The Thing in the Well

The Thing in the Well was a ' that was spawned sometime before the '. Disillusioned ' fleeing the ancient conflict on ' took a small community of the Force-sensitive ' away with them to ', where they established a hidden, mountain-top society.

Over the centuries, this small community of Force-users grew and, in time, conflict arose, with a particularly dark young man gathering followers to take control of the settlement by force until the residents united against and defeated him.

He was sentenced to execution for the deaths he'd caused, however, the individual who was to carry out the sentence let his anger get the better of him; instead of executing and burying the Dark Side acolyte as instructed, he buried him alive in the tomb created for him and left him there.

Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, the angry young man didn't die so much as dissipate, banging and screaming on his coffin lid even as his body wasted away and rotted until even his screams fell silent.

That pure, unfiltered rage tainted the mountaintop, poisoning those who lived there until, several centuries later, the village almost destroyed itself in a civil war. It persisted nonetheless, but the war had fed the Dark Side taint and given a spark of life to the negative emotions.

That life, that living embodiment of anger and hatred, began to manifest in the form of illusions, luring unsuspecting villagers into the mining tunnels beneath which the ancient coffin lay. More and more people began to disappear and as they did, panic spread through the settlement. A panic that further fed the entity in the mountain.

Illusions began to kill instead of trick, tormenting the villagers at night before murdering them, leaving confusion and terror in their wake. By the time it was understood what was going on, only a handful of survivors remained. They chose to abandon their homes and leave the planet.

It would be several millennia later before the entity would wake from its slumber again, this time to terrorise the inhabitants of a more recent settlement further down the mountain, Graultown. As it tormented them with illusions, the dark power spread to encompass the surrounding plains, until the strange behaviour of the local wildlife prompted the neighbouring village of Purple Plains to evacuate to .

The residents of Graultown sent a distress beacon, calling on the Jedi for help, and in return received  Batauww and Hyin, along with their apprentices Avexiss Redonna Odé and Hessinine Valenn.

Unfortunately for the Jedi, they'd underestimated the power of the entity, and after just one night Master Batauww temporarily lost his mind while Master Hyin was torn apart by villagers who'd been twisted into bestial cannibals.

While Hessinine led the villagers down to mountain to safety, Avexiss made her way further up the mountain after the entity contacted her directly, inviting her to its domain in exchange for Hessinine's safe retreat. She encountered the spirit of a young Zeltron boy, killed by the entity, which hardened her resolve and spurred her on to confront the evil spectre.

More spirits lined the path, guiding her to the abandoned mine where she found a simple stone well. Avexiss knew the entity was beneath the water, and despite her fear she jumped in, falling through the liquid and emerging a few seconds later in an ancient, dimly-lit chamber.

There the entity tried to convince her to surrender her body, revealing that it needed a body strong enough to house its dark power without being consumed by it. Without one, it was bound to the mountain itself, unable to move until it accumulated enough power- something that would take millennia.

Avexiss refused and tried to physically strike down the entity, only to be swiftly overpowered and bound by a ghostly purple vapour that shattered her skeleton to end her resistance while it poured into her mind.

Only when Avexiss accepted death did the impossible happen; she achieved  with the Force, becoming a conduit for the Force and a being made of the unstoppable power of light. As if controlled by the Force itself, Avexiss moved on broken bones to annihilate the entity, seemingly destroying it in a huge explosion of energy that knocked Avexiss out cold.

The entity survived, however, thanks to having started the process of taking over Avexiss' mind having already started when she'd vanquished it. Though far weaker, it lurked in the back of her mind, waiting for a moment of weakness in which to seize control.

This fusion of the two personalities left Avexiss in a constant state of caution, although it did have some positives for the young Jedi.

For instance, when ' was consumed in the ' ritual, Avexiss was on the planet and seemingly doomed to be one of the many victims. However, the entity attempted to eject itself from her body- it succeeded, but the two spirits were bound together, meaning Avexiss was also pulled out of her body before the ritual turned it to dust.

Such was their connection that Avexiss was healed by the entity's dark power whenever she suffered an injury, even if those injuries would normally be fatal.