Star Wars
Adventures in the Cron Drift
Fall 2003 - Spring 2004
The adventures of four New Republic citizens as they try to help open diplomatic ties with the Cron Drift for the New Republic.
- Cast of Characters
- Fun Quotes
- Charda's Log Entries for Bimmisaari
- Charda's Log Entries for Saltrusha
- Charda's Log Entries for Likandry
- Characters
- Ben - a young Human Jedi in training
- Chadra - a Rodian Scroundrel
- Kadlo - a Duros Fringer
- Kraig - a Human Ubergeek (Techie in other terms)
- Roshan - a Human Solider
- Nar-Ny - a Saltrushian scoundrel
For your enjoyment a few choice quotes:
"If jedi can lift ships they sure as hell can pull off sucky things" - Roshan
"Some get Obi-wan, some get Luke, we get Ben" - Roshan
"You open the sarcophagus, and out comes a huge dark evil ghostly figure, who hovers over the sarcophagus and smiles menacingly." - GM
"I look in the sarcophagus." - Nar-Ny
"You see a dark thick swirling mist of evil." - GM
"No loot?" - Nar-Ny
"No loot, just the dark thick swirling mist of evil." - GM
"Darn" - Nar-Ny
A Short Stop at Bimmisaari
- Bimmisaari Log Entry #1
What a trip this is going to be, although I'm wary of the amount of money that is going to be made. Although we are going get paid some credits and have free use of a freighter for this mission from the New Republic. We actually had a meeting with Leia herself, I'm sure that will come in handy in business negotiations.
Basically we are being sent to the Cron Drift to scout the place out for possible new business ... I mean diplomatic opportunities, or at least find out as much as possible about what needs to be done for diplomatic negotiations to be opened up with the populace of this drift. What a great opportunity to scout out new merchandise and selling old merchandise, no diplomatic ties means a lack of trade ties too. Might be able to sell some cheap items, as novelties in the Cron Drift, like those cheap toys from ....oh wait...this is a diplomatic mission. On the way to the Cron Drift we are supposed to make a quick stop at a planet called Bimmisaari for I guess just a quick hello, and a supply stop.
Along with me for this mission is a young human Jedi named Ben. He appears to be very young and doesn't look like he knows which end of a light-saber is what just yet. Then there is Roshan, a brash solider. Brash is a good way to put him, since when we met Leia one could hear him muttering some colorful remarks under his breath. Who knew one could actually whisper a whistle. Later at the freighter we met our pilot, a Duros named Kadlo. Kadlo so far seems laid back and more concerned with him so far, not much more than that to say.
Well we are off to the Cron Drift, for the glory of the New Republic and maybe a couple of credits along the way. Dang it, I forgot to fill the hold with those cheap toys.
- Bimmisaari Log Entry #2
Quick stop was a very optimistic thing to say. We are now stuck on Bimmisaari, thanks to those nasty Hutts. They've blockaded us in because of some stupid reason or another. I'm wishing I had filled the empty holds of this freighter with some weapons or something, since blockades make good customers of the local revolting populace, as well as good profit.
We've joined forces with the underground revolt against the blockade, mostly because we sort of got off to a bad foot with the Hutt minions, by shooting at them and stealing one of their junky little hover sleds. Although they shot at us first, since they probably thought we were trying to escape the blockade.
All we did was walk down the street heading back to our ship; I guess it was just the wrong street. The little fracas was not that bad for the first round with a new group. I must admit to having a few good shots, Kadlo and Roshan also got a few. Although it seemed that we only barely survived because we were up against some bumbling lackeys. They tended to drop their weapons, which was beneficial to us since we were quick enough to pick them up and use them in our favor. Sadly the bumbling didn't help us either. Ben dropped his light-saber, much to our chagrin, but fortunately enough he dropped it where he could quickly pick it up before he dove into a hover sled near by. Granted he paid for it by getting blasted pretty hard as he dove into the sled.
If it weren't for the amount of blood in the bottom of the hover sled, we might have been able to salvage a good price for it. The scratch marks on the back from where Kadlo backed over the few remaining lackeys probably wouldn't have helped either, that was after Kadlo had a problem figuring out how to start the thing.
- Bimmisaari Log Entry #3
We are now part of the underground resistance to the blockade for sure. We've been met by a local whose father was a Minister in the local government before the blockade. It is always a good idea to have business contacts within the government, or uh...be sympathetic to the local causes. Her parents were being held in a small prison at the center of one of the many plazas in the city, and since we had "shown" ourselves capable in the last run in with the occupying forces she asked us to help in saving them.
Roshan of course was all for it, or all for saving her from the plight of being a good looking woman without a date maybe. I don't think he was very good in his negotiations for that type of payment. Apparently since this is a blockade and things are tight, we might not get any recompense at all for this, except a nice government official to call upon for favors later.
Once we made it to the plaza we crouched behind the nearest wall to the prison, which would provide us cover without being seen. It didn't seem that things would be too bad off; there were only two guards at the door to the make-shift prison, and two "merchant officer-types" watching them from on the steps.
We spent some time trying to watch the guards and the officers so that we might be able to catch a glimpse of the pass-code to the prison door, but that didn't work very well. A few screams of pain from within the prison made us aware that our business contact, I mean the prisoners were not being treated fairly. The time to act was now, and since these were Hutt cronies, I figured money was a good way to get the job done.
Kadlo and I proceeded to walk up to the merchant officers, leaving Ben and Roshan behind the wall as backup. As we approached one of the merchant officers walked off, but not thinking much of it we let him wander off, thinking he was just possibly making rounds. Besides it is always easier to bluff with one person than with two. The remaining merchant officer was suspicious of us, but my story of the business partner who they were holding captive owing me money didn't seem to impress upon him the need for us to get into the prison. But once I mentioned that we would let him have a slice of the money my friend owed me he perked up a bit. When we told him we would give him a small slice of about 1,000 credits he bumbled over himself and gave us the pass-code to get into the prison.
I then proceeded to the prison entrance where the two guards stood, while Kadlo walked a bit behind me. The two guards were not very convinced we were supposed to be there, even after telling them that if we knew the pass-code we must be ok to be there. Then things went bad.
One of the guards didn't like me trying to open the prison door and tried to stop me with a blaster shot. Fortunately he was not a good shot and missed me. The other guard quickly turned on Kadlo and began to attack him. Ben and Roshan came out from behind the wall where they were hiding and began to attack the guards as well. So began the fire fight.
Kadlo was really good, and took out the first merchant officer, while Kadlo and Roshan together took out the one guard. Meanwhile I opened the door to the prison and dashed in to talk to the prisoners. With the fire-fight going on outside I tried to convince them that we were there to save them. Finding the minister in the group, and mentioning his daughter had sent us, convinced them that we were there to rescue them. The problem was that they, especially an old wounded solider, were not convinced we could actually do it.
How was some simple Rodian supposed to save them from the blaster wielding guards outside, was their problem, since up to that point they had only seen me from the rescue party. The various blaster shots from outside didn't do much to convince them either that a rescue party was really a rescue party. I then proceeded to spin a yarn about how we were so good and brave and dedicated to saving their lives and rescuing them that we would throw ourselves at the guards if need be to manage their escape provided they would just follow me and run out the door.
hmm...uh...hmm....how to say what happened next...
Well I turned took one step outside the door and was suddenly shot at point blank by the remaining guard. Sure enough the prisoners were not impressed by seeing me blasted against the door frame and seeing nearly all my blood pouring on to the ground, that blood which hadn't been burned into the door frame by the blaster shot that is.
Remembering what I had said about throwing ourselves at the guards to protect them, and realizing that the universe was a bit funny, since I had lied about doing this, I threw myself at the guard thinking I could tackle the guard to the ground and let the prisoners run past and free. Sudden loss of blood does two obvious things; first it makes one a bit clouded in the head, since I don't know why I thought I could tackle the guard who was bigger than me. Secondly it makes one lose consciousness a lot quicker after being thrown by a bigger-than-me guard, who promptly threw me to the ground where I can't remember anything more about that day.
From what the others have told me the following tid-bits happened while I was either with the prisoners or barely alive.
After Kadlo and Roshan had killed one of the guards, the second merchant officer returned with four more guards. Ben promptly charged at them and proceeded to attack them. After a spectacular fight, Ben made an amazing slice where with his light-saber he sliced into four of them in one fell swoop giving them considerable damage. He proceeded to kill them with ease after that. Roshan was the one who ran to my aide and with the help of one of the prisoners prevented me from dying and dragged me to safety.
To say the least this short stop at Bimmisaari is turning out to be a bit longer and trying then I expected.
- Bimmisaari Log Entry #4
I guess Roshan was better than I had thought; it seems he had gotten a date with a girl after all, since he wasn't around when we were approached by the queen of Bimmisaari. She wanted us to help her get into her royal palace where she could regain control of her planet or have access to the equipment to do so. All she needed was help crossing the main courtyard at the entranceway. Of course realizing that a Queen made for a better political ally than a minis....I mean we all realized the need to help the struggling people of Bimmisaari, and helping the Queen would be very helpful to them indeed, we agreed to help them, even though we were one person short on our team.
As I expected, this wasn't going to be a simple matter. The courtyard was filled with guards, one of whom was on a hover-gun platform. But to make things more interesting was a double-barreled tank too. With the three of us, the Queen, her hand-maiden and two of her personal body-guards, who didn't seem inclined to do much except run along side the queen, a tank and a mass of guards was a big deal.
All that was needed was to get the Queen into the palace, but it required a mad dash around the tank and guards. So a simple distraction to make the guards and all look one way while the Queen and her group ran the other way was the best plan we had. I was all for a march protesting the Queen and regaling the Hutt and their blockade. I figured who would shoot on a bunch of protesters especially when they were supporting them. That idea didn't go down well, since it was figured that they might shot anyways. Instead it was decided that I would play a drunken local and sing loudly enough that they couldn't ignore me and walk in the other direction.
With my best effort I stumbled forth singing as loudly and badly, or basically just singing, as I could and stumbling as best I could in front of the guards. It worked for most of the guards who promptly turned my way. Unfortunately my not stopping when they asked me to, just made things worse, since they decided it was easier to shoot a drunkard than try to arrest one. Luckily my stumbling made it hard to hit me.
Once the guards started shooting at me the group began their dashes across the courtyard. Kadlo came out firing at the large group of guards around the tank, Ben charged at the guard on the hover-platform and the two along with them to tie them up, while the Queen and company made a delayed run following Ben.
As I tried to dodge the shots from the guards firing at me and firing back, Kadlo had managed to charge close enough to the tank to jump on it. This was a good thing since, Ben had been doing well to fend off the guards he was attacking, and the tank had spotted the Queen's group as they were running across the courtyard. The tank began was able to take a shot at the group, before Kadlo tried to shove something down the barrel. But then the tank took the next shot Kadlo must have had his arm still in the barrel because he was blown off the tank.
Ben proceeded to tie up the guards as the queen and company ran behind him towards the palace entrance. At this point the Tank was taking a pretty good aim on the Queen and her party. Seeing that they might not make it to inside the entrance before the tank got a shot off at the Queen I made a mad dash toward the palace entrance from across the courtyard. I don't know how I managed it but I ran faster than I have ever run before, but I got there just in time to tackle the Queen into the doorway before the tank could take a shot at the Queen. It was a good thing, too, because the Tank did get a shot off and killed one of her bodyguards instead.
Once we got the Queen into palace, and not wanting to become part of a siege I than proceeded to run out the palace entrance and into a back alley behind Kadlo, before the Tank and guards could get a bead on me. Ben meanwhile had dashed off into another alleyway.
I took a nice little nap after that. That was a lot of running to do. Kadlo fortunately didn't lose his arm, but got scorched pretty good, apparently he tried to stick a blaster clip into the tank barrel in an attempt to disable it. Ben meanwhile had been swinging away with his light-saber as best he could to keep the guards off the Queen and her party, and was reveling in how he was able to do something with his light-saber for once, instead of just the lucky swing he had last time. Roshan seemed to have done well for himself since he hasn't gotten back yet, probably still on his date.
- Bimmisaari Log Entry #5
With the blockade over, we had time to get stitched up from the ruckus that we were all a part of. A few dignitaries showed up to celebrate the liberation, but unfortunately I couldn’t get any of them to sign any of the nice "commemorative" items I had. They would have been worth a few credits. Imagine a Hutt blaster used during their siege of Bimmisaari signed by the Queen of Bimmisaari. That would have fetched a few credits I'm sure. But none of the big-wigs would sign anything; even after all we did to help them out. They were even more reluctant to sign things at the funeral for the fallen heroes of the struggle.
At this funeral an elder Jedi named Ohmersi was "laid to rest." Or at least his robe was cremated. He was Ben's mentor, who was I guess trying to meet Ben here on Bimmisaari, but was side-tracked by the whole Blockade. Well that was a nice little funeral, shame the robe had to have been burned though, they go for a lot of cred....uh...it was a shame he didn't survive.
Before we could leave we were asked to partake of one more mission on behalf of the Queen of Bimmisaari. We were approached by Laila, the daughter of the minister who approached us before, and to our surprise and not just a little amusement we found out that she was Roshan's date for the previous night. All I can say about this is the less said about the date probably the better.
