For those on Dxun - the Mandalorians, natives, beasts and lingering spirits of the dead - the invading fleet was a spectacle that was very much like a scene playing out. It was a clear night on the jungle moon, and many were in full view of the occurring devastation without having to scale far up trees or structures to get a look. The ships were large, but did not obscure much of the fire which streaked across the sky as starfighters clashed and fought and exploded, and on the surface of Onderon the defensive structures were bombarded and blown to pieces. Not a concern for the Mandalorians who lived there. The conflicts were not their problem, except when they opted to sell themselves off as hired blades. Even then, it was not so much involved in war as it was dealing with specific groups or problematic individuals. Treating them like assassins rather than warriors, but honour did not pay for supplies. Credit did.

Although they did not involve themselves in the problems Onderon suffered, that was not to say that they were uninvolved entirely. The Sith fleet drew much attention to them, as they were aware that a ship could fire to the left as well as to the right. The Sith were focused on Onderon, but the planet had many sides, and they were situated quite firmly between the planet and the moon. That indicated something, though without a fleet or their own it was impossible to join in the fighting unless it was brought to them. It was enough incitement for most, and by the time the Sith fleet had stopped moving, most of the assorted tribes and clans on Dxun had managed to arm themselves and were readying themselves to deploy in response to the invasion threat.

Through macrobinoculars and from high vantage points on cliffs, or in trees, or from sentry posts, the few ships that were dispatched to the forest were noted. The coordinates were relayed to the camps, and it was not long for war parties to be rallied to chase them down. Through the jungles the expert combatants ran, disappearing into the brush as they hunted for their quarry. Lights flashed in all directions, either from helmets or from weapons, but the tone was hushed, and much of the communications was whispered man to man. Some stayed behind, using their limited equipment to attempt to hack comms and relay information to their brothers in the forest. They were expecting soldiers - probably looking to find something, or mop up the Mandalorian resistance with a token force. The soldiers would probably expect an easy assignment.

They were going to be proven wrong.

The look in Mason's eyes was like that on the face of a child in a candy store. His gaze was held in a vice-grip by the lush, vibrant world below, steeped in a throbbing, violently flourishing ecosystem. A thin line of saliva slithered down to his chin for a moment before he took notice and lazily wiped it away with the sleeve of his coat.

"Gorgeous isn't she?"

He had been standing in the deck of the gargantuan warship known to all who lived long enough to learn its name as The Astaroth, and it was bustling and humming with the buzz of business and activity. The trip had been annoyingly long, and chillingly devoid of female companions save the Grand Admiral herself who, with far less provocation and Force influence than he'd been accustomed to using, had agreed to accompany him in his quarters during an otherwise drearily dull trip through hyperspace.

Now he was directing this comment to the very same admiral, a Miss Annika Tezrian. The Firrerreo was an especially delectable specimen, supple and lean in all the right places, and, had he not been utterly starved from his usual diet of pheromones and sweat, he would have just as soon run a plethora of tests on what he considered a rather ripe sample of an otherwise uncommon species.

"Practically swelling plump with life...

Like a beautiful virgin."

He reached his hand out as it to grasp the moon himself.

"One needs only reach out and make her bleed to truly know the excellence of this ripe fruit..."

He then turns to face the Grand Admiral who, by now was probably navigating somewhere around her deck giving some kind of order or monitoring some sort of readings.

"Wouldn't you agree Grand Admiral?"

He held on his face an expression of hungry anticipation, not unlike the expression he'd worn when seeing her for the first time.

The bridge was alight with activity, a hologram display filling up the center of the room and stretching up the full two stories of the command center. Both the planet and the moon were visible, with their fleet situated in the middle, and off screen was the reinforcement fleet set up in case of emergency. Surrounded by the terminals and operators, floating, colourful holograms and wandering individuals, the Sith's Grand Admiral observed with lazy attention. She was seated in her chair, keypads and displays flanking her and dismissable at the touch of a button, legs crossed and fingers tapping softly at the development in the battle both in air and on the ground. A glance at a holographic representation of data took her vision past the screen and to the man observing from the window, a keen eye watching the moon alongside them.

Her stomach twisted a little, signalling the start of his words which echoed through the room despite the other activity going on. Although several operators had headsets, some did not, but she somehow suspected that only she could hear him as he spoke. The man didn't seem the type to orate to a crowd. The innuendos hung strongly in the air, almost as much as the smell of his... whatever it was he wore. If it was a cologne, she didn't want to know, and if it was something else, she didn't want to know. "Bleed every virgin and you'll find it boring. Leaving some untouched, ignorant and pure can make them a delightful temptation." She dismissed a file, then sighed and shooed away the entire display altogether, eliminating the visual barrier between them.

