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Elba grunts, crossing his arms. To everyone’s surprise, the wookie gets a response from the shipwright: “The balance between warship and civilian transport also varied. Some of my kin are naturally more…bellicose than others, and their doctrine is also unique. But our ships rarely ever went any larger than frigates or heavy cruisers.”
>>Can you tell me more about the Civil War? And about the Adacap that could control lighting?
“Adacap Zonsoe…” Pip takes a moment to spit onto the ground. “I only met the man a handful of times. My mother was married to the chief engineer of Arcblade, so I was required to come to formal events. Inter-fleet meetings and the like. But even before the war, there was something just…wrong with him.”
“In what way?” asks Suzel, deadly serious.
“To be part of the Chain is to live and die but he sword, but even the most hardened of us have a line we won’t cross. Not him. He was ruthless, ambitious beyond reason, and cruel beyond even what most would use for intimidation or utilitarian means.”
The shipwright hesitates, quickly reaching for another drink. “The eyes are a window into the soul. But looking into his felt like staring into the depths of a black hole – cold, merciless, and uncaring save for the desire to consume all in its path. And every act of cruelty and malice he performed seemed to be the only thing that could satisfy that hollowness within him.”
<span class="mu-i">And this was before he supposedly fell to the Dark Side.</span>
Your lips thin into a grim line. “And the lightning?”
“A power we thought only lay in myth and legend.” He shudders. “Cast by only the darkest sorcerers and witches with the blackest souls. I never saw it, but they broadcasted the terrible noise of Zonsoe killing Adacap Tybalt Arcblade. It’s not something I wish to revisit, but one that I fear will haunt me for the rest of my days.”
“Did you know he could do that?”
“No, not at all!” Pip shakes his head. “The first time he displayed it was killing Tybalt aboard his new flagship. But he would display more of it during the Civil War, even up to his final battle…”
>>How does a scion of the Blazing Chain come to find themselves here?
The air grows heavy as the memory flickers before the shipwright’s eyes. “Refusing Zonsoe’s came at a cost. When he declared himself Grand Khan, anyone who dared to resist his authority became a target. Men and women, elders and children, warriors and civilians…distinction became irrelevant if they were associated with dissent. All of Arcblade was designated for destruction only moments after our Adacap Tybalt was murdered for his defiance against the mad tyrant.”
His words are tinged with melancholic bitterness. “For our resistance, we were only given one sentence: annihilation. And Blackshakle was very thorough. What few of us managed to survive, mere hundreds out of thousands, were scattered across the Unknown Regions."
(cont.)
