Faction Binding What Needs It: Expedition to Gargolyn IV (open to all Jedi)

[Shira Varanin]

To the Jedi:

My name is Bindo Duval. I'm not important to this story.

I've agreed to write and send this message on behalf of Starfalling, an elder of the Cor species on a remote, obscure planet called Gargolyn IV.

A large and dangerous creature is menacing Starfalling's village. She intends to use an ancient Cor ritual to bind the creature, keep it sealed underground so long as her people live on that land. Apparently the creature has a very long lifespan. The binding ritual is sacred to her people, but she's asked for the Jedi to provide their strength. Starfalling knows the ritual but is quite elderly and needs more support than her small village can provide.

She and her associates speak Basic well enough, and I've been ordered to travel to another world. You'll deal directly with her. Please do so with respect. Starfalling is a wise and capable elder of a unique people.

Best wishes,
Bindo Duval
Gargolyn IV

###​

Shira brought the Sojourner, an old Jedi transport, down in the forests of Gargolyn. She'd picked a quiet clearing near the coordinates that Bindo Duval had provided.

"All passengers, we've made landfall about a kilometer from Starfalling's village. Air quality's good, nothing strange on the files or filters. We should be fine to proceed without masks or hyposprays. I know you're all broken up about not needing shots."

She shut down the transport, secured the controls, and headed for the ramp. A few other Jedi had agreed to answer Starfalling's request. With their support, the Cor elder would be able to bind the unknown creature.

A ritual that could have plenty of future uses, if Shira paid enough attention. But that was a side benefit. The goal here was to save the Cor from a Leviathan, in their own way. No search and destroy here, just trust in the Force as expressed by a local elder. Shira did her best to suppress her nerves.

Several Cor were already gathering at the edge of the clearing as she came down the ramp. On paper the Cor were felinoid, and she could see some evidence of that around the ears and their quadripedal bodies, but their foxlike muzzles threw her off a bit - they were almost as much canine as feline. Quite alien and, despite her human preconceptions of their animalistic appearance, fully sapient. The Jedi were here as guests of an established people; she had to remember that.



OOC THREAD

 

[Wyatt Morga]

“Come on, Wyatt, you know you want to.”, the Abednedo exclaimed.​

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“I’ll even do your buy-in!”​

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Wyatt couldn’t help but smile and shake his head, already too poor from the last game they played. He couldn’t afford to end up in debt on a mission to help the Cor; let alone be in debt at all. His response came quick, but gentle -​

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“I’m sorry, Biff, it’s just not my game - You saw how I played!”​

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“Yeah, thats why I want to play again, never do get tired of winning.”, he said with a quick, sudden laughter.​

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Wyatt scoffed at the tease, and chose to rise - hearing the sound of their arrival. He couldn’t help but feel a touch of anxiety - he’d never faced a Leviathan before. They were large, rare creatures that dripped the Dark Side like sweat on a hot day; a vicious ichor that threatened to stamp out Wyatt’s own sensations in the Force. Training ones self to feel the Force like ones own breath, natural and flowing came with that cost…​

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The Dark Side was hard to ignore.​

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He sighed something heavy as the door opened, and he took a step next to Shira Varanin, someone he hadn’t had a chance to talk to on the journey. He recognized her name, though - with its own dark history… Yet, Wyatt couldn’t judge such a thing. The Jedi had met redeemed Zambranos, and there was hardly a time to judge one on their ancestry.​

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He smiled softly to her as he looked around -​

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“Different, aren’t they?”, he said quietly as the ship was unpacked.​

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“I’ve never seen a Cor in person.”​

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Shira Varanin​

 

[Shira Varanin]

Wyatt Morga

"I don't think much of anybody outside their species has, Master Morga," said Shira thoughtfully. "I connected with Bindo Duval on our way here; he had some interesting insights. They had offworld contact before the Dark Times, maybe for a couple of centuries. Some mining firm or other tried to muscle in; it didn't go well. They live as they live, by choice, and they like their isolation. Their world, their land. I guess this leviathan's a serious enough threat for their elders to reach out, and I get the feeling they wouldn't be happy if we rolled in and tried to do things our way."

Shira patted the lightstaff at her belt - revealing, she knew, her own bone-deep understanding of the Jedi path. She'd seen too much combat. Her first and only instinct was to find the leviathan and neutralize the threat. But Starfalling and the Cor had their own solutions.

"I've been thinking about whether it's better or worse to bind the leviathan permanently or to kill it. I don't have an answer, but I do remember that Master Yoda was believed to live near a Dark Side nexus so they'd cancel each other out to others' perceptions at a distance - so he could hide from Palpatine. It's possible that bound monsters help the Cor elders keep their planet off the radar of the Sith and such." And the Jedi, maybe.

