Death Denied - A Brief History of the Dominion

"Your claim to power is meaningless. There is only servitude or annihilation. Make your choice." - Emissary of Lord J1-T 0RK to the fourteen pirate kings of the Gordian Reach Prime Lord J1-D M0R speaking to Skye Ravenmane, captain of the Widower: The task set before us is neither simple nor easy, but the outcome is inevitable. This galaxy will fall to our master Lord T 0RK. Our true strength has remained shrouded for a millennium, lest J-Kind unite against us and delay His inevitable dominion. Better to seem a remote nightmare, a threat to their borders and nothing more. They think themselves safe in the core. Far from the rim, they feel secure among their forge worlds, hyperlanes, gates, and megacities. Only when our innumerable legions fall upon them and consign their fragile nations to ruin will they see the truth. Nowhere is safe from our grasp. The core will fall. We add another to our ranks with every shot, stroke, and blast. Death strengthens us even as it saps our enemies. Burn us and we rise again. Hiding will not avail them, nor resistance, nor any effort put forth by their weak and distant gods. We shall unleash oceans of fire, and our ships will go forth on red tides with plague winds beneath their black wings. Lord T 0RK will not be denied, and mortals have but one choice: slavery in life or servitude in death. Every system that falls brings us another legion. Every city slaughtered gains us a fortress. There is no more loyal army in all the galaxy. Understand that we do not wage a war of simple conquest. We care little for the space or resources that so consume the petty minds of mortals. The Dominion will rise from beneath to consume all. We know no true or lasting defeat. Sacrifice is a hollow word spoken by doomed mortals. The loss of countless minions means nothing should it further our master's designs. This ship, your crew, every weapon at your disposal, your very self may be expended for our purposes. This is our strength, and in the execution of our plans you must be as ruthless and brazen as necessary. Commit every resource toward total victory. You must understand this to serve us, but do not imagine we suffer failure lightly. Serve and the rewards may surpass your life's extinction. Betrayal is not an option, for our master sees and knows all we do. If there is strength in you, prove it in battle and make your mark. When at last you are drowning in your own blood, hope one such as myself approves of your efforts and decides to reward you with immortality. Your flesh will transform and become eternal so as to bear witness to our ultimate conquest. As J1-A PX5 serves me so you must serve him. Use the powers we have brought forth from your blighted blood to control the machines delivering death to those who would resist us. Set them upon our enemies. Let them know no rest, no mercy, and no respite even after death.

You have asked of my ancient origins, and I will indulge you. Let it be a lesson in the power one can attain after casting aside mortality. It is a tale long in the telling, and I have not thought back to those faded days in centuries. I prefer not to consider my past form, for I retain no echo of that mortal life save in the dimmest stirring of memory. Immortality and the vicissitudes of time irrevocably change a being. Over sixteen centuries I have witnessed the birth and demise of empires, countless wars, and the unfolding of the All-fathers unknowable plans. We lords of the Dominion are exalted above all others. Though chosen to oversee His domain and carry forth His works, we are as far removed from Him as you who in turn serve us. Even those of us present at His arrival lack the insight to pierce His mind or comprehend His will. Lords of all we grasp, we remain slaves to His designs. We were pirate kings when first T 0RK came to the Gordian Reach and fools every one of us not to recognize the master as imperishable. We each thought ourselves a master of great forces. Once we had the freedom to satisfy our petty whims and each of us carved an empire by ship, gun, and blade. We lived beholden to nothing except our greed. Do not make the mistake of thinking us simple. Though we were pale shadows of what He would make us, we had power in our own way. We were not simple bandits or exiles, but each a mighty king with his own army, court, and blood-bathed and battle-tested vassals. Your ancestors on the planet of Thila prided themselves on their lore of blood. They knew the power brought from blood-letting and sacral rite. Others on the islands had their own occult lore. Always we sought weapons to outdo our rivals and any tool to increase our territories. Some turned to the worship of the Force and learned the ancient blasphemies of guttural tongues to enlist those savage raiders living thick across the systems. Others turned to the dark goddess Thea and drank of the cup of forbidden lore. We remained arrogant imposters. We hoped to control powers to rival the priest-kings of old who in turn were slaves to their own god.