Laila was to guide us to some people who were not very keen on rejoining the Queen's rule over Bimmisaari. Being the nice people we were we decided to help out this time. After we were promised a good wage for the job, and that we were not going to be charged for any damage to the land-speeder that was being loaned to us we set out on the mission.
With Kadlo driving and Laila navigating, we spent a long journey from the city to the some far off swampy jungle. While navigating through the swamp there was the sudden sound of a huge crack, and a big tree began to fall in our way. Ben quickly used some jedi trick to slow the fall of the tree, which allowed Kadlo to take evasive action so that we wouldn't fly smack into the tree.
Despite avoiding the tree, we were still in trouble. Suddenly a huge beast, which I assume knocked the tree down, charged out of the swamp and knocked the land speeder over sending us all across the swamp (I knew getting a waiver against any damage to the land speeder was a good one). In the midst of all of this Laila yelled out that it was something called a Grak. Either way it was big scaly and quite menacing.
At first Kadlo didn't seem to scared by it, but when the Grak hit him, Kadlo started to scramble up a nearby tree. Laila, Roshan and I all ran for cover behind some fallen tress. Ben pulled out his light-saber and began to attack the beast. He even got a really good slice in on it too. Roshan was able to get a shot or two in as well, while Kadlo tried to get higher in the tree.
It probably would have been better if I followed Kadlo up the tree. I lost a relatively good blaster in the fire-fight. First it jammed. Then I tried to fire it again, but instead of the sound of a blaster all I heard was the splash as I dropped it into the swamp. Looking back on the loss of the blaster, it wasn't a bad thing, since it was one picked up from one of the Hutt's minions, so I didn't lose any money by losing it. But now I was without a blaster, I quickly ran to take cover behind Laila who had started firing at the beast.
While Ben continued to press his attack against the Grak, Kadlo had made it up to a branch on the tree and proceeded to throw a stick at the Grak. This distracted it long enough, that he was able to throw a wad of stuff into its mouth. Whatever it was it seemed to have had a affect on the beast, as it seemed to get a bit more sluggish. This allowed Roshan to get a really good shot off at the beast, and Kadlo got the final shot off killing it.
It was a pleasant thing to hear another splash, this time louder than the one my blaster made as it hit the swampy water. As Kadlo was climbing out of the tree he fell. While I helped Kadlo out of the swamp, Roshan stepped up and with Ben's help sliced off two of its claws as trinkets of the battle.
We then proceeded deeper into the swamp on foot, since the land-speeder was a total loss. Who thought the toughest part of trip so far was to result from the fact we didn't have a land-speeder. During our hike, Kadlo and Laila both stepped onto a crusted layer of some kind of quicksand. Both of them fell into the quicksand, and I was just barely able to not fall in myself.
Ben used his Jedi powers to keep Laila from drowning in the quicksand, while Roshan and I proceeded to try and pull her out with a branch we had. Kadlo on the other hand, in his own attempt to get out went under several times. It seemed he was about to go under for the last time, just as we pulled Laila out, but Ben proceeded to use his powers again to save Kadlo. That river of quicksand like stuff did more to actually kill us then anything else up to that point. Kadlo nearly drowned, Ben almost passed out from using his Jedi powers. On the plus side, I not having a blast didn't have that much of an impact on the problem.
Finally we made it to the outskirts of some ruins deep in the swamp. Before we could proceed into the ruins, Ben stopped us saying there was something evil here. Not having a blaster I took a step back, and let Ben, Roshan and Kadlo take care of the evil that was there. It turns out that it was some mutated kind of bush, Laila called it a Tangler. Being only a bush Roshan and Kadlo quickly killed it.
We then proceeded into the ruins, to find the "renegades" that we were to try and persuade to return to the Queen's government. The ruins were kind of disappointing. They we mostly brick and crumbling statues. No artifacts or objects that would fetch anything on the market. The statues were too big and crumbly to make it worth trying to move and sell them. What might have fetched any credits seemed to have been already taken.
My dismay at the lack of anything worth a credit was interrupted by a us stumbling across a nasty looking fellow in black. Now I'm not totally stupid, but anybody dressed all in black and standing in the middle of such ruins is not a good person to run into in ruins in the middle of a swamp. I quickly ran for cover. Roshan, Kadlo and Ben stood up and made a go of it against the guy. Roshan had a few good shots in, Kadlo got one or two in as well. Ben tried to get some attacks in, but I seemed to do better when I was able to hit the guy with a brick. The guy in black proceeded to tear into Kadlo, and had him on the verge of death before he disappeared into the mist.
Why he disappeared I couldn't say, but it was a good thing since it gave me time to patch up Kadlo. When I went to use Kadlo's med-pack (I wasn't going use my med-packs I spent my money on!) I found out what Kadlo had thrown at the Grak earlier. Kadlo's med-pack was missing all of its pain-killers and anesthetics. Kadlo had tossed them all at the Grak to slow it down. Blast him, because that meant I had to use the stuff from my med-pack to help him out. He definitely owes me now.
- Bimmisaari Log Entry #6
After patching up Kadlo so that he wasn't dying, we marched on wards into the swamp. A very short time later we came across what appeared to be the camp of the "renegades." We propped Kadlo up against an old tree and proceeded to enter the camp. Well I prodded Laila to enter the camp and try and reason with them, but then I had to go back her up. Apparently I didn't convince him, because he wanted to talk to a Jedi instead of me. Fortunately for me no money was on the line so I figured Ben could handle this.
Well I'm glad this wasn't a business deal. Ben didn't exactly wow them with his abilities. Moving small rocks didn't impress the Hungain leader, who the renegades turned out to be. But then Ben thought about something and a ghostly figure appeared. It turned out he was able to summon his old dead master, Ohmersi at will. The sudden appearance on the ghost Jedi did something as the hungain renegades got a little jumpy.
Being in the middle of a jumpy group of renegades, Hungain or not, didn't make me feel very comfortable. Laila and I slowly backed away from Ben and his ghostly master. It was a good thing we did too, because suddenly a destroyer droid rolled out from behind a fallen ruin. If that were not bad enough, an evil Jedi named Sabor Jibbs stepped out of a ruin as well.
Just as the shooting started, Ben tossed me his blaster since I didn't have a weapon to use. Roshan, who had stepped up with us earlier, was the first to take a hit, but it didn't seem to hurt him too much. As I tried to take a shot at the Droid, Ben's blaster lost power as the power cell went bad on me. Which meant I owed him a power cell for his blaster, dang it.
As Roshan retreated with us he managed to get a good shot off on the droid, which made its shield crackle a lot. Meanwhile I ran back to cover with Kadlo who kept screaming about wanting talk about things or something. He must have been delirious from his wounds or something. But once he realized that blaster fire wasn't a form of talking he whipped off a shot that hit the droid, along with a shot from Roshan as well.
Not having a weapon, I did the best I could and started throwing bricks at the droid. At least I wouldn't have to pay anyone back for lost bricks. Nor did they cost me anything.
All of a sudden Roshan gets hit really hard by the droid and I had to drag him behind the wall where Kadlo and I had found cover. Ben ran back to check on Roshan and try and help him if he needed it. At this point we learned that a wall only provides cover from the enemy if the enemy is on the other side of it. All of us were on the one side of the wall now. And when I say all of us, I mean Kadlo, Roshan, Me, Ben and now the droid. Sabor was just sort of watching us.
My quick thinking made me realize how much better it was to have the wall between me and the droid; I jumped to the other side. Unfortunately in my quick thinking I forgot that Sabor was on the other side of the wall, and was reminded of this by a blaster shot from Sabor which hurt pretty hard, but not enough to take me out.
With the only weapon I had at hand I figured it would be easiest to take out that droid then a Jedi, especially since I figured I had a better chance to defeat a droid than a Jedi. I mean a droid has a harder time avoiding a brick then a Jedi would, because the Jedi has that crazy ability to move things just thinking about it. Since Ben can move small pebbles, I figured this guy was much better and could easily move a tossed brick. So with that in mind I tossed another brick at the droid. This time hitting it right on the shield and causing it to do nothing more than disintegrate my brick.
Or at least I thought disintegrate my brick. It sort of felt as if the brick bounced off the shield and hit me square in the head. More like hit my brain that was inside my head actually. In any manner it felt like a brick was being used to smash my brains out through my ears. Yes I do have big ears being a Rodian, but it still hurts!
As my head cleared from this bricking, I was able to see Ben charge from his side of the wall towards the droid. It would have been darned impressive if it weren't for the fact he got shot on the way. It didn't hurt him too much but it did cause him to lose his speed. It was Kadlo who’s shot on the droid that actually caused the droid to look seriously damaged.
Seeing as how my brick didn't do anything against the droid I figured it was worth trying to heave one at the Jedi. He dodged it, as expected with ease. He also didn't take kindly to me tossing it at him, because he promptly shot at me and hit me hard. But maybe it was the bravery with which I took the shot, and how even though I fell to the ground from it, how I glared at him through the grimace of my pain he became scared. Yes it was the glint in my eye, not from the pain but of determination to get him. Yes that was it, he ran because I scared him.
It wasn't the fact that Kadlo's shot had caused some serious damage to the droid, which caused the droid to run. Nor was it the fact that Kadlo destroyed the fleeing droid that scared Sabor. It was my heroic jumping into the line of fire that caused him to flee.
After we, I mean I, scared off the dark Jedi, the Hungains seemed to come quietly back to the camp, after having fled the fighting. This time they seemed friendlier than before but apparently not sure of why they were friendlier, because they didn't know that they were unfriendly. In any case we were able to return to the capital having accomplished the task of bringing the renegade Hungain, back in to the fold.
Upon returning to the capital it turned out the celebrations were still going on. Kadlo decided now would be a good time to test out his skill at racing in the local circuits, and Ben decided to join in as well. Not having any money I could make any wagers on the races. Luckily enough it wasn't a bad thing I didn't have the money. Ben actually won more races than Kadlo did, granted Kadlo won one race in face, while Ben won two in five.
In the meantime, Ben order some parts for something from Coruscant, apparently he is going to try build his own light-saber from parts left to him by his former master. I'm hoping it turns out well considering his early exploits handling a light-saber. Of course I'm not one to make snide remarks I guess about handling a weapon, but this time I should be better prepared. I bought two blaster pistols, so if one goes bad I don't have to borrow one from someone.
That is it for the stop at Bimmisaari. We've started on our true journey to the Cron drift, which is after a day of travel already is only another day to go. Of course I've just no realized I forgot to fill the hold with stuff......
Adventures on Saltrusha
- Saltrusha Log Entry #1
Well the trip from Bimmisaari wasn't too bad, it probably wouldn't have been as scary if I hadn't lost the data pad that had the information we needed to get landing clearance. But after scrounging around the ship I found it and we were allowed to land. Geez...a huge ship with no cargo and I still lost a data pad.
Once we landed at the capital we then proceeded to the diplomatic section to meet our contact, a Saltrushian senator named Ri-Lani-Ro. Now being a Rodian I have a hard time pronouncing names, but this one was a tricky one, luckily for us the data pad was able to help us in how to pronounce it correctly. Granted it must have looked a bit odd that a group of people were wandering the streets constantly saying the same name over and over again. Of course considering how out of place we looked to begin with I doubt that would have made much of a difference in separating us out from the people we were walking by. It also didn't help that Kadlo decided to skip along during part of the trip.
To give you an idea of what a Saltrushian looks like, they are almost as tall as a Wookie and almost as hairy, but some places have no hair. Also their names sort of dictate they place in society, both in the order and if they are capitalized or not, as I was to learn later. The first part of the name is their title, the second is their actual name and then its their job last. So a Ri-Lani-Ro is has a job of Ro with a title of Ri, and is more important that someone who is Ri-Lani-ro, because the job is capitalized.
We made our way to the big dome in the center of the city, it wasn't hard to find that, data pad or not. It was huge and I mean big enough to house several starships. So it was easy for us to get there. Alas though the offices we needed happened to be on the other side of the Capital building and we couldn't get in, so we had to walk what seemed like a half a days journey around it to get to the offices.
Once there the guards didn't seem to be inclined to help us, and the imposing weapon detector didn't seem to help us feel better about our situation. One guard didn't like the look of us, and went back to make a call to some higher up. Meanwhile Kadlo talked up the guard, at the weapon detector. Kadlo tells me his name was Ri-salv-da and now a good friend of his. While waiting for the other guard to return I noticed the power plug for the weapon detector was out in the open, and how easy it would be to just unplug it. It is a shame that such a nice piece of equipment, probably expensive, is easily made worthless and useless simply because of some stupid thing like leaving the plug out in the open. Obviously the security systems installation people are really cheap, such shoddy workmanship.
Before I could convince Ben to do a Jedi "pull-the-plug" trick, an Officer, who was named Rin-Salo-Do, with a really expensive uniform, stepped through the door. Considering the workmanship and design of this guys outfit, I now know why they were cheap on the security; those uniforms must have required short-changing the budgets for everything else in order to pay for the fancy uniform of just this one guy. Then again a man with this kind of expensive outfit must be hiding something.
It’s just the economics of the bad and the good. The Bad guys are always dressed well because they have the money to spend, after having taken it, and they spend it on themselves. The good guys don't dress as well, because they only have money that’s given to them from legitimate means, and when they do get it they spend it on other things like helping others. So you always have to be wary of someone in a really nice looking outfit, they have a lot of money to spend on themselves, just where they got it you have to wonder.