"But then bleeding in general is so old fashioned. Back up there with black bile, yellow bile and phlegm. Yes, you get the fun. The quick release of endorphins, but it's so very..." She paused, leaning her head towards her arm and re-crossing her legs. "... animalistic." Her eyes wandered towards the battle situation, but she wasn't surprised by what she saw, and quickly lost interest. "Sometimes the most titillating things are those we never have influence on." She could have shown him things... beautiful, marvelous, fantastic examples of the effects of random chance. Supernovas and nebulae, comets and a odd planets with numerous moons. Things she enjoyed. Things she took time out to observe. "Unless you're more embracing of instant gratification. But that would be very, very disappointing. And I could do without additional disappointment."

Mason listened intently to the woman who had guided him to this miraculous place through space and time with her equally marvelous vessel. She spoke in a dreary but sultry tone that made him salivate, though not noticeably. The word "Animalistic," however, brought a wide, toothy, white grin to his face.

He had the courtesy at least to let her finish speaking before suddenly appearing like a shadow behind her, as if he had always been there.

"Oh, but animalistic indulgences are oh-so-fun."

His voice drifted into her ear ever-so-softly.

"And beautiful things are to be admired, and temptations are certainly thrilling, but what becomes of the thrill over time?"

His hands now crept ever so slowly to squeeze her shoulders in a hypnotically rhythmic motion.

"Beauty become commonplace, and thrill wanes with age."

He smiled, whispering through his teeth into her ear, his breath brushing her skin like feathers.

"I find the only way to sustain such pleasures is through complete understanding. I take them. Learn them. Exploit them. Cut them open so that all their precious, delectable little secrets come spilling out into my hands.

And I drink it up like the sweetest ambrosia, and go on to search for yet another."

He then straightened his back, pulling his mouth away from it's perilously close proximity to her ear, and stood looking out at the lush moon once more, though his hands remained firmly on her shoulders.

"And that's exactly what I intend to do here.

There are plenty of beauties to be seen throughout the galaxy, and in all likelihood, at least half of them will outlive me by a eons. But here, before me at this very moment, is a lush, verdant maiden, just begging me to take her into my arms and ravish her and all her dirty little secrets."

Darth Avisceris, as he'd come to be called, was both known as a shameless lecher, and a fanatical scientist and it was no wonder why or how he'd come to be known as either, for at that very moment, as he stood staring up at the green moon, his eyes held in them a look that could only be described as intense desire.

A typical Sith trick, she thought, not impressed with the magic act. She had been almost paranoid about keeping him within eyesight, and had done a good job of it up to this point. One distracting blink, or whatever it was which had caused it, and she found herself with him suddenly elsewhere, within striking... well, touching as it would be, distance. It did not sit well with her and she shifted a little, unsettled by both his status and his words. His lips strayed close to her ear, and she felt her stomach turn a little. She could match him, but she despised the behaviour as much as the desire he held for the unnecessary destruction. It was a beautiful planet, but even more than that, there were military personnel on the ground, and she would rather not be responsible for blowing apart her own men.

Twisting a little, she finally decided to pull away and stand up entirely, pacing across the room to where the windows housed a picturesque view of Dxun, and watched it turning agonizingly slowly before her. He was an unstable sort and she was wary around him, expecting to have to defend herself, though hoping it would not come to that. Despite being the grand admiral, she suspected her usefulness was limited and paled in comparison to someone of Avisceris's ability. Not the worst she would imagine, certainly, but enough that she shied away from getting too involved in the strung out, psychopathic conversations which were flooded with innuendos and left her hoping he didn't decide to try such things on her. She was quite content without being cut open to spill out her secrets.

"Well if that's how you feel then I suppose I could derive conclusions from it. You seem almost... I'd say obsessed, but there's obviously more going on. I'd even go as far as to suggest you're not getting enough of what you need." Her fingers pressed lightly against the window, pressing a little, but they did not shift at her encouraging and similarly she would refuse to. "If you would like to blow something up then you can either use some Sith hocus-pocus, or you'll wait until what we're here for is retrieved." She wasn't about to be terrorised aboard her own ship, and she would not be blamed for the loss of an important artifact from orbital bombardment. She looked through the reflection at him, and then back to the jungle moon. Not if she could help it.

