#lord dralick

[depizan]

There's nothing happening on screen (or off) here, but it still came out creepy enough I'm sticking it under a cut. (Or maybe I'm just a gigantic weenie.)

Victory

Revenge, as they say, is a dish best served cold, but Lord Dralick’s capture of the Intelligence agent who had repeatedly interfered with his operations was not strictly a matter of revenge. It was the long postponed savoring of a gift that had had the temerity to escape him.

Whumptober prompt #22: obsession

25.9.10, late morning, ship’s time

Lord Dralick poured himself a glass of Chandrilan brandy and leaned back in his sleek acceleration chair. His private starship was well appointed, if less ostentatiously so than some of his fellow Sith Lords’. He preferred simple, expensive furnishings and subtle hints of restrained power. There was no need to bathe everything in red or decorate with holoart of tormented slaves. A few tasteful splashes of red, a well-chosen hunting trophy, a small statuette that only suggested a screaming form – all conveyed the same message with greater elegance.

Perception was power. In Sith politics, in business, even when manipulating Imperial Intelligence. The right attire, the right word in the right ear, the right embellishments to the truth: he had left nothing to chance when it came to ensuring he was the one to deliver the treasonous former agent to his execution. Not for justice, or revenge, but for satisfaction.

Dralick set his glass aside. He would be gravely disappointed if his prisoner had not recovered from the shock of his capture. It could not – should not – have come entirely as a surprise. But then, the young man’s overconfidence and absurd optimism were what made him interesting. Mere arrest could not have crushed that hope.

Without rising, Dralick flicked on the monitor linked to the camera outside the ship’s holding cell. How a prisoner reacted to their imprisonment could give such insight. Some waited with stoic control, while others flung themselves against walls and forcefield with unthinking terror, or clawed at the walls and floor in search of seams that didn’t exist.

His current prisoner looked half-sick with fear. Knowledge of what was in store for him had clearly cut through his frozen shock. The young man buried his face in his hands, and for a moment Dralick thought he might collapse. Instead, he straightened, still shaking slightly, and slumped back against the cell wall. Hope warred with fear. And won.

Dralick smiled thinly. So, his prisoner still saw a way out, just as he had on Nerim when he had blundered so easily into his waiting trap. Perhaps, had he not escaped then, much might have been different. Dralick had allies in Intelligence, of course, but a field agent would have been most useful. He had considered offering the little agent that opportunity… once he’d been rendered a bit more malleable.

It was almost a pity. Still, the young man was not without use. He stood, switching off the monitor with a flick of the Force. It would be interesting to see how long it would take for calculated application of pain to burn away such optimism. Dralick hoped it might take almost the entire voyage.

[depizan]

@pyr0clast has been sorting characters according to the Sorting Hat Chats elaborated, er, Sorting Hat sorting.

I did my main three characters last night here, and now here is everyone else.

Ianya: double burned Gryffindor – modeling Ravenclaw Primary, or trying to

She did the right thing, she made the right choice, and all it got her was pain. She chose the Order, she chose the war, and the war was lost and so was her family. All she has to cling to is being a Jedi. She can pretend to be what she should be, but the problem is she doesn’t have the faith she’d need for rebuilding herself that way to work. It’s more that she can’t throw the Jedi away, not after she lost everything because she thought it was the right choice.

Since her secondary is burned as well, any method will do. But I’m pretty sure it was also Gryffindor.

Novani: Ravenclaw Primary/Gryffindor Secondary – trying to model Ravenclaw Secondary

Novani cares deeply about doing what’s right and good, but she doesn’t instinctively know what that is. She spends quite a lot of time trying to make all of the things she believes a good person should be and do fit together properly with what she believes a good Jedi should be and do. And feeling like it should all fit together much better than she can get it to.

She wants to act with careful reasoned thought but she keeps finding herself doing things that aren’t carefully reasoned at all.

 Daska: Gryffindor Primary/Slytherin Secondary – performing…evil Hufflepuff Primary/Gryffindor Secondary? (people are the Empire, hit everyone else with a lightsaber)

She believes in the rightness of her morals and her interpretation of the Sith Code, despite being surrounded by people who have a very different interpretation and very different morality. She wants to fix the Empire, even if she has some doubts about whether that’s possible, and in the meantime she’s going to do what she can to help people – even if it’s in the guise of being a terrifying Sith. She wants very much to find her sister and mother, but unlike her sister, there are things she won’t do to accomplish that.

She’s comfortable with wearing the mask of a useful but not dangerously ambitious Sith and comfortable solving problems in ways that look direct but aren’t, because what’s on the surface is a sham. (No one asks why a prisoner claimed by a Sith is never seen again, for example.)

 Lysara: (situationally petrified) Slytherin Primary – modeling Ravenclaw and performing evil Ravenclaw/secondary burned…probably Hufflepuff

Lysara cares for herself and her family and would do anything to have her sister and mother back, but she also has a constructed morality around a combination of vengeance and not wanting what happened to her family to happen to others. She’s built a morality of caring for other people on a foundation of hatred. She’ll help random Republic people because she wants the Empire to burn. She’ll help slaves or the downtrodden because she was once a slave and because she wants those who enslave or tread on others to burn.

She cannot let anyone into her inner circle as long as the people around her are all Sith and/or Imperials. She simply can’t take the risk of trusting anyone enough to come to care about them. If she can manage to find her sister and mother and get the hell out of the Empire, she could risk expanding her circle beyond her family. Until then, she’s going to pretend to be a good Sith, sabotage the fuck out of the Empire wherever she can, and hunt for her family.

