The Science of Hatred

[Colonel Karrnage]

<center>The Imperial Academy of Exo-Anthropology, Coruscant</center>

The obelisk-like building stood nondescript amongst a dozen others on the campus of Coruscant's Imperial Academy. The same foreboding stone columns and broad stair-lined walkways decorated it, and the next two buildings to either side. All around, the area was abuzz with students, academics, and various intelligensia and coattail-riders. And of course the Imperials, the true masters of the domain. Officers of the late Emperor's grand army could be plainly seen amongst the throng. They were here to recruit. The Academy hardly bothered hiding that it was a farm for the galaxy's brightest prodigies, and that the harvest was done by the iron blade of the Galactic Empire.

A slight, pale man cut through the crowd without much fuss, intent on entering the building without traffic or human interaction causing delay. Indeed, he barely paused to dispose of the cigarette he puffed on with rapid intent. The red embers bounced off a stony edifice, missing the ash recepticle.

He walked with his head tilted forward and eyes down. One hand gripped tightly at his briefcase. The hand that had previously been fastidiously holding a cigarette was now tucked into the privacy of a jacket pocket. Both hands were cloaked in black gloves, as if they were a necessary antiseptic to the squalor of life itself.

He muttered the minimal pleasantries to the desk clerk, and stepped into the lift, wary to pick a corner farthest away from the other passengers. Some brunette haired woman was smacking her gum, without any inkling as to how obnoxious the wet popping sound was.

Seconds of torture passed, and Colonel Erasmus Karrnage was relieved from the company of dullards. He walked with a rapid and purposeful gait into a lecture hall at the end of the hall. The plaquard on the door read:


PHRENOLOGY AND THE ANCIENT BLOODLINES

[R. S. Esalis]

It was like every other lecture hall permeating the Imperial Academy; clean, utilitarian, nothing to give the outward appearence as to what was taught within its' walls. he only difference between this particular hall was the fact that it was empty. Classes it seemed took place around the clock, and normally for this particular department the same could be said. And yet the fact still remained - this lecture hall was empty.

Except for one woman.

She stood, her back to the door, eyes upon random notes she'd scribbled on the eraserboard. A few crude drawings and diagrams had been drawn by her hand, and she seemed to study them with intense interest. Even as the door closed behind her expected guest, the woman remained with her back to him.

She let a silence hang over the lecture hall, waiting as the Colonel took stock of his empty surroundings.

Finally she spoke, turning around in the process. "My dear Colonel Erasmus Karnage. A pleasure to see you."

[Colonel Karrnage]

"Director Esalis."

Karrnage nodded tenuously. He was not terribly interested in social interaction, but there were times when decorum demanded it.

"This is an unexpected visit. I have a lecture in twenty minutes."

His eyes were already drifting away from her, and to her scribblings on his board. He approached it, looking from top to bottom and back again. With a quick movement, he took a stylus, and began writing counter-conjecture in the margins of Esalis's own notes, crossing out some words, adding question marks to certain phrases.

"You have been busy, Director."

Karrnage spoke in monotone as he paused, hovering over a series of symbols she had scrawled at the bottom.

"This intrigues me. Tell me more."

[R. S. Esalis]

As the Colonel went about his corrections, Esalis couldn't help but tick an eyebrow before casually commenting, "Your classes for the rest of the day have been cancelled - I took the liberty; I trust you don't mind too awful much."

A polite smile was all she gave him as her hand deftly plucked the stylus back from him. "The symbols can wait for now." A slim finger carefully erased one of his 'corrections', and she rewrote her original equation once more. "I have been out of school for a long while, but not long enough that I would forget your teachings, Colonel.

"Nor how to apply them, " she began adding to her notes, a lengthy equation of the principles of the body and how it would be able to change and reform itself anew, "to a previously unknown... anomoly."

[Colonel Karrnage]

"I have teaching assistants who can cover my lecture. It is only an annoyance if you don't satisfy my curiosity."

Karrnage saved the contents of the board onto a disc, and ejected it from a wall panel, causing the large board to go blank.

"My office is adjacent."

He gestured with a gloved hand to the right.

"The heiroglyps you've found are of the Caridan phonetic style. I would say a derivative of the Eagle Kingdom. Yet, they are an aberration. It is obviously not Caridan, or at least a form far removed from the Eagle Kingdom era."

The pair walked through a heavy oak door, and Karrnage closed it behind him, immediately pulling a cigarette from his case. In his private study, the sterility of Imperial decorum could be bent in his favor.

"Where did you find these markings?"

[R. S. Esalis]

She knew the Colonel well enough. "Your curiosity has already been piqued, Erasmus - I may call you that, can't I?"