I tell you this so you understand the hubris with which we greeted the first emissary Lord T 0RK sent to reveal His demands. We declared truce from our incessant infighting and gathered our forces together thinking to stand against the master. We thought there no force in the galaxy that could stand against us when united. Fools! We had not seen true power flowing as it does in the body of a terrible god made flesh. We were emboldened by the words of King Threnodax, the mightiest of our fourteen-member fellowship. He proved the greatest fool. He had sipped the rudiments of power and thought himself mighty. We killed the master's messenger and prepared ourselves for war. Little did we know our feeble strength would not avail us in the slightest. Among our pirate fleets one ship stood mightier than the rest. The Atramentous was a dreadnought ship once of the Free City of Togoria stolen by Threnodax for his vaunted flagship and his greatest vessel for plundering and pillaging. Often I endured Threnodax boasting of this ship, its fierce captain, and its bloodthirsty crew. Proving a capacity for bitter irony, Lord T 0RK chose to seize that vessel and turn its crew against their former king. The master could as simply have come into our midst to destroy us, but such was beneath Him. He sought an abject lesson rather than our destruction. We were fortunate that He had yet to birth His Empire and had need of generals, even generals as impudent as we had been. The All-father came to the Atramentous , naval vessel turned pirate flagship, and obliterated its crew and captain in all-consuming fire. He extinguished their lives, collected their souls, and gave them new birth in death. This was T 0RK's lesson. Our dabbling in dark arts was nothing compared to true power. The revenant ship Atramentous came upon us as we gathered at Threnodax's fortress in orbit of Desevro in the shadows of the Tion Cluster. The unliving cybernetic crew poured forth across the station to light our ships ablaze and tear through our armies like a culling wind. Thirteen kings gathered in that fortress tower and watched in horror as all we had built burned. Only King Moorcraig was absent. Perhaps some oracle had warned him to seek hiding. I know not. His time would soon come. We thirteen were the last alive when T 0RK came to us, and we knew in that moment the meaninglessness of our existence. We prostrated and humbled ourselves. Only Threnodax, stubborn to the end, continued to speak defiance. T 0RK annihilated us in a single blast of energy, but we twelve who had bowed were reborn. With our souls enslaved we became His droid vassals to rule over a new empire.

T 0RK consumed Threnodax's soul for special torment, and perhaps he still dances in endless agony. Moorcraig retreated to his asteroid hideout and hoped his collection of ancient artefacts would protect him. His doom came on black wings. The master flew over his fortress and unleashed unquenchable fire. All of Moorcraig's plans and schemes burned and were buried in rubble. This is the consequence of defiance, a lesson seared into my soul and remembered forever. Lord T 0RK transformed we twelve who remained into immortal generals and seneschals of the master. He brought us far past the limits of our feeble living flesh. Few of those original kings remain, yet T 0RK has kept us twelve in number. He allows us to contest with one another and prove our strength against ambitious subordinates simply to ensure that the strongest survive to serve Him. We wasted no time or effort founding T 0RK's empire, as we were privy now to secrets and powers known previously only to our master. True technology was revealed to us. We in turn built the framework that has given rise to a nation and an army like no other seen in the galaxy—one worthy of our master and capable of bringing to heel those of His progeny who had betrayed their creator. Such an effort was not done in a single day, but time is inconsequential to the undying. Yes, we learned that T 0RK, although mightiest and first, was not the only Overprime. In an age before our insignificant births T 0RK had created treacherous progeny that refused to serve Him. His own essence was too powerful even when divided. An Overprime cannot be tamed or ruled, and it seeks absolute supremacy. His progeny sought to steal His strength, so he hunted them across the centuries to consume their essence to rejoin His own. So it was that T 0RK rent and consumed J1-S H4Z the White Prime in a great battle over your planet of Thila. Her power rained down to shape your people and enhance their rude forms like clay fired in a kiln. T 0RK killed many others, but the survivors banded together and battered our master until he felt it prudent to leave the core and regain His strength so expended in innumerable battles.

His exile was by His choice, for he had derived a plan whereby he could unravel this knotted alliance of his progeny. All he required was an empire, an army, and puissant generals to lead them. The Dominion became the seed that would give fruit to an empire. In those early centuries we twelve divided the ruling of the Dominion among us, each finding his role in directing the construction of an empire. We returned to our old followers and fiefdoms, gathered and united them, and allowed them to taste our freshly awoken powers. We brought each scattered system and pirate hold to heel with brutal example, and we taught the importance of obedience with blood and lash. We crushed petty faiths and gave their followers the choice of obedience in life or unending servitude in death. Lord T 0RK became our sole god and master. We gifted those useful vassals who possessed a spark worth preserving a higher existence and allowed them to retain their full reasoning. We chose first those demonstrating an aptitude for even the pathetic rudiments of technology dabbled in before the master's arrival. As T 0RK opened my mind to the deeper art, I in turn opened the minds of those coming after. This was the dominion left to me as I had sampled most deeply of that craft. I codified the rudiments, passed methodically down to others, to master the industry of reanimation and soul extraction that would become the wellspring of our strength. Your master A PX5, drawn to the majesty of the master, came among us early. He demonstrated an unusual aptitude in the manipulation of death-born power. While not among we twelve at the beginning, A PX5 received a form similar to our own as T 0RK assured us he would make a worthy weapon in time. This has come to pass just as He predicted. A PX5 passed to my service to learn my arts and assist in the creation of T 0RK's army. He has remained my greatest and most loyal tool and weapon. Aspire to emulate his example. Never in the galaxy has a force like ours arisen with singularity of purpose shaped by a power so vast and possessed of limitless intelligence. The nations of man and lesser droids are haphazard. They are driven by the capricious rising and falling of leaders and petty lords and other meaningless events naively called history. T 0RK and His enthralled lords keep our evolution on a guided trajectory.