Her secondary is so burned it’s very difficult to figure out what it was, but her illogical irritation with people who are incompetent or lazy makes me think it was probably Hufflepuff. (She should be glad when Imperials/Sith are incompetent and lazy, since it’s bad for the Empire, but it just irks her, damn it.)

 Tevin: Gryffindor Primary/Hufflepuff Secondary

His morals line up closely enough with the stated morals of the Republic that I briefly considered Ravenclaw for him, but the Republic not actually living up to its morals hasn’t shaken his attachment to those morals or prompted any rethinking.

He could be a double Gryffindor modeling Hufflepuf Secondary but he isn’t really a charger and there’s something that just seems very Hufflepuffy about his leadership. He’s more of a dedicated hard worker who kind of accidentally ended up in a leadership position, and that works more because his teammates feel like part of the team than because they’re following him.

 Bonus extras! Novani’s Jedi Master and the main trio’s villain!

Master Cereb: Gryffindor Primary/Slytherin Secondary – modeling Ravenclaw/Hufflepuff

He has an instinctive internal moral certainty his Padawan lacks, and when push came to shove he would go with what felt right. But he’s Ravenclaw enough to be very good at helping her (and other people) think through moral quandaries in a reasoned, logical way. (Though he has a tendency to encourage morality that matches his own.)

He’s good at and comfortable with fitting in wherever he needs to be and is most comfortable going at things in a quiet and indirect way. He is the ideal Jedi, the comforting master, the cunning spy, the clever detective, the brave rescuer…and while all of those things are true, they aren’t true at the depth they would be if he were actually Hufflepuff secondary.

 Lord Dralick: Double Ravenclaw

His values are selfish and self-serving, but there’s something very thoughtful about them. He’s embraced the general morality of the Sith, but adjusted it in places based on observation and evidence, not just what’s easiest.  (His decent pay and treatment of his employees is evidence for this. He doesn’t feel the need to lead through pure fear just because it’s the done thing. In fact, it would be wrong to pretend fear is the best motivator of loyalty when it clearly isn’t.) He’s also someone more likely to be swayed by reason than emotion. (Not very Sithy there, I suppose.)

And sure, that all sounds like it could be Slytherin, but there’s nothing loyalty based about his values. He wasn’t morally outraged by discovering Kyrian was a traitor; he isn’t loyal to the Empire, himself. And, while he was decidedly irritated that these annoying people kept wrecking his shit and occasionally killing his people, there was no Slytheriny outrage at that. He also has an observational reaction to things that a more instinct based house might not – he didn’t just immediately go after the group again at the end of Conflicts of Interest, he was content to build a case against Kyrian and file away that Savler might have been party to what happened.

(Villains are harder to sort. And not just because I don’t spend a lot of time playing “how does Lord Dralick think?”)

[depizan]

From left to right, descending: Tevin, Kyrian, Jezari; Pheodra, Savler, [empty]; Lysara, Lord Dralick, [empty].

This was an interesting exercise. I have other characters I could have chosen for the good slots, Lysara only pretends to be Lawful Evil (hence the quote marks), and I have several characters that I have no idea where to place on the chart at all.

I also have a lot of human characters. And apparently am not fond of Chaotic alignments. Or Evil ones, since I had to cheat to fill two slots there.

(But alignments are weird, particularly since its easy to put characters in situations where they behave more like another alignment. Savler is really solidly True Neutral, but she treats bounty hunting as if she were Lawful Neutral. Pheodra makes most sense as Lawful Neutral, but being a spy requires her to behave in non-lawful ways. Kyrian’s solution to his job/morality conflict was more on the Chaotic end of things (throw out the rules!) but only because there was no other option. Lysara isn’t Lawful or Evil, but her job of Sith enforcer is. Jezari’s a criminal when she’s not helping the SIS or random hapless people. Hell, you might even be able to argue that Tevin’s definite preference for Good means he belongs in Neutral Good rather than Lawful. And Lord Dralick is an amazingly good boss, for a Sith Lord. (No, really! He only takes his frustrations out on the heroes. Not his employees. You’d be better off working for him than for Lysara’s master.)

I can say quite definitely that all of the characters above have different morals and ethics. (As do the characters I didn’t use for the chart.) But making those morals and ethics line up with ye ol’ classic alignment chart is kind of...squishy.

[depizan]

General Garza or Malora.

General Garza I answered here.

As for Malora... I haven't actually played through the expansion bit she returns in, so I made a quick detour to YouTube to get a feel for what canon does with her. Hmm.

I'm not sure how likely she is to show up in fic, considering my ficverse is something of an AU when it comes to later events. I imagine she's out there doing Sithy things in, er, presumably the Sphere of Biotic Science. (At least I assume that's where she'd be in a timeline where it wasn't merged with the Sphere of Technology.)

I suppose there's some chance she'd cross paths with my villain, since Dralick is a science-minded Sith. But his experiments are useful and productive (particularly by Sith/Imperial standards), so it's unlikely she'd show up as anything other than a name drop, assuming she is as successful in ficverse as she seems to have been in canon.

(I can't, honestly, remember what any of my Sith chose in the mission where you meet her originally. I suspect Lysara sided with her, whatever Daska did, she wouldn't have revealed that Malora wanted to sabotage the experiment, and Dralick - who I did eventually make in game - would...well, that would have depended on whether he believed her or believed Renning. And I don't remember which way I went. Does complicate things, possibly, if I do ever include her as a mention later. Sometimes I wish you could go back in game and see which option you went with...)