Sorry...back to the situation at hand, I'll skip Ben's little attempt at a salute. Considering it probably made the situation worse. This office informed us that Ri-Lani-Ro, was on her way to becoming the Ra of the Senate, which is the highest position for this place I guess. Because of her rise in political power there have been some things that need to be taken care of. Apparently a rapist has returned to doing her old tricks in the area. This concerns Ri-Lani-Ro, because the rapist is a member of her clan. So it would be nice to show how effective Ri-Lani-Ro is politically if the jes-ne (notice only two names and both lower case, must be really low) character were stopped. Ri-Lani-Ro would be most impressed and appreciative if this were to be taken care of for her, and it would show her how helpful the Republic is.
After agreeing to help with this task, we learned that jes-ne is doing her tricks near a local bar named Bixroba's Pub and More. She is dark haired a bit shorter than other Saltrushians and has Aqua colored eyes, which is apparently not the norm for Saltrushians. She started her life of...pleasure at others expenses, 5 years ago, when someone she met at a bar apparently didn't have enough to drink to find her worth spending a night with. She proceeded to take charge of the situation whether the guy wanted to or not. Her clan took her into custody and out of kindness forgave her for the incident, but she wasn't thrilled with this. Apparently she was original called Jes-ne, but after this they called her jes-ne, see the change?
With a new name she and a little bit of bitterness she took advantage of a drunken member of her clan in a manner that wasn't all together voluntary. This time she was exiled from the clan, all together. After those two incidents she kept quiet for a while until recently when she appears to have started doing her tricks again.
Once we were given all this information, we were given a loan of 50 Saltos from the treasury since New Republic credits were accepted here. It’s always nice to be given free money or maybe its payment up front for services rendered. Either way we have native money, which is always a good thing to have in a strange world.
With Saltos in our pockets we headed to Bixroba's Pub and More, me being more interested in the More part, while Kadlo and his new found drinking buddy, who is going to meet us at the pub later, were more interested in the Pub part. Once there we settled on a plan of action, basically the Jedi Ben would be the bait for jes-ne. Once he was picked up we would follow and rescue him and capture jes-ne. Ben was the best one for bait we figured because he looked to be the most vulnerable amongst us all. While we tried to convince Ben to be the bait, Kadlo order some drinks and talked with Bixroba about the place and things.
Bixroba gives a little bit of information, and being a business man, tells us he would like the rapes to stop because it isn't good for business considering they are all near his place. I also learned he didn't water his drinks down, after trying to convince him to let us watch the place from the other side of the bar.
Finally Ben with slight trepidation agrees to be the bait, and Bixroba at Kadlo's insistence gives Ben a table by himself, to act as the bait. The night passed by quietly, only one couple left together during the time we waited. Ben didn't seem very happy about the night either, even though Roshan and I sent him a drink to try and cheer him up. Having not seemed anything of apparent importance happen, and being the only people left in the place we called it a night and went back to the hotel were accommodations had been arranged.
Well something must have been slipped into our drinks, because it occurs to me know that we should have followed up on that couple that left Bixroba's. There was a rape that night near the place and it was one of the patrons. Although I do recall telling Roshan about it and him trying to tell me we should have gone after them, I think I told him it wasn't anything. Either way in a local park a poor guy got mated forcefully. It was decided we would head back to the pub today and keep a better eye out for things this time.
Most definitely something must have been given to us that was stronger than just juice, and I'm suspecting Kadlo was the culprit. Having walked to the hotel at night and a clouded mind, I totally forgot the way back to Bixroba's. Luckily my mind wasn't still hazy to notice the two thugs standing in front of us in the dead end, and the two thugs who stepped in behind us blocking our way out.
I'm not sure if Roshan's mind was still affected by the drink, because he stepped forward and growled at the thugs. And out came the weapons! I hit one of the thugs, and Roshan quickly finished him off. Kadlo with two blasters in hand took out another thug. Ben then charged at one of the two remaining thugs with his little light-saber, which he only missed with. I hit one of the two remaining thugs, and took him out. I had my back turned because I was too busy staring at the working blaster that was still in my hand that I had just used to actually take someone out, in disbelief of course because this was the first time I still had a functioning blaster at the end of an encounter. That’s why I don't know who took out the last thug, and to be honest I don't care I took one out and kept my blaster. What a savings that is, no more having to buy another one!
Kadlo took charge of the group and was able to find the way back to Bixroba's. Once there Kadlo began talking with Bixroba some more while Ben, Roshan and I sat at a table close to the door to keep our eyes peeled for anything odd happening. This time we were smart and order just plain water, so as not to fuzzy our heads up for this important task.
That was some good water, really good water. We once again sat Ben by himself to see if he could attract anything, and order another cup of the some of the best water we've ever tasted. While drinking our second cup, Ben started getting chatted up by a Saltrushian. "That will change the color of his saber". The lady chats up Ben really well and helps him out the door; we try and follow slightly behind him but lose him in the dark alleyways. We quickly picked up his trail though and ended up stopping the Saltrushian in a dead- end alleyway, but Ben was no where to be found.
The cornered Saltrushian told us her name was nea-na, I couldn't tell if they were capitalized or not, or that is what she told Roshan. But we knew otherwise, and began to shout out Ben's name to see if he was around. From behind a door we heard Ben shout back. Roshan was kind enough to break the door down after I failed to do so, and we recovered Ben while Kadlo took jes-ne into custody.
Considering the lateness of the evening, rin-kina-do was nice to us especially when we turned jes-ne over to him. In payment he said they would pay for Ben's drug treatment so that he could recover from the drugs jes-ne gave him. One less thing we needed to pay for, at least.
- Saltrusha Log Entry #2
After a nice relaxing morning, of waiting for Kadlo to give up the shower, we headed back to the senatorial offices to talk to the Senator. Roshan on the way picked up a newspaper, but being in a foreign language he didn't know, he bought another one in which the pictures moved for him. Once there we were greeted by our officer friend, Rin- Salo-Do, who gave us 100 Saltos for taking care of the rapist.
Rin-Salo-Do took us aside and proceeded to give us the details of another favor the senator would like us to take care of as a sign of the New Republics efforts to be helpful. This time we needed to track down a guy who was murdering members of the Senator's clan, and had even threatened the Senator's life. During this meeting Ben kept rambling on about some nonsense or something, but we are starting to learn to ignore his little rambles of gibberish. Maybe the Force is causing him some brain damage or something that he can't think before speaking, we don't know at this point yet.
Apparently this murderer sticks to killing people in the backstreets of the city. More interesting is the fact that he uses an old Slug-thrower, or projectile weapon instead of a blaster. He shots his victims in the back of the head with it. That has to be messy, and expensive. The cost of the ammunition must be big. Blaster pistols are cheap, and you only need to purchase a energy pack which are that expensive to recharge or get fresh. But once you fire a projectile that thing is lost, and you can't just recharge it, you have to buy a brand new one. It’s like throwing, or uh...shooting, good money away.
Kadlo was smart enough to secure a business card with which we could use as sort of badge. This way we wouldn't get into trouble with the local authorities over our job. Plus maybe we could use it to influence certain purchases to our advantage. Once we had our task we figured it would be best to head to Bixroba's to get some information if possible about this guy.
Its funny how bar-owners tend to know a good deal of information about everything, I guess it’s because they hear a lot of stuff from all the people who wander into their places. I bet they tend to talk more when their tongues are loose with alcohol too. The older the barkeep the more information they have, and the shadier their background tends to be. Of course they don't have to be barkeeps to be old and have shady backgrounds.
Its funny, because in one system I went to they were very paranoid about the young people getting strange ideas of adventure and evil-doing that the government passed a law that shutdown bars and side-street food vendors. The side-street food vendors were the first to go since the people running them seemed to attract the most youngsters and old folk too, and they always had information and shady pasts. But it was reasoned that shutting them down, followed by the bars, would get rid of those people with shady pasts or at least prevent them from having a means of passing it on to others. It at first sounded like a very good idea, until the law caused some of the places where the lawmakers would hang-out to be closed down. The law was quickly repealed once the lawmakers own "bar" was threatened to be shut down by it.
Even funnier yet was the fact that my buddy owned the place and he had the shadiest past of them all, and had the best information on things going on, especially since his customers were lawmakers. The information he had was worth the ......uh..nevermind.
On the way to Bixroba's it seemed there were some people in the crowd who were not to happy to see us, as they tended to skirt out of our way or dodge into alleyways as we passed. Bixroba on the other hand welcomed us really well, and even gave Ben his usual table by himself. Kadlo tried to be subtle in asking for information, but Roshan being the brash soldier just jumped right in asking for information. Bixroba said he could help for a price, and my ploy of pleading poverty by showing Roshan's cheap paper didn't work. Partly because Roshan pulled out the more expensive moving picture one first.
Then I was able to with great skill convince Bixroba to accept 25 Saltos and...well....our socks. Yes, he took our socks as payment for information. He had asked for the rest of the money to be in New Republic currency which I promptly said was our socks, and had everyone in our party take off and hand to him. Not believing this I explained to him that if socks were not valuable we wouldn't keep them on our feet. We kept them on our feet because that way no-one could steal them.
Bixroba proceeded to tell us that the place to begin to look was just as smelly as our local currency, the sewers. They tended to be a good way to sneak around the city without being seen. He than gave us directions to the nearest sewer entrance, so that we could begin investigating. Before leaving I checked to see how much a slug-thrower would cost, and it came out to about 300 Saltos. This means that at some point I had to figure out how much a Saltos was in New Republic currency to figure out really if that is a lot or not.
Once again I should not lead anyone anywhere. Kadlo had to help us get back on track, since I got us lost. Why do they insist on following me? We should just start out following Kadlo from the start. As we are trouncing around Ben suddenly spotted someone that looked like our murderer so we all took off after him. Around a corner we spot him jumping down a hole into the sewers, Ben and Roshan quickly go down after him, Kadlo followed shortly after, and I went last. I was not jumping into a sewer after a murderer first. Its not that I'm a coward I'm just giving up my bit of the glory to cover our backs is all.
Once down in the sewers and our eyes adjusted to the scene, we were standing at a dead- end with the ladder leading up behind us. Down the sewer a bit stood the man we were chasing at an intersection. I'm not sure if it was really a good thing my eyes adjusted to see things better in the sewer because I was able to see the Mynocks coming our way. As the Mynocks fly at us the man flipped a switch, and he took off down one of the passages. The switch must have done something because there was a loud crashing sound, like a falling ceiling. The good thing was that it wasn't the ceiling above us that fell; the bad part was the noise appeared to have disturbed some pretty big rats, and they appeared to believe we were the ones who caused the loud noise.
I try to stop the whole bad situation by shooting at the Mynocks, but I miss and get a nice scratch as a result. Kadlo was nice enough to shoot that Mynock out of the air in retaliation for injuring me. Shame he didn't take out the other Mynock who scratched me in return for the death of his friend.
Ben whips out his little light saber and swings it around really well, and promptly singes the hair on one of the big sewer rats. He was much better in hitting the rat that charged at Roshan though, partly because the rat had to run right by him to get to Roshan. The singed rat took the chance and bite into Ben.
I tried another shot at one of the remaining Mynocks and was able to hit it but, not enough to kill it. Kadlo tried to show me up by firing his two blasters at two different mynocks, which didn't impress anyone much since it didn't hit either of them. Which was a shame since one of the mynocks caught me with one of his wings giving me another scratch.
Ben manages to finally take a good slice out of one of the rats, and because of the confines of the sewer and the clutter of people Roshan couldn't get out from behind Ben to get any shots off at any of the creatures attacking us. Although it wasn't a problem for the Rats, one of them turned around and took a nice chunk out of one of my legs, which hurt a lot.
Kadlo again tried his two shots at two different creatures and again misses. Taking the opportunity afforded by not being killed yet, the first rat and another rat use their time to try and kill me and begin to gnaw on my legs some more.
Ben finally uses his light-saber to do more than singe a rat and takes a considerable slice out of the one he burnt earlier. I wish it had been a different one, because one of the other rats practically bit my leg off at this point.
Roshan at this point tried to step forward and appeared to try and catch one of the rats on fire with his newspaper that he had apparently set a fire earlier. The problem was he missed the rat with the flaming newspaper but didn't catch the rat with the paper. This wasn't a bad thing since it must have distracted one of the rats enough that they didn't bite me, they bit Ben instead.
Kadlo, seeing the fact his two different shots at two different creatures, concentrated both his blasters on one Mynock and hits it in the air. Ben sees that it is possible to hit one of the creatures takes his cue, slices and kills the rat in front of him.
Apparently in a dark sewer, having a flaming object that lights the place up isn't a good thing to have in combat. One of the Rats turns and takes a nasty bite out of Roshan. Roshan retaliates by throwing his flaming newspaper at the rat, and causes its fur to singe. The other rat proceeded to take a nice bite out of Ben, I guess because I was so bitten and chewed up I didn't pose much of a concern to it.
Kadlo tries his two blaster shot one aiming for a rat and another aiming for a Mynock. Amazingly Kadlo hits both of them. The rat just simple exploded from the shot, the Mynock sort of burst in the air too. Ben tries to do his bit, charges with his light-saber and chops the last Mynock out of the air. Kadlo meanwhile blasts the last rat with a very lucky shot.