It was here that genetic modification revolutionized applied cybernetics by improving the quality of the flesh fused with durasteel to enhance form. We have refined such methods to combine J driven power and engineering never equalled by organics. The weapons we develop testify to our supremacy, and in our streets the dead walk alongside the living. The powerful energies of the master Himself have shaped the land and its people. What some call the 'blight' seeps eventually into all things. This is the shadow of the master and His brand upon all in His Dominion. Even as the moment arrived when our armies were ready to crush the petty kingdoms across the waters, the arrival of the united J-Empire gave us pause. Those conquerors fell upon the outer rim before our plans could reach fruition. We decided we should bide our time and observe, and we consolidated our strength while the J-Empire broke the will of the people of the Thousand Cities. J ships came once to our space, but T 0RK disabused them of any ambitions of conquest among our islands. Casting a sea of plasma upon their ships, He sent them burning into the black, still blazing as the vacuum of space tried and failed to quench His fire. The master's plans are adaptable, and we would deal with the Empire at a time of our choosing. We allowed them to occupy the Tion Cluster but thrashed any ship that dared the Gordian Reach. The J-Empire proved a worthy adversary, and we learned why T 0RK proceeded with patience and guile. We watched as the rebellions rose up and failed, one futile attack after another, time and time again over two centuries. Slowly the people of the rim stretched and weakened the J, and we learned much watching these battles. Even then we had agents in the cities of man serving as our eyes and ears. We allowed mortals to waste their blood and win victories inch by inch. At times their courage earned grudging respect among our number, pyrrhic though their successes seemed to be. Out of struggle and war comes advancement and invention. We were not so arrogant as to refuse to acknowledge useful innovations or to seize them. We have always taken the weapons of our enemies and improved them for our use. Just as T 0RK turned the Atramentous against Threnodax, we noted the construction of colossals and made efforts to acquire such technology for our armouries. Where the great hulking machines fell against the J our minions came to salvage the loose debris and reclaim the corpses of those who had worked to maintain the machines or control them in battle. From their ashen remains we learned all we needed to make our own sublime machines of war.

We have since fuelled our industries with every advance made by the short-lived engineers of the organics. Each time one of these 'great minds' gives up his last gasp of breath, our agents are there to unearth his grave, recover his remains, and force him to whisper his secrets to us. Through the application of cybernetic industry we have constructed vast numbers of mechs, all engineered and produced by our J1 technicians striving to outdo each other. Driven from their fortresses the J-Empire retreated by ship to their first and mightiest stronghold, the moon known as Condordia over Mandalore. Lord T 0RK was ready, having anticipated this eventuality. For years Dominion industry in the systems of Yavin, Arda, and Maridun was committed to crafting weapons to equal those possessed by the J-Empire. They had an impressive mastery of technology, and their fallen Primes had proven resistant to our initial attempts to unravel their secrets. We knew raw force, not subtlety, would be required. The J-Empire was a foe that would not fall without tremendous commitment and would cost us a substantial portion of our prepared reserves. The master gave His approval to commence the great attack, and we sent forth an army such as few have seen in their most terrifying nightmares. The organics know nothing of this final battle and ignorantly believe their rebellion had driven the black ships back into the core. They delivered just the first blow, but the decisive and ultimate victory was ours. Our fleet flew against Condordia led by five J1-Lords, each a master of warfare boasting armies tens of thousands strong of cyberthralls, men, blighted wookies, and trandoshans eager to gain T 0RK's favour. I was not among them, and I envied those sent forth. It was a battle beyond imagining with invoked powers that shook the fabric of space time, brought fire raining down, and boiled hull to froth. Bitter even in defeat the J had made clear their philosophy. When they saw we would triumph, their Primes demonstrated suicidal resolve and invoked a conflagration to obliterate both themselves and our army in a show of such reckless self-destructive power as has never been witnessed. They blasted the great fortress of Condordia to ruin and obliterated tens of thousands of cyberthralls in a conflagration of fire and ash. Three J1 Primes were erased in an instant from the face of the galaxy. The two who survived were forever changed. Forced into somnolent recovery after the near disintegration of their physical forms, their minds reshaped and became unsuited thereafter to directing the chaos and fast reversals of warfare.

