Star Wars Roleplay: Chaos

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Public Cantonica Canon

The Catscratch's hyperdrive had been busted for almost a year now. At first Davik had seen it as an opportunity: Being on the same planet as his mate Gentis, it seemed to be the perfect moment to play a couple of long cons with the locals. They tried to fix a few Fathier races by bribing jockeys, but when that didn't really turn out to be profitable they bought into a Fathier stable with less than legal tactics only to find out that there's always a bigger fish in the underworld. And by bigger fish I mean Gentis and Davik were goldfish and the actual owner of the stable was a Great White Shark.

Davik had managed to placate the shark with a shipment of Crimson Dawn artefacts that he was way too late delivering anyway and the bounty fod with his name on it was already at the Eriadu guild office by that time. Needless to say they went underground for a bit, crashed in safehouse along the South Stretch and then slowly popped back out doing some minor things like a bookie hustle for those unfortunate gamblers that had been barred from the usual monitored haunts.

For the past few months they had been running a Sabacc Den that the local gang had explicitly told them they weren't allowed to operate from the basement of a drainage pumping station. It positively reeked of sewage that the Boonta Incense could only mostly drown out. A rusty droid with outdated software was the doorman who, upon uttering the phrase "The HoloNet Datasheet said that it rains every Tuesday on Tatooine" would open the sliding doors and reveal a cramped six by six room. In the middle a round Sabacc table stood and enough room for five stools, including the dealer. The thick musk of sweetened Boonta incense filled the room and the muck that covered most of the walls was only barely noticeable.

Behind the dealer was an old grate at about the size of a kath hound with rusted outsticking bolts that were used as coathangers by the man sitting in front of it: Davik Lorso. His greying hair was greasy and slicked backwards and his two-week old beard mostly unkempt with thinner on the right side of his chin where he plucked at it whenever he contemplated cheating.

To any newcomer he would smile heartily, offer them an empty seat and whenever they put down the twenty credits buy in, exchange it for a filled glass of Ripe Binka-Flavored Moonshine. 'You are very welcome at the Freemso-' Freem and Lorso '-Sabacc Den. I'm your dealer Davik and you'll get a chance defeating our reigning champion Gentis Freem himself.'
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[OOC: Anyone up for a game of Sabacc? Three rounds, Roll two d6 to start. Each new round either dont roll (Stand) or roll one of the two dice again. Specificy which in the roll comment. Score is the difference between dice. Smaller difference the better. Lowest equal wins.]
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Was the game rigged? Most likely. Were Davik and Gentis good enough at rigging a Sabacc game to account for the luck and skill of their players? Roll a dice and find out.
Davik, on his account, took a shot of the moonshine regularly and his eyes were already bloodshot as he swayed looking from player to player. 'Sabacc is a simple game, you take two cards and each turn you exchange one in your hand with one in the deck. When the cards in your hands match, you stand down until the reveal.
 
The speeder slid low along the neon strip, its bodywork all sharp chrome edges and tinted black transparisteel. Canto Bight's skyline spilled across the reflection like a kaleidoscope, broken and bent by the curves of the machine. At the wheel sat a polished service droid in a matte black shell, lenses glowing pale blue, hands smooth as they gripped the controls with inhuman steadiness.

Cassel Vorren leaned back in the passenger seat, fingers brushing the collar of his midnight jacket, every seam tailored, every line immaculate. Off duty didn't mean off brand. He had built Helios Broadcast out of nothing but style, speed, and nerve, and he wasn't about to let himself be seen looking like one of the stim addicts staggering out of the alleys.

The speeder dropped to street level, repulsors whining low, before gliding to a stop outside the cantina. Cassel's gaze swept the frontage, quick and calculating, the same way he scanned a political scandal or a gambling fix, always reading the angles, always hunting the story. He stepped out, shoes hitting the permacrete with a confident rhythm, the night air alive with the hum of cheap holo-ads and the smell of synth-spice drifting from the doors.