Roshan, Ben and I slumped to the sewer floor to gather our strength, because we had all managed to have been partial eaten by these sewer creatures. The stench of the sewer mixing with singed rat hair, and burnt flesh didn't help matters. At least we weren't able to smell out stinking sock-less feet anymore. None-the-less all I could do to not pass out was to sit along the wall and try and not bleed too much.
Kadlo having not received any damage charged down the sewer chasing after the man who we were chasing. A short bit later all we hear is a gate open and a lot of rushing water. Kadlo came back shortly after that saying he had chased the man down, and hit him with a blaster shot, but he got away.
We figured it would best to go find a hospital and heal ourselves up. The rats and mynocks took a good deal out of us, and they were just sewer creatures. Attacking anything that was more intelligent might have been worse. Besides Ben was concerned about blisters on his feet, since we didn't have any socks.
- Saltrusha Log Entry #3
We spent a day or two in the hospital to rest up at the Senator's expense. Hey why not take advantage of the free stay while we can. After which we headed back to Bixroba's to see if we could get more information.
Roshan had the notion that our bad guy was working with someone, and started to ask Bixroba about possible hiring of people around the area, and if Bixroba had any information on the bad guy. Bixroba of course had no information about this. But Kadlo manages to get a map of the sewers from Bixroba for 50 Saltos. Although I'm not sure the map was really worth it, might have been able to get a copy of the map from the city planning authority, then again did we really have several months to go through that bureaucracy to get a map. Maybe the 50 Saltos was worth it.
From Bixroba's we headed out to the area where we had dropped into the sewers and got smacked around considerably by the beasties down there. This time we figured it was best to maybe find another entrance into the sewers. Hopefully it would also be a safer entrance. Alas after wandering around in two separate groups we didn't find another manhole cover. This meant we had to go back into the sewers the way we had before.
We opened the manhole cover and proceeded to go down the ladder. All of a sudden the ladder collapses under the weight of us and we all crash down into the sewer water at the bottom. Well not all of us, a few of us happened to land of those who went down the ladder before us. The mucky water though must have caused some concern for Ben though, because he suddenly started to try and convince us we should use his grappling hook and line to escape out of the sewers. I think he, being still a little young, was using this as an excuse to brag about his grappling hook and line. We were able to convince Ben though that we actually wanted to be in the sewers in the first place and didn't want to escape. Well at least not escape just yet.
With our weapons at the ready we proceed through the mucky sewers towards the area of the sewers that became blocked by the rubble. Apparently the rubble was disturbed while we were away. Although it wasn't disturbed enough to have a door in place to let us past, so we had to find another means to get around the rubble. The method of choice was to blast a hole into the rubble. I did not take part and let the others do the work, just because I didn't wish to jam my blaster, either of them.
Yes I now had two blasters, but this was only because I didn't want to be stuck in a situation where I had to end up throwing rocks. So it was worth buying an extra blaster pistol. It better pay off though, because that extra pistol cost me the last few Saltos. Thinking about it now, bricks and rocks and stuff are just lying around on the ground and free. hmm...
Fortunately enough a hole was blasted into the rubble big enough for us to pass through. One at a time though, but at least the process didn't bring down the whole of the sewers on us. Bravely Kadlo decided to lead the way through the rubble, because I wasn't to go through there first. Ben follows Kadlo with Roshan behind him. Not hearing any screams from the other side, and figuring out I was alone now, I followed last.
On the other side the sewer turned around a bend that we couldn't easily see around. Ben creates an illusionary rat, much like the one we fought in the sewers earlier, and sends it around the bend. Ben hoped that this would scare anyone that happened to be hiding around the bend. I tell you I almost stepped back at the sight of the big rat, it was that good. Of course the last one I saw nearly gnawed my legs off.
Ben followed the rat shortly after it went around the bend, with us shortly behind him. We came upon another bend in the sewers where Ben sends another illusionary rat around it. This time the Rat seemed to have done its job well. As we rounded the corner we came upon two thugs standing outside a huge door, staring at the door about where the Rat would have ran into...I mean through the door.
Quickly we engage them with our blasters at the ready. Roshan fires a shot off at a thug but misses. Ben on the other hand waves his hands at them and smiles, but it doesn't seem to cause any affect. Kadlo takes two shots with both his blaster but misses, as the two thugs hit Ben and Roshan with their shots.
Roshan fires back but being knocked off his balance misses. Ben puts his hands on the blaster wound and causes it to heal up. Kadlo on the hand hits with both his blasters one of the thugs, knocking him to the ground dead. The remaining thug tries to take a shot at Kadlo, but misses, and Roshan takes the opportunity to get a shot off. His shot connects causing the thug to crumple and fall into the murky sewer water face down dead.
Ben tries to take the socks off the thugs as bounty; we find a computer pad in the wall near the door. Ben not finding any socks of worth joins us in figuring out how to get on the other side of the door. The door appeared to be a blast door, so blasting it didn't seem like an option. Ben summons his ghostly friend and sends him to the other side of the door, but he doesn't return. It is just a bit unnerving to know that what ever is on the other side of that blast door is capable of stopping a ghost Jedi from getting back through. Probably something a little more blood letting that a big sewer rat I suspect.
After searching around we find a computer keypad in the wall next to the door. Ben steps up to the pad while explaining he can use it to get us past the door. As he starts to push buttons on the pad, a door comes crashing down behind us, blocking us in. As the sound of the door crashing down and the sloshing of the sewer water, the sound of gas seeping into the sewer could be heard. Surprisingly enough you could smell the gas, which is impressive considering the stench of the sewer, but the smell was enough to make us aware that this wasn't perfume to make the place smell better.
Ben continues to stare at the computer pad, and starts to mutter to himself, not enough for us to hear what exactly he is saying. Kadlo quickly steps up to see what he can do with the computer pad and stop the gas from making us "smell like flowers" or at least push them up. It turns out that a riddle came up on the screen, which Kadlo reads it to the rest of us. Roshan and I start shouting out various possible answers to the riddle, with Kadlo joining in as well.
Suddenly I shout out the answer, or at least I believe it was me, and since this is my log it was me. This stops the gas from seeping in and starts the door behind us to rise up, followed by the door in front us opening up as well. The room on the other side of the door was a fairly big diamond shaped one. Inside it stood two soldiers and the bad guy, Urlan, with a big grin on his face. Urlan's grin turns into a laugh. The laughter dies down a bit and through his laughter he tells us that it was about time we showed, and he has been waiting for us, for a while.
I think that may have been why the ladder collapsed on us earlier. I doubt any of us gained that much weight in the intervening time. In fact we probably should have been lighter due to all the injuries. Although a few of us did enjoy quiet a bit of the hospital food. Well the food wasn't that good but it was being paid for by someone else. Although right about this point I did gain some weight in the form of a slug that slammed into me while the two soldiers start firing their blasters at the party.
Kadlo runs into the room and fires his two blasters hitting a soldier, but only enough to make him flinch. Roshan takes two shots and misses, while Urlan nails him with a slug causing some serious damage. The second guard takes a shot at Kadlo, but doesn't connect with it. In the midst of the fight Ben meditates, while I slip along the why trying not to get shot myself, but instead I get a glancing shot off at one of the soldiers.
Kadlo and Roshan both miss in their shots as well as one of the soldiers. Urlan though fires a slug that dings Ben, but Ben waves his hands over the wound and it heals up. Thinking the hits on are on I fire my blaster and hit the other soldier with a nice shot causing him to worry. Not actually bleed, but worry about the possibility at least.
Kadlo finally gets a bead on one of the soldiers and hits him with one of his blasters. Unfortunately Roshan’s blaster pistol at this time runs out of charge leaving him scrambling for his second blaster. As Roshan is scrambling Urlan takes the chance and fires a slug into him causing Roshan to falter back. Following suit the first soldier hits Kadlo for a serious amount of damage.
At this point I know my luck with blasters has passed. Passed on to someone else that is. Kadlo's blaster both jam up, as he tries to fire at the first soldier. Roshan though manages to get his other blaster on target hitting the second soldier for a good wallop, blasting a hole through his clothing leaving a bleeding wound. For this the soldier returns the favor by firing his blaster and hitting me leaving a similar wound on me.
Meanwhile Ben charges up to Urlan who decides having a light-saber wielding Jedi that close isn't a good thing and tries to get away from Ben. I would too, not because Ben is really good with the Light-saber, but more or less because he isn't. Someone just thrashing their light-saber around can be just a deadly as one who knows how to use it. Somehow though I think Ben's charge has given Urlan the idea that he knows how to use it. As Urlan is getting away from Ben he fires off his slug-thrower and manages to hit Kadlo hard enough to knock Kadlo to his knees. Ben though manages to catch up to Urlan and charges him with his light saber out, and misses him. I hope that doesn't change Urlan's mind about Ben being dangerous.
Now I know my luck with blasters has come to pass. With the greatest of skill and marksmanship I get a blaster shot off at one of the soldiers. The shot screams across the room with amazing accuracy and slams into the soldier. The force and accuracy and hit at just the right angle to knock the soldier to the ground unconscious. I just want to point out, for clarity, that it was the soldier who fell into the water this time and not my blaster. The blaster which I had just deftly fired the shot that put the soldier into the water.
With two jammed blasters, Kadlo ducks around the corner of the entrance-way for cover while he attempts to un-jam his blasters. Roshan's with his one blaster fires a shot of at the remaining soldier, but only manages to hit the wall.
Urlan pulls out a blaster and aims it at Ben and fires. Surprisingly enough, Ben blocks the shot with his light-saber. Maybe Urlan does have a real reason to want to get away from him. Maybe Ben is turning out to be a decent Jedi. uh...well maybe is not a yes.
Suddenly Roshan gets hit with a blaster shot from the last soldier standing that causes Roshan to fall into the water. The splash hides the fact that a lot of Roshan blood was mixed in with it, from that shot. Ben seeing Roshan go down slides over to him and puts his hand on him. When Ben stops the water doesn't seem to be as bloody as it was when Roshan went down.
I guess the sudden splashing sound and my concern for Roshan, made my shot at the remaining soldier go astray. That splash was really loud, and the fact that our good companion Roshan was hurt definitely made a difference in my ability to shoot.
Unfortunately for me the last soldier wasn't bothered by the splashing because he fired a shot off at me that knocked me unconscious. Luckily enough Ben was nearby to do his Jedi heal trick enough to get me back on my knees at the very least. Not only did I get blasted to the ground, to add insult to injury, my stupid blaster jams. And better still, Ben gets nailed by a slug from Urlan's gun.
Ben though sort of shrugs it off, and runs up to Urlan and slices at him, leaving a nice scar across his chest. While I take aim and get a blaster shot in on the last soldier. This time my shot didn't knock him out but it hurt him a good deal. Kadlo suddenly comes stepping out from behind the corner with both blasters firing at the soldier. One of the shots hits the soldier causing a cloud of vaporized blood to appear.
Urlan forsakes his slug-thrower, dropping it, and unsheathes a vibroblade. With his vibroblade Urlan swings at Ben, but Ben dodges it with ease. Ben then slices into Urlan nearly taking off one of his arms.
Kadlo still firing both blasters peppers the last soldier killing him. Urlan with his blaster in his other hand tries to get a shot off at Ben, but misses. Taking advantage of the miss Ben moves it to get a strike on Urlan but fumbles his saber, and turns it off. Seeing as how Ben is having troubles I fire my blaster off and hit Urlan causing him another bleeding wound.
Having killed the other soldier Kadlo turns his blasters on Urlan, but doesn't manage to connect any of the shots. Urlan though is able to get his blaster shot to connect with me, causing me to hit the ground and fall unconscious, again.
From here on I can only tell you what Kadlo was nice enough to tell me about the incident.
Kadlo managed to dispatch Urlan with his blasters, and then proceeded to stabilize me so that I wouldn't bleed to death. While Kadlo was helping tend to mine and Roshan's injuries Ben proceed to ransack the bodies of the fallen soldiers and Urlan, and for some strange dark and twisted reason he slices the head of Urlan's body. Kadlo tries to talk some sense into Ben but, isn't able to so he just grabs my body and starts to head out of the sewers, leaving Ben to figure out what loot he exactly he wishes to take out of the sewers with him.
Finally Ben decides to catch up to Kadlo, carrying the head of Urlan and Roshan's body. With Ben's grappling hook, the two manage to get out of the sewers and carry me and Roshan to a hospital where we can get attention. From there they head over to the Senator's offices to notify them that we had stopped the killings. Ri-Salo-Do wasn't very pleased with Ben's "gift" of Urlan's head, just because it was gross, but none-the-less Ri- Salo-Do recognized the fact we had accomplished the job. In payment he offered to pay our medical bills. Yummy, more hospital food.
- Saltrusha Log Entry #4
Since we couldn't spend all our time in the hospital with free room and good free food, we ended up back at Bixroba's Pub and stuff, trying to figure out what would be the next task at hand. Roshan was not much help in this discussion, since he seemed to have wandered off on his own once again. Something about a undercover mission or something, we all figured he meant literally under cover.
While the three of us sat around the table enjoying a standard Bixroba meal, amongst the crowd we noticed a person who didn't fit in with the rest of the crowd. Much like how we didn't fit in. It wasn't just the fact that he was a human amongst the crowd, but the fact that he seemed more interested in playing with the data pad on the table in front of him then looking around or eating or drinking.
