[SWSE] Dawn of Defiance: Legacy (OoC)

[Greymane]

Hey Redshaw, Dent, here's the out of character thread we'll use for the game!

Since we didn't do an active recruitment thread, I'll put the crunch here. We'll start the game proper when everyone is ready.

As I said before, the characters are expected to oppose the Empire in some fashion, or at least dislike them. There's very few requirements other than that. The Han Solo types who just want their money and to be on their way are fine too. If someone wants to be a secret imperial agent or something, that's fine, but talk with me about it first and we'll work something out.

Spoiler: The Big 16 (Because tradition!)

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What game system are you running (D&D, Call of Cthulu, Palladium, GURPS, etc.), and if applicable what edition (Original, Classic, Revised, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 10th, etc.)?
Star Wars Saga Edition

What 'type' or variant of game will it be (i.e. "Shadow Chasers" or "Agents of Psi" for d20 Modern)? What is the setting for the game (eg. historic period, published or homebrewed campaign setting, alternate reality, modern world, etc.)?
The Dark Times

How many Players are you looking for? Will you be taking alternates, and if so, how many?
Just you two. Maaaybe PersonofJid.

What's the gaming medium (OOTS, chat, e-mail etc.)?
Right here on these boards.

What is the characters' starting status (i.e. experience level)?
1st level.

How much gold or other starting funds will the characters begin with?
Average starting wealth. Say you rolled the average each time. A Jedi starts with 3d4x100 Credits, so they would start with 750 credits. (2.5 + 2.5 + 2.5)

Are there any particular character classes, professions, orders, etc. that you want... or do not want? What are your rules on 'prestige' and/or homebrewed classes?
Any of the classes are acceptable.

What races, subraces, species, etc. are allowed for your game? Will you allow homebrewed races or species? 'Prestige' races or species?
Anything in the Star Wars universe is fine with some very few exceptions. No Vong or Chiss. Non-humans will suffer stygma in Imperial-controlled areas unless they're very near-human in appearance.

By what method should Players generate their attributes/ability scores and Hit Points?
32-point buy

Does your game use alignment? What are your restrictions, if so?
I will be keeping track of Dark Side points. If someone goes full Dark, I may or may not NPC the character, depending on the nature and circumstances of the fall.

Do you allow multi-classing, or have any particular rules in regards to it?
Multiclassing works as described in the core book.

Will you be doing all of the die rolling during the course of the game? Will die rolls be altered, or left to the honor system? If players can make die rolls, which ones do they make, how should they make the rolls, and how should they report them?
Gonna say use the forum dice roller.

Are there any homebrewed or optional/variant rules that your Players should know about? If so, list and explain them, or provide relevant links to learn about these new rules.
See below.

Is a character background required? If so, how big? Are you looking for anything in particular (i.e. the backgrounds all ending up with the characters in the same city)?
I like backstories. I won't make anything mandatory, but the more backstory you have, the more tools you give me for nefarious ends.

Does your game involve a lot of hack & slash, puzzle solving, roleplaying, or a combination of the above?
This is a pre-built module. It's linear, but has a very classic Star Wars feel to it. Heroic, with the occasional piece of intrigue and grittiness. There's space battles, a few puzzles, and a little bit of intrigue. I'll be spicing it up as well.

Are your Players restricted to particular rulebooks and supplements, or will you be allowing access to non-standard material? What sources can Players use for their characters?
I have a lot of the books for Saga, All of it is freely available to players*. The primary sources *I* will be pulling from will be the Core book, The Force Unleashed Campaign Guide, and Scum and Villainy.

*Subject to change, if I think something has gotten out of hand.

Spoiler: House Rules

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Solders receive Persuasion and Stealth as class skills, as suggested by the author of the core book.

Skill Focus: Use the Force cannot be taken until level 7.

Force Lightning cannot be chosen as a force power at first level.

Players begin play with one additional feat or talent of their choice that they meet the prerequisites for.

Force Points will regenerate at a rate of 1 per 1/4th your character level per Long Rest (8 hours of uninterrupted rest)

Dark Side points can only be removed via the use of Force Points once per level.

I'm not 100% sure on these house rules. We'll play it by ear and see how things go.

[Redshaw]

Spoiler: Ylva Artis

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Every sentient individual in the galaxy that is or was has a song. It isn’t a song that anybody else crafted. The song has its own unique melody, and its own unique words. Very few people get to sing their own song. Most of us fear that we cannot do it justice with our voices, or that our words are too foolish or too honest, or too odd. So people live their songs instead. Take Ylva, for example. Before the loss of her home and her family, her song, which had been somewhere in the back of her head for most of her life, had a reassuring, marching sort of beat, and words that were about protecting the weak, and it had a chorus that began “Evildoers beware!” and was thus much too silly to ever be sung out loud. She would hum it to herself sometimes though, during meditation.

Selected by the Jedi temple for training at an early age, Ylva left her Kiffar clan to train in the ways of the Force, as all jedi do. Rather than train on Coruscant, the Jewel of the Galaxy, however, she went to the isolated temple of Almas. Almas; a molten rock of a planet, its atmosphere perpetually polluted by naturally released methane and phosphorous, so much so that the night sky is starless, with a mute terrain defined solely by flat, colorless grasslands and endless, lifeless wastelands. But beneath it all, Almas had a secret.

An ancient holy site built and dedicated to the Sith mired the planet and its inhabitants with the Dark Side of the Force for centuries until the jedi came to quiet the ancient ghosts. A Jedi temple was erected from the ruins; a place of secrets and of healing. The temple served as a satellite for the Order, keeping watch over the ghosts of the path, and training recruits to continue the endless watch. Found by one of Almas’ alumni, Ylva was selected to be one of these watchers, raised and trained in the jedi arts. That is, before the Dark Times.

Ylva was a unique student at Almas in that she was accepted at such a young age at a temple which was unique in that it took in students often considered “too old” for training by the masters of Coruscant. Still, she lived and breathed the Jedi Order, as all temple children do, defined by her daily activities and memorization of the code and, like all temple children, it took a few years before the unique shapes of her personality took form. With age, Ylva found it more and more difficult to pay attention in her ancient jedi lore classes, and found more solace in lightsaber drills with Almas’ Mistress of Blades, Master Devan For’deschel, a former padawan of the eminent Master Mace Windu. She grew hungry to see the stars beyond Almas’ permanently opaque atmosphere, and the lush forests of other planets shown in her Holovids. She came to be a fan of the thumping, frenetic beats of Glimmick music – an indulgence that didn’t amuse her masters as much as it might have if she didn’t insist on it being played publically and loudly during her voluntary blade training sessions.

Ylva's apprentice trials came and through hard work and patience, she overcame them. She was allowed to be selected as a padawan and, to her great pleasure, the Blade Mistress herself chose to take Ylva under her tutilage. Under Master Devan, Ylva's already natural skill with the lightsaber exceeded to new heights, quickly earning her responsibilities as a senior student among the new initiates in saber training. But all the saber drills in the universe could not fill the sense of futility growing in her heart.