Our master deemed the price fair. Even an army as great as this proved inconsequential next to ultimate victory. It was a lesson to those of us entrusted to command, and we should always remember His willingness to consign His servants to ash to suit His purposes. In the wake of the tremendous battle, we required time to recover our strength, yet time is meaningless. An age to mortals is the blink of an eye to the deathless. Our losses amounted to nothing compared to the bounty we reaped in the wake of the J-Empire. Treasures came into our hands as well as several yet living J-Primes and the countless blackened corpses of the slain. Through our arts many spoke from beyond death to reveal their secrets. Lord J1-T RM5 rose to prominence, and it was by his efforts that we learned the J-Empire's mastery of gravity. These are secrets our enemies would give much to acquire, and this lore revolutionized shipbuilding at Yavin and gave birth to the Black Fleet. I know well you're familiar with these tremendous vessels, for the Widower ranks among their number. Those on the continent have yet to realize the strength of our navy. They think our fleet is limited to the rag-tag pirate vessels they are accustomed to encountering. When we attack in numbers we will shatter their pathetic ships beneath the prows of our dreadnoughts and land our armies on whatever planets we desire. This is why we will prevail. Any strength of our enemies becomes ours in time. After the fall of Condordia, Lord T 0RK gave me leave to emerge from the dark halls of Skell, put aside my cybernetic research, and pass the oversight of the industries of war to other hands. He needed generals to replace those destroyed at Mandalore, and he chose me to test the new powers of J and begin the next phase in His great plan. We would proceed with our customary patience by planting seeds in the most fertile soil. Considerable gains were to be had in the wake of the fallen J-Empire, and we took the first great steps to recovering T 0RK's wayward progeny. They are the real enemy and the only true threat to our supremacy. Fear not the bumbling soldiers of the core's puerile nations. Were it not for T 0RK's progeny the master would cover all in His blighted shadow. This is the Great War compared to which all others are transient. Our agents have penetrated the cities of man. They feed to us lore to conduct our coming war. Our fleets poke and prod the rim to find the easiest routes to the rogue J1 lairs. Even apparent defeats at Junction, Phindar, or the fortress of Ziost are part of our design. We idly discard one inconsequential army as a feint to deliver another force unobserved into other systems and lurk inward and prepare hidden bases for coming reinforcements. Every fight you enter from this point forward is a test of your ultimate worth. My eye will be upon you as A PX5 sets you against the enemies of the master. There is no limit to the rewards that will come to you should you bring to our master even the smallest step toward the destruction of His progeny.

T 0RK's children are shrewd but afraid. They will not dare reveal themselves openly. They hide among the nations of mankind while lashing out against any who venture close. They are cowards, yet they contain a sliver of our master. Do not underestimate them. Even the least Overprime is the equal of an entire army, yet armies we have in ample supply. T 0RK's children have allowed the cities of mankind to rise as weak but inconvenient obstacles against our master. We must orchestrate our conquest with cunning precision to sweep aside the militaries of lesser systems standing unwittingly between our master and His rebellious progeny. These lands will fall with their flesh and bones slaved to our purpose and their souls harvested to fuel our industries. If this requires us to raze every city and slay every living entity on the rim, so be it. Life matters not except for the strength it brings us in death. Pick apart the so-called 'Free Cities' one by one and sift among their ashes for the disloyal children who have defied their father. T 0RK will reign over all of the galaxy as its undisputed master and god. Our time is at hand. Our machinations and the weaknesses inherent in man will soon propel the core into bitter warfare. For decades enmity has festered among rival nations as each accumulates stockpiles of weapons and trains new generations of soldiers. We have seen many petty clashes in the last centuries, but I predict the next will outdo them all. We shall witness carnage on an unparalleled scale. Nations deeming themselves great cannot abide the existence of rivals, and in their thrashing struggles for dominance they open the way to us. Their armies will hurl themselves upon the spears of their adversaries. They will turn cannons and rifles inward and leave naught but death and slaughter as a feast upon which we will glut ourselves. Every battle they wage is a diversion to exploit. All the better should both vying forces in a conflict expend themselves like a drowning man flailing for purchase against craggy rocks before sinking forever. Death for them is unavoidable, yet we refuse to be extinguished and remain everlasting and immortal. Impress me in the days ahead and I may preserve you. Only if you demonstrate the unique qualities we require will I include you in our undying company. Go forth. Pillage, burn, destroy, and leave nothing but ruins and corpse piles. Our enemies are blinded by inconsequential battles over land. Do not think as they think. Let me see you as a harbinger of utter annihilation with your every waking breath devoted to the glory of Lord T 0RK.