When I walked over to check this out I must have interrupted him in the middle of something because when he looked up from the data pad he mumbled something about calling the wrong subroutine in the flimflam function or something. After that odd hello, I was able to make introductions. As it turns out Kraig was stranded on this planet by his crew on a New Republic ship, for which he was their technology officer that happened to get lost and ended up at Saltrusha. He didn't explain why he was left behind...I mean stranded by his crew though.
Seeing how he was short of money, I drop a hint that he should try selling his socks to Bixroba. I figured this would be good for a laugh, sort of hazing of the new guy. But it appears that Bixroba maybe a bit of a softy, for hard-luck cases like us, because he bought Kraig's socks. Figures a nice guy would ruin my fun.
After introducing Kraig to the rest of the group Kadlo decides we should pay another visit to the Senator to see what we can do to help her out this time. Once at the Senator's, Kadlo's guard friend gets Rin-Salo-Do for us, who escorts us in to meet with Ri-Lani-Ro.
Ri-Lani-Ro gives us the standard thank you for your help speech, with a heavy dash of the "this makes us believe the New Republic is a caring government." Despite all our help though, she still hasn't been made the Ra of the senate yet, and she has one more hurdle to get over before this happens. Naturally we have to take care of this hurdle for her.
It turns out two farming cities are about ready to go to war, as much as any farming cities can, over the fact that they are being robbed. Both cities are blaming each other for the robberies, and things are getting a little heated as the stuff being robbed is important farming supplies and grain. Since both of these cities are part of her clan she has jurisdiction over them, but she hasn't the time, with her rise in power taking up her time, to take care of it herself. Thus it falls to us to go figure out what is going on and try and settle the problem.
She then leaves us to take care of some duties, and we are left with Ri-Salo-Do. Kraig then proceeds to grill Ri-Salo-Do for any information about the robberies. This isn't too bad, because we manage to get a map of the area around the two cities, Ry-Ber and Ry- Tog. We also are given free use of a land speeder to go out to the cities.
With no reason in particular we take the land speeder and head to Ry-Ber first. As we head into the city we notice the it is indeed a farming city, since it is surrounded by large fields, with a few warehouse scattered amongst the, as well as several groups of Saltrushians tending to the fields. I sadly realize that if I hadn't brought any "City-goods" along with which to graciously bring to these farmers. There goes another chance for some profit. The only thing that appears to be of great value might be the data pad that Kraig has, but since he spent the whole trip with it stuck on his nose I doubt I could sneak it away to sell it.
Once in the city, which is basically a loose collection of houses and small buildings, we make our way to the biggest building, a whole three stories tall!! We, correctly, figure the biggest building has to be city hall. The Receptionist isn't very keen on us, but once Kadlo flashes the badge the senator gave us, she gets a hold of the mayor and shows us in to meet with him.
The mayor doesn't seem very keen on us either, but offers to help us out only so much as to get the information he needs to prove it was the other city. From the conversation all we get is that the best evidence that they have that it is the other town, is the fact that the thefts have taken place on the side of the city towards the other city. Most of the items stolen are farming tools and grain. The thefts have been going on for about 6 months, and so far the guards have only been knocked out or slightly wounded. The security cameras and other security items have been deactivated or scrambled, so were of no use. Finally any trails left by the thieves generally head towards Ry-Tog before disappearing.
I was kind enough to wave our fee for help, in exchange for free room and board in the city. Of course that was all we were going to get anyway since the mayor didn't plan on giving us a fee in the first place. The mayor was also kind enough to give us a map of the area and the places that were robbed.
Kadlo was anxious to leave, so we left as soon as we got the map, and headed towards Ry-Tog. This city doesn't give us much of a warm welcome. In fact the Receptionist tells us to go back to Ry-Ber where we came from, since we came from that direction. But with a flash of our badge, she begrudgingly lets us in to talk to the mayor. The mayor isn't much better than the receptionist, but is nice enough to give us a map of the places that were robbed. Basically the same things are happening to the warehouses around his city as around Ry-Ber.
Our conversation with the mayor was cut short; when Kraig lets it slip that we had already talked with the other town. No amount of talking convinces the mayor to let us help, and we are promptly kicked out of his office. We then venture back to Ry-Ber, where along the way Kraig makes a fancy map overlaying the areas that have been robbed between the two maps. From the two maps we find out that the mountains range that runs between the two cities have a number of caves in them.
Once we get back into Ry-Ber the mayor gives us a hard time for talking with the other city. Kadlo is able to talk the mayor down from kicking us out of his office this time. Then Kadlo convinces the mayor to spread the word that a new shipment of expensive equipment is coming in and being stored in a specific warehouse. He then gets the mayor to lend us the use of the warehouse for the operation.
We then head out to setup the warehouse. Kraig begins to put up security equipment to try and keep an eye on things electronically. Meanwhile I and Kadlo decide upon another means to get the drop on the thieves. We manage to convince Ben to hide in one of the boxes inside the warehouse. That way when the thieves get inside Ben can jump out and surprise them long enough for us to surround and capture them. The rest of the boxes we fill with lose junk to give them some weight.
Nothing happens the first night, so we let Ben out of his box, and wait until dawn before putting him back into it. The second night passes without anything, so we let Ben out of the box that day. This continues for another two days. On the way to put Ben into the box for the next night, Kadlo notices a farming crew that is very suspicious. Kadlo points the crew out to us as they walk around to the front of the warehouse. Quickly and quietly we park our speeder in some trees around back of the warehouse and approach the back of the warehouse.
At the back of the warehouse we decide to sneak in through the window at the top of the wall, and hopefully catch the suspicious people as they enter the warehouse. I hoist Ben up to the window and let him slip inside. With Ben inside I begin to hoist Kraig up to the window to let him sneak in, but suddenly a blaster shot is heard from the inside. Kraig quickly jumps off my shoulders and makes a dash for the speeder. I figured the techie would do this; they were not much help in a fight. Meanwhile Kadlo charges around the corner of the warehouse to try and get to the front, and I walk to the other corner of the warehouse to take a look around.
Before I can peer around my corner, I hear a thud from behind me and slowly turning around I see a blaster lying on the ground under the window, much to my relief, since I was expecting a thief getting the drop on me. I walk over to the blaster and pick up my new found loot, as I hear more blaster fire coming from inside the warehouse. While I'm picking up the blaster, I see Kriag on the speeder come roaring out of the trees, and then smashing it into the corner of the warehouse. Fortunately the warehouse didn't fall down, but even more so the speeder wasn't ours so I don't think we have to worry about the amount of damage to it. Typical techie plays all those driving simulations, but when it comes to real driving they were not as good as they thought.
From what Kadlo later told me, when Kraig managed to get around to the front of the warehouse, he almost ran Kadlo over. Kadlo took the opportunity to tackle the thief that he was currently fighting, at the door of the warehouse. He figured he had a better chance surviving a brawl with a thief than with Kraig's driving.
It was a good thing Kadlo did the tackle though, because according to him, Kraig managed to stop the speeder exactly in front of the door, just where he was standing. This gave Kraig the chance to blow away the thief Kadlo was trying to take out, but couldn't because his weapon jammed on the switch from kill to stun.
I waited at the window for more goods to be .... I mean I was covering a possible escape route for any thieves that wanted to sneak out the window. While I was waiting, I could hear more blaster fire from inside, as well as the sound of boxes breaking and junk falling all over.
It wasn't much longer before the fight was over, and we had two people in our custody. From the interrogation of the two it was decided to give one captive each to each of the two cities, so that we could prove it was someone other than each other stealing from each other. After a short negotiation, we manage to convince the mayors to give us three policemen from each city to help us in the tracking down of the thieves’ hideout. Also we manage to get 50% of the cut from the sale of the thieves’ speeder if we find it.
After almost five hours of searching on foot I find the speeder, but since Kadlo had the keys from the captives we had to wait for him to come meet us. It didn't take long since he took the speeder to go search for the thieves’ speeder. From the captives we also learned that their speeder was on autopilot all the time, in order to prevent them from knowing where the base was. This we use to our advantage though.
Kraig jumps into the thieves' speeder and taps into the autopilot, and says he can start and stop the autopilot. With that we decide to follow the speeder while it is on autopilot. Kraig and I jump into the thieves’' speeder, while Kadlo and Ben jump into the dented speeder. The policemen who helped us to find the speeder then decide that they have helped as best they can and must head back to the cities. So with just the four of us to find the thieves’ base, Kraig turns the key and starts the autopilot and we are on our way.
The speeder takes us through the fields, and after a short bit takes a wily set of turns through some forested region, we finally come up into the mountains. I must point out that Kadlo is a really good pilot, at this time. Not only because he was able to stick close to the thieves’ speeder this whole time, because its autopilot was set to avoid being tailed obviously, but because he was very skilled at dodging with the speeder too. Kadlo had to stick pretty close to the thieves' speeder so he wouldn't lose us, and Kraig had to take care of business, which he did over the side of the speeder. Kadlo was able to dodge this, and keep his speeder dry, and still not lose us as we headed into the mountains. Gee if the dent wasn't hard enough on the resale value, the stains would have made it even harder.
Suddenly we rounded a bend on a mountain pass and in the distance we spot a set of huge doors in the side of the mountain with two guards. Kraig quickly manages to stop the speeder's autopilot, and backs us up out of sight of the guards.
With the location of the base discovered, we place a call back to the mayors of the cities to help send us some back-up to assault the thieves’ base, but they tell us that they cannot spare any troops to help in an assault on such a base. Disappointed with that we make contact with Ri-Lani-Ro to try and send us some help. But that turns into a dead end. Apparently all their policemen are dealing with stuff they cannot be pulled from. Before they sign off though, they mention that if Roshan is well enough they will try and send him to meet us.
We decide to wait an hour or two to see if Roshan shows up or not. During which time, Kadlo scouts around the area, and finds a small door in the mountain side above the big doors. Considering that the big doors, are guarded by two guards, and probably have some big stuff behind them, and that Roshan may not be showing up we settle in to discuss the best way to get into the base, hopefully giving Roshan more time to meet up with us.
- Saltrusha Log Entry #4.5 Roshan's version
I'm writing down this since Roshan can't seem to stop talking about it until I agree to write it down for him. If it weren't for the fact that Nar-Ny corroborates this I would have just believe Roshan was trying to cover for another date gone wrong. But apparently something else happened instead.
After we had gotten back from the sewers, we all were hanging out at Bixroba's resting up for the next adventure. Roshan on the other hand decided to step out to get some fresh air. When he got outside he was surprised to see a nice human woman there, apparently waiting for him. The lady came up to him and mentioned that she was waiting for a chance to get him alone so they could talk. Roshan then offered to buy the lady a drink inside, but she said she needed Roshan's help in saving her family who was being held by an evil man. Roshan offered to go back inside to get the rest of us so we could help her family out, but she insisted it could only be Roshan that could help her. So Roshan couldn't get the rest of us to help out, but instead had to follow her to save her family.
…I must interject a bit, in the fact that Nar-Ny wasn't around at this point to corroborate this part of Roshan's story. I have to believe this isn't quite how it happened because Roshan was acting almost like a gentleman. It probably happened along the lines that she flashed him her leg or something and he just fell in right behind her and she led him around.
Roshan followed her along the streets and a few back-alleys for a while, until he turned a corner into a dead-end. At the end of the dead-end was the girl being grabbed and man- handled by 5 big huge brutes. Roshan charged in to the group and fought off several of them, but then only 5 more bigger brutes showed up to join the fray. Roshan was able to take down almost all of the brutes until then 10 more brutes showed up and tackled him and knocked him out.
…I mean who could stand up against…5...10...20 big brutes, right?
When Roshan came about he found himself in a jail cell being attended to by an undercover agent, named Gar Ithil, but he didn't know he was an undercover agent. At this point he only knew Gar Ithil was tending to the severe wounds that were the result of being beaten up by 30 guys…Roshan's math isn't hampered in the least by his ego… With Gar Ithil's help and Roshan's strength of character Roshan was able to sit up and talk with Gar Ithil.
As it turns out the lady, who was also undercover, but that wasn't revealed at the time, was only trying to get Roshan as a recruit for an underground fight club run by a big time crime lord. Roshan was to be put up against various foes one after another, while the crime lord and his various associates put wagers down on his survival or not. Gar Ithil was the medic to the recruits for the fights.
Before Roshan could get any more information, the guards grabbed him and tossed him in to the arena where he was to fight. In the arena the crime lord spoke to him, making some remarks about how he wanted to see how a Mighty Solider of the New Republic would fare in his competition. Based on his fighting against the best brutes in the crime lord's group, in the dead-end alley, the crime lord had put a lot of money on him. At this point Nar-Ny was tossed into the ring as well. But before Roshan could render any help to Nar-Ny a thug was let into the ring and the fight had begun.
…at this point I'm able to have Nar-Ny corroborate Roshan's story…
Roshan not having any armor or weapons decides to run straight at the thug screaming really loudly. This causes the thug to stutter a bit in its charge at Roshan, but lacking a weapon of any sort, Roshan runs over to a pile of junk in the arena, and tries to quickly look for something to use against the thug. Nar-Ny meanwhile has already started searching the junk piles for something.