Alone in the quiet Almas system, Ylva’s primary exposure to the greater galaxy was found in the archives, which contained nothing recent, and spotty Holonet connections. At best, her view of the galaxy at large was through the eyeglass of a kaleidoscope. The start of the Clone Wars, however, turned this desire into something dangerously near an obsession. She checked for news of the war hourly on the Holonet, looking for signs that the violence might be headed toward Almas, though her teachers insisted time and again that their location was too remote, too secret, to draw the attention of the CIS. And when Jedi Knight Darrus Jeht, a former Almas student, came to the temple to request volunteers to return with him to Coruscant, to be trained in war, Master Devan explicitly forbade it. Ylva’s discipline and loyalty rung true and she did not disobey her master. Though she didn’t know it then, Ylva’s life was saved that day by Almas’ Blade Mistress.

While training, Ylva had a brief brush with a dead spirit of the Dark Side that inhabited an artifact she found on the planet's surface. It tempted her with promises of power and ability and though she was briefly tempted, the padawan showed remarkable resilience in turning down the spirit's promise and turning the artifact over to her masters.

Ylva remained on Almas through the duration of the Clone Wars. While previous jedi trainees her same age had been permitted to forage out in the galaxy, under the guide of a master, to experience the universe and complete tasks assigned by the Council, such was not the case of Ylva. Due to the incendiary nature of the war and Almas’ neutral position, she was instead forced into isolation on a planet with no outside communication, nor even stars to look upon. Ylva grew complacent in her studies and her fervor for the Order began to waver. She slowly came to resent Master Devan, for forbidding her the opportunity to leave for Coruscant and continue her training. She felt as though she were stagnating and that all her years of training – her entire life – were to be for little more than sit on some dusty old tomes, left by a long-dead enemy.

How wrong she was.

War did come to Almas, but not in Trade Federation droid carriers. Days before the execution of Order 66, a horde of bloodthirsty pirates and mercenaries broke the planets smoke-polluted atmosphere, landing on the temple’s door step. They outnumbered the handful of jedi a hundred to one, but it was not the mercenaries that were the true threat. They were led by a man – a dark apprentice – who wielded a red lightsaber and the Dark Side of the Force. The apprentice carved a swath through the temple, fighting and single handedly defeating the temple’s two ancient head masters, demanding only one thing: the location of the sith holocrons. Ylva, headstrong and outraged at the invasion, was prepared to fight and die, though Devan stopped her. In a few quiet words, she gave her apprentice a small holocron along with the explanation that “under absolutely no circumstances could the dark jedi lay his hands on it.” No instructions on where it was to be taken or what the nature of the holocron was; simply a directive. A holy task, as a Guardian of the Almas Temple. In fact, a last wish: Devan then left Ylva to fight the man, buying her apprentice time to escape. Devan died, though unfortunately in vain.

In her attempt to escape the planet, young Ylva was caught by the mercenaries guarding the docking bay and brought before the Dark Apprentice, who identified himself as Garth Ezzar. She was interrogated and tortured in ways only capable by the Sith, but she passed the Trial of Flesh and Courage in a way that any Master would be proud. She managed to hide the holocron before her capture and resisted every attempt to glean the secret from her, at great sacrifice. But Ezzar was not a wise man. He did not kill the stubborn padawan, instead deciding to feed his vanity by returning to Coruscant with her. He underestimated Ylva, in her wounded condition, and so when the time came for him to leave Almas, he found her cell empty and her guards dead.

She escaped Almas on Garth's own ship. To her great discomfort, however, she found the artifact containing the Sith spirit on board.

Precious cargo in hand, wounded beyond recognition, Ylva is on the run like a panicked animal. She flees from star system to star system, never staying in one place long, constantly looking over her shoulder for the nightmarish silhouette of Ezzar, and seeking clues of living jedi – though she doesn’t know where to start.

Spoiler: A Jedi and Her Code

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Emotion, yet Peace

“A jedi’s lightsaber is his life, younglings.” Master Devan For’deschel kept a grim expression behind pale, grey eyes. “It is an extension of both their body and their will, a galactically recognized symbol of their authority, and a tool for their defense and the defense of others.” She commanded the room and its students with quiet words and disciplined rhetoric. “It is not a toy. It is not a weapon.” The academy’s battlemaster was missing an arm from the shoulder down, replaced by a robotic prosthetic and no one dared to ask what happened to the original.

“In my class, you will not ignite your lightsaber without my instruction. Your lightsaber will not contact anything without my instruction. In my class, you will learn the skills to use your lightsaber, but as your other Masters will teach you, your saber is more effective when on your belt than in your hand.” The master’s grey eyes moved across the room, catching the uncomprehending eyes of her students.
“Keep both hands on the grip. Tip pointed directly up… You may ignite them now.”

Ylva had never seen something so perfectly blue in her entire life. The heat and purity of the blade washed over her skin like the water of a perfectly warm bath. The hum of her lightsaber was like a lullaby that calmed every bit of anxiety that she held in heart up to this moment. Ylva did not take to meditation; she was too restless. She did not take to lore studies; she was too impatient. She did not fit in with the other students; she was too young. But here, she belonged. She felt the life of the crystal within the handle thumping like a heartbeat, slowly coming into sync with her own. She was entranced. She was in love.

“We’ll begin with your first Sequence. One of hundreds. Try to keep up.”

Ylva’s smile had never been so bright.

Ignorance, yet Knowledge

Ylva exhaled, closing her eyes, and felt the warmth move through her body. The Force was a living thing and though she was intimately familiar with its presence, it always manifested differently to her senses. Sometimes it was a tepid water that brought relief and peace, other times it was an electric shock to the system, that honed her alertness and tightened her reflexes. Today, as she worked through her forms for the sixth contiguous hour that day, it came to her as a cool breeze scented by Ithorian roses. Footwork, pirouette, over hand, slice, more footwork, feint, backstroke. The repetition was beaten into her harder than Mandalorian iron; she communicated in martial forms and expressed herself in the battle cadence.

As she passed the hours, Master For'deshcel observed from a meditation pose. "A saber master does not practice 10,000 different forms. A saber master practices the same form 10,000 times." Ylva was was 16 now, and a padawan’s braid hung loose from her dark, plated hair. She had passed her trials and was selected by Almas’ own Battlemaster, Devan For’deshcel. She was a strict tutor with high expectations, who made up for a lack of compassion with a wealth of information and a firm anchor to tie one’s discipline to.

Ylva released a bellowing kiai as she culminated with a back step, Force-aided leap up into a somersault and double-handed Avalanche Fall. But where Ylva's blade should have stopped exactly one meter above the ground, it instead met the ignited blue blade of her master. With a single hand, For'deschel pivoted and forced Ylva's double-handed grip up and back, "Sloppy. Master Windu would most likely have you expelled for a show like that." With grimace and a little forced swallowing of pride, the padawan disengaged her blade, killing its power, and assumed a kneeling position in front of Almas' blade mastress, head bowed to the floor. For'deschel looked down at the show of humility with grim seriousness. "Never show your back. Never take more actions than absolutely necessary. You claim you wish to learn the secrets of Vaapad, but at every opportunity, you refuse to show restraint." Ylva did not move; she had learned long ago that her master had little interest in apologies. With a sigh, For'deschel stepped back, disengaging her own saber and clipping it back into the folds of her robe.

