#tashram

[xivu-arath]

Tell me about your Star Wars OCs?

this is a tall order... watch me forget someone

mains

rkorya, sith warrior - proud, self-assured, bloodthirsty and far more loyal than she is ambitious, she's extremely powerful and a talented warrior, but lacks fine control in the force due to her training being deliberately sabotaged. she was her family's only hope to maintain their precarious status as minor nobility, and succeeded in this role... and just happened to be isolated, pressured, and used as a pawn for nearly every step of the way. despite that, she's endured and survived and made herself too implacable to really be challenged. she loves the empire (and what she thinks it can become) and is blind to all the damage it's done to her, but she's also someone all the darths have to step very lightly around. My Favourite, has the bulk of my fic and several adjacent timelines of what happens with her (in one she sacrifices herself and becomes a sword ghost slowly moving through history)

shenrihn, jedi knight - quiet, distant and superficially calm - but judgmental, fiercely aggressive in battle, and driven by fear and resentment, they're rather infamous as a jedi for having emerged from the prison planet of belsavis, where they had been in stasis for 20,000 years. once a slave of the infinite empire of the rakata, they navigated the stars and found life-rich planets for conquest, but were put into stasis for study when the rakata's force sensitivity began to wane. the jedi order took custody of them after their discovery, and they eventually became a padawan... but finding the peace promised to them proved very difficult. their story is in limbo after finishing the class story because they would rather avoid all plot forever, but I'm cultivating a very mean au where they end up in the sith inquisitor story instead

significant ocs

vitnako, twi'lek smuggler - witty, laidback, radiates Just A Guy energy, but has a ruthless streak when cornered. an expert on reinventing himself and cutting and running due to a tough past on hutta and being the only one who managed to get out of there. only loosely connected to the class story because it's either sexist or ridiculous, but he's out there dodging the law and having a good time

netethei, chiss agent - Officially The Worst. cheerful, amiable and easily entertained, she's difficult to read due to how genuine her amusement is - but it can easily come at the cost of those around her. she was recruited by the empire after selling a diplomat's scandals and secrets out, and she's currently keeping herself from stepping out of line... but all of her fellow agents hate her anyways

meyrikh, pureblood sith apprentice - secretive, jealous, an insecure mess. child of a family found to be plotting treason, she and her older siblings were sold into slavery, and all of the adults killed. she eventually managed to become an apprentice, but any advantage her lineage might have granted her is outweighed by how uncomfortable her existence makes every traditional sith. her sole talent is in going unseen, but still not as often as she would like. kept in limbo because I want to think of a good master for her still

tashram, togruta sith lord - weary, vengeful, bitter, and stubborn. an attempt on her life by an upstart rival has her crash onto an agrarian planet in the middle of nowhere. laying low slowly turns to actually making a life for herself here rather than risk returning to sith politics. has an extremely wip fic project about how she becomes a farmer, and the connections she makes

the twi'lek pirate crew - barely represented on my blog, but a collection of twi'leks (and one zabrak) created by one of my friends handing me a bunch of adoptables. I don't have much of substance on them but I think they're cool

characters in name only

kymet, mirialan trooper - a republic trooper for the class story

chotal, miraluka jedi consular - a consular for the class story! I actually really enjoy the story but cannot think of a good oc for it yet so here we are

yskra, rattataki bounty hunter - an oc I made in tandem with a friend, but he's not playing currently so she's in limbo. a survivor of rattatak's fighting arenas, trying to make a future through bounty hunting with her partner

[xivu-arath]

seeing lotro listed makes me sooo nostalgic omg

I have! many little guys! I'll only leave a few here or I'd be picking screenshots all day

my two zabrak mains, rkorya and shenrihn (sith warrior and jedi knight, For Parallel Reasons)

my sith lord who was believed dead and became a farmer, tashram (no screenshots because swtor does not believe in letting you access the older female complexion. cowardly)