She squinted and headed off into the grass, toward a Cor who had talismans knotted in her gray fur. In the Force, that Cor felt like a good candidate for Starfalling, the elder who'd called them here.

 

[Wyatt Morga]

Wyatt couldn’t help but smile at her tapping of the lightsaber - but the Jedi had some wisdom about her. Questioning a culture and its reasons, to find something better - it wasn’t a great thing to do before that culture, but it did well to see how far morality stretched. Was it more humane to kill the Leviathan, unlikely as it was, and set them free of the burden - or to break their cultural boundaries, only to instigate another culture against the Jedi for stepping on their fundamental rights.​

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He couldn’t help but shake his head -​

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“Often, it's hard to understand the reasonings behind such a thing. Leviathans are beings of dark energies - and on any planet they would serve a greater threat, I believe destroying it would be the right action.”, he conceded.​

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“- And yet, not here.”​

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Wyatt walked with her through the grass as the ship was unloaded, and the Cor watched with a certain curiosity. He glanced back to them - but noticed some fear in their emotions, barely held back as they studied these ‘foreigners’ with apprehension and anxiety. In time, Wyatt hoped this mission would see them trust the Jedi, to reach out more.​

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The Jedi needed that example, for others of the Order.​

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“Cultures are often mysterious things, and yet we are not here to deny them that right. Consider for a moment that the lands this ritual take place on become holy - a place they establish as their home. It ties them to the land, forces them to respect what they have earned through means much harder than violence.”, he said with a quiet tone as they neared the supposed Starfalling.​

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“Practicality is the way of the modern life we live; but to these people, they look to their history for answers. This is their history - and it is not our place to force them to change.”​

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Wyatt silenced himself as they reached Starfalling however, and bowed with as much respect and poise as he could offer to the Elder. He wasn’t sure if it was the custom, but he knew it was a universally good starting point - and that was enough for him.​

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Shira Varanin​

 

[Jannik Morlandt]

A handful of paces behind, Jannik only listened to the conversation between Shira and Wyatt, his thoughts a mite preoccupied with what might come to pass, if only because he was processing those sights; as a seer, potent vision came in a manner beyond his control, but dipping into the ebbs and flows of time and the Force at will was an old practice, a habit, not unlike a form of fishing. Whether what might come to pass had anything to do with the here and now was a thing kept to himself; Ill practice, it was, beaking about what might not even occur.

Even in long bygone times, being as one with the dark, the thought of a Leviathan would've given him pause. Even now, in the light, it did... the difference being in his relationship with the lightsaber, then and now. That was to say, now, that he more often than not didn't have one on his person. Having not seen a Leviathan before also added to the apprehension, but being a seer meant his imagination didn't get the better of him. He was too grounded in reality. He had to be, to parse the things he saw.

Coming to a halt just behind the other two, just as Wyatt bowed, Jannik dipped his head for a moment or so, out of respect much the same.

Shira Varanin Wyatt Morga​

 

[Shira Varanin]

Shira bowed along with Wyatt Morga and Jannik Morlandt . The Cor elder nodded in return.

"I am Starfalling. I welcomme you to Gargolyn and the valley of the Ramacorr."

Off to the north, past hills and forest, something huge crashed through trees. Flying creatures rose in panicked swarms. Several Cor flinched. The elder did not.

"Yourrre weapons. You will not need themm."

Shira took a sharp breath before she could help herself. Taking down a Leviathan was hard enough at the best of times; going into this unarmed went against every instinct that had kept her alive. She looked to the Jedi Masters.

 

[Wyatt Morga]

“Of course, Elder.”​

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The Jedi made no efforts to deny them such a request - unclipping his lightsaber from its maglock and handing it to the Elder. Surely, he felt fear as the others - knew that in the worst situation, should this ‘ritual’ fail that he would need it, but he had to trust in the Force, and trust in the Cor’s faith.​

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When they had taken it, he rested his hand in the opposite sleeve and glanced to the other two - more curious to see if they’d put up a fight about it. He certainly hope they wouldn’t.​

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Jannik Morlandt │ Shira Varanin​

 

[Jannik Morlandt]

His gaze flicked in an instant to the direction of the noise, driving his thoughts to the ritual to come, of which he knew nothing about. For many, the unknown was feared, but the unknown remained as such for only so long, and it was how things were done in this place. The Cor were still here. At the mention of not needing weapons, Jannik pulled back the outer layer of his robes, showing that he carried no weapon.

"Elder, I am unarmed."

A Jedi often had other means, if necessary, but he was here to lend that strength to the Elder, not wield it.

