Monomachiarum is a multifandom experiece that takes the characters into the chaotic future of the 30th century in the great expanse of space. Our lore is a combination of worlds brought in from other franchises, lore created by the site founder, and user-submitted information in order to make a vast and diverse setting. Add your pages to our grand story no matter who your characters might be or where they came from before. This is a place meant to explore possibilities and open new doors. Canons and OCs are welcome, just so long as they can fit into the setting with a little bit of reasonable modification here and there if necessary. So what are you waiting for? Join us today! If you'd like to get to know our community more, feel free to check out our Discord channel.
May 2023 It's been hectic this last year, but we are alive and celebrating our fifth year of adventure and tales. A lot has been worked on to help make the Monoverse one that everyone can enjoy and explore their story while becoming a part of the greater cosmos. All of you, new and long time players, stay safe, and see you in the Sea of Stars!
the things that you might like don't grow inside of me
"So... what d'you think?"
Yet again - by this point more times than he could count - the silence inside the cramped cockpit was broken. At only 52 meters in length the Besom was already small by Kom'rk standards, and with most of the craft's length a result of the large, blade like wings the bracketed the relatively small cylindrical hull... space was at a premium. Long voyages were still plenty possible as virtually everything built by MandalMotors was designed with endurance and rugged dependability in mind first and foremost, but they weren't something you typically attempted with large groups of people. Four at most for a ship this size, and that was if you didn't mind cramped accommodations. More than that, you made sure it was with people you liked.
Olee hardly fit that description.
She had her strong points, to be sure. At barely more than seventeen standard years old she was surprisingly competent, enough to impress Berun which was not an easy feat to accomplish. At nearly sixty standard years of age himself he'd seen more war in his lifetime than most of the galaxy had over the course of a millennia, and he'd borne witness to some of the best to partake in those conflicts. Veritable legends in their own rights, remembered for decades after their wars were done and gone. For him to trust anyone with his wellbeing and to have his back in a firefight spoke volumes about a person's skill, but that wasn't the same as liking them - more accurately, it was that very assessment of Olee's abilities that allowed the grizzled veteran to tolerate her for days at a time in a cramped space where he could not escape her endless chatter.
"Probably pirates. Just like every other missing person report coming into Daiban within the last two months." Berun answered, his tired voice filtered by his beskar'gam's helmet. As old as he was and with as much action as it had seen the armor's colors had faded a great deal. The once gleaming silver and cerulean colors once worn by the Death Watch and later adopted by all traditionalists as Mandalore's government was first usurped and later collapsed had been scuffed, scraped and battered until they'd faded into a blend of mottled gray and pale blue almost indistinguishable from one another - the hard, T shaped visor, however, looked every bit as intimidating as it had since the day the armor was forged. All in all, a stark difference when compared to the dark blue, almost black beskar Olee wore - probably among the last suits to have been forged before the Collapse.
"No, not that. Vizsla. What's your take on him?" Olee clarified, looking away from the starfield beyond the cockpit canopy to focus her gaze on Berun again. Something he notably avoided doing, as was answering her directly. He knew exactly what she'd meant. The Collapse had been... difficult, for a number of survivors and refugees. It wasn't merely the exodus and resettling, it was the when of where people had been displaced from. Old squabbles that had been centuries old for some were fresh and painful for others, and still more were accused of crimes or misdoings they'd yet to even commit. And of course, under all of that, there were others who knew of those difficulties and sought to abuse them for their own gain, to escape judgement with similar claims of innocence... and in most cases it was impossible to prove one way or the other. For many Mandalorians the debate was a heated one as Vizsla's name was a very well known one, as was that of Death Watch.
But Berun simply didn't care. It didn't matter anymore one way or the other. Vizsla - in the here and now - was offering a lucrative way of life for Mandalorians who sought to leverage their more martial expertise, and it drew individuals across eras and disciplines to his side. Whether or not Berun had been among his followers on Concordia or joined the militia after Maul had executed him and installed himself as ruler of Mandalore was irrelevant, and the old soldier saw no reason to indulge Olee's curiosity simply for the sake of gossip.