Do you play MMOs? Do you want FREE ART? do you want FREE ART of your WOW, SWTOR, or LOTRO character? You're in luck! Because I, puffball, am laundering clout here on Tumblr once again. I tried to be on twitter and couldn't stand getting my eyebrows blasted off by foul takes every five minutes (and now it's some other website? weird.), and though mastodon is my home, my art doesn't get much interaction (because I post it on my extremely insular self-hosted instance that sees no traffic and doesn't allow new users). so I'm here on Tumblr back on my old tricks, opening requests like it's 2011 Deviantart and I'm going on the free art forums in exchange for followers.

send an ask or reply here and god willing I will draw your little guy

[hoiistart]

For @xivuuarath

[xivu-arath]

Following an assassination attempt, Sith Lord Tashram crashes onto a nowhere planet in the Outer Rim. Letting her enemies think she was killed is the easy part - the trouble is what comes after.

Dying. Something around her is dying.

Tashram reaches out to it with all the thirst of a wanderer in the desert. Is she dying, too? Maybe, maybe – the little she allows herself to notice is all pain, a dozen layers of it all seeping together. But beneath and beyond herself is the pain of a thousand, tens of thousands of tiny lives. Plantlife, surely, but right now all she cares about is that they are dying first. She does not have the strength to lift her head or move her hands, but she does not let even one death slip through her grasp.

Each one alone is not even a spark of warmth, but together they are barely enough, a flicker of energy. Tashram uses it to open her eyes, and they immediately blur and water. The air is all smoke, acrid and foul, and she coughs on her first few breaths.

Her ship – yes, this was her ship, this cage of metal warped from the heat and collapsed inward from the crash. There is metal above her, and burnt ground beneath. The heat presses down on her, as potent and unassailable as the grip of an enemy. She has to move. If the fire reaches the fuel tank, no amount of power will be enough to save her. Her hands curl in the dirt.

Moving is terrible. Either new wounds open as she drags herself forward, or older ones reacquaint themselves. She does not have the strength to avoid the twisted pieces of metal and shards of the windshield and they bite and drag and scrape as she crawls over them. They don’t matter. She is Sith, the pain can fuel her for a little while at least, and there are shards everywhere because there is an opening in the wreckage. After an endless moment she heaves herself through, clutching at the scorched earth. The heat is still rolling out, blackening what little she can see beyond the crashsite. A field of long grass, she thinks, though much of it has been flattened.

She was half-thrown from the cockpit. If she had not had contact with the ground, with the charred soil and the burning grass –

No use thinking about that.

She must keep moving, but she can’t. Tashram soaks in what little life there is left around her, but it is a frail trickle. She clings to it and to rough awareness of the ever-present heat, the ugly crackling of the fire as it eats away behind her, the crunch of footsteps in the distance.

The footsteps come closer, stop.

[xivu-arath]

in the dark fields fragments

little bits of my sith farmer fic:

Burns heal. Tashram relents enough to leech a little life from small things – crawling grubs and things that dig in the dirt – and fortify her cracked ribs. Empty weeks pass by as the den of Selonians work around her, a thorn that she’s sure they all want gone, though none say it to her face.

Their generosity irritates her, because she depends on it. But the slow, deliberate pace of their life is a puzzle that she cannot grasp. Selonians are hunters. She knows they were fierce adversaries on Corellia during the war.

-

“Why do you insist on taking pity on me!?” she snarls.

Just this once, she sees Kzittal flinch, ears laying back, but her voice is still steady, still damnably calm. “You’re alone. All of us will die, if left to be alone.”

No. She wouldn’t. She would claw her way to survival, whatever it took.

