Chapter Text
0. Prologue to a Civil War
BBY 62 | Keldabe Base-4, Mandalore
Jaster Mereel, their next Verd’alor.
In his private officer’s quarters, Tor laughed bitterly to himself, feeling more than a little unhinged as the name and title echoed over and over in his mind. He ran a hand through his hair, limp from grease and sweat. He took another swig of narcolethe. It was bitter and fiery, as the drink should be. After all, it was the beverage of choice for Mandalorian soldiers who fought on the frontlines of every great war. My’ika used to joke that it was the pure distilled rage of long-extinct Tuang Shadow Warriors. (Tor would always scoff; how could their mythic ancestors have been so feeble?) Most initiates choked and coughed at the intensity of the drink when trying it for the first time, but not Tor. Not Jaster Mereel, either.
Jaster Mereel, their next Verd’alor.
Tor had argued fiercely for the newly exiled Concordian when he showed up at Keldabe Base-4 nearly two decades ago. Jaster Mereel had mandokar, Tor had insisted. It took a spine of beskar for a nobody like Mereel to kill the corrupt Hardiin second in plain view. What quality could be more important for a soldier of the Watch? His father was skeptical then. Skeptical and weak, afraid of political repercussions from what was then Concord Dawn’s most powerful clan and the ascendant House Kryze that put them there.
How things have changed. Jaster Mereel, their next Verd’alor. The Concordian unknown was on the rise ever since downing his ceremonial bowl of Mandallian narcolethe. Concord Dawn loved him, of course. The ranks loved him. But his father loved him most of all. Parj Vizsla must have thanked the Manda everyday for bringing Jaster to them. Or maybe he cursed the Manda for not making him a Vizsla by blood. Things would have been a whole lot easier, wouldn’t it? Steady, principled, brilliant Jaster who spoke and acted with calm assurance, inspiring confidence and purpose in the greenest recruit. Unlike Tor, the temperamental and demanding heir-apparent to the Vizsla name.
Jaster Mereel, their next Verd’alor. The Concordian man had the gall to look surprised when the announcement was made. But to be fair, he, too, was surprised, was he not? After all, his father had handed him the dark saber, their Vizsla heirloom, merely two cycles before. Now he is the first wielder of the damned sword who has no command. The king-maker reduced to a trinket. A consolation prize. A mockery of the past. A pathetic, impotent symbol. A humiliation. Tor flung the precious heirloom across the room in rage and screamed. The beskar hilt bounced off the durasteel walls harmlessly with a cling. His cry bounced off the walls much the same way, but the echo was a pitiful sound. He felt sick to his soul.
His father had sent multiple summons over the last four days, but Tor ignored them all. He already knew what the old man wanted to say. Help Jaster keep the clan leaders and minor Houses in line, Parj Vizsla would plead, his raspy voice straining to maintain some semblance of authority over his defiant son. The verde are disillusioned with the alor’e. But they would follow Jaster Mereel. Help him, or everything House Vizsla had built since Dral’han will fall apart.
Jaster Mereel, their next Verd’alor. Tor sobbed uncontrollably until he began to laugh, maniacal, all rage and absurdity. Then the sobs returned.
The rank and file verde would follow Jaster Mereel. His father was right about that. The ori’ramikad were practically his private forces, hanging on to his every word, Tor thought with disgust. But Parj Vizsla was wrong about everything else. Mandalorian society had fallen apart decades before. The Watch under his father only pantomimed unity, cutting shameful deals, ceding power and territory to bribe bristling alor’e into pretending that the Mandalorian military had not long splintered into half a dozen factions. What was the point, Tor wondered, of holding together the putrid pieces of a body when the soul had long fled?
Tor counted his losses, as he was prone to do in his depressive spells. Mother’s home. Third Hydian Base. Keldabe’s historic forge. Breshig. My’ika. The satisfaction of Awaud blood. Gargon-4. Sad, beautiful My’ika. Gargon-3. Gargon-5. The parts of his person carved and gouged and scraped away to sculpt himself into the next leader of the Mandalorian Watch. It was the only certainty in his life.
Or so Tor had thought.
What had Jaster Mereel sacrificed?
His comm started to beep again. His father or one of his lackeys, no doubt. The noise was incessant, and - all of a sudden - utterly unbearable. Before he was conscious of what he was doing, the air within his confined quarters was acrid and smokey from a volley of blaster fire, and remnants of his commlink laid melted on his scorched desk. Tor closed his eyes, finally feeling a strange calm settle over him. No one else will disturb him now. His deputies know better than to walk in on an angry and unpredictable Tor Vizsla. He stared at the blaster in his hand, transfixed suddenly upon the Vizsla sigil carved on the stock - a bough of Kodia mume with two delicate blossoms.