"Again."

Passion, yet Serenity

Ylva grunted as she raised her hands and focused her concentration. Sweat poured down her forehead, salting her eyes, but she was too frustrated to notice the annoyance. Her teeth ground together and the boulder shakily lifted up out of the ground into thin air, dirt and pebbles falling off it. Ylva twisted her hands and lunged her body, sending the boulder hurtling into a grounded rock, creating a satisfying crack. She always came to the abandoned quarry for alone time. There were plenty of rocks to smash and no masters to judge her emotional releases.

Why couldn't Master For’deschel understand? The galaxy was at war! Keeping the peace was what the Jedi were meant for and guarding old, dusty tombs was no job for protectors of the galaxy, not a true jedi. It might be fine for older masters, or even the Explorer Corps, but she was young and and talented and strong! She knew she was meant for great things and nothing great ever happened on Almas. Since the war started, she hadn't even been allowed to leave the planet. Other padawans her age were exploring the galaxy, righting wrongs, defeating battle droids, restoring order!

Stretching her arms out wide and spreading her legs, while bending the knees into a position of sturdiness, both her hands lifted up. Two more boulders lifted out of the rubble pile she created, ascending up into the air, orbiting one another harmoniously. Even when Master Jeht, another former padawn of Mace Windu, just like Devan, came to Almas, seeking padawans to take back to Coruscant, Devan forbade it. How could her master be so ignorant about the events of the galaxy? This war was bigger than an old tomb, bigger than all the jedi on Almas. It wasn’t just a war for unification, it was a war for the soul of the galaxy!

The boulders drew closer in orbit and grow faster in their rotations. They circled and circled and circled at a mesmerizing speed until Ylva clapped her hands and they smashed together, raining down broken rock and dirt.

“Padawan…”

Ylva stopped and turned to stare at the rubble pile. She felt something. A presence, but not a person. A voice in her mind, so quiet, so brief, she was uncertain it was there to begin with. She turned to leave for the temple, when she heard the voice again. “Padawan!” Some…thing in the rubble was calling to her. She returned to the quarry pile, closed her eyes and reached out for the presence with her mind. Before she knew what was happening, her legs carried her towards the rubble as she used the force to clear away rocks and dust. She removed the last layer of soil with her hands, revealing a very old, but remarkably intact metal bracelet. It was… beautiful, with intricate designs of tribal patterns and precious stones inlaid on its face.

She touched it and, with the Force and her Kiffar heritage, she felt for its origins. Her body shuddered as a series of images ran through her mind’s eye: dark students with dark purposes, ancient blood rituals, the glow of red lightsabers. She felt the presence wrap around her mind like a diagona’s tentacles, pulling her into the deep with every intention to suffocate and consume. It promised her power, it promised her the ability to bring peace to the galaxy, it promised to make her the greatest among all the jedi.

She gasped and released the bracelet, which clattered harmlessly on the ground. Stepping away instinctively, Ylva stared down at the artifact as though it had somehow burned her. She exhaled slowly, using the jedi technique to empty herself of emotion and kneeled onto the ground in front of the bracelet. After an hour of consideration and meditation, Ylva stood, tentatively picking up the artifact, taking care to guard her mind, and walked back to the temple.

For all the temptation and frustration built up in her, Master For'deshcel's strict teachings rang true. A Jedi’s duty was to the code and to the temple. Nothing more.

Chaos, yet Harmony

Tears streamed down Ylva’s face. Master Devan, the temple, her home, her life. All ashes.

They had come in the hundreds, pirates, mercenaries, cut throats. They broke down the temple doors, killed the knights, slaughtered the younglings. Ten marauders fell for every jedi that was killed, but the numbers were too many. And then there was him. A man in black with pale skin and a red lightsaber.

The heat, the pain, the hate. She releases another gurgling scream as his saber burns away another layer of flesh from her shoulder. He had tossed her into a pit, in the underground tunnels of her ruined home. It was pitch black in the cavern, save for the glow of his crimson lightsaber. He tossed her into this empty pit with naught but the skin on her back and the memory of her master’s death. He turned the power settings of his lightsaber to low and followed her into the dark, where he could taunt and injure her endlessly, without maiming, for hours. There were no questions, no interrogation; all she could gleen from this activity was entertainment for this murderer. Down here, he mocked her, threatened her, but never killed her. She resisted him, in the dark, fighting him with technique and evasion to the best of her abilities. Then she fought him with stubbornness to the point of exhaustion. For three days this continued, the beating of her body, the stripping of her will. For three days she danced with the dark side, wishing for his death and for her own. On the fourth day, she succumbed to exhaustion, unable to fight back as she had before. He came for her and found her kneeling on the floor in a meditation pose, ready to accept death. He asked her, finally, “where is the holocron?”

So that was why he kept her alive. It would have been easy to succumb, so easy. To admit a small truth and finally be granted release from the life she was growing to cherish less and less. But the memory of her brothers and sisters prevailed, and the promise to her master, but most of all, the Code. To live by the Code was one thing, but to die by the Code was another. She discovered, almost to her surprise, that she was prepared to do both.
“Keep it secret, Ylva. Keep it safe. Take it to the Jedi. May the Force be with you.” Devan’s final words to her her padawan before giving her the tiny, impossibly valuable artifact, and then leaping into battle with the Dark Apprentice. Ylva could not bare to leave until after she saw Devan fall. A fatal error, for it meant the master had died in vain and Ylva herself was captured, though not before she managed to hide the holocron.

His question was answered not with a look of pure defiance, but calm acceptance, contrarily bathed in the glow of a hateful red lightsaber. He sneered, forced the tip of his blade against her cheek, burning through flesh and then ripping the blade across the face, cutting skin and charcoaling muscle. She screamed, she convulsed, she fell into unconsciousness, but she remained victorious.

Death, yet the Force

“Padawan…”
Ylva recognized the voice, but it came from no physical form. A presence. A presence she had not felt for years. Someone… no, something. It called to her from the dark, roused her out of unconsciousness. “Padawan, the time has come.”
Every movement was pain, but it only served to wake her sluggish mind. Her vision slowly came to – she could only see out of one eye, but it was enough. She was in the medic quarters, under a dim light, accompanied by a rusty 2-1B droid who hummed monotonously as it stepped across the surgery floor. She recognized the droid as “Cutter,” who tended to her and many other padawan’s wounds for time immemorial.

“Get up…” It whispered. Ylva groaned in pain and protest to the voice. All she wanted to do was sleep for the rest of her life. “GET. UP!” It screamed, flooding the girl’s systems with adrenaline. Ylva sat up. She knew this presence. She knew it wasn’t to be trusted, and yet...