Finding nothing, Roshan grabs a hand full of junk and smashes it into the face of the Thug as the Thug swings at Roshan with a club and misses. Nar-Ny meanwhile finds a sharp pipe in the midst of one junk pile, while Roshan deftly grabs the Thug's club out of his hands. With pipe in hand Nar-Ny rushes over and tries to stomp on the toe of the Thug, but misses, and Roshan smacks the Thug with the club causing him to bleed.
The Thug now clubless and bleeding tries to punch Roshan but misses. Nar-Ny tries to swing the pipe at the Thug, but the remaining bits of grease cause the pipe fall out of his hands. Roshan, tries to hit the Thug, using both hands on his club but fails to connect and due to the blood on it from the earlier hit causes the club to slip out of his hands.
The Thug hearing the pipe and club hit the floor gropes around through his bloodied face and picks up the pipe. Nar-Ny seeing that Roshan has no weapon quickly runs over to a junk pile and finds a nice shard of metal and gives a thumbs-up sign to Roshan. Roshan quickly picks up the club he dropped and as he does so hits the Thug hard in the side causing some of the Thugs ribs to crack loudly.
The Thug now badly hurt makes a poor swing at Roshan, and misses. Nar-Ny on the other hand throws the metal shard at the Thug, hitting him square in the head knocking the Thug to the ground in a pool of blood unconscious. Roshan takes the opportunity to make sure the Thug isn't getting back up and slams the club down on the Thugs skull smashing it to bloody pieces.
After a quick time to recover Roshan and Nar-Ny are tossed back into the ring. This time another fellow is tossed in as well. While this person is another Saltrushian, this one has a broken arm. Before introductions could be made the door for the opponents opens and three Saltrushian Thugs charge out at Rosha, Nar-Ny and the other.
During this round, Roshan basically takes on the three Thugs by himself while the two Saltrushians spend the fight rummaging through the piles of junk scattered around the arena. Roshan eventually stabs one of the Thugs through with a pipe, through the neck with enough force to literally knock the Thugs block off. This devastating scene causes the other Thugs to take a step back, which gives Roshan the opportunity to take down another of the Thugs.
Roshan now only had one Thug left, but he was so badly beaten up and bloodied he wasn't sure if he was going to make it. But Nar-Ny stepped up and tried to help, by grabbing the severed head of the Thug, and tossing it at the remaining Thug, but misses.
The other Saltrushian had snuck up behind Roshan with a pipe and attempted to stab him in the back, with what was apparently not a broken arm. Roshan seeing this quickly turns and smacks the Saltrushian for some damage. But considering how badly hurt Roshan was he decided to try and get out of reach of the Thug and the Saltrushian and run.
At this point Gar Ithil manages to break his way into the arena to help out, seeing as how beaten up Roshan and is now running practically for his life. As Gar Ithil charges in to the arena heading straight at the Saltrushian, he pulls out a vibro-blade. With the vibro- blade Gar is able to nearly slice the Saltrushian's arm off. After a short skirmish, between Gar, Roshan and the Saltrushian, Gar manages to kill the Saltrushian.
With the Saltrushian out of the way Gar and Roshan are able to rush back and help Nar-Ny out with the Thug. Nar-Ny and the Thug have apparently just been punching it out between the two of them. Although Nar-Ny looks the better for it, Roshan is able to hurt the Thug for some serious damage, but it is Gar who finishes the Thug off.
Before the group can celebrate, they here a yell as the lady Roshan followed is thrown into the arena, from the Crime Lord's box seat. As he did so yelling out that he knew she was against him, and he has one more foe for all of them. With that the door opens and out steps a huge Gamorrean guard.
Nar-Ny quickly runs over to help the fallen lady, who gets up and pulls out a blaster pistol she was hiding amongst her clothes. Gar on the other hand runs over to a pile of junk and starts digging. Roshan on the other hand makes a blood curdling war cry in order to scare the Gamorrean. (Although Nar-Ny says he didn't really notice the blood curdling part, but he did hear Roshan scream).
The lady gets up and runs at the Gamorrean firing her blaster hitting the Gamorrean's helmet causing a noticeable blaster scorch mark across it. But being a Gamorrean, head shots really don't hurt them that much; this one just shrugs it off. In retaliation the Gamorrean swings his huge axe from his shoulder down at the lady, but suffering from a bit of shock, misses and hits the ground of the arena with the axe. The reverberations cause the Gamorrean drop the axe on the floor. Roshan quickly takes the opportunity to run up and grab the axe, dropping his pipe in the process since the axe requires him to pick it up with both hands.
Gar continues to dig under a pile of junk, while Nar-Ny has decided to run out of reach of the fray. The lady fires another shot at the Gamorrean, but misses the shot. The Gamorrean reaches out and tries to grab his axe back from Roshan, but Roshan hits the Gamorrean's armor, causing a sizeable dent.
Nar-Ny figures with Roshan's wielding on the axe, it might not be so dangerous to get into the fray and runs up to join in. Gar finally manages to pull something from under the pile. The lady fires another shot, hitting the Gamorrean in the arm causing some scaring. This causes the Gamorrean to drop the pipe he was picking up from the ground. As the Gamorrean drops the pipe, Roshan swings the axe into the Gamorrean's armor again.
Nar-Ny quickly runs over to Gar and offers to help with what it is that Gar has found, but Gar decides not to accept. Instead Gar sets the thermal detonator he just found to 3 seconds. Then as the Gamorrean finishes back-handing the lady, throws it at the Gamorrean yelling catch. The Gamorrena quickly turns around and catches the thermal detonator.
Noticing the thermal detonator everyone makes a mad dash past the Gamorrean, into the hallway from which it came. The whole party makes it in to the hallway and around the bend just as a loud explosion goes off. The Gamorrean was obviously blown up by the blast because some of its guts are splatter against the wall of the hallway.
The lady quickly introduces herself as Haraga, and tells Roshan and Nar-Ny that her and Gar are members of the Khadur organization, and they were trying to stop the Crime Lord's dealings. As she explains this to them they all round a bend and come out through a secret door into the same dead-end alley that Roshan was beaten up in.
At the end of the alleyway two guards start firing back at the group. The two guards are quickly dispatched, but the as the group runs out of the alleyway to pursue the Crime Lord, they are stopped by police officers who tell them to halt. Over the heads of the Police Roshan can see the Crime Lord quickly rush down a side street. Before Roshan can say anything to the others, he gets knocked out by Haraga. Nar-Ny is also knocked out as well.
Roshan awakens later in the hospital where Rin-Salo-Do is waiting to talk to him. Rin- Salo-Do explains that his police were able to go through and capture some of the gamblers, who after some questioning explained what had happened. Also all of Roshan's stuff was recovered as well. The axe and such were confiscated for evidence. Nar-Ny while he helped to some degree is being held in regards to other offenses. As for Gar Ithil and Haraga, there was no sign of them, although the gamblers said they were there. Also he has no knowledge of the Khandur.
When Roshan mentions the Crime Lord slipping away down a street, Rin-Salo-Do shakes his head. He mentions that it is disturbing that the Crime Lord was able to "sneak" past the police as easily as he had. The Ra actually has a concern about that as well, and would like him to return to his party to help out in discovering any information about who might be being paid off to let the Crime Lord go.
…Well that's Roshan's story, and some of it was corroborated by Nar-Ny so I guess there is some truth to it…
- Saltrusha Log Entry #5
While waiting for Roshan to show up we figured out our plan of attack on the base. Kraig figures that he can fool the sensor in the base to try and cause them all to evacuate the base leaving it free for us to take. Typical techie, plan if I get at the computers I can do it all. The only problem is getting to the computers, but they tend only to concentrate on what happens once they get to the computers. So it falls to Kadlo, Ben and me to come up with a way of getting into the base.
Ben tries to convince us he can make a big illusion to scare the guards away from the door, or even scare the people inside the base to surrender. He figures he can conjure up a huge army of illusionary soldiers to march up to the door and tell them all to surrender. This gets quickly vetoed, as we don't think Ben can handle such a big and complex illusion.
Then I strike on a good idea. We take the thieves’ speeder and crash it into the main doors, hopefully causing it to go up in a big bang. While the crashing speeder distracts everyone inside, we sneak into the small entrance at the top of the door. I mean I can always make up for the loss of the speeder by finding some goods inside the base.
With that as our plan, Kraig manages to reprogram the speeder to ram itself into the big doors. After that we start our way up to the small entrance and send the speeder on its way. Almost to the small entrance we hear the speeder crash into the doors, and the sudden shouts of the guards. The guards are joined by more shouting as we finally make it up the path to the small entrance.
Once at the small entrance way, Kraig manages to hack the keypad, which causes the door to open. On the other side we see the red lights and the sounds of alarms going off. Apparently the distraction worked really well, since the hallway on the other side of the door appears deserted. As we proceed into the hallway towards one of the doors, two people come running out from one of the doors into the hallway. The distraction worked really well since the two of them didn't notice us as the came out, and headed down the hallway away from us in a hurry.
After a short pause to see if anyone else was coming out of any doors, Kadlo starts to walk into the hallway. Unfortunately Kraig jumps ahead of Kadlo and opens the door the two people came running out of. Kraig suddenly stops before charging into the room, and we hear someone ask him if he was the one who set off the alarm. Kraig instead of answering tries to pull his blaster, but before he gets his hand even on the handle, he gets blasted and sent sprawling across the hall-way where he ends up slumped against the wall. Apparently Techies aren't that good at quick draw either, who would have guessed.
Ben quickly pulls out his light-saber and standing over Kraig's body, takes a swing at the guy in the doorway, but doesn't connect. Kraig dazed sits up and grabs his blaster and fires off a shot. With Ben standing over him Kraig firing a blaster off wasn't such a good move. The blast hits Ben in the back, fortunately for Ben Kraig was dazed enough that he couldn't get a good enough shot off on his back to hurt Ben to much.
Note: Do not let Techie drive too fast, do not bet on techie in quick-draw fights, and do not put back to techie with a blaster.
Kadlo quickly dives up against the wall next to the door as a defensive move, while I quickly turn around to cover the door that we passed on the way in.
The guy in the doorway tries to hit Ben with his blaster, but fails to connect. Taking the opportunity Ben puts his shoulder down and tries to tackle the guy. Apparently the guy was much bigger and stronger then Ben, because when I took a look back all I could see was Ben's hunched behind sticking out the door, not moving. The still dazed Kraig then tries to get up quickly from his position to tackle the as well. Failing to get up of the floor with any great speed and strength only causes Kraig to end up...well...hmm....uh...in an awkward looking manner behind Ben.
Just when I thought the scene couldn't get anymore...uh...well...hmm...uh...well awkward, Kadlo gets out of his position and stands behind Kraig holding both his guns at arms length over Kraig's shoulders. If only I had a video-cap to catch this sight for all posterity. Ben's backside sticking out of the door way, Kraig bunched up behind that, with Kadlo standing close behind Kraig with his arms outstretched over his shoulders. You don't see the blasters Kadlo is holding because they are in the doorway.
I don't get much time to laugh at this scene, because the door I'm guarding suddenly opens up, and being distracted, and who could blame me, a person walks out and hits me square on with two blaster shots.
According to Kadlo, who later relates to me the scene, but doesn't mention the awkward positions of everyone, the guy in the first door ducked out of the way of his blasters, but it didn't matter because Ben manages to get his square on in the lower gut with his light- saber. Apparently even Ben couldn't miss with his light-saber in the position he was in. Kadlo literal only says position, but doesn't mention what the position is. But as the guy slumps to the ground dead, the group stumbles into the room, where Kraig ducks behind a console, and blasts a techie as he does so.
Kadlo though is nice enough to turn around and fire some shots off at the guy who just blasted me, but not having a good aim misses. The guy doesn't take to much notice of Kadlo's two missed shots, and continues to hit me with his blasters, causing me to fall on to the floor unconscious.
I'm awakened out of shock by Ben, who had run into the hallway to help me out, while Kadlo is standing between me and the guy who shot me. Kadlo manages to get a square hit on the guy, causing him severe damage to one of his arms. The guy tries to fire back at Kadlo and only hits with one of his blasters, while dropping the one he was holding in his arm that just got blasted.
With a bit of effort I'm able to raise my blaster and squeeze off a shot at the guy, and its enough to knock him against the door frame, and slide to the floor dead.
As Kadlo begins to check the guy’s body for anything, I get up and join Kraig in the room, where he managed to take out another techie. Kraig is engrossed in playing with the computers, and manages to get some information out of it. Or at least that is what it seems, by the oohs and ahhs he is making as he types.
Kadlo and Ben join us in the room, and Kraig tells us that we have two possible ways to go about taking care of the thieves. Option one is to blow the whole place up, by overriding the power reactors. This one is quickly decided to be the wrong option for us. The second option requires us to go clean out the place all by ourselves. He then starts flipping through the various security cameras in the base, showing us where the various thieves and such can be found in the rooms. Not seeing too many people in the rooms, we figure we can take on all the thieves remaining in the base, so Kraig tries to seal all the doors he possibly can to prevent anyone from catching us off guard again. The only problem is that he can't seal the door to the barracks, so we decide we should get their first and take out anyone before they manage to wander around behind us.
