Learning how to alter the environment

Location: Private Meditation Chamber, Flagship Invicta Perpetua
 
The walls are durasteel, but the room hums with unnatural stillness.
A single red-tinted emitter crystal burns in a floating hololamp above him, casting long shadows. Incense burns low, mixing with recycled air and the acrid scent of ozone—evidence of many failed attempts.
On his knees before the dais, Cogadh stares into the glow of an ancient Sith holocron, its intricate latticework pulsing with energy.
A voice—gravelly, feminine, commanding—emanates from within.
 
Holocron Gatekeeper (Darth Sarrin):
"Alter Environment is not conjuration. It is not illusion.
It is domination.
The world itself bends—not because you command it—but because it fears your will."
 
Stage One: Understanding the Concept
 
Cogadh clenches his fists. The first lessons are deceptively simple.
“The air is not yours.
The flame is not yours.
The frost, the drought, the tremor, the cloud—all resist you.”
He tries, at first, to force the air temperature to change.
He meditates for hours, summoning the familiar rage, the crackling ember in his chest… but the room only darkens slightly. His breath still fogs. The frost doesn't melt. His will clashes with the natural order—but fails to rewrite it.
 
Cogadh (growling):
“I command fire in battle. I break stone with my voice. Why not this?”
The holocron responds—mocking.
 
Darth Sarrin:
“Because battle is chaos. This is structure.
Rage fuels destruction. But this is discipline. You must not lash out. You must take hold.”
 
Stage Two: Elemental Focus – Cold
 
He starts with cold—appropriate, after the frost-covered hallucination chamber.
He dims the lights. He removes outside stimuli.
Three hours. Six. Eight.
Finally, something changes—not the air, but his own body.
He suppresses his heat. Slows his blood. Forces his body to embrace cold not as a threat, but as an extension of his own spirit.
 
Internal Monologue:
“I am not fighting the cold… I am becoming the cold.”
The temperature in the room drops one degree.
A single drop of condensation freezes mid-fall.
 
Cogadh (whispering):
“…finally…”
But he collapses after holding the state for more than thirty seconds—noses bleeding, muscles twitching. It's a start. A brutal one.
 
Stage Three: Opposing Force – Heat
 
Fire is easier. But control is harder.
Cogadh ignites the air—not into flame, but into swelter. He begins by warming the walls, then making the breath in his lungs burn.
“I know this. Fire answers me…”
But it answers too much.
The air flashes—he loses control—alarms blare, nearby systems spark.
He calls off emergency protocols by hand.
 
Cogadh (sneering):
“No… not yet. Rage is easy. Precision is power.”
 
Stage Four: Atmospheric Control – Wind and Pressure
 
Weeks in.
He learns to alter air pressure—subtle shifts to simulate high altitude, or suffocating closeness.
He creates miniature vortices—one nearly tears a holoscreen from its mount.
This stage is less visual—but more dangerous. It affects his mind.
“The environment shifts, and so too does the mind that breathes it.
If you are not anchored, you will fracture with the air.”
He hallucinates again. The whispers of the blackguard return.
He nearly lashes out with pyrokinesis before stopping himself.
 
Cogadh:
“I see now… The storm is not summoned. It is shaped. And I am not yet its master.”
 
Stage Five: Synthesis – Dominion Over Weather
 
Finally, months in, he attempts his first true Alter Environment invocation.
On a nearby planet Cogadh takes his place at the center of a forest clearing.
He enters a meditative trance. His emotions no longer surge outward—they coil inward, tighter and tighter.
He does not scream.
He breathes.
And the air bends.
Pressure drops. Fog forms. Lightning flickers in a small radius around him inside the clearing.
Not illusion.
Not summoned.
Altered.
 
Final Reflection – Not Power. Dominion.
 
Afterward, exhausted but whole, he returns to his chambers.
The holocron opens one final time.
Darth Sarrin:
“You have done more than wield the storm, apprentice.
You have understood it.
That is what separates the beast from the Sovereign.”
Cogadh (quietly):
“The galaxy will not know the weather.
It will know that I am its change.”
 
Note: this power isnt mastered, while he has learnt it true mastery comes with experience, he just now knows