Faction Black Mire Part II [THR]

[Rayne Lo'to]

Naboo
Tags: Corazona von Ascania , Tatiana Sah , Aurelian Veruna , Vizion Trozky , Aiden Porte , Wuxia Wukong , Atham Harek , Kudau , @Others (sorry, mobile post)

Rayne Runner | Trash Mobile Home
​

"Well, many smart people are attempting to resolve the conundrum as we speak, so we may get your ship back. If not try to think of it as an opportunity. An unseen path in your journey that causes you to stay on Naboo a little longer than expected. There are after all worse planets to be stranded upon."

Rayne let out a sigh, crouching down and rubbing her temple. Those words did not put her at ease. She had none of her food here. That meant she was gonna have to for sure sell some of those stupid bobbleheads to get some kind of money for grub. That was gonna be a pain in the ass.

All right. Circus is in town.

And now she was being insulted?! Rayne stood up with a fire in her eyes, only to see that it was the elected king of Naboo. She very quickly crouched back down and made herself small again. This day was awful. She had lost her ship, not sold a single thing, and now a king was calling her a clown. At this point she was beginning to wonder if she should throw herself into the void. And then came a new suggestion.

"Have we considered a rather large tethered thing, rather than a droid or person, hm? Give it a good toss, then a good yank back towards us? Or is there something similar to this occurring? As I've noticed in our little galaxy, rarely do things not happen more than once."

An opportunity. Maybe her way off of this rock if her ship wasn't found. She turned back to her wagon and rustled through the bobbleheads before she pulled out the head of an old Imperial Probe Droid, presenting it to the gathered officials.

"I'll trade this for a ride off planet," she offered, before quickly making her request more polite with an added "please."

The droid head surely contained all the components they needed to glimpse into that void, so long as they had a means of hooking it up to a cable that fed that info back to them.

 

[Atham Harek]

​

Upon being approached and more or less snuck up on by the tall woman towards the King of Naboo and two Jedi, there wasn’t a moment of hesitation in Atham’s body when he sent the fastest, meanest overhanded punch soaring towards her skull. He moved like lightning. No buildup, no stance taking. Rayne Lo'to most likely had not seen a man move that fast from a standing position.

Atham may have been a goof, but he was still a Trooper- and a Commando, at that.

He didn’t use the hand with the cigar, as he was not a fool to waste good product!

 

[Rayne Lo'to]

Naboo
Tags: Atham Harek , Aurelian Veruna , Jacen Voidstalker , Vizion Trozky , Aiden Porte , Corazona von Ascania , Wuxia Wukong , Kudau , Tatiana Sah , Others...

Rayne Runner | Trash Mobile Home
​

Rayne Lo'to most likely had not seen a man move that fast from a standing position.

And this was true. Rayne folded like an omelet and was out in an instant, the blow to her head all but sending her to an early bedtime. Her body crumpled unceremoniously to the floor, and the probe droid head in her hands fell at the foot of Aurelian Veruna .

Nearby mechanical equipment would malfunction, a result of a brief flicker of her technomancy as her mind slipped out of consciousness.

 

[Aiden Porte]

Aurelian Veruna Vizion Trozky Atham Harek Rayne Lo'to Wuxia Wukong Tatiana Sah Kudau Voli Cholrass​

Aiden Porte had been drawing breath to answer when the familiar pull tugged at the edge of his awareness again, an absence that made even measured words feel suddenly small. He steadied himself anyway, because small words were often the only bridge anyone had before the next mistake.

A presence approached at the edge of his attention, light-footed, composed. Aiden turned his focus to it without hurry, letting the moment of interruption become what it was: a variable introduced into an already unstable equation.

Voli's greeting reached him, respectful and bright.

"Good day," Aiden returned, voice calm, his head inclining just enough to acknowledge the bow without encouraging ceremony to take root in the wrong place. His eyes rested on her a beat longer than politeness required, not suspicion, not accusation, but the quiet attentiveness of someone who had learned that hidden things often announced themselves in the smallest seams. He let nothing show beyond a neutral warmth. "Stay close to the marked perimeter," he added gently. "And keep your mind anchored. This place… invites drift."

Then he drew his attention back to the conversation already in motion.