[xivu-arath]

🌽🍰 for Rkorya, 🎂🍪 for Tashram? :)

(ask meme)

rkorya

🌽: How does this OC feel about acts of affection? What's their favourite act of affection, physical or emotional?

affection - and especially open, earnest expressions of it - was rare in her life for a long time, so it both means a great deal to her and is rather overwhelming. touch and proximity are a Big Deal each time, especially for the measure of shared trust to come close to someone so tangibly dangerous... but actually rkorya prefers bits of symbolic intimacy. knowing each other's habits, sharing space comfortably... checking over each other's gear, helping with a tedious daily task. the sort of thing she'd ordinarily never lower her guard for

🍰: What's something your OC counts as unforgivable?

betrayal of ideals. this is an interesting line to have, given she is a sith lord and betrayals and scheming behind each others' backs is pretty much mandatory. she doesn't begrudge that (except when it escalates and starts undermining what everyone else is doing) but it can usually be anticipated and planned around as long as you gauge everyone else's priorities correctly. it's the... deliberate, careless throwing away of meaningful actions and people who have sworn themselves to a purpose. it's Exactly What Darth Malgus And Vitiate Did, You Fuckheads,

tashram

🎂: Has your OC have any contradictory interests or traits to the first perception people have of them? How do they surprise people?

she always had growing plants as something of a pasttime, though it was admittedly more to keep unnoticed supplies she could drag power and life from - she didn't actually care about keeping them alive until she crashed on kwevron. she's as proud as anyone could expect for the first generation of aliens to be accepted into sith training, but also has trouble not being sincere. she tries to avoid lying to people, and hates boasting

🍪: What is something that's sentimental to your OC?

her saberstaff, since it's the single thing that survived her crash. much later on, kzittal carves a new hilt for it as a gift to her, which makes it even more precious

[xivu-arath]

glance, arms, & favorite for whoever is most on your mind right now?

been thinking about my swtor characters so I'll do this for tashram!

glance: At first glance, what stands out most about your OC's appearance? What's their distinguishing feature?

as a togruta, probably her face paint and lekku! for anyone who's familiar with sith and can recognize her as such, though, it's her age. old sith lords are rare, so it's a sign she's doing something right

she also has a lot of scars for an old farmer in the middle of nowhere....

arms: Does your OC have any weapons? What weapons do they carry, and how do they wear them when they're not fighting?

she mostly relies on the force, so tashram's sole weapon is a double-bladed saber staff, which she usually keeps as a backup for dealing with droids and the like. she wore it on her belt for a long time, but later set it into a longer staff she can use as a walking stick

favorite: Does your OC have a favorite article of clothing or accessory? What is it? What's the meaning behind it? Do they wear it all the time or do they wear it sparingly to keep it safe?

her favourite accessory is also her saber staff - or rather, the hilt it's set into, which was carved for her out of local wood by her neighbour/friend/eventual partner, kzittal. otherwise she doesn't really care much about material objects, especially since most of them were seized by some rival of hers in the empire, or burnt up completely when her ship crashed

the staff is always with her, but it's tough enough and well made. mostly she's possessive with it, and doesn't like anyone else moving or touching it (especially since they might turn it on and slice a limb off)

[xivu-arath]

opening my tashram wips due to the little daily word thing one of my servers is doing and thinking, for the hundredth time, that this idea is really good and I have some structure and I really enjoy what I've got so far and should continue -

[xivu-arath]

politely knocks at ur door with 💍☄️⚡ for tashram :3

💍 Does your OC have a specific item that is priceless to them but may (or may not) be completely worthless to someone else? Is there a story behind this item or is it just because they like it so much?

tashram lost Most of her stuff after crashing and going into hiding, but even before then she wasn't a sentimental type. she valued her lightsaber, some preserved plants and seeds from some very weird sith alchemy projects, but not much else stood out

however after she's healed and making her own way on kwevron, kzittal (the selonian that found her and whose warren took her in while she recovered) carves her a staff to help with walking around, and it's... a gift? entirely unasked and unlooked for?

she would rather never admit it but it's precious to her

☄️ Does your OC believe in fate and destiny or do they think it’s a load of garbage? Would they ever get this fortune told? What would a fortune-teller tell them about their future?

