Lord Malleus

Summary
Lord Malleus is one of the original founders of the Shadow Court, and the one along with Lord Sidonius who searched for, and gathered the rest of the founders. Malleus is small and with a tendency to remain absolutely still for long periods of time, saying he is listening to the whispers of the dark side. Like all force users his somewhat delicate frame is deceiving, and what lacks in pure physical qualities he makes up with his force abilities.

Personality
Unlike most sober and colourless sith one can find, Malleus has somehow found a way to preserve his sense of humour, although now somewhat more twisted than it was in his childhood years - bordering on a sadistic mania.

He is curious to the extreme and refuses to let any unanswered question go, of course more than once he can abruptly stop, look into the distance, then claim he has the answers without ever giving any hint to what it was. Power- and knowledge-hungry to the extreme he believes completely in the superiority of the dark side and considers the light side and the jedi to be nothing but fools and weaklings, but it is necessary since there need to be duality for choice to exist, and he chooses the dark over the light fully understanding that. And also because, as he once revealed, “I find it is more fun feeling and spreading pain than feeling and spreading peace.”

Distant but sociable, cold but at times very kind, his actions and reasons can often be very hard to understand to those around him and at many times seem erratic. This has led many to believe he suffers from a bipolar disorder of some kind. But whatever true drive or allegiance Malleus has he does not say, and the reasons behind his actions are entirely his own.

History
Malleus story began when his mother, an acolyte under the command of Darth Vich, betrayed her master along with many other acolytes in return for being accepted as true students of the sith academy. His father could have been one of the many acolytes or soldiers his mother consorted with before her betrayal but regardless he was slaughtered alongside the rest of Darth Vich's retinue when the siths attempt at gaining power failed. It was shortly after her acceptance into the academy she learned she was pregnant, the struggle of his mothers training at the academy while being pregnant at the same time eventually forced her to flee out into the wastes of Korriban where she soon gave birth to splice.

She raised him there in the dark world far from any form of civilization, and trained him in what little of the sith ways she had learned and of traditional rattataki combat. One day an imperial ship was forced to land close to the entrance to their subterranean hideout. It was a simple crew consisting of technicians, servants and a few soldiers, the ship had suffered from some machinery malfunction and while the crew tried to fix it his mother sneaked on board and waited until they had fixed it and taken off again while splice remained unattended underground barely 12 years old.

Once the crew had retired to bed she silently murdered all of them except the captain who she commanded to turn the ship around to their home. He complied and became their unwilling slave, as splice grew the captain had taken a liking to him and grown to accept his position, he taught the young man as much as he could about computers, machinery and ways to access locked system and hack into pretty much anything. His savage upbringing and condition had shaped splice into a cruel merciless animal, but the understanding that there was so much more waiting for him beyond the desolate wasteland had given him a bottomless hunger for knowledge

Eventually when he reached the age of 17 he left his mother and their slave for the sith without saying anything, he arrived a stranger and was quickly picked up by the sith and interrogated. He quite readily embraced the pain they put him through and answered all questions honestly, when they discovered he was a force sensitive like his mother they agreed they would make a sith out of him or he would die in the process. The training was brutal, he had no family line to speak off and his official imperial records recorded him as nothing more then a slave before coming to the academy. Even worse he was not even human which made all human students taunt him relentlessly and try and kill him whenever the opportunity presented itself.

It made for the perfect environment to train sith, and splice enjoyed every moment of it. His hate grew and so did his cunning, he had survived in a wasteland where nightmarish creatures were spawned and hunted, he came from a people who had known nothing but bloodshed for millenia. It was in this place he belonged, the human students liked to gang up on him, so he avoided direct confrontation. He understood electronics and could splice his way into most systems, he gathered information about his enemies, he sabotaged work of sith masters and framed them for it and watched how they were punished with almost artistic fervor for their perceived betrayal. He once hacked into the penalty system and a student who was to be lightly “disciplined” instead died under the care of the torture droids.

He did all he could to inspire fear in his enemies and he succeeded. He began to befriend all the non humans who arrived and slowly built a network of loyal allies since all non humans besides the pure blood sith were regarded as lesser beings. He came to appreciate the power of knowledge and the hold one could gain over another with it, so he spliced his way into private systems of sith masters whenever he dared to. He also studied the old scripts and holocrons off limits to mere students and learned much of the dark side and the history of the sith.

Eventually he found that there where much knowledge and information regarding the dark side that were unspoken and mostly guessed at, most sith only cared for the power the could squeeze out of it not the nature of it itself. One day he left the academy for the valley of the dark lords, were the ancient tombs rested. He lived in them for three weeks, surviving on raw meat from slayed predators and whatever nourishment the dark side provided, avoiding all contact with the occasional student or master that entered one of the tombs. Slowly he began to hear whispers, as if the ancient sith lords themselves had taken an interest in him, and slowly enough his understanding of the dark side deepened. Most of it was unspoken, merely a feeling of what it was, and it was not something lightly captured in words, but he understood then that the empire was not the same as the dark side.

