Aftermath at Winter Fete [Outer Rim Coalition and friends]

[Jorus Merrill]

CETO​

WILD SPACE​

OUTER RIM COALITION TERRITORY​

"Holidays aren't high points in happy lives, far as I'm concerned. It's challenges and tragedies that make us want to draw close."

Last month's undercover raid on Tatooine hadn't gone as planned. They'd failed their primary objective - abducting a well-connected shipping magnate to gain better access to Imperial space. Concerted resistance from stormtroopers and bounty hunters had killed a good fraction of the commando team. The rest of the mission had only escaped by the skin of their teeth, rampaging through a podrace. Those funerals were still in the rearview.

Now Jorus Merrill, right arm bandaged to heck, was trying to raise a left-handed Winter Fete toast to a quiet dining hall full of ORC people, Undergrounders, and local Selkath. He felt himself stumbling over his words.

"I take full responsibility for what happened in Mos Espa. No amount of good food and friendship will bring back the folks we lost last month, but stronger bonds can help us keep it from happening again. In that light, thanks for making time to come out and eat, exchange gifts, share a drink or a song or a dance or whatever."

Feth, but a lot of people had come out. General Beyyr, the silvertip Wookiee; Dingo Darr, the Krevaaki engineer; Shenna'vala, the tiger-striped Twi'lek mechanic; dozens of other familiar faces.

"Anyways, I don't want to take too much of your time." He raised his glass a little higher. "To the folks we lost, and the new year to come. Chakta sai kae."

 

[Vaudin Miir]

Day Three. He lay in a cot on board his ship. His sheets plastered to his clamy red skin like a wet zeltros t-shirt as he tossed and turned. His eyes pressed closed, hands clutched his head, and knees pulled up to his chest like an abandoned babe in the wilderness.

He shook violently as the constant visions assaulted his raw senses. The force it seemed was not going to waste time waiting for him to recover from his recent decision to quit drinking. No, it pressed on him, through him, stronger than ever. The things it showed, people long gone and yet to be conceived tore at his already strained mind. He saw it all, the rise of dark times, flames doused by blood, beacons being lit in the reaches of space. A king was born, a queen sat a throne of white. He couldn't sort any of it out.

He screamed through his ship. Screamed for a drink, just a sip. He only a little. Just to ease the pain. He writhed in pain, sweat pouring from him as quickly as the drinks once poured in and he fell from the cot.

The floor was like ice, glacial cold and unyielding, as he arched his back and rolled to his chest. He began crawling slowly to the refresher, the need to empty the contents of his already empty stomach made him move as fast as he could but his body wouldn't cooperate.

He reached out in the force unintentionally as his subconscious reacted to the perceived enemy of his own making and space and time in the room breifly distorted, a hole broke the air and quickly winked out as the strain through him into unconsciousness. As the hole collapsed, it took a portion of his room with it, to the force knows where.


[member="Jorus Merrill"]

 

[Sor-Jan Xantha]

He didn't know a whole lot about what had happened.

There'd been an Underground something-or-other. Somewhere. Chit had gone down. People had died. He didn't have the details and he didn't really go looking for them. Half his employees were Levantines and the rest were either Rebel Alliance ex-pats, like [member="Marque"], or recruited from out in the Kathol Outback to staff the Corellia Digital storefront on Rebellion Actual. Enough rumor, suspicion, and urban myth had crept up through the various networks that connected Corellia Digital to the Outer Rim Coalition that Sor-Jan had been confronted with at least twelve different conflicting accounts of what had happened.

One said it was a shoot out at the L-5 Corral on Ord Pardron. Another said it was some kind of rigged podrace competition, with Imperial spys and everything, on Scarif. What was true and what wasn't didn't really matter all that much.

What mattered were the people who'd managed to haul their butts out of there.

Yeah, some people probably died. And it sucked. Force knew, Sor-Jan could relate to that. He'd probably lost more battles in the Clone Wars than he'd won, and those cherished victories had come through the experience of the conflicts that had preceded it. He'd cut his teeth on the Stark Hyperspace War as a padawan. Lost a lot of good friends in a very short time, including Bo-Mar Xantha and the crew of the Reliant over Manaan. And for what? The price of kolto?

A decade later, he'd failed to position his troops properly when they'd landed on Yinchorr Prime, allowing his master to become overrun when the right flank completely fell apart. Like any young knight, Sor-Jan had tried to recover with a half-assed rescue effort that he'd been making up as he went along. And he couldn't even do that right. People later called him a Jedi Master, but what was the point of all his training if he couldn't even save the one person in the galaxy who had been like a father to him?

So, yeah, the tow-headed vampire knew a little something about recovering from a swift kick to the reproductive organs.

He got more than just a couple of looks coming through the door.

In part because he looked like he was ten. And he was, from a certain point of view. When you lived a couple of thousand centuries, it helped to have nature put in some natural stopgaps so that there was at least a century between generations.

...but mostly it was because there were five kegs that were just floating in the air behind him.

Standing just inside the doorway, the young boy was clearly interrupting something. A toast perhaps? Good timing, then. "Hey, Jorus. I ran the tables on this Arkanian, but he didn't have the credits to back up the game his mouth was playing," the small Corellian boasted. "So he paid me with this lot," the boy added, jerking a thumb over one shoulder to indicate the floating mass of kegs behind him.