There was no organism native to the Mandalorian territories as resilient as the Kodia mume tree, his aunt Mirda had explained to him, before he donned iron emblazoned with the symbol. Its root system ran deep and wide, reaching into the fissures and fractures of the most abyssal beskar veins to hunt down every last molecule of water. Aggressive orbital bombardment campaigns only served to eliminate its plant competitors and encourage more extensive root growth. It was almost as if the plant thrived in adversity. It had never been eliminated from Mandalore, nor its moon. Not by the Rakata. Not by the Taung. Certainly not by the Republic.
But tonight, Tor found no strength in the symbol. The stylized tree branch had never felt so foreign. So passive. So powerless.
Tor rarely dwelt upon his boyhood. Growing up on the historic Vizsla morut on Concordia was tedious, his schedule packed with trainings and drills and studies. When it wasn’t tedious, it was fractious - filled with endless arguments that served no purpose except to chisel at the fissures within his clan and House. Pointless, pointless bickering and hand-wringing that made everyone weak.
But in his self-imposed isolation within these quarters, Tor thought often of the day his grandfather died.
“The worst thing the Republic did to us was not to destroy the homeworld,” rasped a shriveled Cassus Vizsla as he made his final address to the clans. His frail body was propped up upon the throne by stims and sheer will, unrecognizable from Tor’s eternal image of the clan patriarch. It still shocked him how quickly a body can deteriorate over the course of a month.
“Not to… annihilate our legions.”
It was a rare clear morning on Concordia, two days after the sombre rites marking yet another Day of Remembrance. Not that anyone alive could remember the devastation of eight generations ago. Of eight Vizsla Mand’alors ago.
“Not… stealing our beskar. Or slaughtering our goran’e.”
The audience room of the Vizsla morut was a riot of colors, packed with over a hundred clan leaders sworn to the Vizsla name. But it was incongruously silent - so quiet, that the dying man’s rasps seemed to bounce off beskar armor and echo in the chamber. Even in his final hours, struggling to draw breath and clinging to on to lucidity, Cassus Vizsla possessed an iron grip over all the warrior clans gathered. The Mandalorian Watch was synonymous with House Vizsla, after all. His ancestor had recovered Tarre’s weapon from Jedi clutches and used it to raise a decimated Mandalorian army from the ashes of Dral’han.
Tor remembered watching with boyish amusement at the way a Clan Kast representative desperately tried to suppress a cough to avoid the censure of all else present. His own father never wielded such power and respect.
“Poisoning the Manda! Infecting our souls with their weakness and cowardice and greed,” his grandfather spat before devolving into a coughing fit. Aunt Mirda immediately moved over with an inhaler, before being forcefully and angrily waved away by her father. She complied, head lowered. Her body language was unreadable.
Cassus Vizsla did not need to elaborate or explain himself. In his final years, his grandfather was prone to angry - sometimes violent - outbursts about the rapidly growing numbers of Mandalorians who dodged drafts, refused customary tributes to Keldabe, sent their children to the Core Worlds to be indoctrinated, and increasingly had the clout and credits to do so. Look no further than the Kryzes and their ostentatious wealth, flaunting their little domed slice of paradise. Selling, selling, selling Mandalorian technology and ingenuity to their destroyers. Reformists, they called themselves. Soulless and Faithless was more accurate, as far as the Vizslas were concerned. But the Kryzes have managed to elevate themselves to a House, without a single Mand’alor or feted warrior to their clan name. There are more Houses in the Assembly now than ever before. His proud grandfather had not attended a single proceeding since Tor was born, increasingly disgusted by the prospect of sitting as equals at a table with merchants who styled themselves like Core World nobility.
It took a few minutes for Cassus Vizsla to gather enough strength to continue in a weak wheeze, “It’s everywhere. Even here. Among us. In my own house.”
Young Tor had not missed the way his father’s eyes flashed in anger and his jaw clenched, barely biting back a retort or sarcastic reply. Parj Vizsla had attended those Assembly sessions that his grandfather despised. He hardly ever saw his father at the morut in his youth. The man spent all his time at Keldabe being weak, gawking shamefully at the material riches of the Faithless.
