My Dearest Keef,

I have written and rewritten this letter dozens of times in the last few days. What began as a simple, frivolous missive to ask how you fare, how new students are treating you, and to finally get around to telling you all about the whimsical side of my journey aboard the Ghost Star has transformed, time and again, into a an ever-lengthening screed of fear, trepidation, and burning questions that sear my brain and ignite the oxygen in my lungs. I know not what to write anymore. I don’t even know where to start. No words can adequately express my stunned disbelief at what I have heard of the recent events at Starfall in just these last few days. Surely it can’t all be true, can it? Surely, some of what the news is saying is just sensationalized puffery to garner better ratings? Surely… surely it’s not as bad as all that? Please, my dear friend… please tell me it’s not as bad as all that. 

And please do so quickly, because the longer I must await your reply, the more I shall be tormented by the unthinkable… the unbearable notion that these recent atrocities have claimed you as well. Please, Keef… do me this kindness: for once in your life, when you receive this message, reply immediately. Do not waste your time attempting to woo me with another one of your clever little bagatelles. As much as I enjoy them – and I do so enjoy them, my dearest one – my heart is much too fragile at this moment to bear the glacial pace at which you write. Simply send me a reply saying that you are alive and well, and then set to work on the next great Titian novella. The pleasure of your flowery prose will be made all the sweeter by the sure knowledge that it is certain to arrive in due course.

Reread that last paragraph before proceeding any further, Keef. 

Good. Now do it again.

Are we clear?

Splendid. 

And now, to the many, many questions upon which I hope you can enlighten me. I’ve gone back through the innumerable drafts of this letter and arranged them before me in the order that they were written, so as to to assemble my queries in a manner that roughly corresponds to the order that news of recent happenings at Starfall hit my eyes and ears. No doubt I made some mistakes of chronology along the way, which I hope you will forgive and politely correct. But most importantly: where the questions below are based on information that you know to be false, please gleefully point out to me that the HoloNet has fed me a line of drivel. It is a curious thing to say, but nothing would make me happier in this moment than knowing that I’ve been lied to.

First of all… there is the matter of the late Dr. Vray. To be consistent, I suppose I should ask for your definitive confirmation that he really is gone, but truthfully, this is one piece of news of which I do not doubt the veracity. I did at first, though – primarily because Vos News was the first to drop the story. Did you know that? I don’t know how they found out before everyone else, but they announced that the Lurians had murdered the good doctor several hours before the other networks. When it first popped up on my feed, I figured it was just Vos being Vos – and besides, this wouldn’t be the first time that the news has declared Vray to be dead. There’s probably no one person in the entire Empire who’s experienced the uncanny pleasure of reading their own obituary over a cup of coffee more often than Dr. William Vray. I wonder if he kept them as trophies? (As I hear the Lurians did with Vray’s shoes – and by the way, that’s bullshit right?) 

Anyway, I blew it off when it was just a Vos story, but once GNN and INB started running it, I knew it had to be true. Maybe misreporting his death all those other times made the networks more hesitant to go to air this time before they had rock-solid confirmation that the physician did not heal thyself. I guess that’s one benefit of being Vos News – when you lack all accepted journalistic standards and practices, you sometimes get to run a true story before anyone else. I’d be shocked if you were to tell me that this is all wrong and that Vray is still alive and melting bones, but I sadly doubt it. All I can say is: rest easy, William Vray. May the peace that eluded you in life be yours now.

Speaking of peace… there’s this other little puff piece that Vos pushed for a minute saying that Grandmaster Sol’on broke her vow of pacifism. The other big networks are dead silent about it, though, and even Vos itself hasn’t brought it up much lately. I don’t know if that’s just the news cycle moving onto bigger and more salacious stories (the Light knows that there’s been enough of those to go around) or if this can be taken as Vos News’s version of a story retraction (that is to say, “retracting” a story by never talking about it again while also never openly acknowledging that they were ever wrong). 