Shira Varanin Wyatt Morga ​

 

[Shira Varanin]

Wyatt Morga handed over his lightsaber promptly, and Jannik Morlandt wasn't even carrying. Shira hid a grimace and unclipped her lightstaff from its specialized holster, the leather-and-phrik gadget that prevented an inadvertent activation of the upward blade. She passed the weapon to Starfalling. The quadripedal Cor hunkered down on her back legs, took both sabers in her prehensile paws, and tucked them away in a leather pouch.

The sound of the leviathan's passage grew closer. "We should hurry," Shira said. "I think it's coming for either the village or the ship."

An ululating howl rang through the trees. The Cor elder moved back to a quadripedal posture. "A signal. The beast is close to a sinkhole large enough to hold it. My people will try to lure it." She yapped in her native language and a younger Cor deposited a large basket in front of the Jedi. It held Cor-tooth talismans, tied to wooden spikes on strings of braided silver fur. "Each of these is the memory and relic of an elder. The ritual calls on them to be with us. These must pierce the beast and break its..." Starfalling struggled for the right word.

"Blister traps?" Shira suggested. "The bubbles on its back?"

"Yes. This kind of beast traps spirits that we must set free, or the elders will not be with us."

Shira scooped up several of the talisman-spikes quickly and, she hoped, respectfully. She tucked them through her belt and set off running into the trees. The leviathan was shattering trunks not far ahead.

 

[Wyatt Morga]

Free the souls, trap the beast - the Cor made it seem so simple.​

​

Wyatt understood they had done this before - at some point - but there was always a thought in the back of his mind, of what exactly this would do. With a second breath, he buried those thoughts - understanding that if he did nothing out of fear, many more Cor would die to the rampage of this leviathan. A fate he couldn’t allow.​

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With a more reserved enthusiasm, Wyatt slowly picked up a few of the talismans for himself and tucked them away. His shed the large and baggy robe he carried with him - taking off into a dead sprint after the Knight before him;​

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“Do you have a plan, Shira?”, he said after he caught up, hearing the distance crash of tree timber in the distance.​

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“You’re certainly moving like you do.”, he offered as Jannik caught up to the both of them.​

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Shira Varanin │ Jannik Morlandt​

 

[Jannik Morlandt]

As his two companions did, he picked up some of the talismans and like Shira, tucked them throughout his belt, taking off after the both of them in the next instant, with the Force-graced speed. Hearing ahead as he had been doing from the outset, Jannik was interested in what the young knight had to say about her own plans. He was just as interested in how this ritual would work, and though the concept was experience, he had plenty of exposure to the ways of the Allyan witches and other sects, and had learned from them, so turning to other methods was not so foreign a thing. And though a master for many years, there was always the possibility of something more to learn.

"Contingency plans, perhaps?"

How uneasy it was to place your faith in the unfamiliar, when your gut rumbles a different tune, and for his part, the movements and tics of the body gave additional insight beyond their words.

Shira Varanin | Wyatt Morga

 

[Shira Varanin]

Wyatt Morga Jannik Morlandt

"Plans are for Masters, right?"

The trees parted, and not just as a matter of subjective point of reference. A full-grown Leviathan of Corbos lurched into sight. Its oppressive presence bore down on her - and the despair rolling off the souls in its blister traps. Bone-deep panic dug in, but this wasn't her first time charging something gargantuan and malevolent.

On the plus side, Leviathans were bred to kill cities and stupid Jedi, not individuals as a rule. Ungainly head, tiny arms, no agility. Shira circled behind a falling tree and leaped high. She came down spike-first on a blister trap. Crystal shattered and half-tangible misty Cor faces rushed out into freedom.

Whether most kinds of Force ghosts were really souls or just echoes was an open question. At a guess these were the latter. But nobody had told them they didn't exist, and to Starfalling and the passed-on Cor elders, it didn't even matter.

 

[Soloman Priest]

(Wrong account.)

 

[Wyatt Morga]

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Plans were for masters, he imagined.​

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But - it seemed a little late to set one up as Shira rose through the air to strike at one of the pustules that had formed. Wyatt had no choice to follow in suit - and launched him to do much and the same; letting the mix of mist and echoes surge past him, and the almost noxious fumes of the Dark Side fill his nose.​

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Wyatt wanted to gag, but he imagined there would be a time and place later on - so he he drove that physical sensation down with the Force and moved on wards, precarious balancing on the twisting, fighting rodeo that was the leviathan - before calling out to the others;​

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“If you fall, get clear!”, he said as he slammed another into the hardened leather.​

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Shira Varanin │ Jannik Morlandt​