Vizion's words came measured and firm, naming Lorn Reingard and Bastila Sal-Soren with the weight of history behind the names. Aiden listened without interrupting, allowing the titles and the politics to pass over him like wind over stone. He felt the truth underneath it: the ache of two missing presences, and the sharp, almost physical wrongness of the Force refusing to give shape to their absence. When Vizion said it was his home too, something in Aiden's chest tightened in agreement. Naboo had a way of doing that, making duty personal whether one wanted it or not.

Aiden remained silent through it all, not because he had nothing to add, but because the room for adding was narrowing. He could feel it: authority hardening, tempers edging toward decision, the kind of momentum that turned caution into inconvenience.

And then the King's question landed, clean, sharp, and unavoidable.

Which one was going in?

Aiden kept his face composed, but his mind moved fast, probes vanishing without signal, the Force offering no echo, the black circle swallowing matter as if it were an idea that never should have existed.

He looked at the void without meaning to, and the void looked like nothing at all. The fact was that Lorn and Bastilla were in there, and he wasn't going to rest until they were both home safely. He understood, in that moment, that arguments about jurisdiction would not matter to the missing. Nor would pride. Nor would caution, if it became paralysis. Someone had to step forward not to prove a point, but to create a thread, any thread, that might lead back out.

Aiden's voice was steady when he spoke, and he did not raise it.

"I will go." he said simply.

He spoke truth, as if the decision had been made long before his mouth caught up. He did not dress it in heroism. He did not offer a speech.

He only added the boundary that made it something other than reckless.

"Not as a test," Aiden continued, calm and controlled. "I go in with intent, with safeguards. We can't let this become a precedent where people are thrown at mysteries until one sticks."

He let the silence take the rest, standing with the weight of his choice settled into his posture, grounded, deliberate. Aiden didn't look away from the black circle as he finished, quieter now, more for himself than anyone else.

"Someone has to try to bring them back."

It was then the sounds of someone hitting the ground could be heard, and the sound of a punch was heard just prior to that.

Aiden let out a small sigh. "This is the last thing we need right now." Aiden motioned for two surrounding Jedi to get her to the medical tent nearby. He looked to the soldier that struck her, speaking in a rather curious tone. "You okay?"

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

Kudau Rayne Lo'to Aurelian Veruna Aiden Porte Vizion Trozky Atham Harek Wuxia Wukong Tatiana Sah Voli Cholrass Jacen Voidstalker Dankaia Virkenn

"An ambush predator," Cora hummed thoughtfully. "I hadn't considered that. Just because we can't sense any malice from this…thing…doesn't mean that it doesn't exist."

"Kudau," she repeated, turning slowly to meet the Shistavanen. "Corazona. It's a pleasure to meet you, though I wish it had been under better circumstances-“

Wham!

Cora's attention snapped forward, just in time to see a Twi'lek hit the ground. A soldier hovered above her with an outstretched fist.

"Oh, for Ashla's sake," she grumbled. "Come, let us remove that poor woman from such unpleasant company. She looks concussed.”

As she spoke, Cora stalked forward. Or it would've been, if she hadn't been carrying a passenger. More of an irritate wobble, as it were.

"Really, Aurelian?" She didn't bother to hold the judgmental tone in check, nose wrinkled with one hand braced at her back, the other atop her swollen abdomen. "We're striking civilians now?"

She met Aiden's gaze, then motioned for Kudau to lift poor Rayne away from the ruckus. Her focus fixed over Aurelian like the glare of a floodlight.

"Dismissal of the Jedi would be unwise. As councilor Trozky said, the Force is likely involved to some degree - the fact that we can't sense anything beyond it is proof enough. Something is interfering.” With her patience eroded by physical discomfort and now this, she waved a hand toward the soldier.

"What would you do if this thing were to suddenly spit up a host of Sith Lords? Punch them to death?"

With one last tsk, she lumbered back around, and waddled her way toward the medical tent.

 

[Dankaia Virkenn]

[]

Sleep Tonight - The Birthday Massacre​

Tag: Corazona von Ascania / Wuxia Wukong

Dankaia and the Padawan Belui moved beyond the humming perimeter pylons, where holofences dissolved into an intricate design of pale blue light and the ground shifted from durasteel plating to raw, soiled earth. Data-streams shimmered across Dankaia's wrist console, feeding her telemetry in silent bursts, while the distant sky pulsed with artificial auroras; residual signatures from the first recorded manifestation of the Void.