haha no. she's not even interested in conceptualizing the force as something that can affect and influence events to proceed as they should. the universe unfolds due to the nature of the people careening through it making decisions and numerous mistakes and that is how it's always been

she would never get her fortune told unless bullied into it somehow. but perhaps a fortune-teller would tell her that she will live out the rest of her life surrounded by people... and that is. close enough to true

⚡ What are your OC’s phobias? Is there any reasoning behind these? How do they calm themselves down after getting scared? What are they like when they’re afraid? Is there any chance of them overcoming their fears?

after crashing, tashram is skittish around fire. she doesn't like it pointed out and gets snappy and defensive if it's noticed, because it's irrational and foolish - just because she was nearly burnt to death in the twisted remnants of her ship doesn't mean she should have any lasting fears of it!! she survived, she killed the hunters that came after her, she has done everything right...

mostly she tries to get some distance and feed the fear into something larger. if she can't turn it to anger, she can at least use it as fuel to get something done

[xivu-arath]

2 and 9 for trash grandma

trash grandma being one server’s very affectionate name for one of my sith, tashram, lmao

2. what would they pack for a trip that might be different from question 1?

she usually packs lightly - she’ll bring her lightsaber, some way to communicate, especially after being stranded, probably some food or plants that she can drain if she’s in a tight spot. weird practical sith things: having some potted plants you can suck the life out of if you must

9. what color dominates their wardrobe, if any?

she does not pay much attention to clothes, so it’s either “whatever is closest to hand” or “whatever will blend in”. black when she was in the empire, browns and dark greens on kwevron

[xivu-arath]

a surprise gift of tashram from @hoiist, my sith farmer/murderous grandma by @spindlewit!! thank you both so much ;; I have been Admiring since last night, this is just so gorgeous

[xivu-arath]

can u giv me 3, 4, 11, n umm 16 !! for tashram !! :3

okay thank u tumblr for refreshing everything instead of loading in a neat notifications like usual, let’s try this Again

3. What social media platforms would they use (if in a world where those existed) and what would they use them for? Bonus: What would they get cancelled for? 

tashram would like to live in a universe where she can only exist through email or maybe having to send a messenger bird (she’d be a little impressed) but she is on sith facebook, with a totally locked down account. you can only find her through group photos where some poor apprentice has had to laboriously tag every single lord and darth, and she’s always off to one side grimacing or with her back to the camera

she would get cancelled for participating in very niche farming discourse in her community without the slightest remorse, but the cancelling would be done and upheld by like ten people so it’s okay

4. Do they have any weird scars, and how did they get them?

most sith get a bunch of scars, especially towards old age, and tashram is no exception. she has a few standard ones from duels and assassination attempts and such, the Usual(tm), and a mess of jagged and burn scars from when her ship crashed. quite a few are readily visible on her head and arms

11. What’s something embarrassing they did as a child/teenager? 

got stuck in a tree for an entire day. she doesn’t want to talk about it!!

16. What do you think this character’s worst decision was? What does this character think their worst decision was?

hmmmm tashram’s story has most of the general arc planned out but specific terrible decisions that worsen things have been left up in the air, so this might be a bit vague still. perhaps not identifying the root of what dissatisfies her with imperial society or sith politics earlier.... in accepting infighting and ruthlessness as the only way forward, and becoming apathetic to it, she became callous. not purposely cruel, maybe, but she had to carve out a space for herself, and so did not grant that to anyone else who came after her... and so, when she was in need of help, she was alone

also her other worst decision is to be mean to kzittal, which she is for like. Several Chapters Still and idk how I’m gonna survive

tashram has complicated feelings about confronting her mistakes. I think once she actually gets the hang of teaching her apprentice, she might regret not sparing more time and consideration on her first one - but she hadn’t been granted that consideration when she was an apprentice, and had been expected to die without making it to lord. she couldn’t shed the weight of that when she took on a student for the first time, and the bitterness seeped through

[xivu-arath]

in the dark fields - i

I am not good at multichapter projects but here I am anyways!! sith farmer deserves it

(AO3)

She pours all her bruised, burning focus into the bounty hunter’s living body and pulls.