I don’t know, but it seems awfully farfetched. The Grandmaster is, by all accounts, one of the most serene and composed sentients in the galaxy. I find it hard to believe that she’d lose her grip on a core tenant of her inner being that she has held so close for so long, even in the face of an imminent threat. You’re not going to believe this, but they say that she used the Light to roast an entire legion of Harrun, “leaving nothing behind but smoldering flesh and showers of blood.” Now they’re back to calling her “She Who Eradicates” again. Bit over the top, if you ask me. But what’s in a name?

All of that said, the news has been very clear that many Lurians have recently died at Starfall, whether killed by Vaega Sol’on or the blades of your intrepid comrades. While there is nothing inherently outlandish about the idea of a Lurian assault on a Guardian Academy – we are at war, after all, and the Academies are where the future soldiers of that war are being whelped with every passing day – I have desperately wanted to believe that the reports of Lurians attacking Starfall Academy were mistaken. Why Starfall? Titus is quite literally on the complete opposite side of the galaxy from Lurio. If the goal was to smother their future combatants in the cradle, there are plenty of other Academies where that could be accomplished. What is it about Starfall that attracts such wanton disaster? 

I don’t know if this is all true, but I will say that all of the major networks ran the story, albeit with drastically different casualty figures. I feel fairly confident that some major skirmish with the Lurians happened there, but the details are hazy. GNN even said that this supposed “Autonomous Planets Coalition” was involved – a rare point of agreement between GNN and Vos. I imagine you’ve heard all about the APC by now from those student radicals in MADIS, but I had never heard of them until they came up on the news just the other day. INB didn’t mention that at all, which… tends to make me think that maybe they really were involved. I get why the official Imperial sources don’t want to talk about them. It sounds like these people are offering the galaxy the first alternative model of interplanetary governance since… well, I guess since the Dominari Empire, but suffice to say that one doesn’t “count” as a viable alternative. This is different, to say the least. I still can’t tell if these APC folks really want some kind of secession from the Empire, or if they’re just a protest movement trying to make a point. But I do think that the INB is afraid of giving them any attention, and that says something to me: they’re afraid that if they let the APC speak, people will listen.

For their part, I will say that the APC has gone to great pains to disavow any involvement that they may or may not have had in the whole mess. Officially (if anything really can be “official” from a coalition that can only charitably be called “organized”) the APC is said to condemn violence to achieve its aims, and perhaps that’s true. That is, of course, if any of this actually happened. How can anyone really know anymore? You know what they say: the first casualty of war is the truth.

The reporting on the apparent “ceasefire” is but a further example of the fog of war clouding everything. Depending on who you ask, the Empire (by and through your illustrious colleagues at Starfall) has either made a masterstroke of statecraft or the greatest diplomatic blunder of the millenia. You wouldn’t believe how many different versions of the terms of the ceasefire accord have leaked out, many of them contradictory.

I’ve heard that our Empress herself delivered the instruction to hand over Armistice Station to the Lurians, which seems utterly absurd – why would our dear Empress concern herself with such things when there’s an entire diplomatic corps for just such that purpose? And, much like my question regarding the attack on Starfall, why Armistice? It seems an awfully random piece of real estate for Lurio to claim – again, on the complete opposite side of the galaxy – to say nothing of the not-at-all-small matters of what will become of Imperial citizens already there, and how this will all affect anyone looking to get to or from Lomali? Perhaps now that relations are becoming “normalized” between the Empire and Lurio (if indeed, things ever were “normal” between us) the Lurians will allow the Lakki to come and go as they please, and for Imperial aid to flow in. But I have my doubts. I’m no diplomat, but in my humble opinion, a peace made with a knife to one’s throat is no peace at all.

