A man pleads for your aid in solving some difficulty. The Jedi teach that you must give it to him, without question, for the path of the Jedi is selflessness. The Sith teach you must spurn him, without question, for he must make his own strength. Both are fools, as is any man who tells you to follow dictum without question.
The TRUE Sith accepts the gift he is being given, and understands why. The man requesting aid is offering you the strength and experience that will come from solving his dilemma. The false Sith would have you cast that gift aside! Fools! The TRUE Sith accepts the gift, gains the strength, learns the lesson, and rather than increase the power of another, he undertakes to increase his own.
Name: Ryassek
Race: Rodian
Occupation: Sith Adept
Height: 1.5 meters
Weight: 51 kilos
Eyes: Red
Skin: White
Languages Spoken: Rodian, Basic, Sith
Fragmentary Language Knowledge: Mandalorian, Tythonic
Physical Description:
A small, wiry Rodian, Ryassek is an Albino. His reptilian skin is a pale white, and his eyes naturally a pinkish red. Smaller than most Rodians, his movements are precise and carefully controlled, his head perpetually inclining this way and that slightly, his eyes darting around a room even when at rest, taking in as much as he can about his surroundings. He normally dresses in layers, typicall a light set of dark grey clothing over which he wears vests, belts, parkas, jumpsuits, or combat armor as the situation requires it, often accompanied by a long (for him) open coat.
Force Skills:
Trained and skilled in the basic Sith powers, Ryassek has recently begun expanding his repertoire of Force abilities into the realms of more universal Force use, with varying degrees of success. His unique philosophical view of his own nature as a Sith serves as a rough guide in shaping what forms his Force Powers take, and what forms they will avoid.
Dark Side Powers (relatively more skilled): Force Grip, Force Drain
Neutral Powers (relatively less skilled, though working on it): Telekinesis, Precognition, Psychometry
Presently Researching: Force Lightning
Lightsabre Forms:
Primary Form: Makashi (Form II)
Secondary Form: Soresu (Form III)
Rodians are fairly small to begin with, and Ryassek is slight even by the standards of a Rodian. Consequently, he naturally gravitated towards the Sith variations on the Makashi form of Lightsabre combat, a style which emphasizes precision and elegance over strength and power, resulting in an organic, flowing style of fighting, well suited to Ryassek's strengths. When employing this form, his fighting seems less like battle and more like a ritualized dance, as his sabre winds and spins around himself and his opponent, one move bleeding seamlessly into the next.
Early on however, Ryassek realized that the inherent limitations of Makashi Style would have to be balanced out through other means, and elected to train himself in the Soresu Form, a more deflection-oriented Lightsabre form. He is not as skilled in this form, relying on it as a secondary protection against blasters and other ranged weapons, and even when employing Soresu, his style is more fluid and open than the minimalist approach that Soresu-Masters can employ, a weakness he recognizes and is trying (so far without much success) to rectify. Still, he is quite capable of holding his own in Soresu form against most opponents.
Non-Combat skills:
Well read and extremely literate, Ryassek lacks practical skills, and has next-to-no capacities with robotics or other technical elements beyond the basic capacity to maintain his own lightsabre and equipment. He is, however an extremely skilled orator and rhetorician, having trained himself diligently to speak Basic, Sith, and other languages without the slur to his words that most Rodians evidence. He has a passion for philosophy, particularly Sith philosophy, and loves debate, discussion, and other such pursuits as they relate to his 'unique' outlook on the universe.
Personal History:
A member of 'Clan Reevan', one of the many Clans on the Rodian homeworld, Ryassek was born offworld, to parents who lived on the planet Taris. His parents were poor traders, scraping a living on the lowest slums of the city-planet, scraping to avoid the worst of the upheavals that periodically rocked the planet. Ryassek himself was born after the Mandalorean War and Tarisian Civil Wars devastated the planet, and spent his early childhood in the partly-ruined slums of the lowest levels of the planet. His father died of disease shortly after he was born, and his mother was murdered by gang members when he was only five. Thereafter he survived as a petty thief and an affiliated member of one of the violent gangs that ruled Lower Taris, barely warding off death from any one of a thousand sources that lay in wait for aliens on Taris.
