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May The Invisible Hand Be With You - (Star Wars CK2-Style Quest)

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Given that Grievous is a member of the Foundry Raid team, this picture is only slightly off-topic.
 
Alright people, with literally one vote against the leading plan, I'm going to go ahead and call the vote for Plan Killing Field.

Get hyped folks - this is the probably the only time you're going to see all of the Abysswalkers together before the Palpatine assassination. Also the Spider Droid Hive will be coming back. And Jymeen. And some other people, but who really cares about them?

Anyway, I am tentatively scheduling the rolls for 3 PM US Eastern Time tomorrow. Be there or you will risk incurring the wrath of Grievous and HK-47.
 
That's right when I'm starting the next installment of my tabletop Star Wars game. I guess I can set up to watch it on the laptop I use for a GM screen, but the time is kinda awkward for me.

EDIT: Daylight Saving Time is an abomination. If someone ran for president on a platform of devil worship, child sacrifice, and abolishing DST? Well, they'd have a shot at winning.
 
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(Omake) Leaving Tython's Grasp (Canon)
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    • Leaving Tython's Grasp​

    Life on Tython fell into an easy rhythm. I'd wake up a bit before sunrise and go out for a run, practice my katas. They'd arranged a sort of "guest house" for me on the Temple campus but off the grounds proper. Were I one to pay attention to the etiquette of all of it, I'm sure that would say...something. Maybe? Maybe this was kinda irregular for them or unexpected so they were making it up. Back at Byblos there were about four or five different options for the etiquette requirement. I went with formal dining because, hey, eating in class. It turned out we only actually ate for tests and everything else was lectures and such. Still a few more meals than most of my other classes.

    Anyway. I was in their guest house, so waking before sunrise and doing some morning exercises didn't bother anybody. If I was lucky, Darra would join me. Sometimes we ran together. Sometimes we sparred. Well, I call it sparring loosely, on account of her being an annoying stubborn cuss of a sparring partner and my being a dirty rotten cheat of a sparring partner. Then again, the main reason I was a dirty rotten cheat was because she was better at the Force than me and better at fighting than me (which might have had something to do with us not trying to kill each other). My losses gradually became less bad as we learned each others' fighting styles, but most days we sparred led to me walking a little gingerly back to the guest house to get cleaned up from all the times she'd driven me into the ground.

    Half the time I forgot I was working for the Abyss Watchers. To any outside onlooker, I looked like an independent. Once in a while I'd check the messages on my ship. Nothing much. Master Veskasa Jansen had agreed to be my point of contact with the organization. Considering she'd helped me turn the flickering embers of my Force Sensitivity into a roaring bonfire, it made sense.

    After cleaning up and the morning meal, I'd help Jedi Master Healer Rogan. I'd do the doctor thing, help people do rehab. Rogan, in turn, helped me learn how to focus and harness my ability to heal with the Force. That mostly made sense. I could put a scientific finger on what it was I did, how I was nudging the body to heal itself. Mostly. I think I was brushing up against suspending the laws of nature for a few moments. Which could be the difference between life and death, and if I had to ask physics to be quiet a moment while I worked...well, there was no harm in asking, right?

    Between patients, or during procedures, we'd discuss the Tython Council meetings. How and where the Tython Jedi would intervene. If they would intervene. If the Tython Jedi were ready to be different from the Coruscant Jedi. If they were ready to talk to the Corellian Jedi. If the Corellian Jedi would ever pull their heads out of their butts and realize there was more to the galaxy than just the Corellian system. How exactly you would phrase that if you had to call it a surgical procedure (we settled on craniocolectomy).

    Sometimes that took all day, interrupted by a midday meal. Sometimes we got done shortly after the midday meal and I met Darra to learn the lightsaber. Y'know that athletic grace I mentioned caught my eye? It was in her lightsaber-work too. It always seemed to take me a few moments to actually get my brain moving again when I was watching her. Look, Jedi fitness training did great things for her legs, and that area where her legs met her back. Really, that whole area. And above it. In another life, she might have done professional dance and made hardened crime lords weep at the beauty of her movement. We're not in that other life, though. So instead I picked up elements of her flowing Ataru form and she picked up elements of my Djem So form.

    I could have gone on forever like this, doing something good. The days blending together. Spending time with good people. Naturally, of course, this was when I got the message that turned my world upside-down.