Servo-drones hovered at a respectful distance, their lenses rotating in quiet vigilance as the two figures advanced toward the marked coordinates, footsteps echoing with a faint, synthetic resonance.

Belui broke the silence, his voice edged with nervous energy as he glanced toward the scorched depression ahead. "If the Void appeared here now, it could do so again in the future; and possibly did so before in the past. Shouldn't we be ready for engagement?" Dankaia slowed, turning just enough for the glow of her cybernetic circuitry to catch the edge of her expression.

"Readiness doesn't mean recklessness," she replied calmly. "We don't provoke what we don't yet understand." She gestured toward the data spikes hovering in her display. "Every variable we collect now keeps us alive later."

They resumed their approach, the air growing heavy with interference that made Belui's comm unit hiss softly in protest. "No unnecessary chances," Dankaia continued, her tone firm but measured. "We observe, we record, and we leave. That's the order."

Belui nodded, steadying his breathing as he adjusted his grip on his lightsaber without igniting it. Together, they stopped at the edge of the Void's birthplace, two small figures framed by technology and ancient power; watching, listening, and resisting the instinct to act while the unknown watched back.

Spoiler: Loadout

• Cybernetics / Bionics
  • Left Hand
  • Cybernetic Brain Chip
  • Cybernetic Heart
  • Cybernetic Spine
  • Cybernetic Rib Cage
  • Cybernetic Limb
• Weapon(s)
  • Lightsaber

 

[Jacen Voidstalker]

JACEN

Aiden Porte

Jacen had one palm to the ground, his eyes closed.

There was nothing beyond the edge of darkness. It wasn't like the Netherworld, but it wasn't like an Ysalmiri either.

He almost missed having someone to quote some old proverb just to make him think harder.

"Which one of you is going in?"

The question hung there, sharp and unavoidable. "You lost two already. You want oversight. You want a seat at the table." Aurelian's jaw set. "Someone should be trying to bring them back. Who are you sending?"

He was a good distance from the drama, but he had a surprisingly keen sense of humour for an old man.

Jacen raised one hand and gave a small wave.

"Hello there! I wonder if I can help with that."

 

[Aurelian Veruna]

Direct Tags: Atham Harek | Rayne Lo'to | Vizion Trozky | Aiden Porte | Jacen Voidstalker

Aurelian turned, already annoyed, and found the lieutenant far too close for comfort. Beret. Cigar. That grin again. He pinched the bridge of his nose, then reached out and took the cigar straight from the man's fingers. He examined it with a frown. Cheap wrap. Uneven cut. He handed it back without ceremony and looked past him toward the void.

The rope idea lingered. Crude. Inelegant. Possibly the only thing left. Technology failed. Probes vanished. The void did not care how clever they were. Aurelian opened his mouth to respond when motion exploded at the edge of his vision.

A Twi'lek folded in half and hit the ground.

"Oh come on," Aurelian snapped, turning on the lieutenant. He sighed and looked down at the unconscious woman and the droid head at his feet. A probe. Of course. He crouched, nudged it with his boot, then straightened.

"Well," he said dryly, "it seems we have a volunteer for the rope option."

He was about to elaborate when the Jedi knight spoke up. Predictable. Aurelian listened, arms folding as the man volunteered himself like this was a story that needed a hero. A soft chuckle escaped him. "Lieutenant," he said without looking away from the void, "you were right. Keeping the Jedi around was inevitable. One of them was always going to step forward. Hero complex and all."

Cora's voice cut in, sharp and disapproving. Aurelian turned, already tired. "Oh, of course you're here," he said. "And for the record, I did not knock her out." He gestured toward the soldiers fanning out. "If Sith start pouring out of that hole, we are not punching them. We are pointing very expensive blasters at them. Many of them."

He paused, reassessing. The field was chaos now. Jedi. Military. Reporters. A bad idea waiting to happen. He looked between the unconscious Twi'lek and the volunteering knight.