"Moving to jump point. Eyes on our scanners for when we drop out, commercial ships have been going missing out here for almost a month now." Berun said, completely ignoring the young woman's earlier inquiries. And while she would grouse and - he could only imagine - pout a bit under that helmet, she did as instructed. The old Mando still had yet to completely wrap his head around how these new drives worked beyond the fact that they were far slower and less convenient than the Besom's now just short of useless hyperdrive, but he understood "pilot to point, execute jump" well enough and it helped that most of the systems were largely automated. Easing the fighter forward and cutting back on the throttle as it neared the preprogrammed point, the ship would lurch forward into a bright blue portal as it performed the last of what had been several dozen jumps up to this point. Bright blue glow giving way to a starless pitch black, the next few minutes were thankfully silent as the girl beside him focused on what she was doing, calibrating sensors for the moment they dropped back into realspace. As the ship's nav system detected their exit point fast approaching another blinding flash of blue would illuminate the cockpit before stars once again reappeared. One in particular much closer than the others, a distant yellow orb of warm light, and far closer than that to the point that it was practically filling their field of view was the local planet set as their destination - some unpronounceable name that Berun wouldn't even attempt to speak or spell.
Even closer than that, though, was something else and the first immediate indication that something was wrong, adrenaline flooding Berun's system as he suddenly yanked the ship's controls to avoid a piece of twisted metal wreckage nearly as big as their very fighter was. The speed and extreme nature of the maneuver was enough that the fighter's inertial dampeners weren't enough to completely dull the feeling of his stomach falling out, and even as the fighter twisted away from the initial near collision the Mandalorian suddenly realized that it wasn't just the one piece of wreckage they had almost hit. There were hundreds, potentially thousands, some just as big as the initial chunk, some even bigger, but the vast majority too small to see and accurately track - but he heard them impacting the hull, thousands of metal raindrops that threatened to tear the fighter apart were it not for the ship's particle shielding. Pulling back on the controls to angle the ship above the plane of the debris field, Berun only realized he hadn't been breathing as the sound of metal impacting metal began to fade and he allowed himself a moment to think again.
During all of that, though, Olee had been uncharacteristically silent. For a moment genuine concern for her wellbeing flashed through Berun as he looked over to the younger Mandalorian, but she was fine. Just... staring. Wordless, and it was impossible to read her expression through that T shaped visor, but... staring. Confused and feeling a growing sense of unease in his gut, Berun turned his head and leaned forward towards the transparisteel to try and get a line of sight on what had her attention.
He almost wished he hadn't.
The sheer amount of wreckage they had flown through already told a chilling story, but the planet was something else altogether. For the most part it was exactly as one would expect, a muddy ball of green and brown with the occasional white wisps of cloud. Right up until the night side of the planet caught Berun's eye. Stretching across it for what had to be hundreds of kilometers and clearly visible from orbit was an angry orange scar, the unmistakable color of flame and molten rock or metal. He didn't even have to look at the ship's navigational systems to know what had been there - the colony was gone, had been gone for a good, long while. Even through the Clone Wars it was something that Berun had never seen the likes off, and judging by Olee's silence neither had she. How many ships had attacked this world? How long had they been here? As the old Mando was wrapping his mind around the implications, however, Olee finally spoke again.
"... Berun. Near the equator. What is that? Survivors?"
He knew better. Something able to do that didn't leave anything behind unless it chose to, but how Olee could see anything with the naked eye that far out-
And then something moved. They were the faintest of blue flashes, almost invisible, but something was orbiting the world in the middle of what looked like another debris cloud. The krif was that, though? It couldn't have been-
A shrill warning ripped through the cockpit, cutting Berun's thoughts short as the collision alarms sounded and the space around them was torn, blue flashes spitting out dozens of teardrop shaped crafted that moved at an astonishing pace - several firing their weapons as they passed by, blue energy bolts splashing over the fighter's shields and triggering a second, much more distressing alarm. Hands suddenly on the controls again, Berun didn't say a word as he kicked the fighter's throttle and whipped the craft around on an exit vector. Olee, as expected, shared the same line of thought as she began programming the ship's navigation system to follow the same path they had used to get there, just in reverse this time. Juking the fighter to avoid flashes of incoming fire from the enemy fighters now turning to pursue, space lit up blue again.
Not, however, as they jumped - rather, something else emerged ahead of them, slipping free of the otherspace with a thunderous crackle of static discharge that danced over the impossibly large nightmare vessel's cylindrical hull, the front parted in four evenly spaced prongs. At least Berun assumed that was the front as it was the end that left slipspace first, but right now that wasn't important. The warning trill of failing shields filling the cockpit, a similar blue glow filling his vision as Olee activated the Besom's jump drive was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen as the small fighter disappeared into safety, plotting a course straight to Daiban.