Begeren. Once a prosperous Sith world, it has been the site of numerous battles throughout the millennia. Grand halls and monuments were torn down and re-purposed by looting Republic forces thousands of years ago, before they were driven from the planet. Isolated settlements still dot the planet's surface, but the inhospitable, craggy, and desert-like terrain, along with the beasts common to many desert and Sith worlds, have kept most humanoids from colonizing. Occasional skirmishes have left debris scattered throughout the desert, and battles were fought here as recently as the Galactic Civil War.

The One Sith’s hold on Begeren is all but broken, though a few small pockets of resistance remain. The Clans and Houses of the Brotherhood now swarm the planet to defeat them, but attention has returned to plunder. Roaming bands of Jedi, adherents to light and dark alike, claim—or destroy—priceless artifacts at every turn. One of the few remaining untouched areas on the entire planet is the Valley of Monuments, so named for its glorious architecture. The valley is a patchwork collection of sand dunes and massive canyons, inhospitable even in the best of times. Despite this, the One Sith maintain control over the area. Exactly how—or why—this place has not yet been claimed by the Brotherhood, you do not know, and nor do your superiors, but you know it is ripe for the picking. Perhaps one reason is that access is limited—the One Sith maintain control over the valley’s entrances, save for a small handful of paths that tread directly through canyons used long ago as ancient burial grounds. Intelligence suggests these entrances are virtually undefended. Your plan, at the moment, is to find your way into the Valley of Monuments through one such canyon, and it is there you now find yourself.

Somehow, despite the windswept sand dunes mere meters away, the canyon before you remains virtually free of sand. Macabre hills fill this canyon, thousands of exposed skeletons laying atop one another, the sand dunes of most of the planet replaced by dunes of stark white bones. The dark side hangs thick in the air over this massive valley, flanked by four incredibly large crystals placed at each cardinal direction. This is one of a handful of ancient mass graves, the final resting place of literally thousands of slaves forced to give their lives millennia ago to create the massive monuments of Begeren. Far in the distance, massive Sith monuments rise before an impressive ancient palace, but your attention remains here, now, where the bones shift beneath your every step, crunching noisily. Ancient clubs, whips, and other weapons occasionally break through the bony landscape, testament to the vicious past of this place. To those that can even sense the most rudimentary of emotions through the Force, an even more sinister feeling permeates the air here: not only death, but suffering, anger, and hate.

The sun slowly creeps towards the mountains far beyond this impressive valley, casting long rays of light that reflect off many of the white bones littering the canyon. The heat here is oppressive, but the sun will depart soon, leaving you in cool darkness. You notice that the large crystal to the north, situated in the shadow of a large canyon wall, begins to shimmer a faint blue, causing the bones beneath it to take on a ghostly glow. You think you hear rustling of bones in the distance, and almost think you notice something movement, though it could just have been the wind. Your step hastens as you move quickly through the canyon, hoping to escape this place before sunset takes it, and reach areas with more valuable items to claim or destroy. But before you can make much progress, you begin to hear the telltale signs of another living being—the sound of footsteps crunching bones—and they are coming from just over one of the boney dunes that litter the area.

The Sith stared into the pile of corpses and bones, staring at his recently acquired prize and the others that had met the same fate. Scars and chunks of flesh missed from the corpse he had been dragging, dirt and grime clinging to its skin with sand underneath the nails. He looked down at the corpse, and to the sea of corpses in front of him. The Sith dropped to his knees amidst the cadavers and skeletons, gazing in glee as he looked upon the death and decay. All the life had been sucked away, gnawed by time and chewed apart by the toils of war. The Umbaran smiled widely as he picked up a skull and began talking to it, holding the jaw bone in tandem with the head, moving the bone as if it were speaking to him. He threw the skull aside, grabbing an arm and examining it.

Bits of meat still clung to it, rotten and black with a maggot inching towards it. The Sith flicked the maggot away, mimicking what he thought it sounded like as it went flying through the air. He brought the leg up to his nose and began to sniff it, the nauseating stench almost hauntingly euphoric in some way to him. He scraped it off the bone with his teeth, depositing the harvest in his pants pocket. Then he looked at his addition to the mass grave, a freshly made corpse crafted from the finest living being.

Blood had congealed on the wounds he had inflicted, pockmarks and craters of flesh littering the chest cavity and lower limbs, evidence of gnawing glared at the galaxy to see. The Umbaran cackled with glee, removing his gifts clothing and staring at the various wounds inflicted. Fingers carefully caressed the genitalia that had been removed with a heated knife, a smile of remembrance covering his face.

