Star Wars: Flames of Hope IC

Celoac at night is almost peaceful.

Assuming you lived on a Forge world before, anyway. The Forge stretches deep into the planet, opening a hole ten kilometers wide and stretching down deep into the planets mantle. Materials are harvested from the planet, and the massive machines and factories in the Forge convert the minerals into… well, no one is quite sure what the Forge makes. But make things it does, loading them onto transports that come and go at all times of day and night.

On one such night, a figure is running across the rooftops of Qeron. As they run, they leap from building to building. Behind them, three more figures are running, giving chase. As they leap over a heat exchanger atop one of the buildings, one the chasers raises a wrist, and a dart flies out, silently propelled on a jet of compressed gas. The dart misses its mark, embedding in the ferrocrete material of the rooftop. The chase continues, until, at last, one of the darts strikes home, and the figure trying to evade their pursuers falls to the street below.

* * *

Day breaks out. The Forge is still hard at work. And Qeron comes to life. People begin to get themselves ready for work. People are heading to work. Street vendors are setting up their shops and starting to cook their foodstuffs for sale to the variety of beings who live and make their livings in the city.

And, perhaps most unusually, the usual patrols of Sith troops are reinforced by a half dozen of the battle droids the planet has to be able to maintain order.

Morning Routine: dress, eat, set blaster to stun, holster blaster, head out to the local bounty board, see what if any bounties look like they are worth taking, meet up with the rest of the party to discuss plans.

Kir Mondlo woke up that morning like he did every morning: climbed out of the uncomfortably small bed in his tiny apartment that he was being charged way too much for, ate some cheap breakfast, put on his permanently-stained technician coveralls (though at least they made it easy to hide his blaster pistol under them) and walked to work.

Seems like today was going to be more repairs and trying to cobble together components salvaged from less fortunate droids to make the few reasonably-valuable ones sellable. Like usual.

Qeron in the daytime always reminded Charra of her teenage years. The hustle and bustle of a working class neighborhood, all while armed guards looked on in a mix of boredom and annoyance. There was also something disturbing about it; everywhere else Charra had ever lived had possessed a sort of intimacy, carried through the familiar conversations of passing relatives or the passionate arguments of lovers and friends. Well, not passionate by foreign standards, but Pantoran passion was certainly of a different breed. Qeron, in contrast, was a place of passing by. A liminal space where it wasn’t just the armed guards trying to burn time as fast as possible, but really almost everyone. Perhaps that was the problem with living on such a cosmopolitan planet. Perhaps that was the problem with living on such an authoritarian planet.

As usual, Charra suppressed her urge to run off at the sight of bounty hunters, and tried to keep a brisk pace towards her destination. The faster her business, the faster she could get out of here.