"Read em and weep, ladies." He puts down the final card, and for the third time, Pazaak is his. He rakes in the credits, even as his competition scowls. It's only the scarcely enforced rules of this dingy, dirty little cantina that has kept them, so far, from lunging at him with a vibroblade, and only their own, stupid, pride that keeps them coming and getting their ass handed to them.
There's three of them, women. One has a lion with a man's face scrawled on her cheap leather, the other has horns crudely attached to her helmet, and the third was just big.
"You must be cheating."
He shuffles in his seat and tries not to laugh. Imagine the gall...
"Just lucky, I think." Atton shifts in his seat.
"In my experience, there's no such thing as luck." The big one has a sour, sour look on her face.
The cantina they're in is a small, almost intimate affair-- capable of holding, perhaps, fifty people. The floors are hard wood, soaked in alcohol; it smells of smoke, desperation, and sweat in there. Only one pazaak table, which he happens to have been dominating so far-- and without the Force, even, at that. "In your experience as...?"
"Freighter captain, when discretion is required."
"With all the credits you've been tossing down, I take it business is good."
"Oh yeah, real good. Without the Jedi around, people in my line of work have a pretty good time of it."
"Yeah that makes sense. I imagine plenty of people find it easier these days, without them around. Bounty hunter, smugglers, slavers..."
And there it is. The bomb is dropped, and no-one notices a metal cylinder being palmed in a gloved hand.
"Alright, you figured us out. And what are you gonna do about it, lawman?" The Big One talks first.
His purple blade springs to life, and the whole room goes quiet as the Galaxy shakes-- along with the table, flung with the force, landing a solid ten feet away, near the bar proper. "I'm demanding your immediate surrender. I'm hoping you're stupid enough not to offer it."
Lamely, stupidly, she pulls out her vibrosword from its hilt-- but before she can do a thing Atton's carved her hand off. She's howeling, grabbing the stump, and he is already moving, charging the lion lady, fluid like all those holocrons Meetra made him watch of the basics of Makashi. She bats at his saber, and he can tell that she has military training-- Echani, maybe?-- but no natural affinity for it. Compared to-- hell, even the Sith mooks on Onderon she's bad, never mind Sion-- she's mediocre, at best, and so he comes from the right, she blocks, he feints from the top with a single hand cut, and then twirling his saber he carves through her hip.
The third has gotten over the existential shock of Jedi out of nowhere and has grabbed her chair. She tosses it, but he grabs it with the Force and the smashes it on her.
It was fifteen seconds of hyper-violence--
There's a shot, and Atton is already whirling around. He needn't, though-- one of the people he had dismissed is clutching her chest, meanwhile a kid maybe eighteen at most is holding the blaster, from half the room away.
From the shackles still on his wrist, Atton guesses that the boy was once...merchandise... and that things have just gotten much more complicated in an entirely different way.
--
Mission 1 (Brianna and Mira, the Core)
Hey, me and Brianna have received word about some kind of something between some Mandalorians and local security forces. A lot of people are going to die if we do nothing, so we're heading out.
Write you soon.
--
Mission 2 (Visas Marr and Mical, Mid-Rim)
We located a small pirate base, after speaking with some locals-- seems a number of Sith soldiers went warlord after Revan killed Malak. We must assume, given some of the damage we have observed, that there was a Sith Lord among them.
Report will be in once we have dealt with them. Visas and I have also alerted local authorities, to be on the safe side.
--
Mission 3 (Atton Rand, Outer Rim)
100 people missing.
Nobody knows how, just that the victims have seemingly no connection. Seemingly.
Hah.
Except, of course, for a small series of freighter. Whose visits just so happen to match up with the disappearances.
I am, of course, certain that this in no way has any connection at all.
I'm going to catch a ride with local security forces, see if I can't cut them off-- I know where they're going.
--
Mission 1 (Brianna and Mira)
We have good news. Mira has made contact with the Mandalorians, meanwhile I have begun speaking with the authorities-- this is the situation, as far as we can tell:
A band of Mandalorian veterans from clan Wren who went pirate after the Wars are trying to join up with Canderous on Dxun; apparently, they've grown tired of the outlaw life. However, local security forces on one of the planets, Galdara, are heavily populated by Republic veterans from the Mandalorian Wars, who saw the Mandalorian convoy stopping to resupply and misinterpreted it.
They are fairly evenly matched-- the Mandalorians have a small number of barques, but the security forces have the weight in numbers-- even that many freighters will weigh down the Mandalorians. The likliest outcome would be an absolute slaughter-- so far, Mira and I have maintained the tenous stalemate, but something more permanent must be done, and soon, before these idiots kill each other.
--
Mission 2 (Visas and Mical)
Neither good nor bad news to report, only oddities-- we traced a number of illicit supply shipments to a camp we located on Ebra, but found no-one present.
Most of the supplies had been taken-- only a small room sealed with some kind of droid intelligence was not open and ransacked.
--
Mission 3 (Atton, Outer Rim)
I found them. They can't be too bright-- tried to hide on Sullust.
Fortunately, they're also pretty bad at figuring out how to cover their trail on planet as well-- credits were transferred from an account attached to the ship to a cantina near the space port. Figure I'll send in my last report once I'm done with them.
--
Mission 1 (Mira and Briana, Core)
Well, good news-- we managed to calm these idiots down.
I spoke to the leader of the Mandalorians in front of all her soldiers, and that seemed to convince her to listen and turn off her guns--seems they were impressed by my command of Mando'a.
The Security Forces tried to do what we were afraid of when the Mando's guns went off, but before they could Brianna, on the lead ship, knocked out the captain and worked through the chain of command until they called the whole thing off. Brutal, but effective.
After that, the Mandalorians and the Security Forces managed a deal-- the Mandalorians gave back everything they stole, and in return the Security Forces let them pass.
To thank us, one of the security officers gave us a journal from her son-- a Jedi killed during the Mandalorian Wars. It has a few things we might find...interesting.
(+5 Knowledge, +15 PP)
--
Mission 2 (Visas and Mical, Mid-Rim)
We managed to open the door using some of Visas' passcodes, and in so doing found a few things.
There was a girl there, who we thought was the Sith's former apprentice-- no.
She was one of the soldiers, and goes by the name of Breda. She began having what she thought were hallucinations. After some time, she determined that it was, indeed a Force ghost.
We have not managed to determine who the Ghost was in life, but in any case that is of limited importance. More importantly, the Sith eventually found out and was determined to make the soldier her apprentice through pain and force.
Eventually the two battled, and Breda emerged triumphant with the aid of the Ghost. Too weak to fight through her former comrades, she entered into a healing trance, until we found her; she does not know what happened to the soldiers.
Also inside the room when we opened it were a number of lightsaber training manuals, which should be helpful.
(+10 Knowledge, +1 Initiate)
--
Mission 3 (Atton, Outer Rim)
I found slavers, and I beat them-- most are now in prison.
But Bao, I also found a Force Sensitive. One of the victims they brought with them to the Cantina to sell-- as we fought, he pulled the blaster from one of the slavers and shot her dead.
He's the son of some minor richer in the Rim, a merchant and freighter-- stolen to teach his father a lesson.
He wants to become a Jedi, and he's more than old enough to choose-- but I have this sinking feeling things are about to get complicated when his father finds out.
Still, the whole damn galaxy oughta know that we're back now.
(+15 PP, +1 Initiate)