"Hypothetically," he said, tone light, "we could tie the two of you together. Cover multiple variables."

Then another voice chimed in. Another Jedi. Waving. Aurelian stared at him for a long second, then laughed. "Oh good," he said. "Another volunteer." He straightened, mind racing. This was spiraling. "Fine," he said, clapping his hands once. "We have options. We have volunteers. Let's stop pretending this is controlled and start deciding who goes in first."

​

 

[Atham Harek]

​

Despite being apolitical and a rather unassuming man when it came to politics, Lieutenant Atham Harek drew one conclusion:

The King of Naboo was a sanctimonious little toad.

"We're striking civilians now?"

"Well, just me, my fair lady." Atham placed his hands on his hips, giving the Twi'lek a once over. He really did a number on her! Good sport, that was. He couldn't help but be slightly bemused at the situation. "I don't think I've ever seen such a tall woman fall so quickly." He looked around, and narrowed his brow when the cigar was returned.

Still, he smiled, maintaining the careful fiction that he was not, at that very moment, entirely capable of thrashing the snot-nosed, arrogant, tetchy, bossy, pompous political maelstrom before him...curly-haired, reed-thin, and possessed of eyebrows far too expressive for his own good. He coughed, severing the line of thought at once. Utterly unbecoming of an officer and a gentleman to think of pummeling his superiors!

And yet, he could not summon any real remorse over having struck the woman. One did not, after all, creep up on Atham Harek and reasonably expect a favourable outcome.

"Jedi tend to do that, heroics and all, sir. But I do say, I get quite tired of being right all the time." His hands naturally made a sort of stiff L-shape, as if he was presupposed to holding a glass of brandy.

"Why not a ship, hm? Preferably one with a hyperdrive... purely for the novelty of not being stranded. It might even afford us the small luxury of discovering what, precisely, awaits on the other side, and withdrawing with bravery, dignity and poise should it all go rather badly. That is, of course, unless this devil's rear deposits us directly into the jaws of some enormous and deeply awful mechanism, or a creature of similar discouraging temperament. Or, the Sith's front porch."

A pause. He made a hmph sound, as if the thought just crossed his mind.

"Ah well, surely there isn't some malicious entity behind this, hm? Not like our greatest foe routinely produce horrors beyond our comprehension!"

 

[Kudau]

If it was distraction Kudau had wanted when engaging with the others on site, he had gotten plenty of distractions. From the Twi’lek who’s speaker system had made his ears ring, and subsequently got a punch to the face from someone who seemed to be a republic officer, his mind had certainly been able to drift from the massive hole in the middle of the countryside.

After helping Corazona von Ascania move Rayne Lo'to to the medical tent, his ears perked up as he overheard the voices outside. He began relaying the commotion as best he could to his peers,

“They’re talking about sending something- no, someone, into the hole to get… the people who dropped in?” In the chaos of everyone getting on site to deal with the situation, Kudau had missed the memo that the first Jedi he met, Bastila Sal-Soren , was stuck in the pit. He continued relaying, “They already have a few volunteers to be tethered and sent in…”

As the conversation outside the tent continued, his hackles raised slightly, and expressed an opinion, “I do not much care for that officer,”referring to Atham Harek , “One would think those working with the last major order of Jedi in the galaxy would be more respectful…”Kudau wouldn’t normally express such unfiltered opinions, especially when he knew he might be jumping to conclusions, but Corazona’s friendliness had inspired him to express his emotions. He felt doing so might help him socialize better…

 

[Rayne Lo'to]

Naboo
Tags: Corazona von Ascania , Kudau

Rayne Runner | Trash Mobile Home
​

Rayne was motionless for a good moment, which made moving her away from the pit very easy. She didn't twitch or squirm, and with the work of several Jedi she was brought to the nearby medical tent with not too much hassle. As she dreamed, those visions came back to her again...

The brutal death of dozens of Twi'lek garbed in black, people who looked like her. Crimson blades clattered to the ground as they all found themselves ran through with vibrant blue blades. These assailants all had the same features: Blonde hair, grey eyes. As her gaze was overwhelmed with the sight of limbs splattering against the floor, time froze as she felt the cold metal of a lightsaber in her hand. Crimson blade, her body draped in black robes. A blue saber was pierced through her chest, blood trickling down her mouth.