Mason leered a clever grin at the woman as she spoke to the window.

"My dear woman,"
He started.
"You misunderstand me!"

He was quickly standing at her side once more, staring out at the same ponderously rotating ball of jungle.

"Simply blowing it up is far from productive.

Why, what would you imagine would happen to all those lovely little soldiers down there? And to the beautiful little beasties ready to rip their throats out?"

His voice was almost sing-song.

"My dear, Darth Avisceris always gets results, and a simple detonation would be far from profitable."

He leaned close once more.

"I fully intend to descend upon this maiden myself, and probe her secrets with my bare hands."

He leaned back now and chuckled.

"Or rather, the bare hands of a dozen or so underlings. It would be unfortunate if I were to lose a few fingers."

He wore a gleeful smile now, imagining all the wonderful specimens he could steal away from the planet, and all the wonderfully depraved things he could do to them.

"Now, I suppose our Dear Lord Tarael would be loath to miss out on such an opportunity, I wonder where he's hiding..."

He mused to himself now as he gazed out the window. His thoughts wrapping silently around the various life-forms populating the planet and how best to use them.

He misunderstood her? He had to admit that sounded very easy to do, and at the same time very unlikely to be the case. Certainly, if she was wrong about the blowing up then she expected that was the only thing, and that destruction would be induced regardless of the method. He arrived back alongside her, like a snake, or a shadow that crawled along floors and walls and arrived silently, and crept everywhere as if it had insidious purpose. Likely, yes, and she would venture to suggest that it was more than likely and in fact pretty much a certain fact. To the question he proposed, she would have to say that if he cared about the soldiers on the ground, he would be the first Sith to do so to her memory, and that would surprise her quite a lot.

The sexual innuendos and references continued to spew from his mouth, and she drew her arms around herself to both compensate for the cold which seemed to surround him, and the feeling of being around him which she associated to being similar to an animal stalked by predators. "I feel the planet would be very much mistreated if you were to allow lesser hands the pleasure of doing such a thing. After all, if you are wiling to just let anyone have your way with her, then you're not setting a very high standard of company." Turning away, she allowed him to continue his visual feast of the destination below them, glancing to the holograms depicting the battle on Onderon, before approaching one of the operators. "See if you can find Lord Tarael and get him up here. And check no one's gone missing on board."

Seven: number of times he had left Yaga Minor in the last 10.2 years. Time apart from his work was counterproductive to both advancement of research and Sith warfare – calculations showed casualties caused by his engineering work were reliably higher than his projections of personally-inflicted casualties if forced to “take the field”. Octavian Tarael frowned lightly. Military euphemisms and jargon were highly inexact, a source of constant irritation. Personal battlecruiser (7669013, registered under appellation “Experiment”) was currently exiting hyperspace according to his monitoring devices. Unpleasant to operate on non-personal warship, but necessity to be near central flow of information preceded personal discomfort at present. Comm networks could easily be subjugated by his systems, but word of mouth could not be similarly acquired. The Arkanian’s hand twitched: Avisceris was... irksome in his flesh obsession. Octavian had never understood the biologist’s fascination for recreational sexual activity: flush of endorphins and other chemical activity could easily be reproduced by any competent scientist, the insistence on pursuing intercourse repeatedly was... bewildering. Lack of interest in such matters on his part was a possible bias, yet Karnes deviated statistically from norm of sexual behaviour for gender/age/race/social group.

The Arkanian scientist briefly considered chemical castration for the other scientist: a mind focused entirely on science without the flesh distractions might yield greater and more regular results than it would in its present state. He finally dismissed the motion, as the Shade of the Sith’s creativity seemed to relate to his level of sexual activity. While motion was dismissed, notion worthy of further examination: if similar subjects could be found, a method would be drafted an implemented. Relation between sex drive and use of the Force phenomenon currently undocumented – given usual relation between strong sensations and the phenomenon, results could be interesting. Putting the line of thought aside currently, the Tyrant of Yaga Minor finished the last line of coding he was inserting in the core computers of ship 3201978, registered appellation “Astaroth”. The engineering crew was still looking at him from the sides in a mix of awe and terror – his reputation was fear-inducing, but his genius in matters of mechanics could not be denied. A barely noticeable shudder ran through the ship (less than half of percentile of current ship population within physical means of noticing, operation-caused lack of focus unfactored) as the efficiency of the sub-light engines increased by 0.0126 percent.

