<font color=white><font size=4>Several Centuries Ago . . .</font><br>

“How did it come to this?” mouthed Nothrok, silently as he stared upon the steadily advancing battle lines of the Yuuzhan Vong that grew thickly onto the horizon of the planet Dorvingal, the last home of the Sando.


“How did it come to this?”


It was a question he’d asked himself repeatedly over the last several hundred years to the point at which it lost all meaning.

For he had no memory of how it all began.

He couldn’t discern whether or not his absent mindedness was due because he had chosen to forget, or the depths of his mind had long since become numb to the memories of the destruction of his race.

A destruction which was wrought through their own self-centredness and pigheaded inability to see beyond the reaches of their own nostrils.




Nothrok drew his sword from its scabbard. It’s thick, weighty blade held a brilliant red sheen as it caught the edges of the morning sunshine as it crept over the eastern horizon. Tipping the enormous blade into the ground, which easily stood over a hundred meters in length, Nokroth heaved a breathy sigh and pulled his monstrous frame onto its hind legs.

He leaned against the stone battlements of Gorath castle, the last outpost of Sando resistance left to be crushed by the seemingly unstoppable onslaught of the Vong war machine. Those remaining on Dorvindal were selected to hold the Vong assault long enough for the remaining Sando to escape from their homeworld and flee the galaxy.


“So this is it then, Nokroth my friend.” came a voice to his left.


“What?” he replied, glancing to the Sando who stood to his left.


“The end, ”Spoke the voice “The end of this place, the end of our blindness, “


“The end of us.” declared Nokroth, almost bitterly choking back on his own words.


“Perhaps,” The formerly disembodied voice was that of Budjek, Orlock and leader of the remaining Sando armies, second only to the Kagan himself. The golden-brushed hue of his skin gleamed with an almost radiant regality as he stepped into the emerging sunlight.


“but by standing, you give us all hope.”

“Hope of what?” spat Nokroth.

“Why, hope of a new beginning for our people. Few lifeforms can claim to be given such a chance at absolution for centuries of unrest.

This may be our final stand, but it is the beginning of an new life for our people.


Come, accompany me to the front-line.”


Budjek led the young Nokroth from the castle walls and past the lines of slave soldiers who stood, regimented and ready for battle.

The pair drew their swords as a horn sounded the approach of the advancing Yuuzhan army.

It would have been an understatement to describe the Sando forces as simply outnumbered that day.

Reduced to fighting with simple blades and clubs, the two thousand man force of humanoid servants had been reduced to all but the most basics of combat. All ten Sando who stood with the group were far from numerically superior either, and stood to face almost complete annihilation from the twenty thousand Vong soldiers who were rapidly advancing over the hills onto their position.



“There lies what you seek so much of nowadays my young friend, “ said Budjek pointing the blade of his sword toward the enemy lines. “there lies our Retribution.


Charge!!”
<br>
<center><b>Let us have peace, let us have life,<br>
Let us escape the cruel night.</b></center><br>


The hulking one hundred meter blade cast a foreboding shadow as Budjek held it aloft toward the sun.

With a powerful roar from his humungous lungs, the slave armies under his command began the march forward toward the advancing Vong hordes who brought with them the means to their own end.
<br>
<center><b>Let us have time, let the sun shine,<br>
Let us beware the deadly sign.</b></center><br>


Like two opposing tidal forces, the armies of Budjek buffeted against the regiments of Yuuzhan troops.

The ten Sando warriors leapt headlong into the jaws of the enemy, bringing their enormous blades bearing down upon waves of troops, cutting them in two.

Nokroth advanced swinging his sword viciously from side to side like a scythe on a cornfield. The bodies of Vong soldiers were thrown without a care into the air, and the ground began to turn to a dark , crimson mulsh underfoot.


"How does it feel?" belted Budjek to his protégé across the battlefield.

"How does it feel to be alive?!"
<br>
<center><b>The day is coming, armageddon's near,<br>
Inferno's coming, can we survive the blitzkrieg?<br>
</b></center><br>
Nokroth brought his blade hurtling down into the earth, knocking several dozen vong to their knees.