Canto Bight wasn't just a playground, it was a goldmine. Everyone here was selling something: a scam, a secret, a sob story dressed up as opportunity. And Cassel Vorren was in the market.

He adjusted his cufflinks, smirk tugging at the edge of his lips, and walked inside. The lighting was low, all smoke and shadow, the kind of place where people gambled not just with credits but with their reputations and their lives. Perfect.

The droid driver eased the speeder away behind him, melting back into the night traffic. Cassel's eyes scanned the room with professional curiosity. He wasn't here for the cards, though he'd play if it helped. He was here for the people. Sources, marks, maybe even partners. Helios needed new blood, new voices, new dirt to feed the HoloNet stream.

He cut a line through the crowd, shoulders squared, carrying himself with the ease of someone used to attention. Every glance was an opening, every half-smile a potential lead. A place like this was a living network, if you knew how to tune in to the right frequency: and Cassel always did.

At the end of a corridor he found the door, a rusted panel with a tired droid slouched beside it. The thing's photoreceptors flared faintly as it sized him up. Cassel leaned in, voice low but steady, smooth as a broadcast line. "The HoloNet Datasheet said that it rains every Tuesday on Tatooine."

The lock groaned open, metal scraping against metal, and Cassel stepped through into the cramped chamber. Incense clung to the air, thick enough to almost mask the sewage stench seeping from the walls. Neon from a battered wall-strip threw jagged light across the sabacc table at the centre, casting the players in shifting shades of red and blue.

Cassel moved with unhurried confidence, shoulders relaxed, eyes sharp, taking in the setup before fixing on the man by the grate, Davik, by all appearances. He adjusted his jacket, let a slow, knowing smile play across his lips, and walked toward the table like a man arriving at his own broadcast stage.
 
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The burly Klatoonian, Gentis Freem, let out a low snigger as he brought Davik's attention to the Den's newcomer with one of his thick thumbs. A clean-shaven young man in a meticulous suit positively screamed that he was an easy mark. Davik couldn't help but nod and flash a grin of unbrushed teeth,

'Welcome, kid.'-he reckoned he had about twenty years on the newcomer, perhaps even more seeing how fast his spice-addled body was aging these past few rotations, 'My name is Davik, this here-' he nodded towards the Klatoonian, "-is our Den's champion, Gentis."

Next moment he tried to size him up as he pulled out an empty shot glass and filled it with moonshine, "Buy-in is one-hundred credits." He figured the man in the expensive suit had some money to burn and if he came all the way here then he had already been kicked out of the clean places. "You lose more than you can pay, Gentis here gets to one free punch on your jaw-" and boy that Klatoonian was muscled up so much that one free punch could straight out murder. As he had.. five years ago, just before those four years in that Republic prison ship. But who's counting!?

"-so what do you say, zoombatta," Davik placed the shotglass in front of the empty side to his right. "Think you can handle it?"

Nor'baal Nor'baal
 
Cassel slid into the empty seat with the easy grace of someone who’d walked onto a hundred stages before. His jacket caught the neon’s edge, flashing sharp lines of midnight and silver as he settled in. He didn’t so much as glance at the moonshine (it was probably half rust by now) but let his hand drift into his jacket pocket, producing a slim credchit case in polished durasteel.

“One-hundred it is,” he said smoothly, laying the credits on the table like he was paying for front-row seats at a show. His eyes flicked to Gentis, then back to Davik, and the faintest smirk tugged at his lips. “As for the punch...let’s hope your champion doesn’t get the chance. I’d hate to have to explain a broken jaw on my next broadcast.”

He slid the shotglass a measured inch closer, fingers tapping the rim once before pulling back. Every movement deliberate, every word polished. Cassel Vorren wasn’t here just to play cards, he was here to be seen playing them.

“Deal me in.”
 