The dark apprentice had underestimated Ylva. The weak minded guards at the entrance were easy to deceive. She stole their clothes and limped through the rubble-covered halls of her home with little difficulty… a little too easily, in fact. But she was not without counsel. The voice… the presence, seemed to know the guard locations even before she could detect them. It warned her, it kept her safe. She eluded her home’s occupiers, recovered the holocron she’d hidden, and made for the hangar bay. The ship was black and sleek and beautiful. It would suit her purposes perfectly.

There were no guards, the security was disabled, the engines were warmed… it was almost as if the ship had been prepared just for her. It carried her off Almas and into the great, black unknown. Stopping in the referesher to clean the blood and mud of her hands, Ylva finally could see the physical results of the Dark Apprentice's torture. She looked at her reflection and a grotesque stared back. She would have vomited were she not so very exhausted. She collapsed in the ship’s private quarters, but before she finally allowed herself to rest, she noticed two things on the bed stand: a lightsaber with a blade emitter on each end and a beautiful, ornate bracelet with tribal marks.

Spoiler: Character Art

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Mythweavers Sheet

[Dent-2020]

Hey Greymane!

Allow me to begin by saying I'm very sorry for how long this took - Redshaw says that when he told you I'd finally gotten my character build done you had thought we'd just given up on playing, and I feel so *awful* about that. I promise to be prompt with posts once the game actually launches.

I hope you like what I've written, and I hope it gives you plenty of material to play with in the future. I left a number of things with ambiguous fates, so you might choose to bring them back at later times, if you wanted.

And if you don't like it, you can always kill off the character in the first session... but then I'd have to create someone completely new...

Spoiler: Coal Sere - Boom Goes the Detonite

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We have opened a new mine shaft outside of Telka – you may not remember the city; your mother and I took you there to see the Last Forest when you were four. When I come home, perhaps we will go there again.

This new mine is a marvel of technology; I could not feel safer if I was in my own bed. I have grown fond of the Union foreman on the site. He is very concerned for the well-being of those he manages, listening and responding quickly to our concerns. He has invited me and some others to play Sabaac each day at the end of the work shift. There is talk of holding a tournament on our next rest day, and the foreman thinks he can obtain a Dejarik table, if there is enough interest.

If there is any consolation for my presence here, it is that we are fed very well; there is none of the privation in the mining camps that we have seen in the cities. Last night we were given seared nerf steaks, with a sauce of stewed muja, and I thought I would burst by the time I had finished it. I often take my meals to the top tier of the mine and enjoy them by the light of the magma river there; it is a truly beautiful sight, and a pity I cannot share it with you.

You needn’t worry for me.

With all my love,

Babba

The letter had appeared on Coal’s datapad at school that morning; the first thing he had heard from Babba since the Techno Union peacekeepers had taken him nearly three months before. He had rushed home to show it to Yaya that afternoon in a fit of glowing excitement, but when he read his father’s words to her, she had only cried.

It was his tenth birthday.

---

“They’re building a statue of Tambor outside the Justice building,” he said, leaning in to peer at the wiring that Yaya held in her claw-like fingers. It was hard to see; the room was only dimly lit by a few half-charged light panels, as the Techno Union had begun rationing power to the city. All available output was needed for the operation of the new B-1 battle droid factories, they said. For the good of Metalorn, and the advancement of the Union, they said. Coal wasn’t really sure why the advancement of the Union should matter to him, except that people seemed to think Metalorn was part of it now. There was some amount of disagreement on that point in the streets, though.

Lack of light hardly hindered his Gran, in any case; she said that she had been building self-destruct features for droids and weapons since she was a young woman, and that this was much the same, just outside of a droid’s casing panels, which actually made it easier.

“Oh? And are they going ta gi’ it his great honking nose, as weel?” She asked, sounding genuinely curious.

“What? No, he – he’s a Skakoan, Yaya,” Coal said, wondering whom she must be thinking of, since it couldn’t be Wat Tambor. “He’s always wearing that gigantic pressure suit.” He gestured with his arms up to cover his nose and mouth, and gave her a fixed stare in his best impression of a Skakoan, in an attempt to illustrate. “I’m no even sure he’s got a nose, actually.”

“Hmpf. He does. And it’s a great honking one, elsewise he wouldna wear that idiotic mask to cover it all the time.” She said, sounding resolute, though he could see her lips trembling in paroxysms of held-back mirth. “Now, hand me that coupler, and the Gizka paste.”

“And what’s that paste for, then?” He asked. Of all the components she had asked him to track down for her – he had spent the last few weeks digging through the waste heaps behind the factory - the Gizka paste had possibly been the most difficult item to track down. The last thing most people wanted, on top of the rationing by the Techno Union, was to find their food supplies half-ruined by an infestation, and he hadn’t been able to find anyone who would part with their meagre supply until he had thought to ask one of the ship’s captains at the port. It had only cost him an afternoon spent combing the man’s ship for mynocks, and when he had discovered and cleaned out the carbon scoring on the underside of the navigational array without being asked, the man had told him to call in a favor, ‘anytime.’ Coal still wasn’t sure how he wanted to spend this treasure, and was presently in mind of hoarding it. Captain Janik hauled cargo for the Union, and said he could be found at the docking bay every few days. It could wait.

Yaya’s face took on a closed expression. “It’s an anticoagulant.”

Coal liked to think he knew an awful lot of big words. Babba was a teacher, or he had been, before. But he didn’t recognize that one.

She had been reaching across the table for the pressure sensor, her gnarled fingers fumbling blindly, but she paused now to look at him. She had a heat in her eyes that he hadn’t seen there since Babba had been taken from the school, nearly three years before, like a raw river of molten ore that seared him to see.

“Ye’re getting older,” she said, reaching out to brush her hand along his jawline, where the bones of his face were beginning to show, thin and angular, the soft roundness of childhood now a fading memory. “Do you know what it is, to be a man?”

He thought that it might have something to do with taking the trash out before being asked, and might have said so had the fierce look in her eyes not made him reconsider.

“It means,” she said, “drawing lines, and fightin’ back anybody who dares tae cross them.”

“And how would you know?” he asked, teasingly.

“Because I’ve raised three of the poor wretches before, ye wee smartass.” She replied, sitting back in her seat and crossing her arms over her withered chest. “And because being a woman’s nae so different, though people like to claim ‘tis.

"They crossed yer father’s line faster than most; ye can choose where ye draw yer lines, but ye canna choose when others will cross them, or when ye mun fight ‘em off. He saw where this was heading, and he fought them with words. And now they have polluted my home, taken my son, half-starved me, and each day I see them stealing the future away from you, Balachan, and I find they have crossed my line too. But I’m no fighting them with words.”

She held up the pressure switch, “Now, d’ye remember where this'n goes?”

He took it from her and carefully fused the connections to the rest of the device, his fingers sure and steady. “Do we arm it now?”

“No.” Her eyes widened in alarm and she batted his hands away from the assembled detonator brusquely.

“Why not?”

She cackled. “Because I’ve eight fingers left to me, and I mean to keep them.”

---

“I hear they’re calling it the Unreal City, and they say as you may see it from space.”

