Eternal life was a goal that many Sith had aspired to throughout galactic history. In her research Darth Syrinn had pored over ancient history books detailing the planet-ending ritual of Lord Vitiate, the agonizing three-hundred-year stasis of Revan, the botched essence transfer of Darth Zash, but they offered little help. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, Syrinn did not possess Vitiate’s magnitude in the Force, Revan’s mental fortitude or Zash’s powerful artifacts. She could not do what they did, but that did not mean she was resigned to failure. She was Dark Lord of the Sith, heir to Darth Bane’s legacy, among the most powerful Force users in the galaxy. She would think of something.
From the day of her birth among the crystal forests of Christophsis eighty years prior Syrinn (then a measly girl named Shiren Dizkar) had been fascinated by alchemy. When her family had visited the capital Chaleydonia and observed the kyber crystals being refined and purified in bubbling colorful liquid, Shiren was struck by the odd beauty of the chemical reactions, the hissing shards being readied for export to the Jedi Temple. Her passion developed into latent potential as she took to studying the sciences and became a medicinal researcher for the Republic Medical Service, testing the pharmaceutical properties of newly discovered bacteria on far-flung worlds. It was on one of these worlds that she inadvertently created a Force-imbued potion from basic alchemical ingredients, the small blip of power she exercised bringing her to the attention of a secretive Kel Dor Sith Lord searching for an ancient artifact. Darth Flurin sought her out, scooped her up and took her on as an apprentice. Officially Shiren Dizkar was still missing according to the Republic’s records, but Darth Syrinn was alive and well. The memory of those shining crystals meant that the purple-hued focusing lens of her little-used lightsaber was taken from Christophsis’s crystalline shores. It was Syrinn’s alchemy that attracted her master to her, and her alchemy that eventually killed him. That was the way of the Sith, to betray, to discard, but Syrinn had other plans. She was not just the next in a line of lords doomed to die by their students’ hand – she would persevere, by any means necessary.
Syrinn’s work dictated total isolation from the powers of the galaxy, so an unassuming Outer Rim world like Nathema, far enough from the machinations of the Jedi to not draw their attention and unimportant enough to not attract any visiting threats, was an ideal choice. It was steeped in the Force from the aftershocks of the calamitous ritual performed there millennia ago, but that power could only be sensed by those attuned to the dark side. She sustained herself on the agricultural output of the local residents, whom she had tricked into forgetting the woman they were giving food to, and they were the only people she spoke to other than her apprentice.
Ah, the apprentice. Her dark agent, her blue-skinned supplicant. Darth Mowbris was his name, but he was not a Dark Lord in the way she was. He was not Sith to her, which was part of the reason why she sought to extend her life – so that she might serve as the shining example of a true Sith that her Chiss student was not. He was intelligent, admirably sadistic and capable in combat – but he was also brash, impatient and prone to blunder. The secretive Sith that came before him would frown on such a man assuming the title of Sith Master. He had not yet proved himself.
The two had trained together for six years, by which time in her own apprenticeship Syrinn had concocted a variety of alchemical Force conduits to subdue, seduce, convince, kill and everything in between, as well as rediscovering several potent artifacts buried across the galaxy long ago and carrying out silent executions of political targets to further her master’s aims and prevent the discovery of the Sith. No matter how much Darth Flurin distrusted her, he could not deny her talents and achievements; Mowbris, meanwhile, had done little more than fetch some offworld artifacts that Syrinn had sensed. Granted, some of that blame fell to her for being more engrossed in her research than her role as a teacher but Flurin too had been detached and it didn’t stop Syrinn from seeking out knowledge for herself from Sith tombs, dark side Holocrons and archival tomes. The dark side held infinite knowledge and yet her apprentice had no desire to pursue it.
Throughout their time together as master and apprentice Syrinn had begun the construction of a Sith holocron intended to instruct Mowbris in the dark side properly, filling it with all her accumulated knowledge of the dark side for him to seek out when he was ready to supplant her. However she had come to realize that he was not deserving of such knowledge, passed down from generation to generation by the Sith of the past. She would wait until somebody truly worthy discovered the holocron to pass her teachings down; but what to do with Mowbris in the meantime? For all his faults he was an adept servant and decent enough with a lightsaber to render a direct confrontation dangerous. She would have to find another way to snuff out his life so that Syrinn might seek out a true worthy apprentice.
For now though, she realized, her plan would have to wait as she heard the familiar sound of Mowbris’ Rendaran-class assault shuttle, an old Republic ship recovered from a crash site on Nathema several years prior, making its descent overhead. Her student had arrived home.