Slowly, her eyes drew open. They blinked out of sync for a moment as the world around her spun, then came to equilibrium. How was it that she had gotten to this place? She remembered being insulted, trying to offer equipment to barter her way off of the planet, and then... Her head throbbed as she tried to retrace her steps. Rayne didn't drink, mostly because she found the flavor of alcohol to be unappealing, but she wondered if this horrible sensation was what a hangover might feel like.

“One would think those working with the last major order of Jedi in the galaxy would be more respectful…”

Words outside the tent filled her ears. She sat up with a muted groan, reaching up to rub her temple. All of this was so strange. What made it even more so was when a woman hobbled in. Very pregnant, though not to the degree that it masked how beautiful she was. If Rayne wasn't half-disoriented she'd probably find herself rather flustered. It was hard to talk to beautiful people from lives she couldn't fathom without thinking about the fact that she wasn't anybody. Perhaps the concussion, then, was a blessing sent to cure her of her social anxiety.

This was all so strange. She couldn't keep track of everything, her head was hurting to much. Even so, she should still at least inquire about what had happened. Rayne reached to the back of her utility belt to grab her vocoder. What she drew back was a concave rectangular device with a warped shell, wires sticking out of a place where the plastic had peeled away. Whenever she had fallen, Rayne had crushed the device.

Her expression was very pathetic, the sort you'd expect when a child dropped their ice-cream at the park. Maybe it was childish to pout and sniffle down at a broken piece of gear she had pulled out of a literal trash pile. Then again, she was probably justified.

She had been hit in the head.

 

[Dankaia Virkenn]

[]

Sleep Tonight - The Birthday Massacre​

Tag: Corazona von Ascania / Wuxia Wukong

The scanner-light bled across the basalt face in shifting patterns as Dankaia slowed, her breath fogging in the cold that radiated from the stone itself. The cave entrance was less an opening than a wound; jagged, humming softly with a subsonic thrum that set her implants whining and made the air taste like burned copper.

The Void pressed against her senses, a gravity without mass, tugging at the circuitry in her spine and the ancient currents in her blood all at once. Belui swayed beside her, one hand braced against the rock, eyes unfocused as if the darkness beyond the threshold were staring back. "It's here," Dankaia barely whispered, more to steady herself than to confirm it, as the cave answered with a pulse that rippled through the ground like a sleeping machine turning in its dreams.

Belui took one step too many toward that call, and the world tilted. The pull of the Void surged, sharp and invasive, draining the color from his face as his knees buckled and his boots skidded uselessly on the slick stone. He stumbled backward, arms windmilling, and vanished with a startled cry as the ground gave way beneath him. The fall was short but violent, a hollow crack echoing up from below as he slammed into a narrow underground cavern veined with glowing fungi and rusted metal remnants from some long-forgotten age.

Dankaia rushed forward, peering down into the glowing dark, her heart hammering as the Void's presence deepened, stronger now, closer, thrumming through her like a corrupted power core awakening beneath the earth.

"Belui," Dankaia called into the luminous dark, her voice threading through the hum of ancient stone and dead machines, "answer me, are you okay?"

She closed her eyes and reached outward through the Force, letting it flow past the interference of the Void, past static and shadow, searching for the familiar cadence of his presence like a signal beacon lost in cosmic noise. A faint echo answered her touch, unsteady but alive, and she exhaled slowly, anchoring herself as the darkness shifted, aware now that it had been seen.

Dankaia didn't hesitate, she stepped into the darkness and dropped, cloak snapping as the blackness swallowed her before releasing her in a controlled impact beside Belui, boots hissing against stone. He looked up at her from the cavern floor, sheepish and wide-eyed, and muttered, "Sorry. Didn't mean to make it dramatic."

She smirked, offering him a hand as faint lights from behind crawled over her, and said, "Relax, if I minded dramatic curveballs, my life would be boring."

Spoiler: Loadout

• Cybernetics / Bionics
  • Left Hand
  • Cybernetic Brain Chip
  • Cybernetic Heart
  • Cybernetic Spine
  • Cybernetic Rib Cage
  • Cybernetic Limb
• Weapon(s)
  • Lightsaber