Davik couldn't believe his luck. One-hundred credits was a bigger sum they had expected to cheat anyone out of tonight and neither he nor Gentis could stifle a grin. "Good decision, let me deal you in," Davik said as he snatched the credit chip from the table and started shuffling the two decks of Sabacc cards. Gentis' snigger turned into a low growl as the large Klatoonian tried to gain some measure of composure and a poker face. He wasn't the smartest partner Davik could have wished for, but considering all the cons they had played here on Cantonica for the past months then... wait, they'd all failed so far.

Davik gave both players two cards and thus the game of Sabacc was underway. "So, what kinds of broadcast can we know you from?" The aging smuggler wasn't completely oblivious to the going ons in the Galaxy, mind you, but reception while in hyperspace wasn't the best and when planetside he most often visited the kind of places that didn't fancy playing Galactic News on a loop. "You're not on CBHN, are you?" Davik's eyes narrowed as he tried to match this young man's face to one of the broadcasters he'd seen on the Canto Bight HoloNet News. He didn't usually stop and watch, but the other day they had this gorgeous Catharese presenter that purred at the end of every other sentence and it had Davik under a total spell the entire time. Well, the fact he was high probably didn't help much either.

He tried to remember her name, but "You don't happen to know this presenter from Cathar? She does local news on, eh-" kriff, he hadn't actually remembered anything about what she had been saying. He knew the color of her eyes and how her high cheekbones accentuated her chipped ears and majestic brow. Not to mention how shiny and soft her fur looked, as if begging you to--

"-ahem, what can I call you, young man?" Davik was flustered by his own thoughts and forgot to call him kid this time. An extra shot of moonshine would straighten him up, surely.

Nor'baal Nor'baal
 
Cassel let the cards fan into his hand, face unreadable under the shifting neon glow. He held them light, careful, like a man who knew presentation mattered as much as the play.

“CBHN?” he echoed with a small laugh, the kind that carried just enough polish to sound genuine. “Not quite. I used to be with the Bulletin back on Coruscant. Now I run something of my own, Helios Broadcast. Faster, sharper, glossier. We keep the giants honest by being hungrier than they are.” His eyes flicked between Davik and Gentis, weighing their tells as much as their words. “So if you’ve seen me, it was probably breaking down a council scandal or tearing a celebrity apart for cheating on their third spouse.”

The mention of the Catharese presenter pulled another grin from him, this one edged with amusement. “Ah, yes, I know who you mean. She’s got half of Canto Bight entranced. I can’t say I know her personally yet. But she’s exactly the sort of voice I like to keep an eye on.”

He placed his cards flat on the table for a moment, fingertips resting against them like a seal. “As for what you can call me, Cassel Vorren.” The name was delivered with a subtle rhythm, practiced, almost like the drop of a headline.

He picked the cards back up, tapping them together once. “So tell me, gentlemen, do you always run your games from the basement of a pumping station, or is this just a temporary home while you plan the next big con?” His tone was light, teasing, but his eyes stayed sharp, already calculating whether their answers might be worth more than the credits on the table.
 
Hubert strides into the canteena with shoulders hunched, and his eyes on a swivel. He knows little about the area, and being a wanted fugitive doesn't do any favors to ease his tension. Bounty hunters seemed to lurk wherever he set foot, it was only a matter of whether or not they were actively looking for him...

He managed to land (If you can call barely managing to reach the planet's orbit on an empty fuel reserve, and slam into the ground below a landing...) without a scratch on him, his ship however was not as fortunate as he. At least it wasn't his ship. He shuffles his way through the crowd, doing his best to keep from slamming into the other patrons that surrounded him in a claustrophobic melting pot of different faces. He set out on this voyage to meet a client whom left him a rather cryptic request to transport some sort of contraband from point A, to point B. Their meeting point was set to be at the local canteena, in the back corner of the room. The last few words of the holo-message wail through his memory like a siren.

"If you are late, the contract will close."

'Well it isn't my fault the bastard didn't fill his ship up...' His inner monologue protests, as if to plead his case to his own demons that were currently beating him down for his mistakes. He takes a long drawn sigh, and approaches the bar, flagging the bartender and ordering a pint of spicebrew. As he takes the glass into his hand, and brings it to his lips for a long draw, another thing comes to mind...