His grandfather’s eyes were misty and distant as his voice drifted even lower. “I see it already. The next Annihilation begins from within.” Tor had never seen the man so despondent. Everyone else kept their expressions carefully blank - they might as well have kept their helmets on. A veneer of respect maintained for the last of the old guard. They would not bother for Parj Vizsla, nor for Tor.
Grandfather died late that night. He lost consciousness quickly after the major clan leaders made their final calls and the stims had worn off. But there was nothing quiet about the way he marched on.
Tor had never heard a sound like that before. It filled the hallways of their living quarters. Moaning, gurgling, clicking and bubbling. Stuttered groans and underwater screams. It went on and off for hours. Tor begged his family, to no avail, to put his grandfather out of his misery immediately. Parj simply closed the door to the death bed and left. His aunt took him to his room and held his hand while she wept in silence. Death rattle, Mirda explained as she attempted to comfort him. It sounds scary, but it doesn’t hurt at all. Mirda was a liar, little Tor had thought. He was certain that his grandfather’s soul was being ripped out through a constricted throat, shred by painful shred. And nobody wanted to do anything about it.
Tonight, Tor raised his bloodshot eyes to stare into the pulsating halo of the white lights above, wondering if Cassus Vizsla’s kingly soul was whole among the Ka’ra. If it could be whole, knowing what has become of his Clan and House - of Mandalore, and the Vizsla dynasty he stewarded. Nine generations, ending with Tor Vizsla.
Or maybe your grandfather, too, would have liked Jaster better, an absurdly reasonable voice whispered, soothingly, sounding at once like Aunt Mirda and My’ika.
Jaster Mereel will be the next Verd’alor. Help him. Do what you must to keep Mandalore together. Please, Tor. What’s one more sacrifice - after everything you’ve lost and all that you’ve been given, in its name? Think of Mandalore. It’s the only Vizsla legacy that matters.
Mandalore.
The voice was intolerably, painfully, kind. It was Aunt Mirda comforting him as the death rattle from across the hallway drowned out everything else in his mind. It was My’ika talking him down from flaying Tetyc Awaud alive. It was Jaster Mereel, offering to go against Parj Vizsla’s command and right the injustice of Gargon-5 if he asked. Tor never knew what to do with kindness. It only seemed to outline the contours of his suffering and bring it into sharp relief. Tonight, it was all that he could see and feel.
Please, Tor. Think of Mandalore.
He curled up into himself upon the cold duracrete floors of his office and begged for the voice to quiet. When it did, he let narcolethe pull him into a fitful, restless slumber, propped up against the side of his desk. In the early hours before dawn, he dreamt of Cassus Vizsla’s unseeing gaze as his corpse was placed upon the pyre, and a juvenile shriek-hawk descending from the skies to peck out his liver. Clan leaders around him watched on disinterestedly, dressed in Core World finery and drinking unfamiliar party beverages. His dream-self pushed his way through bemused and condescending adults, clambered onto the pyre with his grandfather, grabbed the shriek-hawk by its beak, and set them all on fire. Around him, through the licking flames, the crowd finally dropped their masks and screamed in true terror.
When Tor opened his eyes again, it was to the vague sense that something had died - but was then replaced with perfect clarity and purpose.
Later in the morning, an aide found the door to Tor Vizsla’s office wide open. Its occupant was gone and the interior was a ruined mess, unrecognizable from the militant order of its usual state. Blaster and flamethrower burns scorched every surface. When the worried young man entered with his blaster drawn, he found no signs of forced entry through the fenestrations, nor did he find any explanatory note left behind. The fabled Dark Saber was left on the floor, half-hidden under a broken datapad. Near the door, a beskar pauldron marked with the Vizsla sigil was also unceremoniously tossed onto the ground. A freshly opened can of black armor paint lay tilted on its side near the door jamb.
Then the aide gasped when he finally saw the vandalized mume bough emblem on the back of the door. At first, it looked like a paint-saturated rag was just dragged haphazardly over the mounted flag. But when he stepped back, he saw it - primal and ominous in the still-wet paint - the dark silhouette of a hunting jai’galaar circling overhead.
0, 02, 005: The line between warrior and beast is clear, drawn by millenniums of sages and fools in our history. Heed the Canons of Honor, lest you look into a mirror, and find a monster without a soul.
Mand’alor Jaster Mereel of Concord Dawn, 54 BBY. Buirikan b’Ori’ramikad or The Supercommando Codex,
“Preface, Section 2: Honor and the Resol’nare.”