Without awaiting an answer, the director of Imperial Intelligence went on. "You would not have saved my scrawlings to a disc if you did not find anything I wrote to be of merit."

Esalis took stock of her surroundings, of Karrnage's office interior, and of him. He had been a curt individual when she was herself studying here, and it was plain to see that he had not fallen lax in the upkeep of his personal traits.

She humored his inquiry, if only partially. "The heiroglyphs are indeed somewhat Caridan-based, but where that similarity begins, it ends just as quickly. In fact, they are simply a melding of two cultures - a product of evolution and adaptation. My own men have told me as much. Yet beyond that, they can decipher nothing. All they can tell me is that these pictographs are not the 'real thing', so to speak; they are nothing but what appears to be a temporary bridge between a much older dialect and Basic itself.

"The problem is, is that this 'bridge' cannot be translated." A pause, "By anyone here, that is."

[Colonel Karrnage]

"There is no reference point. Caridan and Basic inhabit different phonetic styles. A vast sample of this glyph would be needed to establish a link and translate it."

Karrnage exhaled a stream of smoke through his nostrils.

"As I asked, Director, where were these glyphs found? Is this an isolated find, or part of an archaeological site in its entirety?"

[R. S. Esalis]

Esalis produced a datapad from her pants pocket, holding it out for the Colonel. "A complete scan of text found over twenty years ago in the ruins of the old Jedi Temple. Apparently, one of the padawans there had a less than... normal past. We recovered a leatherbound book, and a journal. The journal was written in basic with a few unknown foreign phrases interspersed within.

"Tell me, Erasmus, what do you know of Lupines? I ask because it seems there are only two left, and their entire race has slipped the minds of most if not all scholars."

[Colonel Karrnage]

"The Lupines were long considered a folk myth, but curiously one that showed up in several early civilizations. Of course, living examples of their race have not been truly investigated by science."

Karrnage half laughed, flicking ash on a datapad at the corner of his desk.

"Indeed, whether they are a race at all is one of many inconsistencies in the numerous accounts of Lupine lore. Some describe the Lupine as a state of accursed existence, attributing it to magic and the occult."

[R. S. Esalis]

"And if I told you they indeed did exist? That there was one on this very planet?"

She still held out the 'pad for him.

"What would you do then?"

[Colonel Karrnage]

Karrnage smiled tautly.

"I would be very interested in making this Lupine's acquaintance, Director. The amount to learn from such a life form would be immense."

He glanced at the datapad Esalis handed him.

"Loklorien s'Ilancy. Padawan of the Jedi order."

He grimaced, looking perplexed.

"I do not doubt your work Director, but I have serious questions. What do you know of Lupine folklore?"

[R. S. Esalis]

"Actually," answered Esalis, taking on the very same look that the Colonel had, "nothing whatsoever."

She paused a moment, pursing her lips in thought.

"All I know is that there are - or were, two left. This padawan," she nodded at the datapad he now held, "is presumed dead, wiped out in the Purge. All that is left are what few possessions of hers that were recovered; namely her journal and the book. Near as my men can tell, the book is a history of lineage - ancestors, family trees, the like. That is only a guess though, since the writing is indecipherable at this point in time.

"The other is very much alive, plying her way through smuggling and any other odd job she can find. All of the records we have on her are also on that 'pad, though I am ashamed to admit it isn't much. We only really began taking note after an anonymous tip was delivered to my office. Since then we have had her followed, traced any ports of call she's ended up in, and whatever else we could find.

"Thankfully, her name is much less foreign to the tongue; Arya Ravenwing."

[Colonel Karrnage]

"There is a duality, in practically every iteration of Lupine legend, Director. Whether this duality is one of mind, blood, or something artificial is not known, but the concept exists nonetheless. Order and Chaos. Of course, this dichtonomy exists in many ancient mythologies, so one must wonder if there is any significance. However..."

Karrnage set the datapad down, and brought up a panoramic image of what appeared to be a hierarchy tree of some sort.

"There exists no such dichtonomy here. The pyramid's zenith lies with one."

Karrnage's eyes lit up behind his obsidian spectacles. He was beyond intrigued.

"If we believe, as the ancients did, that the mirror has two faces, then your Ravenwing can not only show us what she is, but what she is not."

[R. S. Esalis]

"An astute observation, Colonel."

Esalis stared at the heirarchal tree, her eyes skimming over the foreign alphabet and the names she could only guess they spelled. The Director shifted her stance, turning a curious eye toward Karrnage.

"Then you believe Ravenwing to possibly be the mirror of whatever school of thought that this - " she gestured to the panoramic, "- ancestral family belongs to?"