“Hmpf. You can’t see shist on Metalorn from space – not through the clouds in the upper atmosphere. Maybe you’d see the glow of the lights. If it was on the night side of the planet. And you were looking.” Janik scoffed, watching Coal unload crates from his ship. Janik imported food from Correlia, and exported a cargo of B-1 Battle Droids every few weeks. Except the agro imports didn’t happen every trip, and sometimes his hold was already half-full of Verpine parts, if he had made a stop on Roche before moving on to Metalorn. This week there was some food. Coal kept an eye on where the crates were being taken, in case Alban wanted to risk liberating them later.

“Where is it they’re all goin’?” Coal asked, indicating the stick of B-1s that a loader droid was preparing to move into Janik’s hold. “It canna all be to the same buyer – they’d hae enough to populate a planet by now.”

Or take one over, he thought darkly. That wasn’t how the Techno Union had taken Metalorn, though. Alban said it had all started a long while back, when prospectors had found the Cortosis vein under the rainforests outside Telka. None of the corporations on the planet had had the technology to get to the stuff then, though, so the planetary senators had signed a trade treaty with the Techno Union. That was all the official story, but Alban said the Union had bought the government, really, then they had simply replaced it. Emigration was denied. The B-1 factories had opened, then the Cortosis mines. They began controlling production output, then imports and exports. Anyone who disagreed tended to disappear. Anyone left was forced to work in the factories or mines for a bare subsistence on ration tickets.

Of course, they’d talked about it in school a little differently.

“Hrm?” Janik barely looked up from the log on his datapad. “Oh, they go all over. Outer Rim, mostly. Thought anymore about that marker I owe you?”

Janik always asked this when Coal came to find work with him. Four years on and Coal still hadn’t decided. He knew when someone was trying to change the subject, though, and let it happen. It wouldn’t do to seem too interested.

“Oh, I’ve been thinking that what I’d really like is an Eopie calf. I could melk it.” He staggered under the weight of a large crate of radni, and dropped it onto the grav sled with a groan. “An’ maybe charge for rides?”

“Fresh out of Eopie.” Janik grunted, his eyes a dark scowl over the pitted crags of his face as he scrolled down his inventory.

“Hell. Well, s’pose I’ll hae to keep thinking.”

Janik chuckled. “Hmpf. Sounds difficult… Hey kid, beat it!” His face changed suddenly to something like righteous indignation, and he charged Coal, waving his datapad wildly as though trying to shoo a pest.
Coal glanced quickly over his shoulder and saw two peacekeepers entering the hangar. He ducked under Janik’s next enormous swing, conveniently aimed several inches above Coal’s head, and careened Janik into the rack of B-1s with enough force to knock the entire loading stick over, scattering the droids inert compacted bodies all around the ramp. He hoped the old spacer wouldn’t mind too much. He turned and hurtled over the grav sled, then ran from the Port like there was molten durasteel under his feet.

These near-misses were beginning to come too frequently.

He was forced to take a longer route than usual back to Yaya’s small apartment off Foundry square, ducking through a side tunnel that always smelled of piss and rancid ‘fresher wine, and was in a foul mood as a result. The streets were crawling with peacekeepers, seeming, in that way peculiar to inconveniences of every kind, to grow in density the closer he came to his goal. This wasn’t so unusual, though; there had been a growing police presence over the last few weeks, after an announcement was made that all able-bodied citizens over the age of seventeen were to be mandatorily assigned to a work facility. Although work in any of the Techno Union factories or mines meant pay in additional ration tickets, there were still any number of people actively avoiding registering for assignment – Coal among them. He had no more desire than anyone else to get shunted off to the new orbital platform, crafting armored ship parts in that floating prison until his eyes melted from solar radiation exposure. He slipped along in the shadows of a depowered light strip and avoided the vacant eyes of the tunnel’s denizens, wanting to attract neither attention nor provoke violence.

He jumped over to the side of the tunnel as a garbage speeder – one of the few civilian vehicles left in the city – rattled past him. The repulsorlift coil under the rear passenger side appeared faulty; the rig tipped dangerously as the vehicle sputtered, then sprang half a meter higher than it should have in compensation, giving the truck the amusing aspect of a cantering herd beast. He was surprised to hear his name hailed as the speeder shuddered to a halt at the entrance to the tunnel, where it rejoined the main thoroughfare.

As he considered the merits of dashing back along the way he had come, the door panel on the passenger side was kicked open, and a grimy, narrow-faced young woman – a few years older than him, though she was so small that she hardly looked it - craned over to peer out. Beryl. Black grease smudged her sunken cheeks, and her hair clung to her nape with perspiration.

“Get in.”

He didn’t hesitate, but dashed forward and launched himself into the operator’s cab of the vehicle before it could commence again along its automated route. The interior of the garbage speeder smelled of battery acid and burnt carbonite. Better than the tunnel, at least.

He began to tell her what he knew of the latest food shipment, still waiting to be inventoried at the Customs House, but fell silent as he took in her appearance. Her lips were a thin line, a grim seam of garnet in the chalk wall of her face.

“What is it? What’s happened?” He asked. His stomach turned sour in a way that had nothing to do with the lurching motion of the speeder.

Beryl stared grimly out the forward viewscreen. “Where have ye been? I’ve been searching them sewers half ma life.” She grumbled.

“Well ye’ve found me. Will ye no tell me what’s amiss, or d’ye mean to punish me with the suspense of it?” He growled back.

She didn’t say anything at first, but then the speeder lurched around the corner past Foundry Square and she drew a deep breath as though marshalling the will to speak.

“Coal—“ Her voice sounded uncharacteristically timid.

He wasn’t listening to her, and turned instead to peer past the grimy viewscreen, gooseflesh prickling along his upper arms and across his shoulders. He smelled the bitter tang in the air before he saw the smoke. His first thought, absurdly, was that the atmospheric scrubbers were malfunctioning. All of them at once. It only occurred to him when he saw the conflagration of the apartment that they were simply overwhelmed.

Later he would remember launching himself frantically at the door of the speeder, though he didn’t really think about it at the time. Finding the speeder doors locked, he couldn’t remember trying to claw his way past Beryl, though she insisted he had, and the long pink weals down her arms made him feel sick with shame to think of the next day.

He had a hard time taking in what she told him. Bits and pieces held some clarity, while others existed in a buzzing fog, like a mechanical whir that couldn’t really trouble him.

They didn’t think Yaya had been inside the flat when it blew.

She had been taking a device to plant at the Justice building, but her partner said she had never arrived there. She must have been arrested on the way.

Alban thought the explosion at the apartment was meant to draw anyone else in the resistance to the scene. The peacekeepers had already made three more arrests before they’d managed to spread the word out among the safehouses. The resistance network needed to go to ground, until they could figure out how much Yaya might reveal.

Coal tried very hard not to think of why she might say anything at all.

“What was she doing placing one herself?” He exploded. “We had a deal—“

“She volunteered.” Beryl spoke softly into her lap, without meeting his eyes. “No one forced her to do anathing. Ye think we meant to lose our bomb-maker this mornin’?” She asked, heavy and worn. “No one thought they’d think to search a blind auld woman.”