It’s all just too much, Keef. Every day, we are shot-through with more tales of woe. Every day, we are told that some new development on the galactic scene is the most important thing to happen in a generation, and we must urgently stand up and take notice. Every day, we are made to fear that these are the last days of our tensile hold on the peace that our parents’ generation fought so hard for in the 890s. But it can’t be true every day, can it? If I have to hear one more talking head look into a camera and say that “we are living through historic times,” I’m going to eat my obi. I grow so terribly tired of the constant anxiety. I just want to shut off my mind for a night and rest. And yet… I cannot look away from it all for the life of me. I cannot stop myself from endlessly scrolling through the doom and gloom. I know I shouldn’t, and yet the news cycle still has me trapped.

Dearest me, Keef. I don’t know what’s become of me. I need a distraction like I need my last meal. Perhaps I’ll try indulging in some lighter fare for a change, as a treat.

Take for instance this line of balderdash: as I was writing this letter, VoPo (trying to be all journalistic-sounding for once, rather than just running stories on Erissian pop stars) just posted a new article saying that the Dominari attacked Starfall three times in three days. Can you believe that? Not one, not two, but three different Dominari attacks in three days? Sure. Ordo Dominari disappeared from the galaxy for two-and-a-half decades, and now we are to believe that they show up at Starfall Academy every day of the week and twice on Sunday? Give me a break. 

You know, stuff like this actually makes me quite cross. There’s enough disinformation flying around right now as it is. Why are these unscrupulous little media outlets so insistent on fanning the flames with fanciful tales like this? Don’t they see how this makes our fellow citizens unable to tell truth from fiction, even when the truth is poking them in the eye? Pardon me a moment, dearest one, while I take a gander at this piece just to see what manner of yellow journalism VoPo has decided to engage in for novelty’s sake. I’ll regale you with the highlights.

Well… that was a mistake.

Please, Keef. Please tell me that absolutely none of that is true. Please tell me that the people of Hondru are alive and well. Please.

Write back this instant, you beautiful fool. 

Please.

Yours, always,

Hastakon

Hastakon, you poor dear. 

You must be in a state if you’re scrolling Vos News. Promise me you aren’t turning into the sort of codger who leaves the holo tuned to “Vital Signs with Donny Vermillion” as you go about your afternoon. I’m too far away to stage an intervention.

I’m sorry. I’ll try, for a fleeting instant, not to be flippant or florid. I’m alive. 

Your letter found me unharmed, albeit rattled. I wish I could tell you things haven’t been as bad as all that, but it’s possible they’ve been even worse. I, too, would have assumed this convergence of crises was mere sensationalism, were I not here to see it (again, this does NOT mean “Above Board with Mox Tuubruu” has the right idea. Really, give the tabloids a rest).

I find myself with a rare free evening, so you’re getting a full update whether you want one or not (and you do want one, Hastakon. No shame in it. You beg me to be brief, and then you spend the rest of your letter coaxing the sordid details out of me). 

The previous years here at Starfall have been tumultuous to say the least, but no one expected this place to become the locus of a Lurian assault. I can’t say the same for the Dominari – the school’s population is forever on pins and needles with the fear that another red saber will lash out from around any given corner – but to have the two converge upon us at the same time was unsettling, and clearly no coincidence.  

And the exact scale and substance of the APC’s involvement in this mess is going to take some time to understand. From where I sit – which, admittedly, is in a seat of confusion and spotty information – they seem to be a scattered collective with disparate interests. Perhaps some of them truly are genuine idealists committed to a nonviolent movement, but it’s clear their aims are still disorganized enough to enable bad actors to infiltrate the ranks. We were visited by a party who claimed their banner, under the false pretense of good-faith collaboration with MADIS, our student body’s activist tendency. I overheard some of these conversations in passing on my way to Vindori Hall: flattery, offers of solidarity, promises of support, most of which seem to have been bald-faced lies intended to lure the Order into collaborating with violent insurrectionists and swinging the negotiations towards Lurian interests. We’ve been issued a formal apology from the APC, who claims the emissary at Starfall was a rogue agent. I’m as concerned as you are about the Armistice piece – her Rainbow Eminence Laevinia has sent us private reassurance, and I have faith in her shrewd political mind, but I have to wonder whether the Guardians at Voidborn feel the same.