Dying. Something around her is dying.

Tashram reaches out to it with all the thirst of a wanderer in the desert. Is she dying, too? Maybe, maybe – the little she allows herself to notice is all pain, a dozen layers of it all seeping together. But beneath and beyond herself is the pain of a thousand, tens of thousands of tiny lives. Plantlife, surely, but right now all she cares about is that they are dying first. She does not have the strength to lift her head or move her hands, but she does not let even one death slip through her grasp.

Each one alone is not even a spark of warmth, but together they are barely enough, a flicker of energy. Tashram uses it to open her eyes, and they immediately blur and water. The air is all smoke, acrid and foul, and she coughs on her first few breaths.

Her ship – yes, this was her ship, this cage of metal warped from the heat and collapsed inward from the crash. There is metal above her, and burnt ground beneath. The heat presses down on her, as potent and unassailable as the grip of an enemy. She has to move. If the fire reaches the fuel tank, no amount of power will be enough to save her. Her hands curl in the dirt.

Moving is terrible. Either new wounds open as she drags herself forward, or older ones reacquaint themselves. She does not have the strength to avoid the twisted pieces of metal and shards of the windshield and they bite and drag and scrape as she crawls over them. They don’t matter. She is Sith, the pain can fuel her for a little while at least, and there are shards everywhere because there is an opening in the wreckage. After an endless moment she heaves herself through, clutching at the scorched earth. The heat is still rolling out, blackening what little she can see beyond the crashsite. A field of long grass, she thinks, though much of it has been flattened.

She was half-thrown from the cockpit. If she had not had contact with the ground, with the charred soil and the burning grass –

No use thinking about that.

She must keep moving, but she can’t. Tashram soaks in what little life there is left around her, but it is a frail trickle. She clings to it and to rough awareness of the ever-present heat, the ugly crackling of the fire as it eats away behind her, the crunch of footsteps in the distance.

The footsteps come closer, stop.

“Count on a Sith to almost make it out,” a low voice says. “They can’t just show up and get killed like everyone else.”

“It’s in that code of theirs. To be Sith you must be a huge fucking pain in the ass to everyone in the galaxy.”

“Even your assassins,” the first says.

“Especially your assassins. It’s like those stars-damned slugs they’ve got. You shoot a hole in it and it crawls off to try to bite you in the foot later –”

They laugh. They are so close Tashram can feel them, vibrant and full of life and deadly. One must be standing right beside her, because their boot nudges her. She is too tired for anger at their mockery, too tired even for deception. The boot hits again to roll her over, and she goes with it, grasping blindly for their leg.

Her fingers brush past, and she pours all her bruised, burning focus into the bounty hunter’s living body and pulls.

A strangled sound as he tries to breathe, but she takes that too – the air from their lungs, the blood from their veins, the panicked flutter of their heart under her hand. She drinks it all, even as the other one shouts. Blasterfire is just another pain on top of the rest, and she does not try to defend herself or avoid it or heal, just reaches out. Her power is slow, so slow, but draining one life gives her the energy to course it through the air and into the other hunter and then it is too late. She is a deep chasm carved from pain and struggle and she drains them both down to their bones.

When they are both silent, and she can breathe a little easier, Tashram drags their bodies closer to the ship. The flames lick at her with greedy appetite – if there’s anything left of the corpses, it won’t be enough to be recognizable.

They must have a ship somewhere nearby. She picks a direction amidst the long, tossing grasses and wide-spreading trees in the distance and goes to look.

Between her pained, halting pace and the fits of coughing that catch her, she does not get very far. More than once she thinks of draining the life of everything around her – but what surer way to give herself away? Other hunters might come. She must travel to a safe place, go to ground and recover her strength in time.