With the plan in place we all file out of the room and begin to make our way down the hallway. But before we do we stop in the other room, where Kadlo shows us what he found there. It is apparently a room for coordinating raids all over the planet. There is a nice holographic map of the planet with markings on it, in the center of the room and several consoles all around it. Kraig manages to download the map and some other information into his data pad. One of the interesting tid-bits he finds is that the group has some off-world ties, but what he cannot determine.
Ben takes the lead followed by Kadlo and Kraig with me bringing up the rear. As we are walking down the hall, Kraig starts a little dance, but is stopped quickly by Kadlo who turns around and claps him on the side. Ben quickly turns around to see what he missed, but only sees Kadlo's not so pleasant face, and Kraig rubbing the side of his head. Add Techies cannot dance to the list.
Around the turn in the hall we come across some stairs heading down into the lower levels of the base, and with Ben leading us, we proceed down them. Before we can all make it to the bottom I hear a blaster shot go off, but only manage to see it miss Ben and hit the side of the stairway. Kadlo reacts to the shot by firing both his blasters in return, but being at the top of the stairs I cannot see much of what is going on. This isn't a bad thing, because it also means I'm not in the line of fire as well.
Suddenly Ben charges from the bottom of the steps with his light-saber at the ready. Kadlo also makes a dash from the bottom of the stairs, while Kraig moves down the steps and fires a shot off. I don't know if it hit anyone, but all I know is he is in front of me, and he can't hit me in the back from there.
With Kraig moving to the bottom of the steps I'm able to move down as well, and take a quick shot at one of the thugs in the hallway. It’s at this point I should mention that none of us realized that all the security cameras we looked all showed the inside of rooms. Not one of them showed us the hallways. If it did we might have thought about the first option a bit more. Apparently the thieves were too busy running around the halls checking the place out, instead of just sitting in their rooms, because there were a lot of them in the hall in front of us.
Kadlo from behind the body of a fallen thug, manages to hit one of the others causing a huge wound, but not enough to knock him out of combat. Kraig manages to fire a shot that kills one of the thugs. Kadlo meanwhile jams the heavy blaster he got off the guy upstairs, and to make matters worse drops it too. But Kraig manages to hit one of the other thugs with his blaster.
While Kadlo and Kraig were shooting it out, Ben ran up to the thieves and started swing his light-saber at them. In fact it appears that he even went right after one of the officers, based on the thief’s outfit. But the outfit was only impressive for so long, because Ben was able to tear a gash into not only the uniform but his body as well.
I was too busy being impressed by Ben's ability that I practically walked into a stray shot. The shot though brought my attention back to the battle at hand. With a clear mind I was able to blast the guy whose stray shot I had walked into. My shot was good enough to cause him to slump to the ground, in pain.
Meanwhile the higher-up Ben was engaged with was able to fire a shot off and hit Ben, but it doesn't hurt Ben that much. On the other hand Kadlo manages to get a shot off that blasts a hole clear through one of the thugs. Kraig also manages to hit a thug, but not for much damage. Ben having been knocked back a bit by getting hit, turns on the thug that Kraig hit, and swings his light-saber felling the thug. I then manage a hit on the same guy as before, but it doesn't do much to the guy.
Ben already knocked back suddenly gets a blaster shot right in the chest, that knocks him to the floor, and holding his chest where a bloody wound has appeared. Kadlo gets off a shot that kills one of the better dressed thugs, while Kraig manages to get a shot off at the higher-up thug doing some damage to him. Meanwhile I do my best to leap over the bodies and around the blaster fire to try and help Ben. By the time I get there Ben though is about ready to pass out, so I quickly tried to stop any more blood loss, and prevent him from going into shock.
Kadlo steps in front of me and Ben and fires his blasters at a thief killing him. While Kraig gets a hit in on one of the remaining thieves, and shouts for them to surrender. This only succeeds in causing one of the thugs to drop his weapon, and run back into the barracks.
While I continue to try and tend to Ben's injuries, the higher-up thug blasts Kadlo for some damage, while Kadlo fires his blasters at one of the thugs doing a fair amount of damage. Kraig once again hits a thug with a blaster shot and yells for him to surrender, but to no avail.
At this point Kadlo follows Kraig's notion of firing at the thugs and yelling for them to surrender. This doesn't seem to do much at first, but then the two reaming opponents suddenly duck into the barracks. This was a good thing because my blaster just ran out of energy, and Kadlo had dropped one of his blasters.
But before Kadlo and Kraig can chase after the thugs, the higher-up thug pokes out around the doorway and gets a shot off that hits Kadlo. Kadlo dives and picks up another body for cover, while Kraig manages to hit the thug, and yelling for him to surrender, which doesn't work.
Ben tries his best to pick up a thug's body to hide behind, but considering his wounds, doesn't succeed well and only causes himself to be knocked out when the body falls back on him. Seeing as how Ben is now stuck under a body, and passed out I decide I should take care of the problem at hand. I sneak up against the wall and begin to fire at the thug along with Kadlo and Kraig.
The fire fight lasts only a bit longer, but it does end in a manner we weren't expecting. The guy shot himself in the head. This is a shame, because if I hadn’t dropped my blaster at that moment I would have done it for him. Oh well, I guess it saves me some energy on my blaster.
With the fight over, Kraig ties up the remaining thugs, and begins to question them. Kadlo searches the body of the higher-up thug, who turns out to be the captain of the group. Figuring these are greedy thieves I check the pockets of the dead, and find some money.
From the interrogation, we learn that these people had been doing raids on the planet Likandry before they came to Saltrushia. But we don't get much more from them. Not having much to do with them now, we left them tied to their chairs in the barracks. Seeing as Ben's has stopped bleeding seriously we figure its best to leave him there until we search the base out. In one room we find a letter mentioning a meeting at the Lo-Di system in two months time, but that is it for the rooms in this area. We then head back to the hangar doors. With the floor of the hallway behind us still strewn with bodies, it doesn’t take much to convince the guards on the other side to surrender. Inside the hangar we find two Y-wings and three speeders. In one of the speeders I find a med-pack with which I go back and bring Ben out of his slumber. Kadlo and Kraig take the opportunity to go wander around the basement of the base, while I get Ben back on his feet. Once Ben is back on his feet he begins to search the bodies for any loot, and I go back and try and figure out which of the speeders I should take for myself. Ben wanting a souvenir decides to take the hat of the Captain-thief for himself and determines to wear it all the time.
Once Kadlo and Kraig return from the basement, we decide we should head back to the cities to let them know what was going on. While Kraig, Ben and I each take a speeder, Kadlo decides to take a Y-Wing back, as his personal trophy. When we do get back into the cities though, our speeders are confiscated. At least Ben and mine are confiscated, Kraig managed to change some records changed that made it appear his speeder was legit.
Despite having lost our speeders, we tell the mayors of each town what had happened. We then head back to the capital piled into Kraig's new speeder. When we get back to the capital, Ri-Salo-Do tells us that Kadlo was arrested for unauthorized flying of a fighter into capital airspace. Because of the paper-work involved it will be some time before Kadlo gets out of jail for that. It turns out to be a good thing, because that gives us time to rest up at the hospital and enjoy more of their good food.
- Saltrusha Log Entry #6
After a short stay in the hospital resting, we are invited to meet with Ri-Lani-Ro. So we make our way over to her offices, with out Kadlo, because he is still being detained. On the way there though, Kraig decides he cannot stand Ben in his new hat that he tries to steal it off Ben's head. Ben though manages to, for better or worse, stop Kraig from stealing his hat.
After the hat fiasco, we finally made it to the Senator's offices, and we led in to meet with her. While we waited for her to arrive, Kadlo was walked into the office wearing handcuffs. Apparently the paperwork hadn't been cleared up yet for his release. But when the Ri-Lani-Ro walks in the guards take Kadlo's handcuffs off, when she motions to them.
Ri-Lani-Ro begins by thanking us for our help in taking care of the raiders, as she calls them, in the outlying cities. With the raiders dealt with, she has been able to use that to give the boost she needed to finally ascend to the position of Ra of the Senate. Her first act as Ra was to put in front of the Senate a bill which would have Saltrushia become a member of the New Republic. But the other Senators will only vote on the bill if other systems in the Cron Drift join the New Republic as well. Apparently they don't want to stick their necks out too far on their own.
With that the Ra says that the other systems in the area could be persuaded to join the New Republic as easily as Saltrusha was. Especially since we have dealt with the raiders on this system, if we do the same for them, they probably would be willing to join the New Republic too. The best place to start would be the Likandry system, since they are being victimized by raiders as well.
Before she lets us leave though she would like one more bit of help. Apparently there are some Senators being bribed by local merchants and gamblers. The funny part was that she said this like we were supposed to be surprised by this. If we were to help in stopping the bribery, the bill might stand a better chance of getting passed. It seems that the Senators that are being bribed are the ones who are most vocal against the bill. So if we were to stop the bribes, they might not be as vocal against the bill.
As a reward for helping her out with these Senators, not only will it help pass the bill, but she might see her way to letting us keep the confiscated Y-Wing that Kadlo took, for a discounted price. Kadlo accepts the offer, which in doing so causes us to agree to help her with the bribery problem. I didn't point out to Kadlo that it could be perceived as her bribing him to do the job for her. Although that didn't stop me from asking her to let us keep a finder's fee of any of the money we find.
With the monetary parts of the job taken care of we decide to check out the two gambling establishments in the area. Ty-Osay and Ty-Onay, are the only two real establishments in the capital, and they both have an intense rivalry between them. It is understandable, considering the fact both are out to make money, if some one else is cutting into your market you'd be a little miffed too. Even more so when it is a lot of money in the market to be taken from the victims, I mean customers.
Kadlo and Kraig decide to go check out Ty-Osay, while I got stuck with Ben and heading over to Ty-Onay. Our trip to Ty-Onay was an event of mixed emotions. We first walked into the casino, and it was a nice and splendid place. The two of us saddled up to a gambling table, and I was about to place a wager at the table, when our old friend Roshan came up to us. He told us he had an interesting adventure that he had to tell us about, and he was on his way to Bixroba's when he saw us come into the Casino. So that was the good thing.
The bad part came when Ben in the excitement of seeing his old friend decided to "talk" about the adventure that Roshan had missed. It sort of went in typical Ben style like this;
Roshan, claps us on the back, "Hey guys long time no see! Have I got a story to tell you guys about."
Ben, "Roshan! Hey it is great to see you too. I've picked up something from the adventure you missed with us." Ben proceeds to pull out the heavy blaster he picked. "Check this heavy blaster out I picked up for you during our last adventure, isn't it awesome."
"Ahem, excuse me sirs," says the gruff voice of the security guard as he grabs Ben's hand that is waving the blaster around, "if you will please leave the premises." The please wasn't merely a formality since all three of us were promptly thrown out of the Casino. If it were not for the fact that Ben can be handy with his light-saber occasionally I'd almost say we should tie his hands together when we enter places that require some tact, poise or even maybe some common sense regarding weapons.
In either case we could only head back to Bixroba's and wait for Kadlo and Kraig to join us. When we did all get together, it turns out that Kraig somehow managed to get into a high-stakes Sabacca game with the boss of the Ty-Osay Casino. The draw back is that the initial entrance "ante", a.k.a. fee, was 2,500 saltos.
Not having that kind of cash, Kadlo tries to ask the senator for the cash, but doesn't get much. Failing that Kadlo tries to get some cash from doing three-card monty in the streets but doesn't manage much. In the mean time Kriag tinkers with his data-pad and comes up with a somewhat simple hack to help with his card game a bit. In the end Kraig and Kadlo can only manage to get 1,660 saltos together. I only gave have my money to them, because I try my best to not let anyone gamble with my money except me.
While Kraig takes Kadlo and Roshan to the game, I hang back and go to a Casino on my own, and manage to make-up a good deal of money on my own, and end up with about 1,750 saltos. Ben is left back at Bixroba's to think about how to act in such situations, where guns are a touchy subject.
After a while we all end up back at Bixroba's at about the same time. Kraig is nice enough to give me back my initial 150 saltos, and brags about how much he made. Kadlo takes some of the winnings and gives about 2,000 saltos to the Senator to pay back the small loan they gave us, and both Kadlo and Roshan take about 4,000 saltos each from the pot. Ben didn't get any because Kraig believes Jedi don't need money, which Ben seemed a little upset at hearing.
With some money in hand the group decides to spend the next night hanging out at Bixroba's bar. Ben and Roshan start the evening off by arguing over how things went down, in the sewers a few days back. Kraig steps out the door, and comes back in shortly there after while Ben and Roshan are still arguing, Kaldo just sits back and drinks. A little later in the evening, a lady walks in and sits down and chats with Kraig.
Having grown tired of the sewer argument, Roshan gets up and starts tap dancing, or does as best he can. Ben laughs at the dancing, as we all did, but Ben was a bit louder about it. Roshan turns on Ben and challenges him to a blaster duel. Ben smartly declines, but when Roshan insults Ben's pirate hat, Ben stands up and accepts the challenge.
The two of them turn around and put their backs together to begin pacing off, but being as drunk as they are it looks more like they are leaning against each other to stop from falling. Every time one of them would try for a step, the other would fall back on him and thus they ended up doing a strange drunken dance back to back for a few minutes. Finally when they were able to walk away from each they got to about ten paces, they both quickly turned on each other, and the duel was over. The turn was too much for either's sense of balance. Roshan actually made more of a half-circle instead of turn, and when he finished his half-circle he ended up with his face plastered into a column. As Roshan slowly slide down the column, with the help of snot greasing his slide, Ben swirled around not once but twice. Ben was on his way to making a third complete turn before he fired. Well I guess fired isn't the right term, more like vomited, but it was akin to projectile vomiting. I guess the Jedi, with the force have a bit more power than most, but the way Ben heaved up there was definitely some force behind it. Fortunately, no one was in the target range and things just hit a glass window.