But here we are. “Peace.” “Historic times.” Would you like your obi sautéed in hern butter or baked into a roll?

 Much of our attention has been turned towards helping the people of Hondru recover – I’m afraid civilians saw the worst of it. The Dominari who assailed our campus came armed with one of the most grotesque uses of shadow I’ve had the misfortune to witness: innocents not only stripped of their will, but turned into malformed beasts devoid of all thought and agency. I can only hope most people write off reports of these “fleshcrafters” as tabloid flights of fancy – otherwise, we’ll be in the grip of a galactic panic. 

Please don’t think me mad or mind-controlled when I tell you they are very real.

The good news: our Guardians fought valiantly. The Light reports that Dominari numbers are mercifully few, and dwindling – seventy-seven in the galaxy at last count. The bad: the remnants seem to be seeking support wherever they can find it. Operatives reporting to a Dominari called “Hawkmoth” were aggressively attempting to recruit our student body to their cause, promising riches and unfettered power. While we have had no defectors, a few of the Venefari Pacifists under Sol’on’s care were puppeted by someone, and they attempted to deliver Jezza Stormblessed into enemy hands.

That last bit makes me as uneasy as you’d imagine – especially considering that yes, Sol’on did break her vow in spectacular, very public fashion (though the reports may have been exaggerated – she eviscerated a couple dozen Lurian soldiers, and not an entire legion of Harrun). We are left with a small but hungry cohort of Venefari Pacifists openly studying Dominari arts under the tutelage of a weapon of mass destruction. What is this institution playing at, Hastakon? You ask me why this place attracts such chaos – I believe it is because our esteemed faculty roll out the welcome mat.

My revulsion towards the “pastime” of Hammerball shielded me from experiencing the eradication in person (though Halloran has taken to delivering me a personal invitation to every game. I’m convinced she delights in my vexation). I had spent the afternoon on blaster duty, the early evening on incident reports, and was making a valiant attempt to retire to my apartment, fully intending to decompress with a glass of red and push through the opening chapter of Eyob Corr’s The Snows of Rissi (my verdict: dull as dirt. Wooden dialogue. Don’t bother). My quiet evening was not to be – the evening’s conflicts continued to escalate, and when my part in the fighting was done, the incident reports were waiting.

 While the losses here on campus were few – a bold young page named Cid and then, alas, the late doctor – their impact has been profound and destabilizing. We both know Vray was a splenetic blowhard (may the Light keep him) but I never wished to see the man cut down. Much of the student body is in anguish over the loss, and even those of us who had little love for the man still feel his absence. And yes – the Lurians took his shoes, and somehow managed to warp his saber.

The Medicari have their hands full dealing with the physiological aftermath of the attacks. Master Artemisia Inari has arrived on long-term loan from Brightleaf to stand as head of the sect, and they are as doting and gentle-hearted as Vray was brash (our Medicari are now treated to Pretty Prism Power Guardian bandages and time outs in the “cozy corner,” which I’m certain they find more palatable than having their bones liquefied). Knight Kina Vako’s significant experience as a surgeon commands a good deal of respect – which is fortunate, considering Stav has taken to leading the students in experimentation with bizarre rituals (can you imagine who would want to raise Vray from the dead? Yes, you read that correctly – and not a mere revivification, but a full scale reprisal. Fortunately it was temporary. We have enough problems without his bellowing corpse shambling around the quad).