Some suit he klepped a particular set of keys from, just so happened to be planet hopping to burn more money on pleasure in a few nights, than most would see in their entire lives. Canto Bight was his previous stop, according to the ship's logs, and to Hubert's astounding luck, the idiotic owner of said craft kept a journal that logged all of his nefarious stops and purchases. A datapad full of receipts of sin.
amongst the location in the datapad in which he currently sat, the words, "Sabacc Den," next to, "The HoloNet Datasheet said that it rains every Tuesday on Tatooine."

Upon remembering this, his eyes begin to swim around the room in dissecting patterns, looking around for a table surrounded by low-lives whom would just as soon shoot their opponent on a whim as greet them to the game. Only there was no table, the low-lives in sight definitely aren't playing Sebacc...

Finally his eyes fall upon a lone door, in front of which stood an old droid. Hubert's brow furrows in contemplation as he collects his glass and makes his way to the door. He observes the droid from only a few feet away, as if he expects it to do something in response to his presence, but alas, it simply stares back into his eyes, simply waiting.

"Uhm..." He clears his throat abruptly.

"The, uh... The HoloNet Datasheet said that it rains every Tuesday on Tatooine." He says softly to the droid, checking over his shoulders one last time for any bounty hunters that may be following his trail. As the droid subsides, and the door shoots open, he is met with a table that again, to his astounding luck, only seems to have room for one more at the time. Upon meeting each pair of eyes in the room, he nods in greeting, and takes a seat, pulling a deathstick from his inner coat pocket and lighting it.

"Already goin' broke, might as well test my luck. How much?"
 
Just when Davik was about to call the first round, the door opened to reveal another young man. This one, admittedly to his own disappointment, didn't seem to be someone with deep pockets. "Ah just in time-" he gestured towards the empty seat and put a shot of moonshine in front of him, "Buyin is one-hundred credits-" which, by the look of him, Davik wasn't entirely sure he had on his person, -and if you don't have that on you I can extend a line of credit once," he didn't mention that if the young man wouldn't win the game on an open line of credit, Gentis would sucker punch him on the jaw. The trick was simple, after all. You pay or you get punched.

Davik turned dealt the newcomer a set of cards and then turned back to Cassel Voren; "Cassel Voren, eh?" he pursed his lips, "Tell you what. You win today and I'll give you my comcodes. I know some people between the Outer Rim and Corporate space," meaning, in smuggler code, that he ran spice from Pyke and Hutt-controlled worlds to the black market of Etti IV. At least, that's what he did when the Catscratch was still purring. The broken hyperdrive and lack of spare parts in his price range had put a temporary stop to all that. "There's nothing old Davik can't deliver. Spice, Talent, Droids and Information. All for those that can pay my price," a price that, at the moment, was a working hyperdrive.

Finally he turned back to the other newcomer, "Ah I forgot. Davik's the name and I'm your dealer for today. Your opponents are Cassel Voren," he motioned toward the man in the expensive suit, "and our Den Champion, Gentis Freem." The Klatoonian grinned a greeting.

Nor'baal Nor'baal Hubert Starhopper Hubert Starhopper

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[OOC: I've decided to do all the rolls for the Sabacc game. Just tell Davik IC when you want to replace a card (or make an OOC note like this)]
 
Cassel let the cards rest in his hand, gaze flicking between Davik and the Klatoonian before landing back on the dealer. The offer drew a measured smile across his face, one that never quite reached his eyes.

"Comcodes are a valuable prize in their own right. But what interests me more is what you just said, Davik. Spice, talent, droids and information. You and I both know information is worth more than all the rest combined. What kind of information are we talking about? Cargo routes? Names? Blackmail material?" His voice stayed smooth, curious without looking desperate, the kind of tone he used on guests in a studio when he wanted them to say too much.

