[ IP ] The Mothers

Wist Nay'tu paused from her bowl of noodles, setting aside the eating sticks as she did so to look up at her partner and sometimes mentor. 
 
 `` Tomess?'' 
 
 The veteran mercenary picked at a wiggling tentacle of something before deciding against eating it. 
 
 `` Yeah, Wist?'' 
 
 `` What does your name mean? The word Ghast I mean.'' 
 
 Tomess Ghast darkened for a moment before shoving aside his bowl of food and looked his partner in the eye. 
 
 `` It's a long story, going back to the very earliest ages of humanity on Ord Ivran. Legends hold it that the first settlers feared the forests of our world and rightly so. Even today all manner of creature dwells underneath those dark boughs unseen and unheard. But among the most fear were the wraiths, foul creatures that could phase through even the thickest walls of stone and fed on the souls of beings. They saw without eyes, smelled the fear in the sweat of men. They floated like a miasma above the ground, for it was said they were so evil that the world itself rejected them. Travelers feared going out at night and families would lock their windows and bar their doors in hopes of protecting themselves against these bloodthirsty monsters. 
 
 `` We were a people afraid of the night and all the terrors it would bring. No one knows exactly why our home was so cursed with spirits and monsters. Ancient stories have it that a great evil soaked our world in the Dark Side of the Force, pools of unnatural energy collecting and festering. Others say it was justice for the blood we spilled in the Pius Dea Crusades, the untold numbers of aliens that met our blades. I'm liable to believe both. 
 
 `` No one knew what drove these monsters, these wraiths to feed on humans. One night a village would lock up for the night, the next morn an entire family would lay dead in their beds, their life-force drained from them, withered like husks. But that was n't the worst. Because sometimes they would n't kill, these wraiths. Instead, they'd abduct a child and whisk'em away into the forests. Most believed this was how they grew in numbers, swelling their ranks with our own flesh and blood. Not one child taken was ever heard of again, saw for one. 
 
 `` He was n't three when they took him, slipping away one dark winter's night. Unlike others his mother awoke to find her son missing, the window open and more than just the freezing air chilling her heart. She saw them, dozens of wraiths, grinning without lips, staring without eyes, carrying her beloved child away. She chased after them, heedless of the danger but she was too late. By the time she got to the tree line they had long since vanished into the cold night and her son with them. She fell down, her heart heavy with sorrow. 
 
 `` The boy emerged from that forest the next morning a full grown man, his hair turned white, his eyes the color of ice. He never spoke of what happened in that forest but for whatever reason the wraiths never emerged in such numbers again, and remained in the hollows and cairns deep within the woods unless disturb. He had a new name after that, the only one he would carry for the rest of his life, *The Ghast. * He was more spirit than man after that but whatever he did or learned whilst in the company of those wraiths, they certainly taught him how to kill. He married and had a single child who carried his legacy with him in his veins. 
 
 `` This was some eight thousand years ago, and through all those centuries, through the Clan Wars, through the Mandalorian Wars all the way to the Clone Wars, the Ghast line has fought. We do not farm, we do not build, we exist only to fight. Not one Ghast in a eight millenia has died a peaceful death. Every single one has died fighting, whether that's in some grand battle or in a drunken brawl. There is no peace for a restless soul.''
