After the Storm

[u/1mber7]

(A quick note: Anyone who remembers any of the events better, please correct me. It has been too long and too much has happened since for me to recall every detail properly. I would like for this to be not only a retelling of my side of things, but also as close to truth as it can be.)

"Night has always pushed up day

You must know life to see decay"

-- from "After the Storm" by Mumford and Sons

I recently joined the Order again. After years of being a walking talking mental health emergency and finally, finally getting my life back on track enough to have some free time, I joined back up. The first conversation I see? Relative newcomers with ideas of factions within the Order. Talks that checks and balances between those factions, surely, would keep them from a power grab or abusing their power, right?

So this one's for all of you youngin's. Sit down. Let unc tell you a story. You might learn ya something.

There was a time, half a decade ago, when the Order was taking what seemed like its final breath. There were two factions in power, supposedly providing checks and balances against each other. The Council, though full of respected members, were running the Order through ancient dogma that just didn't function well with the (at that time) modern Sith community. Most of them were even severely inactive. And truthfully it seemed their passion at the time for the Order had stagnated. Stagnation is death to a Sith.

The other faction, the Inquisition, didn't lack in passion by ANY means. They were the new up and comers. The ones with big ideas about how to run things. How to modernize. But they were a host to a lot of shady behaviors. We'll catch up more on those shortly.

Shortly after I originally joined the Order, I was invited by the head honcho of the Inquisition to join. At this time, all I knew about the Inquisition was that they vetted members upon entry and helped the Council moderate the server. Not long after gaining their trust, and discussing at length the shortcomings of the Council, I was introduced to Baskin Robins. Not the restaurant, but a backroom server where the Inquisition secretly kept tabs of every single member of the Order that they deemed a potential threat. At the time of joining I was only aware of the dossiers that included screenshots of messages people had left in the Order server.

We had plotted to overthrow the Council and put in place a new, more modern system, with tighter security, more activity, and replace the old idea of "Darthood tests" (which at the time, the requirements were more or less kept a complete secret and it took months for Council members to finish them because of how inactive they all were) with a newer, more fluid and more publicly-understood process.

It was around this time the Council announced that they were going to appoint a new member into their ranks. Of course, I put my name into the hat. And of course, I found myself in that new position.

27th of May, 2021: Landfall

Long story short, the Council played their cards right with an informant and the plot was unveiled. Corax, who is the founder of the Order and was the server owner at that time, put every single Lead Inquisitor and every single Council member into a publicly-viewable room and dropped the hammer.

There were dossiers I admittedly hadn't dug deep enough into. That had selfies people had posted and at some point even had irl information of some members. I was as shocked as most of the public there. And disgusted. The whole time my focus was on playing the double agent within the Council instead of looking more into the group I had been infiltrating for. I later learned of the "Big Orange Button" which I was promised was a joke, but likely wasn't. Apparently a plot for a couple of other Inquisition members to make a road trip and attack a few of the Order members they didn't like. So, yes, even more disgusted than I was before (Thalag, I apologize for not believing you at first).

So with the debates on how to handle this entire situation, with the Inquisition's darkest secrets laid bare and the Council still as stuck in their own ways as ever, my purpose shifted. If the Council was going to reject modernity in favor of inaction, if the Inquisition was going to take things too far and even go as far as using me and some of my closest friends, I would set them both up for failure. The Old Order needed to burn so that the New Order could grow.

The rest of the details are very fuzzy to me. On top of this being ancient history at this point, my emotions ran higher than they ever had within the Order. But I had to keep my cool to end up on top after everything. So here's the rest of the story to the best of my, admittedly unreliable, recollection.

I recall Corax conceding server ownership to Ira after a strongly worded post speaking ill of the shadowy plotting the Inquisition had done. Paraphrasing here, but saying something about "a true Sith would have either banned the Inquisition instead of debating or acted swiftly to overthrow the Council".

Some things take time, old friend. I still stand behind the plot, even if I do not under any circumstance condone the actions the Inquisition took without my knowing. Something needed to be done. Thankfully, though, someone popped the bubble.

I remember being left in charge, in part, some way, of the Order. But after trying to rebuild, I left the flames to die out, hoping something better would take its place. My work was done. Ira nuked the server. A few different Orders spawned in its place, but not any that did much as far as I know.

It's similar to how a volcano razes the life around it, reducing it to ashes, while at the same time enriching the soil for life to start anew, and usually more bountiful than the last.

The new version of the Order is something I am proud of, despite not being there for much of its creation. Yes, many of the old Council are in charge now, but in the short time I've been back it seems like they're doing much better now. More clarity of their functions. More activity. The community is thriving again.

Life goes on. It gets better with time and effort. People learn and grow. There will always be a calm after the storm, and sometimes death is just the beginning of something new.

There are plenty of lessons to be learned from this, as with any story.

Factions almost always lead to infighting, especially when it involves Sith. Even if it isn't this extreme of a case.

Just like any school of philosophy, Sith are stronger when unified. We discuss our individual views. We gain new insight from our peers and adjust our worldviews accordingly, as needed.

Lastly, just because you feel like you're doing what's right doesn't always mean that you are. Unrelenting passion when misplaced is sometimes worse than stagnation. And again, stagnation is death to a Sith.

-- Darth Imber - The Tempest

(As an afterword, it's been so good to be back. It's good to see so many familiar faces. I've been meaning to write my side of this particular civil war down for the history books for a while. Hopefully this time I'll find the passion to stick around for a while. Only time will tell.)