They were different and separate, the dark side turned away none seeking its power, embracing all who “fell”, but it's will was not the same as the empires, to the empire it was just another tool. With the new found knowledge he left the tombs behind and returned to the academy, merely stating he had been seeking artifacts hidden outside the academy to gain favor. His “failure” to find any was punished, but a new form of feeling had entered into splice now, all his rage, pain and fear was more focused. They no longer controlled him, they were focused in a crystal clear manner and he could feel how the dark side had begun to guide his actions.

The masters of the academy noticed that he had changed but now how exactly, his abilities had increased tremendously, and he no longer feared to face any fellow student in open combat. Eventually he was told by one of the masters that the time had come for his final test, he had been at the academy for six years now and he was eager to face the end of his training.

He was told he needed to go out into the wasteland and kill his mother and her slave. He was shocked at first to hear this, he had assumed they had been taken care of after his interrogation when he first arrived or fled somewhere else. But now he understood, they had been purposefully been left alone for this moment, so splice could prove his loyalty, his one place was with the sith and so he was to kill all his ties to those outside of it.

He agreed to kill them and was presented a ceremonial blade for it, it was rusty and old and the handle was jagged and spiked, it would cause much pain when utilized both to the one used on and the user. The lesson behind this was clear, he would feel pain to kill his mother and surrogate father, he was to feel that pain and it would give him power. He hunted for them across Korriban's landscape, eventually he found a trail which lead him to believe they had fled off planet. He returned to the academy’s space port and commandeered a ship and continued the hunt. He found a smuggler captain that had apparently shipped his prey to a small outpost on Belsavis where they had sought sanctuary with a jedi. He killed the captain and hurried to Belsavis where he landed at one of the few imperially controlled locations, he asked around if they had information regarding a jedi by the name of Karesh Livendu.

They did, he was a well known hermit and jedi consular, that lived out in lush woods far into republic land. He acquired all information available concerning the route he needed to take and its dangers and set out, once again killing wild life and eating raw meat and living off the dark side, bringing him even closer to it. He could not engage republic patrols with out them realizing he was there so he clouded their minds best he could to supplement his lacking skill in stealth. Eventually he began feeling the presence of his prey.....and the jedi harboring them.

He was unsure if he could face an experienced jedi face to face and prevail, but splice knew that deceit and betrayal could kill just as effectively. He used the force to lure his old splice teacher and surrogate father out into the woods while they were all sleeping soundly. A surrogate father whose name he never had known, they had referred to him just as “slave”.

When he woke up to find himself sitting face to face with the child he had helped raise he became alarmed, but using the forced to affect his mind splice presented an option. The man could either die now or he could return as usual and poison the jedi's food to weaken him severely, Splice wanted the pleasure himself of killing him. “slave” agreed with a nudge of the force and returned to the hut with a small bundle of leaves splice had harvested and knew to be extremely debilitating.

He sat all night meditating and gathering all his anger and ambition focusing it to give him strength, eventually morning came and he began pacing back and forth, his anger burned as strong as the sun. The jedi burst suddenly out of the door and began sluggishly sprint towards him drawing his lightsaber. Seeing this hated enemy of the sith and guardian of the republic stumbling like a drunken fool made splice cackle with glee and charge him in turn. Despite the jedi's state he was no easy kill, but eventually his moves became so slow and uncoordinated that splice began toying with him, sending bursts of lightning and taunting his weakness. Eventually he took the lightsaber from him with childish ease and sliced of his arms and legs, taunting the jedi he would be food for the stronger predators of the jungle.

He walked into the hut where his mother and coward “father” were holding each other, his mother walked to him and explained how they had fallen in love with one another and had wanted to leave the darkness behind them and live peacefully together with the jedi. Disgusted by this he told his mother of her lovers betrayal and cowardice, saying she would never have become so easy prey had she not forsaken the way of power. He sliced the throat of “slave”, the man whose name he would never know and then he did the same to his mother, not leaving her an opportunity to say whatever it looked like she wanted to say.

Splice felt nothing but triumph, he had brought low a full fledged jedi and completed his last test, he would return to Korriban and be named a true sith and be given his lightsaber finally. He casually left the lightsaber with the jedi, saying he could try and use it with his teeth if he wished and made his way back to his ship and eventually korriban.

He returned to the master and presented the blade, now buried beneath caked blood and told him he had completed the task and told the story. The master was impressed but said he would not be able to provide him with a lightsaber yet or name him full sith, it had been decreed all sith and students were to undertake the dark trials to make sure they were ready when the time to crush the republic came. Furious Splice was about the leave the chamber when the master said that as a reward for his success he was now no longer Splice, he was Malleus, and had every potential to soon become a true sith lord.

Malleus left Korriban and began wandering amongst the stars, waiting for when the call to return to Korriban and the dark trials would come, he returned now and again to meditate in a cave on Korriban that seemed overflowing with the prescence of the dark side. It was during one of these meditation session he would feel the calling that would eventually lead him to Lord Sidonius and his future as a sith lord.