First Reply Antique Dealers

[Pal Veda]

“There’s nothin’ here,” Pal reported through his wrist comm. He looked around the desolate peak as the cold wind cut across his face.

Skrrrrrr…”Wh—-“ Skrrr….

“I said there’s nothin’ here!” Pal repeated.

Skrrrrr. Just more static.

“It ain’t here!” He yelled back over his shoulder, foregoing the comm to shout at his companion approaching from the path below. Of course it wasn’t here. These Jedi and Sith are all the same, sending him on wild goose chases, promising big pay days, then their old maps turn out to be completely useless. Or worse, they lead straight into some half-assed trap set decades earlier. And this time, it required him hiking almost ten kilometers up a mountain in temperatures that barely rose above zero at midday.

Pal cursed and kicked the side of the frozen rock jutting up in front of him in frustration. Snow and broken ice fell to the ground, revealing a large symbol on the stone beneath. “Well now,” he said under his breath, bending over to examine the carving, quickly clearing the remaining slush with his gloved hand, “what do we have here?”

 

[Persephone Dashiell]

ANTIQUE DEALERS

​

"You don't have to yell." Voice raised so it carried in the icy wind. Much lower, she added in. "My ears ain't broken."

With her bodyguard droid in tow, the pair was slowly approaching the peak with Pal Veda .This wasn't the first bounty hunter Persephone had worked with. Drifter - Darryl had been her last and despite his smart-ass attitude they had gotten the job done. Raked in a very healthy amount of credits as well - most had gone to Darryl. Yet it was all worth it to the teenager, gaining experience while also having her back watched.

A shiver ran through her as she approached where Veda was knelt down. Head tilted to look at the logo, a small frown. It was hard to tell as it was half broken and cracked. Not a surprise given their location.

"Symbol of the Dagoyan Order? It would track. Mountain. Quiet. Would give all the Jedi all the time in the 'verse to come up here and pretend they were solvin' the problems of the universe..."

A small pause.

"We may be getting closer."

 

[Pal Veda]

The kid was smart, but a bit spicy. He wouldn’t expect anything less from a Dashiell.

“Bunch of borin’ ole monks sittin’ around in circles, freezin’ their butts off. Yep, that tracks.” Pal slid off his pack and dug out a data pad. The mark looked familiar, but he wasn’t exactly the expert when it came to ancient languages and symbols. He did a quick scan of the cracked emblem and ran it through the database. “Looks like a partial match to what we found in Halsoun.” She was right. Of course she was right.

Pal held up the data pad and did a quick 180 degree scan of the area in front of him. Not a ton to glean from it other than no hot spots or obvious signs of life. They would have to do this the hard way. He estimated the plateau-like peak to be no more than 250 square meters. Divide and conquer.

“Let’s take a look around. See if we can find what we’re lookin’ for.” As the words left his mouth, an ear-piercing screech caught his attention. Pal’s hand instinctively gripped his holstered blaster as he scanned the skies to identify the origin — a large raptor circling overhead. They were a little too big to be prey, or at least he was. “Head on a swivel, kid” he reminded his young companion, loosening his hold and lowering his gaze to meet Persephone Dashiell . She may be out here on her own volition, but he was sure ole Judah would come for his head if anything happened to her.

 

[Persephone Dashiell]

"If I were a pompous Jedi wanting to sit around in quiet, where would I hide the entrance."

Persephone had already surmised the entrance to any underground in-mountain tunnels was hidden. Designed to keep those from entering and disturbing the meeting of the minds so to speak. It was almost like one of those spiritual quests people took where they were searching for enlightenment. In this case, Persephone had zero idea what the Jedi would be doing but imagined it was of a similar process.

Carefully navigating on the ice, she moved to her patch to search. Slipping and falling wouldn't be wise at this point.

Yet the call from Pal Veda startled her a little, causing her to lose some purchase and go tumbling into a small rock formation. Above them was some large bird, obviously thinking they may be its next meal. She wave off the concern about the raptor as Veda looked over to her as she braced herself back to a better standing position against the rocks.

"Zee, shoot the bird down."

[ With pleasure Miss Persephone. ]

It wasn't often the bodyguard droid got to actually shoot at things.