“Aye, no one thought, ye mean.” Coal growled.

“Alban’s gone to take care of it.” Beryl murmured.

“If there’s to be a rescue, then I want—“

But Beryl was already shaking her head. “Nay. Ye’re listed on her ration chip; an they see you, they’ll know what’s up quick as mercury.”

“She’s my Gran,” he insisted.

“So ye think she’d want ye to get yourself kilt for her? Or worse, arrested?” She finally looked at him. “There’s naught ye can do to help here. But Telka needs someone for demolitions. Alban means ye to go.”

“Alban can kiss ma arse!”

“Aye. An’ ye can tell him over holo from Telka.” She hissed.

And that was that. Coal pushed again at the locked speeder doors for form’s sake, then slumped on the narrow bench seat, head in his hands.

The garbage speeder drove itself along a route that neither of them could alter, though Beryl, who spoke better binary than he did, managed to convince the vehicle not to make any stops as it worked its slow way through the city and back to the recycling plant. They reached the edge of the city shortly before the glow rods were dimmed for curfew, and jumped from the cab as Beryl spotted a lonely looking tunnel that Coal had never used before.

She handed him a respirator mask and a small ration chip.

“That tunnel will take ye to the surface. Face the glow on the horizon and travel half a klick, ye’ll come to a canyon. Used to be a river before the Skakos came, but now they’ve made it into a transport route.” She explained. “Follow it as far as it goes, an’ ye’ll come to Telka. Ye’ll need to move fast – the journey may well take all night. That card’s a new identity, but it comes with an assignment to the new B-2 factory there.” She shrugged apologetically. “It was the best I could do on short notice. Ye’ll be building homing rockets.”

“S’pose I can make ‘em all shoot a touch to the left.” He croaked, trying to be philosophical about it. His voice sounded torn, but he couldn’t remember if he had been screaming, or how long it had taken him to stop.

---

“Hey, you!”

Coal didn’t bother looking up to see who was trying to get his attention – they all sounded the same. He grabbed Jasper by the sleeve of his shirt and tried to tug him away from the old man he was buying Radni sticks from, starting to move along down the street.

“Hey, you!” The man tried again. Coal sighed and turned around, accepting one of the little cigarillos from Jasper as he made the universal gesture for who, me?

The trooper jogging across the square to catch up to them was very young, and on the edge of panic. It was easy to tell because he was missing his helmet, and tension was written in every line of his schoolboy face.

“How do I get to the holo-center?” He asked, coming to a stop a few feet away from them. He was doing nothing so human as catching his breath, but his dark face was flushed, and a sheen of perspiration glinted off his skin under the glow rods set high into the city ceiling. He must have been chasing around for a while, Coal thought.

“Nay, man. That's closed.” Jasper said helpfully, casually sticking one of his Radni between his lips and nibbling on the end.

“If you could just point me in the right direction? I know it’s by the supply depot.” The trooper tried.

“Aye, tha’s closed too.” Coal offered, feigning stupidity. “Near on… twa years, is it no?” He turned to reconcile this fact with Jasper, trading conspiratorial grins. “Mind, if it’s only a message ‘round here ye mean to send, word of mouth’s the fastest news on Metalorn.”

“I really don’t care whether the holo-center’s in operation or not, I just need to know where it is.” The man said slowly, as though he could force understanding into Coal’s head by sheer force of will. His lips were beginning to curl in anger and, Coal thought, embarrassment. Ah, poor fresh meat.

“But surely ye can send a message from ye’re barracks, no?” Jasper asked, in a voice that was eager to please, but belied somewhat by the vicious grin he was failing to hide behind his angelic blue eyes.

The trooper looked a bit confused at this. “No. I mean, well, yes, but I don’t need—“

“Right. Ye need the holo-center.” Coal interrupted, stepping forward, all magnanimity and reason. He waited for the look of relief to kindle in the man’s eyes before he pounced. “D’ye know how to get to the bakery on the Strand from here?”

“Ah, ye dinna want to be sending him there!” Jasper sounded exasperated. “It’s closed!”

The speed with which the trooper’s temper turned from panicked frustration to violence was astonishing.
“I don’t care if it’s fragging closed or not!” The man shouted, his sidearm drawn and leveled at Jasper’s very vulnerable-looking chest. “Just tell me where in the name of Death on this miserable backwards rock the holo-center is you strill-faced—“

Coal picked himself up from the ground with a moan. Had the man really elbowed him in the teeth? When had the man elbowed him in the teeth? “It’s naught but three klicks tha’ way.” He gestured, and spat blood onto the stones at the Trooper’s feet, glaring balefully. “Ye mean to go, or no?”

The trooper slowly lowered the blaster pistol and took a few hesitant steps backward. “I’d have killed you.” He said, shaking his head, as though still utterly perplexed by them. “Was it worth twisting me around? And after everything we did for you?”

Coal looked him slowly up and down, taking in the full measure of his shiny white armor, his too-young face. “Oh. That was you, saved us from the big bad Separatists, was it?” He asked. He watched the man’s face flush a darker shade of red and took another menacing step forward. “ ’Cause me and mine were in that battle, charging blaster canons with naught but our welding masks and bombs we’d cooked up in our wee kitchens, and I dinna recall you on ma right, man.” He pointed again toward the southeast corner of the city. “Three klicks. That way.”

The trooper looked as though he was suffering a sudden acute case of lockjaw. It wasn’t that Coal was particularly intimidating, but if word got back to the veteran troopers in his barracks that he’d claimed responsibility for a fight he hadn’t even been decanted for, they’d likely drop his sorry ass on the far side of the Wasteland without his boots next. After a moment’s pause, the soldier spun on his heel and stalked off in the direction indicated.

Jasper stood with his hand covering his chest, as though to armor himself against blaster bolts. “My heart’s gang that fast! There’s aught wrong with this lot.” He muttered, then louder at the fleeing trooper’s back – “Ye’re out o’ uniform, Buckethead!”

The trooper didn’t so much as slow in his tracks.

Coal nodded, watching the Republic soldier jog away through the barred-over stalls that lined the square and past the large graffito the declaimed Awa wi’ ye in large, blocky Basic lettering.

“Aye. Even the auld boots canna stand them. He must belong to the 211^th at GHQ. They like to strip the new ones of their nav kits an’ dump them across the city to find their way home afore eve’n muster,” Coal said. “Third I’ve come across this week.”

Jasper chuckled, then spat on the ground to mirror Coal’s earlier sentiment.

Awa wi’ ye, indeed.

Coal had thought that the Techno Union was the worst thing that could ever happen to Metalorn. Now he knew they were not the worst thing – merely the first.

He had thought the Republic soldiers were their salvation when they had finally arrived to capture the Foundry of the Confederacy, as Metalorn and other industrial mining planets like it had come to be known. He had spent the week after the first dropships landed running between Republic checkpoints, trading ration packs for bottles of liquor cooked up in ‘freshers, and teaching the troopers bawdy songs and rude words. They had sacked Wat Tambor’s palace here in Telka, and cheered as a diplomatic supply ship, the first unfettered contact that Metalorn had had with the Republic democracy in nearly eleven cycles, landed in the plaza outside with a relief aid shipment of nutritional food cubes, medications, bacta, and even long-forgotten luxuries like namana, muja, jerkied nerf, and beard suppressant.

