some rambling about Soren, the ritual he went through as a teenager, Zakuul and Star Fortress connections, and his relationship with death
Soren is Varkhal's brother. the two were selected by Lord Harren to both be his apprentices, as he saw potential with identical twins with assassination and stealth skills
Harren liked to mess with Sith alchemy and experimental rituals. years prior, he'd stumbled across information from an unknown part of space while out exploring. information, that he realized he could combine with a ritual intended for unnatural healing and just generally making it Significantly harder to kill the one the ritual was used on
Harren convinced Soren to take part in this ritual of his own making. the ritual that combined Sith methods with what would turn out to be Zakuulan ones, though they didn't know that at the time. Soren didn't understand what he was getting into. not at first
Var would later find his brother half-conscious, covered in his own blood, hands bound to an alter and covered in marks carved into his skin
the ritual was marked off as a failure, and the twins became bitter with their master
it would be when they were 22 that they had a run-in with another pair of apprentices - rivals from their Korriban acolyte days - that would result in a fight. Soren would die with a lightsaber through the heart, while Var would sustain fatal injuries that would have killed him if not for intervention by Teeres
...only, well. days would pass, and then Soren would wake. very slowly coming to, and finding himself in a stone coffin with the smell of burned flesh heavy in his nose
the ritual had worked, though not as intended
it had preserved his body after death, slowly worked on repairing the fatal damages with a...strange substance. almost metal-like, somewhat tough like a callous, but still malleable as flesh should be.
Soren would think Var was dead, as their Force bond had been severed with his death. instead, he felt a connection...elsewhere. couldn't pinpoint it. it fed to him knowledge he knew he shouldn't have; it was overwhelming, at first.
when he returned to their master, he didn't say anything of it. Harren only knew of the resurrection - Soren wouldn't say a word about the unknown connection. his master would lie that Var was indeed dead, though in reality had cast him aside when his injuries left him disabled. he wanted all of Soren's focus
it would turn out that Soren's unknown connection was to the Star Fortresses, still partially under construction in Zakuulan space; it would be many years yet before they would be stationed in orbit of various planets in the known galaxy. even so, they offered to him what information they had access to, and he felt as their sun reactors grew. as the weapons clung to the Force through the Zakuulan Force rituals that allowed their reactors to run as they did. he felt their sentience begin to bloom, as they cautiously reached out to each other - and to him. he clung to these unknown machines like siblings, using them to fill the hole in his chest that losing his connection to Var had left
while he'll never fully understand how the ritual worked, and his master was unable to replicate it - eventually getting himself killed in trying to - it would turn out that it attempted to replace his bond with Var instead with one to the Fortresses. in doing so, it fractured the bond that the twins had, making it irreparable and so they can barely sense one another even when in the same room
it wouldn't take long for Soren to realize that, while the ritual would revive him after death (rather quickly, after the first few times. sometimes he could find himself getting back up mere minutes later), that it gave him a strange new connection to an unknown world, well...
it seconded as a curse. it drew death to him like a siren song, and the longer he went without dying, the harder it became to avoid it
Soren has been gutted, poisoned, head nearly completely separated from his shoulders, stabbed through the heart, bled dry, electrocuted, head cracked open, legs cut off to send him into shock - he no longer fears death.
merely sees it as an...inconvenience