 

[Pal Veda]

Come on, where are you? There had to be some sort of trigger mechanism somewhere. Some old cairn that needed to be pushed down, some rock face that needed to be pressed in. Something.

PEW! Pal snapped back to reality at the sound of the blaster, immediately drawing his own DL-44 and taking stock of his surroundings. PLOP! The raptor’s body smacked the ground a few feet away, now lifeless. He angrily turned to the shooter. “What the hell, droid?!” He then eyed Persephone Dashiell and shook his head in frustration, knowing her bodyguard was almost certainly acting at her command.

Suddenly, the earth beneath his feet began to vibrate, gently at first, then a little more violently. The dang bird landed on the trigger. Pal struggled to keep his balance as the rocks around him shook apart, swallowing the lifeless raptor and revealing an opening large enough that even Jabba the Hutt could squeeze through — well, maybe before the third helping of Klatooine paddy frogs. Regaining his composure, Pal cautiously walked over to see stairs leading down into the mountain’s interior.

“Well, that was lucky,” he smirked, visions of credits dancing through his head as he peered into the dark tunnel.

 

[Persephone Dashiell]

"Sorry - did you want to tame it or something?"

Could be one of those guys into falconry or rare birds. Persephone found the older someone got - and Pal Veda looked old - the more they liked to sit on the porch and watch birds. Looks as if herself and Zee had interrupted those plans. Yet it had been a great mishap with activation and causing this entrance to open. She had been worried at first, thinking it required the Force to open. Lucky for regular folks it wasn't the case.

As she descended down after Mister Veda, warmth was starting to creep back in her bones. Out of the wind she was able to focus again, pulling out a flashlight to look around. Zee activated his optical sensors, flooding the space with as much light as possible. The stairs down were steep. As if they were a test themselves. Persephone would be taking them down very carefully.

"Think Jedi put booby-traps in? I mean...it seems childish to me, but we're talking about Force users here. Could easily take out any intruder but probably think its still fun to have a trip wire in place. I'm going to be amused though if we reach the bottom and find a whole bunch of nothing...."

Her voice trailed off, breath puffing in front of her. They weren't down far enough yet for temperature to be more regulated.

"...yet they seem to leave all their valuables lying about so chances feel good to me."

 

[Pal Veda]

Did I want to tame it? Maybe I just don’t want you and your metal friend firing off blaster shots in my ear for no reason! But Pal didn’t bother to say any of this. There was no point. Instead, he headed down the stairway that had revealed itself moments earlier.

As he stepped over the dead bird near the top, Pal noticed something interesting and motioned toward it with his flashlight. “See that?” There was another small symbol under the raptor’s body, a set of circles with a line through them and what looked line a tiny hole at the bottom. It wasn’t the weight of the bird on the trigger, but rather the blood that drained from the corpse after impact. He’d had the same fear as his companion — that maybe they would need to Force to open the passage. Nope, it required a blood sacrifice. That wasn’t exactly in line with the Dagoyan Order he was familiar with.

This discovery also made Persephone Dashiell ‘s question all the more poignant. “In my experience, the Jedi and Sith ain’t too different from each other when it comes to protecting their secrets.” While he typically rolled with the self-proclaimed good guys, he had run a few jobs for the other side over the years. The missteps of the Jedi were usually due to their superiority complex rather than ill intention, but the same could be said for several sects of the Sith. They weren’t all outright evil. They just all seemed to think they were better than everyone else, and they went to great lengths over the centuries to keep the sources of their power and knowledge hidden from the uninitiated. That included this trio.

Like his partner, Pal took his time descending, moving his light back and forth from the next few steps of the spiral staircase to the walls on either side, keeping an eye out for anything suspicious. Nothing he could see was cause for alarm, which was cause for alarm in itself. These places were always boobytrapped. It shouldn’t be this easy. It was never this easy.

About 50 meters down, the stairs came to a stop and the path opened into a rectangular room. An empty rectangular room. Pal stepped to the side to allow for Persephone and Zee to join him in the chamber. “Well, kid, what do you make of this? I don’t see those ‘valuables’ lyin‘ around in here.”