Octavian sighed in satisfaction: the imprecision had been ticking away maddeningly at the back of his head since he’d first set foot on the warship’s deck. Paying no attention whatsoever to the crew, the pale-skinned scientist activated his neural interface and directly monitored the information flow the Astaroth was receiving as he made his way to the deck. His feet were set on the most efficient path without needing to access the blueprints: he had seen them two years ago and his memory was flawless. He had applied the necessary modifications to make it so. The course of the engagement was within acceptable parameters predefined for the operation – no intervention was necessary so far and he saw no reason to leave the warship otherwise. Accessing the bridge com systems and cameras, he listened at Karnes as the scientist disclaimed his intentions to the Grand Admiral in an intonation that implied sexual interest, though whether it was directed towards the Firrerreo or towards the metaphorical virginity of an inanimate astral object, he could not ascertain.

"See if you can find Lord Tarael and get him up here. And check no one's gone missing on board."

It took a hundredth of a second to determine he was hearing the Grand Admiral’s voice through his biological conduit and not his neural interface – blinking as he processed the latest report of the advanced landing parties, the scientist focused his intense blue eyes on the Lord and the officer.

“Unnecessary,” he informed them absently. “Karnes, personal body language indicates interest in sexual congress while that of Grand Admiral Tezrian implies reluctance at the same – pursuit of this course of action counter-productive at this juncture, more important matters at hand.”

Octavian’s eyes suddenly turned away from them and he frowned, the data he’d been receiving for the past hour coming together in a pattern he was not pleased with. Entering the Firrerreo’s personal space without a thought as to the socio-psychological implications of such a movement – indulgence of the soft sciences was limited to situations where time permitted such – his long and spindly fingers tapped a series of codes on her keypads. The holographic display in the middle of the room immediately pivoted to a chronological representation of the resistance met by the advance learning parties on the surface of Dxun. The display was set to loop and the diminutive, pale-skinned Lord turned towards his two colleagues with an expectant look on his face. When they failed to react, he frowned.

“Reaction time of Mandalorian forces on the surface too smooth to be concurrent with the unhindered advance reported by planetside troops, even factoring morale derived from warrior-culture. Sith forces getting drawn in for ambushes purpose, most likely – immediate reinforcement recommended, but defer to your superior technical knowledge of warfare, Grand Admiral,” he explained in clipped, controlled tones.

She hadn't really been paying attention, expecting the arrival of the strange man to be presented by one of her staff rather than his own, unexpected arrival. The man was where the view of the small fleet had been, though the projector continued to simulate the environment from separate feeds, causing the moon and planet to continue slowly rotating and lighting up with invading forces which seemed to appear from nothingness surrounding the Sith Lord. Turning as he spoke, she lingered for a second or two before realising what it was that had happened. Narrowing her eyes a little, she glanced around, joined in the confusion by the few operators who were looking at the hologram and trying to identify the location of the hijacked signal. Not worrying herself with the details of that at the moment, she turned from her conversation with the first man in favour of the new arrival.

"Factor... what? Oh... right. You really think so? I hadn't expected the Mandalorians to be so aggressive in their defense of Dxun. There's certainly nothing there they should feel culturally drawn to. The temples are ancient Sith, and Force artifacts." She suddenly felt as though it was something she'd easily have picked up on, but the invasion of Dxun was secondary in her mind and she'd not really been in the best of moods, constantly around the counterpart whom she believed continued to stare at the revolving forest moon. Continuing to calculate and think about what it was, she nodded slightly, wondering how best to warn her men when they couldn't accurately describe what the Mandalorian forces were doing. Sighing, she cleared her throat and returned herself to the matter at hand.

"Thank you for the advice. The forces down there should be headed by a Sith individual, though I'm not sure how well versed in identifying the Mandalorian patrols they will be. I'll have the details forwarded to the relevant captains, and we'll... hmm, yes, let's redirect a squadron of starfighters to provide some strafing fire if we can. Other than that, not much I can see us doing. We can't exactly provide orbital coverage, and I'm not keen on committing more men there than I have to." Without having to say anything directly, the relevant men and women took up their roles and began pulling up screens and communications with the men down in the forest. With that settled, she turned the conversation to another topic. "Will you be taking a shuttle to the moon, Lord Tarael? I appreciate you're a scientist, and samples are rife down there."