However, with every dozen that perished, their numbers seemed to be replenished three fold from the battle lines.

Three of Budjek's warriors had been overcome, and the slave soldiers were dropping in number by the minute.

Suddenly, several large bangs greeted Nokroth's head, knocking him off balance.


He turned to see and advancing troop of Vong thudbug grenadiers. One of the deadliest armaments the Sando had encountered. While singly, not particularly effective, when used in high numbers, they could be devastating.

Nokroth recovered his footing and readied his sword, deflecting an oncoming hail of thudbugs with a Hefty swipe. His blade began to disintegrate, its metal not one to stand against such a weapon.

His weapons was no more than a piece of scrap, and he cast it aside. Staring at the soldiers ahead, he drew his talons and prepared for his inevitable death.
<br>
<center><b>Save us from fate, save us from hate,<br>
Save ourselves before it's too late.<br>
Come to our need, hear our plea,<br>
Save ourselves before the earth bleeds.<br>
</b></center><br>
Nokroth bared his gargantuan fangs . . .



. . .the vong lobbed their thudbugs. . .


. . .then a bang . . .but . . .


. . .Nokroth felt no pain, no explosion . . .no bright light, then he looked to his feet.


Amongst a sea of vong bodies and rich, red blood lay the mangled, fragmented corpse of Budjek.


He had thrown himself into the fray to save his young charge, and now he lay bloodied and dead.


A silent rage began to boil behind the eyes of the blue-skinned behemoth, and he began to gallop with enraged ferocity toward the reloading Vong grenadiers.

Pouncing from his powerful hindquarters, Nokroth dove into the fray, dicing Vong warriors left and right with his claws, and tearing soldiers of the enemy limb from limb, tossing their limp bodies asunder.


Nokroth arose momentarily from the carnage. To his left the remaining Sando warriors were beginning to fall victim to the harsh onslaught of the Vong, and to his right, they had already broken through his already frail lines and had begun to breach the battlements of Gorath castle.

All seemed lost.


Who was he kidding, it was lost long before this day had ever come to pass.

<br>
<center><b>The day is dawning, the time is near,<br>
Aliens calling, can we survive the blitzkrieg?<br>
</b></center>

<center><b>What Have We Become?</b></center>

The Gods had abandoned them, there was no explanation to befit the tragedy that had befallen his people. His reign was no different than that of his ruling fathers or their fathers before them, surely the fault lay not in him. His race was surely not the source of their own situation, for it was their manifest destiny to be where they were, They were the chosen, the manifest which were to dominate all. How could this happen to the Gods chosen people?

A barrage of thudbugs shook the walls of the fortress around them. RendAck sat deathly still in the open throne of his ancestors, from which they had ruled the mighty Sando Empire for millenia. The stone fortress was a mere representaion of the power the ancients had thought they once had, when all there was of the Mighty Sando was this single world. Now, now it came again that this single Fortress would be the single possesion they had again, and it too would not remain theirs for much longer. Why had it come to this?

A multifaceted blade shimered in the light of the double suns rays as they poured through the ramparts into the throne room. He held the symbol of his own authority by the handle, spining it into the floor as if it were a spawnings play thing. A small hole in the stone floor signified with what strength and the depth of thought he was in to have created such a thing with a mere metalic blade. The wail from outside the wall accompanied the crash of another thudbug attack, the Fortress shaking with long accumulated dust from the ages.


<center><b>Come What May...</b></center>

It was carved into the blade in what appeared to be a single claw, no doubt the message of a long dead ruler to what would have been a spawn for this position. Too bad RendAck could not have been there to recieve the sage advice one was sure to get when being delivered a line such as that. No, he might not have the wisdom of the ancients, or the strength of the Gods, but he was the Kagan of his people and he could recognize a message of meaning where it stood.

Come what may, the Sando would survive, past this day and into what lay beyond. There esscence would not be quenched from this galaxy or any other. Not this day or any other. Wether it be the will of any Gods or earthly dignitary, the Sando would prevail and theirs would be the Manifest once more, and forever.