I felt a glimmer of hope upon reading that both our incoming Venefari knights were fellow Dawn Cliff alumni. How I’ve longed for a shred of decorum within that sect! No such luck. At first, Bastien Sevrun seemed to comport himself with appropriate dignity, but I wouldn’t have thought our alma mater enjoined its Knights to cavort through fields with wild beasts, or to encourage the student body to commune with tubers. Kura Var, for their part, was partaking in the greenhouse “stash,” catapulting down the hallways, and probably selling speeder parts from the docking bay on the black market by the end of initiation night. Perhaps Dawn Cliff isn’t what it used to be. Anyhow, by the end of the first week of classes, Starfall’s fabled Venefari “instructional methods” had caused permanent psychic injury to most of the sect (the faculty, predictably, blame some sort of specter). I’ve heard the new unofficial Venefari motto at Starfall is “horror and pain.” And they say this proudly.

Kai’fu makes an impressive Master and is an accomplished teacher of the Vindori arts, though she is still rather preoccupied with dueling. She has the aid of two new Knights. I can only guess the Tarrani family made a sizable contribution to the Order this year, because they plucked some supercilious Vindori cousin of the Magistrate out of an adjunct position and appointed him to knighthood. I’ve heard Kev’ann’s history classes consist almost entirely of the glorification of the Tarrani ancestral line (yes, even the most notorious parts of it. The man swans around campus in a crown). Knight Kaha’ea’s reputation as an eminent scholar precedes him, at least, and he keeps himself busy with study in the Archives much of the time. Can you blame him?

Qain, as intrepid a warrior as he is, punctuates every other breath with a microdose; Kang is an inspiring warrior but as near-feral as ever (usually with a trail of equally feral students behind her), and poor long-suffering Acolyte Indira is covered in bandages from handling the offspring of the apex predator they call “Teddy.” Grodur wander the halls and lunge at unsuspecting Novices. Potion bottles litter the hallways. Some propagandists in dire need of a copy editor insist hern are a Dominari invention. With the Ouiori in such want of a grounding presence, is it any wonder Master Adain was brought out of retirement? Her skill in ritual facilitation has been essential in protecting the school from harm – I’ll admit I have little idea how the Ouiori do the things they do, but they cajoled the Titian wolves and grodur and juvenile lava garo into joining the defense effort.

The Bellati have brought on a new Knight as well: Lunarre Vastai – a wild-eyed Naran with teeth filed to points. Some sort of legendary hunter of Paronese beasts, apparently (how long did it take the hammerball team to recruit her? Two days). As fearful as I am that she’ll sink her teeth into my throat, the students and faculty have embraced her. Passionate, certainly. Our Bellati are certainly kept busy enough to need all the drive they can muster – the students have defended us admirably, and they made short work of the fiends who captured Stormblessed. I’ve passed our patient and long-suffering sabersmith Ly’sar in the halls at 3 AM more than once after a marathon paperwork session – he’s regularly kept up until the wee hours repairing blades. Oh! While I’m thinking about it – they say the intrepid and oft-kidnapped young Knight Garok has pioneered some ritual called a “ghost suplex.” Perhaps you can explain to me what sort of move that is, exactly. I know you tune into Sunday Night Scourge, if only for the burnished Rikkan beefcakes in tiny shorts. 

Life goes on. As trying as it is to be stuck here in the company of such oddballs – each of whom seems intent on training the students to be just as outré – at least their exploits provide some distraction. 

And distraction, my dear, is sometimes the only thing holding me together. I’ll admit it, Hastakon – it’s hard not to fear for one’s life amidst such violent upheaval. I wish I had the luxury of boredom. My soul longs for mediocre novels and forgettable cabernet. I want brunch and idle gossip and charming company. Maybe we’ll never see a day that isn’t “historic,” but I’d love at least one afternoon.

It’s getting late, and you warned me not to write a novel. I’ll leave you with a promise: I am intent upon living through all this. I am intent upon sitting down with you again over a glass of bubbly and a plate of Rhonian honey cakes and finding something frivolous to snark about. 

Perhaps something a bit less frivolous than your average VoPo exposé. For your own sake, put down the datapad and try not to worry too much.

Yours in the Light,

Keef