[Colonel Karrnage]

"Not necessarily."

Karrnage stopped her short, an index finger resting at the corner of his mouth for curt emphasis.

"I consider it just as likely that she could be a part of the same ancestral family. In the end, both outcomes serve our purpose. That being said, the possibility that none of this is true must also be weighed. Is there verification of this Ravenwing's unique identity, or is this all anecdotal?"

[R. S. Esalis]

"Well," a sly smile touched the corners of her mouth, "The source who delivered the information did mention having been witness to her transformation... "

Slyness turned almost coy, "... but I suppose that is only a trivial matter."

There was more, but Esalis chose to let her information trickle out, giving the Colonel only bits at a time to see what his own conclusions were, and if they paralleled hers.

"Thanks to that journal of the padawan's, we do have a list of these 'Greater' and 'Lesser' Houses, as she called them. Enlighten me, Erasmus - look at the house names beneath that of Loveloxx, and tell me what name you find within the ranks of the Lesser Houses."

[Colonel Karrnage]

Karrnage paused.

"Hmm, I see."

He extinguished his cigarette, and picked up the pad again, browsing through even more passages.

"There is still the chance that this is all a well-balanced hoax. I am, however, inclined to chance it being true."

He set the pad aside, and picked up the book, handing it to Esalis.

"I want everything in this book copied into data. Down to the micron. Carbon date and gas chromatograph every page. I want to know more than I'm given to read."

He settled back into his seat, and smiled.

"After that is done, I suggest we have this book put in a museum. A museum outside of Imperial territory. Of course, I doubt Imperial customs will accept such a proposition at all."

[R. S. Esalis]

Esalis ticked her head to the side, regarding Karrnage. "I thought you would say as much. Everything has already been copied 'down to the micron', as you say."

She shifted her stance again, looking down at him. "I had it sent to your private inbox earlier this morning.

"As for this museum outside of Imperial territories, I think that can be arranged without any fuss."

Taking a step back then, the Director paused as if remembering something. A look of 'Ah yes' passed briefly through her eyes, and Esalis pulled a small leatherbound object from her pocket. "I have something for you. No apple, I daresay," she said absently while unwrapping the object, "but I do have this.

"Think of it as a 'thank you' gift."

And without ceremony, she set a small trinket on the Colonel's desk. Taken with the book and journal from the padawan's ransacked rooms, it was beatifully crafted from white onyx.

And it was a vornskr.

[Colonel Karrnage]

Karrnage allowed himself to be captivated by the carving, and cradled it in his hand. The real-life beast that was half of the inner duality of the mythical Lupine. It's features were sharp, broad, and held an ominous countenance to anyone who looked upon it.

"I always do enjoy your visits, Director. You are the best student I could have hoped to have taught."

[R. S. Esalis]

"I only wish I had situations such as this more often, Colonel, so that I might enjoy your company more often than not."

She gave a nod. "Sadly, affairs of the state are rarely this intruiging."

Esalis breifly touched back to business, "With both the journal and the text copies, how feasable is it that you would be able to put together bare translations? I don't need anything specific at this juncture, aside from more light shed on this mystery."

[Colonel Karrnage]

"That is a very good question, one that has a threefold solution. The glyphs are a mish-mash of ancient Caridan and proto-basic, that much is clear. What is not clear is exactly where the relationship lies. Linguistic computers should be able to map some of the more detailed reference points. This should give us a basic understanding of individual words, but not how they interact with each other. For that, we will need one of two things. The first would be access to a larger archaeological find with more texts, as well as a wide range of artifacts. Third, and most important, is to interrogate someone who can speak this tongue."

He crossed his arms, and lowered his head.

"If your Ravenwing is indeed our Lupine, her mind may hold this key."

[R. S. Esalis]

Esalis nodded, idly tapping the book she held."Then this key will have to be obtained.

"I've had Ms. Ravenwing followed since I first recieved word of her... changing. If you so wish it, then I will have her brought to you and you may do with her as you please."

[Colonel Karrnage]

"Oh?"

Karrnage paused reading again, looking over the datapad at Esalis.

"Well, by all means yes. Why risk using a treasure such as that journal as bait, when they just swim into our nets without a fight?

I hope there isn't too pressing of a timetable on this project, Director. The amount of observation required before we can even understand differences in her physiology, if they even exist, will be considerable. To jump immediately into something as complex as overt interrogation would be too risky, considering the lack of second chances at our disposal."

[R. S. Esalis]

"No timetable whatsoever, Colonel. I'll have my men collect her."

Offering no other farewell, Esalis turned on her heel, leaving Karrnage alone to study his new reading material.