So it was that the conquest of the planet by the Sith during the Jedi Civil War probably saved Ryassek's life, in that the Sith sent teams of force-adepts into the lower slums to locate force-sensitives for "processing". The young Albino Rodian was caught clumsily trying to steal a Sith Officer's sidearm, and only escaped execution thanks to his status as a force sensitive. Packed off to the Sith training grounds on Korriban, he escaped the utter destruction of the planet Telos, and was trained as a Sith Accolyte from the age of seven.
Perhaps others might have resisted the temptation of the Dark Side, but training at Korriban brought out an entire side of Ryassek that he didn't even know existed. More importantly than the force and physical training, it was the Sith philosophy, his first encounter with ANY philosophical system of thought, that transformed him from a shy Rodian mutant to a disciplined student and scholar. His eyes opened to possibilities beyond mere survival, a place where his inquisitive mind could be nurtured, a place where rage, hatred, and other strong emotions were not laughably impotent, but sources of strength, Ryassek threw himself into his training like a possessed being. Before long he was one of the top students on Korriban for his age-group, one of the few who seemed to offer promise beyond that of a mere soldier or berserker, one of the few who appeared to actually grasp the
meaning behind the Sith teachings, and who sought constantly to better understand the theory and the philosophy underpinning everything the Sith did and sought to do. Some of his tutors believed that Ryassek held great promise, and felt that one day he might even take his place as a Sith Lord.
But this was not to be, for if the Sith instructors perceived Ryassek as a submissive apprentice, then they had mis-judged their Rodian, for in Ryassek's eagerness to explore the philosophical and spiritual depths of Sith philosophy, he found himself pushing the limits of where even the Sith dared tread. And the more he read, and thought, and debated, and searched, the more conflicts he found between Sith theory and Sith practice. If the Sith were dedicated to the harnessing of emotions for the purposes of personal strength, why then did they have an almost religious fear of non-hostile emotions like Love? If the Sith believed in personal power at all hazards, why then did they pledge obedience to a hierarchical military structure bent on conquering the galaxy for the betterment of other Sith? Why, if Sith Lords were the masters of the Sith disciplines, did those same Lords permit their subordinates to take on tasks on their behalf, robbing themselves of the ability to learn from new experiences? These questions led to doubts, and the doubts led to further questions, which his teachers tried to cure him of through pain and force. Weaker than his teachers, he submitted to such punishments, but the questions did not go away, and soon he turned to texts and teachings named heretical by the Sith authorities for answers.
It was the teachings of Darth Traya, a mysterious Sith Lord who had been betrayed and defeated by her apprentices, that finally gelled the answers inside Ryassek's mind. In reading her works, he realized that the Sith Lords
themselves had only an imperfect understanding of Sith philosophy, and that their views were constantly at odds with one another. Taking from her such elements of truth as he believed her works contained, Ryassek's doubts crystalized into a rejection, not of Sith philosophy, but of the Sith themselves. His teachers feared his questions because they had not the fortitude and clarity of mind to look past their own delusions of grandeur and pain. They wasted their time and talents on inflicting evil and destruction on the universe, when instead they should have been studying, discerning, and following the TRUE Sith path.
If they would not do so, then he would.
And so it was that Ryassek broke with the Sith Order, as his demands for answers to ever-more fine points of Sith philosophy, and his veiled and less-veiled accusations of hypocrisy and doctrinal error finally led to him being cast out of the Sith order, a painful and very nearly-fatal process, but one he had long-planned for, knowing as he did that the Sith as they stood could not help him walk the path he wished to walk. Escaping or destroying the Sith assassins sent to slay him, he made his way out into the Galaxy alone, to continue his quest for more knowledge and deeper understanding of the 'true' Sith way, a task which may take him to places unknown, and through perils unimagined, but which he is confident will finally lead to him becoming the One, True, Lord of the Sith.