Coal had been elated to discover Janik at the Port in Telka, chivying one such aid shipment. It turned out the old smuggler carried a Correlian relief pilot’s contract with the Republic and came and went between Republic and Techno Union planets as he liked, switching between his apparent identities with ease.

Above all, Coal had waited with eager expectation for the release of the laborers from the mines, and the political prisoners from the Unreal City.

And he had kept on waiting.

Metalorn had been calling the battle its Liberation, and for a brief heyday you couldn’t walk down the street without enterprising souls encouraging you to purchase their ‘Liberty Noodles,’ ‘Democracy Power Converters,’ and even ‘Republic Pots.’ Slowly, however, it became clear that Metalorn had not been liberated, as they had thought. So long out of contact with the rest of the Galaxy, the Republic had no confidence in the loyalties of the citizenry. A few weeks after the battle, Coal caught a Republic holo that described the battle as the successful capture of a Separatist stronghold. The troops that remained were an occupation force.

The factories were closed, and the unemployed loitered in every tunnel and square. The mines, unexpectedly, were kept open, and there were rumors that the environmental body suits beneath each trooper’s white plating were now being lined with the miraculous mesh that dispersed and deflected energy weapons of all kinds.

True, there was food now, and even a little news on the holonet, but no money to purchase it. The Techno Union’s system of ration chips had so long been the only economy on the planet, and it had disappeared overnight. As for Republic Credits – what were Republic Credits? Anyone who had once held capital in such had run through it long ago. To complicate matters further, several of the cities even began fabricating their own denominations and currencies, individual as fingerprints.

Out of necessity, a healthy Black Market erupted based on barter. You could find almost anything you wanted down ‘Republic Alley,’ if you were only willing to part with everything else you had.

All in all, it had almost been a relief when the Separatists had retaken the planet the first time.

By now, Metalorn had changed hands so many times that most citizens had lost any loyalty they ever might have felt for either side. Half of Telka was in ruins, civilian and military areas alike. A school might sit cheek by jowl with the smoking rubble of the buildings on either side of it, and the children in the yard played war games where the deaths of the droids and the deaths of the troopers were practically indistinguishable, except for a certain amount of theatrical twitching.

At night, Coal often lay awake and dreamt of a world where man had never so much as heard the word Cortosis.


“C’mon. There’s Alban.”

Jasper pointed with his chin across the square and Coal grabbed his bag out from under a disused stall and hurried after him towards a bulky cargo speeder with Republic Aid markings on the sides. Jasper stayed outside the vehicle, speaking to a driver dressed in clone trooper armor, while Coal clambered quickly up onto a bench seat in the back. He cradled the armfuls of shape charges tucked like so many eggs into the bag in his lap, and tried not to flinch as the speeder rumbled and shuddered at standstill.

“That’s the last o’ them, then?” Alban asked, nodding at the rucksack.

Coal passed the bag across the aisle gingerly. Alban had, though Coal could hardly fathom how, laid hands upon military-grade detonite, and Coal had spent the last several weeks forming it into his own recipe of frag grenades, shape charges, thermal detonators, ribbon charges, and even sticky explosives.

“Go canny,” He cautioned. “They make every other thing I ever made ye look like bitty wee firecrackers.”

Alban smiled wolfishly. “Good man.”

The approbation made Coal nearly swell with pride.

Alban peered around at the grim, pale faces of the other men lining the benches along the walls of the speeder, packed like food cubes in a crate, their feet swimming among bags of weapons – blaster rifles, stun batons, and even some ion grenades. Each of them was dressed in more of the pocked white plating of Republic soldiers. The armor had not been difficult to obtain for this venture, with so many troopers killed on the city streets during the most recent seizure of the planet. The Republic were even worse about reclaiming their dead than the Separatists were about scavenging their inoperant droids for parts. Trickier was finding anyone among the malnourished ranks of the resistance both tall and broad enough to fit into the suits. When Coal had tried on the costume, the chest plating had hung loose from his narrow shoulders, the shin and thigh armor had both been long enough to overlap at his knees, and when he attempted to walk the utility belt had slipped ridiculously down over his hips and clanked against the plate over his backside. It had been humiliating, but Coal consoled himself that ultimately he hadn’t needed to be large or muscular to be integral to this mission. He’d be there behind the heat of every explosion.

Looking at the surprising wealth of their gathered munitions, Coal wondered (and not for the first time) about their intended target. But, after their last attempted sabotage had ended prematurely in a series of public arrests, Alban had been adamant that information about the target would be on a strict need-to-know basis. No information could be allowed to fall into Republic hands. Only those going on the mission tonight had any idea at all what lay ahead.

Alban cleared his throat. “Ye’re all wi’ me tonight because ye understand better than most that Metalorn canna thrive under any government but her own,” he said, his voiced pitched loud to cut through the hum of the repulsor engines. “Ye all understand that the cost of victory is great sacrifice, and many of ye have made such sacrifice before, but I dinna mean ye to do so again. Today, we strike a blow to teach these interlopers that there is naught on this planet for them, and the cost of keeping it far too great. Tonight, this planet shall become ours again. Ye all know your business, but if there are any among ye who dinna desire to undertake this venture at my side, speak yer piece an’ go now.”

Coal saw the gaze of a man near the front of the hold fix upon the hands in his lap, and the jaw of the man next to him clenched tightly enough to make the muscle of his cheek bulge, but the speeder was shrouded in purposeful silence.

“Then tonight, whatever may happen, remember my lads that ye live in service to your world.” Alban turned to Coal. “All of ye,” he said, and Coal recognized it as his dismissal.

He couldn’t let it go that easily, though.

“I’d know better’n anyone where to set the charges,” he said quickly.

Alban’s lips thinned into an expression that was neither quite a grimace nor a fond smile.

“Aye, lad. Ye’re verra bright.” He said blandly. “Now get ye home, and dinna draw attention to yerself.”

Coal heaved himself up angrily and hopped down out of the back of the aid vehicle, mouth drawn into a moue of displeasure. Alban thumped his hand down on the bench to signal the bulky speeder to move, and Coal watched it rumble down the tunnel, then bid farewell to Jasper, but did not go home.
Instead, he headed for a small side-tunnel nearby.

Someone in the city resistance network had spiked the local servers to list the tunnel as defunct, sealed shut after a collapse, so it was never guarded. It was one of the narrow shafts that used to bring water down to the city reservoir from the river on the surface, back when there had been rivers on the surface.

In fact, it was the same small tunnel that Coal had used to smuggle himself into Telka the first time, and it was to ease movements such as this that the resistance went to the trouble of hiding it on the city datalogs.