<center><b>Time Won't Tell!</b></center>

Raising himself swiftly from the seat which no other Kagan after him would see, he thrust the blade before him, raised high and to the sky. The suns light glancing over the tip brightly momentarily blinding him as he held his stance, a symbolic gesture of strength and power over his domain. His large yet lithe form moved swiftly over those ramparts which seperated him from his people. The Parapets were filled with the bodies of those infidels lacking the proper mental faculties to have attempted to infiltrate the Fortress outright.

The Sando that had been reserved for the Fortress's immediate defense, and the defense of their Kagan, stood with weapons held high and at the ready for the service of their masters. If his word was to be given, they would surely lay themselves out for his will. To the last his people were as honorable and loyal to their ideals.

"Mongke Burilgi!"

It was a call of retreat for those in the field, not of surrender, but a tactical descion made by their leader to fall back to the confines of the fortress itself. For the saftey it defined and the hope that lay within, the Sando's one great chance for victory lay buried deep in the castles very walls, and its time would come.

There were none to retreat, none to call back, from the ramparts the shouts of fierce battle drowned out by sounds of the explosives of Vong weapons. The very foundations of the castle heaved and shuddered as it absorbed impact after impact from heathen weaponary, threatening to collapse with each quake of its mass. The throne room itself shook violently as half of its entry hall crumbled into ruin. RendAck stood silently in consideration of this, the destruction of the old would give birth to the new...

He held the majestic sword at his side, turning so rapidly his tail struck a piece of debries that smashed through another portion of wall. Lifting a heavy clawed fist, he beat the wall behind his now defunct throne repeatedly, shattering stone and earth as the wall slowly gave way to his incesant rumblings. It was not to the outside that he raged, but another long unused chamber in the reccess of the castle itself.

"Leaving so soon?"

He craned his neck to the side, a warrior standing behind him, blade driping with a color of liquid not much unlike that which covered himself. He recognized the male as one of Budjek's, from the field of battle itself and yet he stood now, here inside Gorath. This could not be good. He turned back to the remenants of the wall, a billow of dust ushering out as the last of it came crashing down with the full force one would expect a three-hundred meter slab of stone to come down with.

"It is an Imperative, you know. It is an Imperative that we surive to see tommorow."

He moved into the darkened chamber, his eyes still recoiling from the blast of sun that had reflected from the blade not moments before. Shapes, large and rounded, tubes far bigger than himself and yet built for him and his ilk so long ago. Turning back to the other Sando, he raised his blade and directed back into the dark room of which he had just made a new entrance to.

"We shall never give in, never surrender. We shall strive into the next day and the next. We shall conquer tommorow and when we do, we shall come home again. For now we must survive this day, and we can not do that here. Assemble those capable of flight, assemble them and bring them back to this place and we shall... continue on..."

Grasping his red blade to the floor, Nokroth lowered his head to the hilt, bowing before the Kagan before leaving the room once more from the blasted hole of a stray boombug. Raising his arm high into the air, he struck the sword deep into the stone before the chamber. Lowering his claws across the handle once more, he felt the grip, a twinge of remorse before sprint from the room to gather his harem.

None that remained there that day lived through it. As the innumerable forces of the Vong overwhelmed the battlements and massed the Parapets, his loyal defenders slaughtered en mass by the vongs bioweaponary.It was in these final moments that the spires of the castle crumbled to nothingness, massive suits of silver glaring down against the battlefield as the sun shown over them, escilated skywards over all the death, behind them in tow, the future. Egg's of the next generation of Sando, cryo-stored until such time that saftey could be assured.

Below seemed like scene from the nightmares of Sando ages past, lifeless hulks of dead Sando littered the ground as Vong marched over them like ants. The space above was littered with even more corpses, floating husks of suits ripped and torn by the Vong landing craft, shrunken bits of dead matter still visible through the openings of the suits. Closing his eyes, RendAck looked ahead into the darkness of space, activating the Swimstream of his ancient bodysuit and left the world behind.




So it still rests, to this day, faded and suffering generations worth of decay and rust, waiting the next Kagan of the Sando to lift it up, shining in the light of its glory and bring a new area upon what once was the age of the Sando. For the day they would return, for the day when they would reclaim all that was lost and they would stand over their homes once again as leaders of the pack.