He shifted his attention to the newcomer across the table, giving him a brief nod, the kind that mixed acknowledgement with appraisal. "Cassel Vorren. Helios Broadcast," he said by way of introduction, clean and clipped. His eyes flicked to the deathstick, lingering a fraction of a second before returning to Hubert. "Bold choice, lighting up before the first hand's even played. I admire the confidence."

Cassel tapped the edge of his cards against the table once, thoughtful. "As for me, Davik… I think I'll take another card." He leaned back, a faint smirk tugging at his mouth. "Let's see how generous this deck really is."
 
Admittedly, to none other than himself, Sabacc is not a game Hubert is necessarily familiar with. The sight of an unknown set of card in front of him, and the significant dip in his wallet for it put a sinking feeling in his gut on top of the already twisting, nauseating feeling that has been eating at him since he entered the city's limits. His eyes shift around the room, revolving back to his cards. His one advantage is that his opponents may misread his confusion for despair, and luck brings him a winning hand. However, the expression on his face quickly changes as he hears mention of a smuggler, offering his services...

"You wouldn't be needing a pilot 'er mechanic by chance, would 'ya?" He asks, wasting no time, his common projected with a rather sly accent. "There ain't a ship out there I can't strip down and build up again. And as it happens, I know my way around flyin' 'em too." He takes a drag from his deathstick, letting the smoke slowly roll from his nostrils as he peers at his cards again, for a moment, confusion taking his features again.

"Change." He says, trying to instill as much false confidence as he possibly can into himself, poking his finger on top of his cards. IN a moment of forgotten manners, he looks around the room again to meet their eyes in a rotative sweep. "Hubert, by the way. Good to meet youse'."
 
So far so good. The Sabacc Den had a full table and the buy in had been much bigger than usual. It was time to make sure Gentis gets a winning hand and what better distraction was there than sincere interest in his players; "You're a mechanic?" Davik asked Hubert, "Specialized in starship engines, per chance?" Although Davik had enough know-how to fix his own hyperdrive once he got the parts he needed, someone who was actually trained to do so was in high demand in the galaxy. Anyone can be trained to fly a ship from A to B, after all. The difficult part of flying is trying to fend off pirates by engaging in a dogfight. Davik had thirty years of experience on the hyperlanes and even he couldn't pull that off. But mechanics? Most corporate bulk freighters had droids pilot their ships and employed only a crew of mechanics to keep both the ship's engines and the droids intact. If Davik had chosen that as career path he'd have been rich two decades ago.

Meanwhile the players received their new cards and Davik refilled their glasses with the Ripe Binka-Flavored Moonshine.

Turning back to Cassel, Davik winked, "Knowing something is much less valuable for me than it is for you," the Black Market on Etti IV had strict anonymity structures in place to make sure that the buyer, seller and procurer of information deals would never have to meet. They weren't in corporate space right now, though, and on Canto Bight all that really mattered was a good poker face and credits to burn. "But if your information is in a place that I can find on my charts-" and as an experienced astronavigator Davik's starmaps were comprehensive, "-then the only thing standing between you and you knowing what you want, is the price you're willing to pay."

Nor'baal Nor'baal Hubert Starhopper Hubert Starhopper
 
Cassel lifted his fresh card, eyes flicking over the face before sliding it back into his hand without betraying a reaction. His expression stayed composed, the kind of calm that looked good on a broadcast feed and worked even better across a sabacc table.

He let Davik and Hubert's exchange play out, gaze moving between them with quiet interest. A mechanic's skills and a smuggler's routes were a story in themselves, but Cassel kept that thought behind his eyes. When Davik turned the conversation back his way, he answered with the same easy polish he used on air.

"Information at a price. That's the oldest trade in the galaxy, isn't it?" His tone was conversational, though his eyes never left the dealer's. "But you'll forgive me if I don't buy blind. Give me a taste. One thing you know that would be worth Helios paying attention to."

He swirled the moonshine in its glass, set it down untouched, and let a faint smile touch his lips. "If the sample's good, then we can talk about the price."

With that he tapped his cards once against the table, settling them flat. "And for now, I'll stand."
 

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