I guess such vomiting takes a lot of energy out of Jedi, because Ben promptly passed out after that. So while Kraig finished his conversation with the lady I was picking Ben and Roshan up and taking them upstairs to their rooms to sleep the night off. Kadlo was kind enough to sit back and laugh and then talk with Kraig about his conversation with the lady.
The next morning, we all gather downstairs at the bar for breakfast, well maybe brunch by the time some of the group arrived. It turns out that Kraig had bought a map from the lady he chatted with the night before. In fact Kraig had spent a good deal of the night working on making the map 3-D, with nice little colorful symbols for the guards and security systems, of the Ty-Osay Casino. It just makes you wonder if the techie would have been able to put that much effort out during the night, if he didn't pay for the map from the lady in saltos, but other things. Then again, pushing buttons on a data-pad is totally different than pushing buttons on a female, but I don't think the techie understands that.
Apparently inside the Casino is a vault where they keep sensitive information on storage discs. Since the bribes they are giving to senators and other government officials would be considered sensitive information, it stood to reason that we should get into the vault. Once in the vault we retrieve the information and get it back to Ra-Lani-Ro, and will be done with our chore this time around.
Roshan strikes upon the great idea of getting a job at the Casino as a guard in order for us to have someone on the inside. After a few bumbling starts, Roshan manages to get a job and is paid well at 90 saltos a day for it too. Kraig once again begins to tap away at his data-pad again, and tries to come up with a hack for the security systems at the Casino. Kadlo wanders off muttering something about getting sleeping gas for the mission. While Ben and I just take the time to catch up on sleep and generally be lazy.
After a few days, Kraig manages to finish his little hack program, and gives it to Roshan, she it can be put into the Casino's systems. With Roshan on duty, the rest of us head to the Casino that night. Surprisingly enough, without Roshan's help Ben manages to sneak in his light-saber, Kadlo sneaks in the two canisters of gas, and I manage to sneak in my blaster.
Once inside, Kraig activates his little hack program which causes the security cameras to blink on and off. As the cameras go in out of action, Kraig and Roshan start up a noticeable conversation about how things are going. Meanwhile Kadlo gets Ben to wander over to one of the gambling tables across the room from the back hallway, and tells him to start a diversion. During which time I quietly make my way to the back hallway.
Once Ben is at the table, and Kadlo has made his way quietly over to the hallway entrance, Ben begins his distraction. Suddenly Ben points to the players at the table and shouts that he saw him cheat. As the player tries to make his case, Ben just gets louder about the fact he saw him cheating and starts yelling for security to show up. At this point Roshan quickly runs over to see what is going on. As Roshan tries to quiet both Ben and the player down, Roshan takes a swing at Ben and misses. Ben suddenly turns and takes a swing at the player. This causes a brawl to break out in the Casino.
With the distraction of the brawl, Kraig and Kadlo decide to charge down the back hallway. Not waiting to check for guards they actually get stopped by one, as I come up from behind the two of them. Kraig tries to stun the guard with his blaster and fails, and Kadlo being nervous or something fails to hit the guard either. The brief exchange of gun fire was ended when I blasted a hole in the guard.
I guess since the noise of the blaster fire probably set off some of the still working security systems, Kadlo and Kraig run to the elevator, to try and get down to the vault. I manage to get there just as Kraig gets the elevator to work. As I suspected we make at the bottom of the elevator we are greeted by two guards, both of which I had to dispatch.
Kraig then rushes into the office area, and comes across two guards and the Casino boss. One guard is quickly blasted by Kriag, Kadlo manages to hit the Casino boss quickly and hard enough for the boss to become stunned. The other guard meanwhile drops his gun and gives up.
With the office secure Kraig manages to hack into the system and get the vault open. I follow Kraig into the vault while Kadlo ties up the Casino boss and other guard. In the vault we find a huge stack of credits and other valuables. While I begin to start taking some of the valuables, Kraig starts looking through the old paper documents looking for information. Kadlo joins in and helps Kraig search through the paper documents looking for information as well.
Having found the information they needed, the two grab some of the valuables and head out of the casino. I quickly follow after stashing some more in my pockets. On the way out of the Casino we pick up Roshan and Ben who are scrounging through the remains of the brawl for anything they can find to keep as loot.
We all manage to make it back to Bixroba's where we are met by Rin-Salo-Do who wants to know what went on at the Casino. Kraig tries to pin the whole incident on Ben for starting a brawl. Saying if it weren't for Ben's brawl we would have had a peaceful solution that didn't require blasting anyone. Not really buying Rin-Salo-Do decides that a fine should be paid for the damages and generally disruption of the peace. Kadlo and Kraig each 15,000 saltos to Senate, leaving them with only about 5,000 saltos left of their haul. It would have been less, but Roshan had to mention I had given him 10,000 saltos once we got back, so Rin-Salo-Do was tipped off we had a lot of money. Luckily for me, even minus the 10,000 saltos and the 500 saltos I gave to Ben, who didn't blab, I still had a sizeable amount of money left.
With that having been taken care of, Kadlo uses the rest of his money to buy the Y-Wing from the Senator, not having enough I give him the remaining 6,500 saltos he needs to buy it. Kraig spends several weeks trying to build up his land-speeder, with new weapons sinking all his money into that, and with Roshan's help does an interesting job of it. During the month Roshan and Kraig work on the land-speeder, Ben is able to finally put his new light-saber together. Kaldo uses the time to train in his Y-Wing to become familiar with it, more to change to displays and button labels from Saltrushian to more common tongue he can read.
Me I take my time to find some good commodities to fill up our hold with. Finally I settle on Saltrushian Ale, and buy 500 Saltos worth and have it stored in our hold. The rest of my Saltos I leave with Bixroba, for safe keeping for when I need it. I figure it is best to leave the 3,000 saltos on the only planet where I can spend it. No use dragging it all along to another system where it can't be converted, this way I can use it for what I need on Saltrushia.
Ben took to the idea of buying some stuff to sell elsewhere. I believe at this point Ben had spent most of his thinking on putting together his light-saber, because Kadlo convinced him that Super-Bounce Balls were the thing to buy and sell. So Ben spent all his money on 5,900 Super-Bounce balls. Figuring that this would be a good time to make a bit more money, I tried to get Ben to pay a shipping fee on the space he was taking up with the ridiculous purchase. In the around about argument I think he used some Jedi mind trick, but I managed to owe him 50 credits a day for storing my Saltrushian Ale. Don't worry I think I can take care of that charge easily enough.
After spending a month's worth of time on things Kraig loaded up his land speeder, just barely on to our freighter. If it were any bigger we wouldn't have had room to store anything else, much less my cargo and Ben's. To make room, Kraig stuffed some of the Super-Bounce Balls into the Chaff tubes on the Freighter. Even at this point the land speeder was a really tight fit in the hold.
With everything on board we decided to begin heading out to the Likandry system, but before we did Roshan brought along a mousey Saltrushian named Nar-Ny who was with Roshan during his "undercover" mission, and was able to corroborate the story. Since Nar-Ny helped Roshan out we figured it couldn't hurt to have another member of the party so we let him tag along for the ride.
- Saltrusha Supplmental Log Entry by Kraig
So, I got stuck here on this backwater world after the Relentless left. No big deal. I'd found some new pals, garnered myself a speeder and might actually make it back to the Core Worlds sometime soon. Not too shabby.
However, in the meantime, Kadlo and I decided to scope out one of the casinos to see if Ri-Lani-Ro's suspicions were correct about the various casino owners. Hell, there may have even been some cash in it for me—my hard-drive seriously needed a new upgrade.
At any rate, I started on one of the sabbacc tables in one of the casinos under suspicion. After some wary rounds, I got lucky and ended up winning a nice pot—almost tripled my cash on a single flip of the cards. It's really a simple game of bluffing, only made somewhat complex by a timed randomizer system acting as a luck-switch.
Luckily for me, one of the regulars took a shine to me. After some sly talking from myself and Kadlo, I garnered an invite to the casino owner's 'back-room' games, where the stakes were substantially higher. The ante? 2k. Needless to say, neither of us had that kind of cash on us, so we decided to pay our friends a visit.
I didn't bother asking the Jedi for money. If he's anything like that Yoga fellow I read about in those Imperial files, he shouldn't need much in the way of credits. Charda, however, was a different story. He was a natural con-man—a good guy, but a fondness for hard coin. Unfortunately, the cheap piker only lent us 150 Saltos. Between Kadlo and I, that was still a far cry away from the 2000 ante we needed, much less the cash we needed to gamble with. Not having any other options, we took a trip to see Ri-Lani-Ro for a loan.
Luckily, the new Ra wanted to see these guys taken down pretty badly and fronted us a tidy sum. It put us over the ante fee, but didn't leave us much room to work with in terms of gambling. One lost hand and we'd be finished. We needed something to tip the scales, and I had just the plan.
After looking at those sabbacc tables in the casino proper, I started working on a project to give me the edge. Essentially, I started modifying a wireless transmitter so that it would be tuned to the frequency of the randomizing tablulature governing the shifter console. As long as I was careful in activating it, I could trigger a shift anytime I got a significantly bad hand, giving me another chance to pull my luck together. I could only hope that it worked. While my testing was thorough, I couldn't help but feel uneasy.
The next day came our shot. Taking Roshen and Kadlo with me to act as 'bodyguards', I kept up my appearances as a Corellian software designer who had some money to blow and a program he wanted to see on all the government computers on Saltrusha. After getting through security, we were escorted to an elevator, which led us down into the sub-basements beneath the casino.
I've been around some pretty swanky places in my day, but that place was positively off-the-wall: chandeliers everywhere, red carpet from wall to wall, and more honeys than I could count. I tell you, if I wasn't so busy trying to take down their boss, I'd have quite the time 'uploading some data' with them. Particularly that cute redhead…
Anyway, the security guards escorted us to a nicely furnished sabbacc table in one of the rooms of this underground palace. Several other Saltrushans were already there, and after some late arrivals the game was about to start.
My luck, in the beginning of the first round, was not what I needed it to be. In the game that would, almost definitely, define the rest of our conduct with the casino owner, I was blowing it. I didn't want to risk using my transmitter at the beginning, but as time went on, I was dealt such a crappy hand that I didn't have a choice. The game was on the line, and I needed a win.
Deftly, I slipped my hand in my pocket and forced a shift. After that, my luck began to change. I started gathering some useful cards and only needed to shift again once. At long-last, the high tension game came to the last deal. I needed a good hand, or our cash was gone.
Then, victory! A sweet, sweet pot was all mine—over 10k in all. Absolutely fantastic! We now had the cash we needed to continue gambling, as well as the opportunity to milk some of these cash cows for information….and some more cash, if the opportunity arises.
During the break and the second game, I managed to chat up some of the players and got some informal confessions as to how things were done around here. Yes, there was quite a bit of bribery going on in the senate, on the part of the various businessmen who wanted things done their way.
The second game was almost a mirror image of the first. I had bad luck at the beginning, but after a few shifts and a series of good cards, I pulled out a massive victory. Where we had only 2.5k coming in, we were now up to well over 25,000 Saltos—guess I could afford that new hard-drive after all! And, maybe I could afford something for my speeder, too. I felt like that Jim Bunt fellow from all those holo-cubes…speaking of, I wonder when the next Bunt movie is coming out, anyway?
The third game was somewhat lower in the stakes and didn't last as long. I ended up losing, but since the stakes were lower comparatively and I was already quite pleased, I didn't mind so much. We were still up by at least 18k, and we were garnering the information we needed.
However, we hit a snag. Mingling after the game, the casino owner pulled me and the boys aside. Just like the Bunt movies, he knew the whole while who we really were. Being somewhat up the slipstream without a hyperdrive, I decided to play hardball and cut him a deal: if he toned down his own bribery and that of his patrons, and gave us some information on his rival's actions, we'd make all the accusations against his rival, taking him out of the water.
Essentially, it was a win-win situation for both of us. He wouldn't have any charges against him and would have his rival conveniently removed from the competition. We would be following the Senator's request and would probably make a ton of cash in the meanwhile. Calling it a deal, the owner and I shook on it. He told us that we'd soon be contacted by a Mon Calamari woman with the specs on his rival's place. I have no problems with the fish-heads, but they're not really my type. I can't get over the smell.
Well, I guess Charda can tell you the rest of the story. He wanted me to write this, so I'll finish this up quick. I paid back the smarmy bugger exactly as much as he paid us, and paid both Roshen and Kadlo handily. Roshen hung onto his cash, while Kadlo ended up buying one of the Y-wings that Ri-Lani-Ro was offering. Me? Well, I ended up taking a trip back to the casino owner and managed to procure two heavy blasters configured for my speeder. Oh, and my hard-drive? Yeah…a sweet upgrade. Life is going well, and it looks like I'm going to be the new pilot off of this rock, once we're done.
Captain Kraig Tor-Shaneel of the Discordia...I like the sound of that!