His ears pricked up, hearing the moving steps of another life form. His smile dropped to a twitchy snarl, low and guttural growls emanating from him like a cool breeze in the forest. He had been discovered while he was saying good bye, and the transgression could be forgiven. But the question of whether he would allow it to be forgiven had remained to be seen. He refused to look behind him, feeling the strength of wisdom and the coolness of being vacant of emotion. He basked in the anger, the turmoil and fear of death, and the vacancy of emotion gnawed at him. His inner voices began begging him to infuse the vacancy with some kind of emotion.

The Umbaran reached out with his mind, the tendrils of consciousness swarming outward and flexing their muscles. They gripped the mind of the Jedi near him, old and battle worn, but met a wall of resistance. Unsurprised, but even less impressed, Samael turned his head and stared at the intruder. The old Jedi, gnarled by age and wearing a mask of dissatisfaction, looked upon the Umbaran. The Sith could feel the Jedi within him, scratching against his skull, and the calm presence made him feel unclean. He snarled, and the anger he summoned booted the Jedi from him.

“Stay out of there.” said the Sith, “Unless you want to see what it is you have fought so hard against.”

Samael rose to his feet while throwing a handful of sand into the eyes of the Jedi, darting away from the old Consular and trying to find somewhere to hide. The Umbaran darted to and fro, his eyes scanning left and right trying to find some kind of hiding spot but found none. He stretched his mind outward again, feeding on the pain and anguish of his recent victim. He basked in the screams of a weak human, bathed in the pain as the knife entered his flesh and broke through veins, adored every scream and devoured every moment of begging. Fueled by the sadistic memories of the Sith’s past, he pulled on the negativity of the horrid transgressions and thrusted it at the Jedi like a lance of anger. His consciousness washed over the Jedi, and the chinks in his armor began to show. Samael gritted his teeth and focused harder, swarming his enemy with an aggression that even a wild beast could not equal.

He viewed the life of the Jedi, saw the darkest things he had done and the most villainous, and he could not help but laugh. He began to remember the things he had done, the death and villainy he had cascaded over the populaces of the galaxy, and the memories made him laugh. He cackled until tears came to his eyes, and the Umbaran wiped them away as he fell to a knee. The Jedi, anger lingering underneath the surface, practically blinded by the sand, activated his lightsaber.

“Do we really need to resort to violence?” said Samael mockingly, causing the Jedi to frown at his actions.

“Perhaps not.” said the Consular, still staring at the Umbaran.

Samael smiled once more, and began thinking of the darkest things he had done. The vile deeds swarmed like an infestation of locusts and flies, and soon the image of the Jedi and his future became corrupted and twisted. The Jedi began to see images of acts he had not committed, he saw things he would not do. Samael grinned with glee as he saw the horror of his own actions play out in front of Liam, smiled as he saw the hands of the old man tremble with disgust.

Children with their skin peeled back like an orange, their tears and screams only muffled by their sadist captor singing the Galactic Empire’s Imperial Anthem. They begged for it to be over, and the more the pleaded the slower he went. Cameras had recorded everything and he made them watch as he thoroughly enjoyed his fun. An old woman who had her breasts cut off and shoved in her mouth, only to have her throat slit and the breasts pulled through. Finally, he showed him a gruesome memory, one that even the Sith looked back on and thought it was too much. He had taken a stray dog to his dwelling, the memory of safety and comfort fogging the mind of the Jedi. Slowly, with a steady hand, he wrestled the dog to the ground and methodically broke each bone in the dogs legs. Unable to move, whimpering louder than anything he had heard, the dog yelped and seemed to plead with his life.

Like a maestro, the Jedi saw himself take a knife to the dogs limbs, removing them with a gruesome pop, and then placed a treat not far from the dog. Samael himself made a face when he saw the horror and pain in Liam’s eyes. Horrible atrocities that the Jedi had dedicated his life to preventing had now begun to play inside his head as though he had committed them. False memories planted themselves like seeds, and soon Liam began to question everything around him. Was the Umbaran real? Was this a dream? How much of this was he in control of?

The Sith rose to stare at the Jedi in his eyes, tears forming behind the old man’s. His reality was shattering, and the tears that formed were saturated with that sadness. The Sith stared at the Consular, who had gritted his teeth and seemed to glare at the Umbaran. The Boogeyman of Taras was not sure if the Consular had allowed his anger to get through, and he felt a cold chill cross his spine.

“Even the devil gets a shiver when a quiet man grows impatient.” said Samael with a smile, “Let it all out.”