Drawing back from the Force goes against her every instinct, and without it she feels unmoored, half-blind. She stumbles on, and there is still no sign of a ship or a landing site.

But eventually she hears the rattling drone of a speeder engine, which cuts off a good distance away. Tashram stops, taking the opportunity to cough and clear her throat. At least she does not need to work at looking weak and helpless – she is already close to that.

The stranger wades through the grass towards her, stopping far out of arm’s reach. From afar they were curiously indistinct, and now she sees why – they are a Selonian, fur dangerously close to blending in with the dull colours around them. She has only ever seen a few, and none outside of the Corellian system.

They study her for a moment, and then look past her, to the plume of smoke still starkly visible. “That your ship?” Their voice is a rough burr.

“It was,” she says, stupidly obvious. “I crashed.” Everything she has ever learned fights back against opening her mouth and asking for help. No Sith Lord would stoop so low. No alien Sith would dare, not with every rival and student circling and waiting for a chance to prove her weak and unfit for the power she wields. So Tashram chokes on the words, and cannot get them out.

The Selonian does not wait for them. “Any others with you?”

“No.” She thinks of the bodies, reconsiders. “They’re... dead, now. Where is the spaceport? I – I need a ship.”

“No ships in the spaceport right now.”

“No ships?” She laughs, incredulous and strained beyond belief. “Where is this?”

“Kwevron,” the Selonian says, and shrugs when she stares at them. “It’s quiet. I’m Kzittal.”

Her only hope is still the hunters’ ship, if she can just find it. She turns aside, swaying. Suddenly the Selonian is in her way, leaning on a staff. She should have caught them moving, or noticed the weapon –

“No ships that way,” they say, unruffled by how she startles back. “And if there were, you’re too banged up to fly. Den’s not too far. Go there, rest, get fixed up. Then we speak of ships. Good idea, yes?”

Tashram thinks that even if she were to turn away and refuse, the Selonian would drag her there anyways. Their certainty is not quite a threat. “Yes,” she manages, and looks for any sign of satisfaction or triumph. They show none, and do not move to help her when she insists on limping the short distance to their speeder on her own fast-fading strength.

It is not a victory at all, but she holds it close to her heart all the same.

[xivu-arath]

7 and 18 for Sith farmer

7. If the one prison phone call thing was real, who would they call?

this is actually somewhat the plot point of the next chapter I have to write and incidentally the second time you’ve casually predicted a plot I’m writing?? I am impressed and a little unnerved,

initially, tashram would likely call her former apprentice, though they are not close. their relationship is one of distant pragmatism and not stepping on each other’s toes - the call would doubly expose a vulnerability and place tashram in their debt

later on, she’d have to chew on her pride a little, but she’d undoubtedly call kzittal

18. What character from another work do you think they’d get along really well with?

I’m not sure if I can say anyone gets along well with tashram - or tashram with them - but I actually would say zavala? their morals hardly align, but she would respect his grim resolve, the steadfast determination to hold the line and protect what matters with his bare hands. she’d attend his knitting classes and give him a basket of her crops each time

[xivu-arath]

hey swtor, let characters look old!!! and let togruta have scars!!

anyways this is tashram, a sith lord turned farmer on an outer rim planet, who discovered that revenge on your political enemies isn’t quite as satisfying as the toil of life and death working with the land itself, and promptly retires to farm since everyone thinks she’s dead anyways

she zaps her neighbours’ crops free of pests and channels the lives of small burrowing things back into the soil. she’s a mysterious, independent and creaky old lady of no small renown on her backwater planet, and content to keep it that way

[xivu-arath]

in the dark fields - ii

chapter 1 | AO3

“I would be cast out for that foolishness. You beside me, of course. Is quick health worth that?”

“It could be.”