Yes, he'd said ran the tables. Read between the lines people. The kid had totally just swindeled a man at Sabaac.

ProTip: Never play cards with a telepath. Or a species known for its ability to mind control.

"This stuff ain't no good for me," Sor-Jan noted, adopting a faux sour tone. No, seriously, he had the body mass of a preteen and the alcohol tolerance to match. Plus, between ale and chocolate milk... it was going to be chocolate milk. Yes, everytime.

"You know anywhere I could dispose of five kegs of Corellian spiced ale?"

Put a tear in your beer tonight, ORC. In the morning, get back out there and punch some Imperials in the face!

...and be ready to do it all again.

[member="Jorus Merrill"]​

 

[Eun]

A cry of anguish, suffused with terror and a desperate pleading for it all to just stop. Eun, attuned to the screams of the suffering, felt more than heard the cry as he passed a ship in port. Lilac eyes narrowed and he brushed away a strand of multi-colored hair to better examine the starship. Curiosity drove him to walk toward the ship's main hatch, along with another motive of which we shall not yet speak.

Surprisingly, the hatch was unlocked. Eun entered. He wore clothes that might once have been considered the height of fashion among nobility, but now looked worn down by years of travel to the far flung places of the galaxy. Slowly, Eun cast a gaze around. The smell of sick and sweat assaulted his nostrils. He grimaced.

Thankfully, he did not catch the whiff of decay. So, the scream had not been a rip in the temporal skein, nor a figment of his imagination.

He spotted the presumed owner of the ship laying on the floor. A red Iktochi, soaked in sweat and in what appeared to be a feverish delirium.

Eun knelt beside him and in a voice light as a feather said, "My name is Eun. I am here to help."

[member="Vaudin Miir"]

 

[Vaudin Miir]

[member="Eun"]

His addled mind fought to clear itself as his tear crusted red rimmed eyes cracked open. The taste of bile felt heavy and acrid in his mouth as he tried to speak. The voice, the voice that reached him was such a stark contrast to the thundering in his head. Visions, assaulted him again, a problem he should have learned to control years ago rather than trying to drink it away, but the drinking had been far quicker.

He looked up his horns moving with his head and scrapping agaisnt the hard deck plates. The voice reminded him of the diathim and their calming voice, but this was no place for angels, even if the time seemed right.

"Are you death." He tried to croak but his ears could barely hear his own voice over the cries of terror and pain that echoed in the force. "I just need a drink. A sip for the pain."

He tried to roll but breathing and holding on to consciousness was all he could manage. Just one drink. He could stop again tomorrow.

 

[Rekha Kaarde]

She stood off to the side with a glass in her hand. What do you say on days like this?

Feth.

A good word. When Jorus lifted his glass she lifted hers. She had been out of it a long time hiding away trying to forget what she was. The loneliness of losing friends and just not knowing what to do with herself. Well she could only wallow in that oh woe to me place for so long. Here she was determined to make friends and have some fun conversation cause she had enough of the bad.

"To those no longer with us, clear skies" She downed the drink ready for a refill.

 

[Eun]

Pitying, yet curious eyes stared back at the wretched creature, though the source of his suffering now became apparent. Drinking could shove feelings away for an evening, but the longer you pushed the feelings away with the bottle, the more they built up. And if you stopped drinking, then it would seem as if the floodgates of those pent up sorrows would open and they would all rush out at once. A pitiable conundrum, but one Eun had never faced himself.

He could not get drunk.

Eun pondered the Iktochi's question. He wore a thoughtful look as he stood up and rummaged inside the drawers of the cabin. At last he found a bottle and again knelt beside the wretch.

"Death is one of my names, but I prefer Mercy."

He held out the bottle for shaking fingers to grasp. He lay his other hand gently on the horned man's shoulder. "Here."

[member="Vaudin Miir"]

 

[Vaudin Miir]

[member="Eun"]

He looked at the bottle, reddish skin slick with cold sweat as the man offered it to him in. Vaudin's eyes were wild with fevor as he reached up with a shaky hand and took the drink.

His hands shook violently as he tried to bring the bottle to His lips. Most was spilled as he tried to gulp the burning liquor and filled the air with the scent of spilled alcohol. The burning hit the back of his throat and rolled down to his still emtpy stomach and instantly began to churn against him.

The bottle dropped empty on the ground as he pitched away from the man and began to vomit again on the cold floor. The breif reprieve from pain rent away as he loosed the acid soured alcohol onto the deck plates.

"I'm dying." He said hoarsly as he rolled away from the vomit and curled intoa ball on the deck.

 

[Eun]

"Hm, maybe," said Eun, grimacing and taking a step backward as the Iktochi vomited everywhere. The overwhelming scent caused Eun to wrinkle his nose.

"Or maybe you just need some food in you."

He bent down and attempted to help the man to his feet. "Come now, why don't you get yourself into the refresher so you can clean yourself up. And then I will take you to the local cantina. I hear they serve excellent soup."

The words seemed to carry an unnatural, compelling authority to them that belied their soft tones.

[member="Vaudin Miir"]