    ---------------------------

    I went back to my ship to check my messages one morning and there was one from Master Veskasa. "If you're not too busy, there's a family matter here at Home that needs your attention. It's about your cousins."

    Well.

    We'd arranged before I left that if the Watchers needed me, that's what she'd say. A family matter was something that was Abyss-only. My cousins were the Kaleesh warriors. Which meant only one thing. The Foundry.

    I told Master Rogan that I had to go, that the woman who trained me asked for my help. That I had not forgotten the one who brought me into this much larger universe. He told me to go, that he'd handled these things before I came and that while he'd miss me, he could handle them once I'd left. "You're telling Darra, right?" he asked.

    I nodded. "I leave tonight, and I was kinda thinking spend the rest of the day with her."

    "Good. We...the Council...have been discussing with Jedi Lord Cerulian how they avoid letting attachments drive them to the Dark Side and are...considering becoming more flexible in certain policies." Rogan was playing something cagey, but I couldn't tell what. "He also pointed out the pragmatic concern, that aging and dying off in isolation helps nobody."

    I went looking for Darra. We didn't typically spend mornings together, so I had no idea where to look.

    You haven't seen her, but search your feelings and you know where she'll be, Rogan had advised me.

    I went back to the ruin we first sparred at and found her there, meditating. So pretty. The rustling of the grass brought her out of her trance and she saw me. "You're leaving, aren't you? Rogan wouldn't let you out this early unless you'd healed everybody on the planet and had nothing else to do."

    I blew out a breath, sat down facing her about half a meter away. "I am. Master Veskasa, the woman who trained me and led me into this much larger universe...said there was a family matter and that there was a chance the war would put my cousins in danger."

    Darra sat, eyes staring at me and trying to read me. "You don't want to go."

    "I don't want to go. I need to go. If I stayed here at my cousins' peril, I'd never forgive myself if something happened to them," I answered.

    Darra made to stand. "I'm back on active duty. Bring this before the Council and they'd have to send me with you."

    I shook my head, gestured for her to stay seated. "No. This isn't a Jedi purpose, and you've suffered plenty for other people's causes. There's a dispute with a metalworking company that supplies the droid armies. My cousins are trying to get what they think it owes them. The company hasn't hesitated to use combat droids against their opposition. You show up, the company sees a Jedi, it sparks a whole intergovernmental incident and probably the next battlefield of the war."

    Darra pressed up into a squat before sitting down next to me. "Fine. You're their backup. Lucky them. You're good in a fight. Tricky and hard to hit. Thing is...you're not as strong as I am. Part of that's natural talent, sure, kinda like I'm naturally better-looking." She smirked. "Part of it, though, is a practice handed down through the Jedi Order that helps us develop our strength. It's called Alchaka, and I'll guide you through it until it's second nature for you. You'll get stronger. Strong enough I won't worry about you running into something you couldn't trick your way out of."

    Look. If Darra had wanted someone else to know what our Alchaka looked like, she'd have set up a camera and had it broadcast over the Holonet. What I can tell you is that we did a lot of repetitions with a wide variety of different movements and positions, and at the end of it we lay there in the grass panting for breath.

    With our clothes ON thank you very much. Though I'll admit I'd thought about it the other way. Towards the beginning. The first couple times. Then I let my mind go and concentrated on my breath, my movements, her breath, her movements. The two of us doing this together.

    I reached for her hand, brought it to my lips. "My deepest gratitude, Darra," I said, releasing her hand.

    "Come back alive, Riphath," she replied.

    I was still thinking on those moments when I powered up my ship and headed back towards the Abyss Watchers, back to the Foundry.

    A/N:
    Look, when you have the opportunity to make a Firefly reference you take it.

    I listen to Star Wars music (in various youtube mixes) when I write omakes. I'd just finished writing the "you need to come back to the Home" message and was starting to put together how Riphath would tell Darra when Across the Stars started to play.

    The rest, as they say, is history.

    Speaking of history, this ties up Riphath's stack of "currently non-canon" omakes as taking place slightly before the Foundry Raid and after the Jedi Temple Bombing. It's just been a busy few months for him.
     
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    • Once again, the alert shows up for me after the rolling has finished

    seathes in rage:rage::rage:
     
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