“It could,” Kzittal allows, stepping back to look at her searchingly. “But not an offer you should make now. Not one I will take.”

Kwevron, Tashram soon finds out, does not have a medbay, or even a dedicated medical droid. Kzittal promises her there is a good store of kolto sprays at the den, but what she remembers of being treated is a dream stretching on for too long – waking to pain in the dark, surrounded by gleaming eyes. Somehow, she keeps her resolve to not draw on the Force, in case her enemy is searching for her, and so she is weak instead, racked with fever and unable to walk more than a few steps.

When she is clearheaded enough, she rages at her weakness, and nurses that bitter anger as her sole comfort. The hunters’ ship looms large in her mind. If she could only go out and find it, before anyone else does. Before they are tracked back to this planet, and to her....

But she can’t even make it out of the den on her own power, and she cannot simply ask if another ship was found, and risk the attention it would draw. So day by day she seethes, and heals.

“You look better,” Kzittal says, peeling off the poultice on the worst of her burns. Today she can sit up on her own, and as small as it is, not having to rely totally upon a stranger is an immense relief.

Tashram reminds herself that she is still stuck here, utterly at the mercy of her and her tribe – apparently all sisters, which she still cannot make sense of – but the relief remains, contrary to all facts.

“Not well enough,” she says, biting her cheek to keep from wincing as Kzittal dabs at her side with a rank-smelling salve. “It would go faster with more kolto.”

“And use all of it on an outsider? We cannot order more for many months.” For all that she grubs in the dirt on a backwater planet, Kzittal seems more impassive to her than most Jedi. Her fur masks her expression, and her ears don’t even twitch as she speaks. “I would be cast out for that foolishness. You beside me, of course. Is quick health worth that?”

Tashram lets out her breath in a hiss, not even sure herself if it is from pain or rage. If limited resources were such a problem, they should have thought more about settling here in the first place. But she waits until she can be sure she will not say anything to put her life at risk.

“It could be.”

“It could,” Kzittal allows, stepping back to look at her searchingly. “But not an offer you should make now. Not one I will take.”

“Don’t be stupid,” she snaps. “I have technology, weapons, things this planet has never seen – surely if not that, you need credits.” Unbidden, she thinks of the bounty that had been placed upon her. It had to have been quite a sum to draw that much attention. Better that Kzittal not ever learn of it.

“Are any here?” Kzittal asks, ignoring the heat in her voice. Tashram would give anything to make her react somehow, make her see she is worthy of respect and fear. “What use to me or my sett are promises? Any outlander can promise as much.”

“I wouldn’t lie.” If only because needless treachery is usually more trouble than it is worth. The Selonian shrugs a shoulder, unconcerned with this. Tashram struggles to find her way back to composure, the Force a lure she cannot draw upon. A quick display of power would solve everything, or close to it.

But she can’t risk it. It hasn’t even been a month since the crash. Whoever had ordered her death could wait, especially since her body had not turned up.

She takes a deep breath that jars her ribs unpleasantly. “Then what do you want?”

Seeming to take that as a sign that the discussion is mostly over with, Kzittal moves back in to apply a fresh poultice. “Good yields for the crops,” she says, voice even. “Getting grazing permissions for the year from the neighbours. No sickness, no blight. Not things you can grant, yes?”

Tashram curls her lip, looking away. Small concerns, fit for a small and petty world.

“And to see you well, and away from here. Which you can give, if you wait.”

She chews on that for a long moment, hating that she must let herself be tended to, that she is so easily and effectively cornered. She cannot risk drawing attention, so she cannot use the Force. She cannot use the Force, so she cannot heal herself or commandeer a shuttle from the locals. She cannot heal on her own power, and so must wait on Kzittal’s mercy....

“It’s not as if I have a choice.”

“Hm,” Kzittal says to that, and finishes bandaging her injuries in silence. When she leaves, Tashram stares into the waiting dark, hot-eyed and teeth gritted against words she must not say.