Coal followed the tunnel to the surface, taking care to protect his lungs and eyes with a full-face respirator mask that he kept stored by the door. He exited the tunnel into a furnace-like heat that seeped immediately into his muscles and bones, and tightened his skin like the top of a drum over his wiry frame.
Around him stretched a vast wasteland of mechanical junk mingling with decomposing organic refuse. Golden-brown dust swirled in clouds and eddies, dancing like a river’s current between the heaps of industrial trash that towered around him.

He turned to crest the hill that marked the Northern edge of the city below; far in the distance to the East there was a faint blue glow on the horizon, growing in intensity with the gathering twilight. Closer, to the North, was the great Cortosis mine that the Techno Union had built nearly twelve years before. A massive skyhook connected the output of the mine to the orbital station in the upper atmosphere – an elevator of carbonite nanofibers that stood unsupported against the pink and orange skyline, and disappeared from view in the roiling golden clouds.

On that first long walk between Cruint and Telka, shambling forward on stiff knees, the hot wet air of his breath gathering on the interior of his mask, Coal had panicked and worried that with his datapad gone the words from Babba’s last message – his only message – might dim in the archives of his memory, but the shade of his father was always there beside him on this hill.

“I’m sorry it’s been so long,” he began.

He always made a point of dropping his broad accent when speaking to Babba. Babba was a teacher, and had always insisted on proper Coruscanti Basic in their home.

“I’ve not made any progress with that girl I was telling you about last time,” he explained, feeling sheepish. “I never have anything to say to her that sounds interesting – what am I supposed to talk about – C-B3’s?” He sighed and allowed himself to tip back to lie against the hot baked soil. “There are days when it feels like all the most important parts of me are secrets.

“But I was thinking maybe I could take her down to the crystal caves under the oldtown. I found a tunnel last week that the Union didn’t manage to blow completely before they retreated. Maybe if she’s distracted enough, I won’t have to talk too much.

“Maybe when we’re free again, and you come home, you can teach me how to talk to women.”


It was a few hours later, when the light had dimmed to a murky grey, and the vault of the sky overhead was indistinguishable from the pitted rocky ceiling of the city he sat atop, that the mine exploded.

Molten gas erupted in a low spreading cloud from the mouth of the mine, engulfing the base of the skyhook, and the tower began to collapse upon itself with a piercing screech and rumble that Coal could feel thrumming through his own ribcage to rattle his heart.

The ground shuddered and buckled with the force of an earthquake, and the leading edge of the seismic wave caught him, seemed to rip the ground from under his feet, and knocked him back. Sparks of light spotted his vision, and he dimly wondered if this was what stars looked like.

On the edge of perception, like the echo of a friend’s voice in a crowd, he heard a startled cry answered by a vast and pitiless emptiness.

Blackness took him.

---

The world was a burning chaos in the weeks afterward. It wasn’t entirely clear what had happened, but a broadcast a few days later over the Republic holonet claimed that a Separatist terrorist cell had committed an attack on the cortosis mine outside Telka, meaning to deprive Republic forces of the armor alloys unearthed there. The explosions in the upper levels of the mine had managed to ignite pockets of gas that ran through tunnels and veins all the way from the mine to caverns under the capital city of Telka – highly reactive byproducts of the baradium bisulfate explosions used in the Techno Union mining processes. Magma pits had opened to the surface, causing further seismic disturbances below. The perpetrators had not been recovered. Mass casualties in Telka.

The populace was forced to relocate to a refugee camp on the surface. Nearby cities were overwhelmed by the hordes of homeless, injured, broken families. Stores of rebreather masks and enviro-suits only protected one-tenth of the people from the caustic dust that swirled through the air and coated their lungs and red-rimmed eyes. The compressed gas tanks supplying those masks that existed were depleted by the second day. Coal only wore his to protect the sensitive linings of his nose, mouth, and eyes, though it did nothing to make the atmosphere any more breathable. His lungs ached constantly, and his voice was a cracked wheeze by the time he found a sleepless Janik passing out emergency nutritive supplements and bacta to a thronging crowd that threatened to overwhelm him.

“I need a favor. I need you to get me out of here.”

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[Greymane]

First IC post is up! Pick your text colors, and do something!

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...7#post21062267

[Dent-2020]

Okay, been a while since I've done this - I can't seem to remember how to roll dice. I thought it was just [roll]#d#+mod[/roll] to get your dice roll plus a modifier, but that does not seem to be working...

Also, wasn't sure if checking the life support system on the suit would be a perception check or a mechanics check. For perception my mods a +5, but mechanics it's a +13.

[Dent-2020]

Trying out my roll here instead of the IC forum:

(1d20+5)[20]

[Dent-2020]

Rolling for initiative. Who goes first, Coal or his wee beastie?

(1d20+3)[8]

[Dent-2020]

Hah! Probably not Coal then!

[Greymane]

Hah! Probably not Coal then!

I laughed, too. But then I rolled even lower. Coal's up first.

[Dent-2020]

Shoot! I had a strategy all worked out for when your demon bat jumped me.

Speaking of which, is Coal taking any penalties to movement/dexterity given the environment? I've been working on the assumption that there are magnetic locks holding him to the ship, unless you'd like to say he's clipped in/tethered to a railing or something, in which case I need to know the extent of my leash. For that matter, how is your creature gripping the hull?

All of that said, I don't believe I'm carrying any weapons, unless the space suit has some apparatus I was unaware of. I should have my tool kit on me, though - could we claim I have a heavy wrench/spanner and something akin to an acetylene torch?

[Greymane]

Shoot! I had a strategy all worked out for when your demon bat jumped me.

You can delay or make a readied action if you'd like.

Speaking of which, is Coal taking any penalties to movement/dexterity given the environment? I've been working on the assumption that there are magnetic locks holding him to the ship, unless you'd like to say he's clipped in/tethered to a railing or something, in which case I need to know the extent of my leash. For that matter, how is your creature gripping the hull?

You have a fly speed while in Zero-G, but you can only move in straight lines. While in the suit, however, if you use your magnetic locks, I'd say you can move in any direction normally, but at half speed. While I didn't explicitly say it, you have a tether AND magnetic locks on the suit's soles. The leash's line is fed by the door. Unless you start running laps around the ship, you're in no danger of running out. There is a safety feature which can allow someone to be reeled on in, in an emergency.

The creature just seems to be laying flat against the hull at the moment. The claws don't appear to be applying grip, so Coal is left to wonder if something on its underbelly is doing so.

All of that said, I don't believe I'm carrying any weapons, unless the space suit has some apparatus I was unaware of. I should have my tool kit on me, though - could we claim I have a heavy wrench/spanner and something akin to an acetylene torch?

Yes, you have a tool kit. Page 139 of the core book details its contents, but the things most probably to be used as improvised weapons would be: an Electroshock Probe, a Fusion Cutter, a Hydrospanner, a Laser Welder, a Hydrospanner, Power Prybar, Sonic Welder, and Vibrocutters, It also lists the damage these things do in the tool kit's description. Fusion Cutter seems to be the best at 2d6 Energy.

I never realized how decked out for a fight an engineer could be.

There is an attack roll penalty to using one of your tools as a weapon of -5. Zero-G also normally provides an attack penalty, but I'll be ignoring one of them for now and going with a straight -5.