Personality: Were it not for the fact that Ryassek publicly and proudly claims to be a Sith, and the arsenal of powers he wields, people who met him would have great difficulty determining
what Ryassek is. Certainly his behavior is not that of most Sith, for he follows what he believes to be a higher and more exalted path. Determined, intellectual, and affecting a refined sensibility, Ryassek is nevertheless a Sith to his very
bones. He wields his emotions like razor-sharp weapons, fueling his terrible and devastating powers. The major difference is the goals he sets his powers to, and the philosophy he espouses in wielding them. Unlike most Sith, Ryassek is neither cruel nor consumed with a need to inflict pain and suffering upon other beings. Having suffered both cruelty and hardships in his own life, he respects the value of such things as teachers of lessons, ones which he feels the Sith are all-too-eager to dole out to others, weakening themselves at the hands of their victims. He is absolutely dedicated to personal power, and has absolutely no interest in spreading war and destruction wantonly about, 'like a child throwing a tantrum'. Strength comes from action, experience, and trial, and consequently, rather than cause misery and pain to those around him, he often
aids people in need (sometimes even for free!), not because he wishes to help others, but because he wishes to gain for himself the strength that comes in facing whatever challenge they are unwilling to face themselves.
Ryassek's "pure" Sith philosophy is perhaps best expressed through his own words:
The Sith teach that power is everything, that personal advancement is king, that strength is born through conflict. Yet in their lust for domination, they wall off entire schools of thought and deem them heretical or anathema, as though we are not strong enough to face them. If conflict breeds strength, and pacifism weakness, then no true disciple of the Sith can afford to ignore these teachings.
Too often, the philosophy of the Sith are subsumed in mere sociopathy and brutish hate. Too often we set ourselves up as overlords and generals and imagine this grants us power! A muscle that is not used will atrophy, and those who rely on legions of fanatics and slaves will only turn themselves into a fanatical slave of their own delusions.
The so-called Sith are masters only of hypocrisy! If emotion makes us strong, why then is Love or Friendship or Pleasure anathema? Are we Jedi? Do we willingly cast aside an entire side of our beings because it is inconvenient for us to face it? We hold that cruelty is king, and mercy a fool's folly. Yet the Jedi build EMPIRES from mercy. If the Jedi way produces weaklings, then why is it they endlessly return to burn us from the galaxy?
I am Sith! I desire power for myself. Not for the Sith Empire, not for my self-declared Masters, for me! Power is not the means to an end. Power is the end. And I will not needlessly blind myself through fear and tradition. The Jedi are weak, but there is great strength hidden in their teachings. Darth Traya was blind, but in her blindness she saw truths no other Sith Lord ever dared face. I will gather power and strength within myself without fear of the consequences from the short-sided psychotics who lay claim to my allegiance, and in so-doing, I will become the TRUE Lord of the Sith.
The Sith imagined themselves superior to the Jedi because they had transcended the fetters of compassion. I will prove myself superior to the Sith, by transcending in turn, the fetters of cruelty.
A philosopher and a scholar to the core, Ryassek enjoys debate, discussion, and other intellectual pursuits. He is absolutely terrible at most games of strategy (having not the right mindset for them), but perversely enjoys them anyway. Indeed, for a Sith, Ryassek is strangely personable. He clearly believes himself superior to all other force users, but he equally strongly believes that the Jedi and Sith ways, flawed though they are, hold truths that are important for him to learn and meditate on. He is introspective to a degree almost unheard of among Sith, and meditates on his passions and weaknesses with the fervor of a Jedi. Unlike a Jedi, he gives himself full reign of his emotions, and unlike Sith, he does not restrict himself to painful or "dark" emotions, seeking to find ways to draw upon his entire being to fuel his neverending quest for personal power and enlightenment.
Gaze upon my works, ye mighty, and despair...
Havoc: "So basically if you side against him, he summons Cthulu."
Hotfoot: "Yes, which is reasonable."
