Private Dark Humour Night

[Damsy Callat]

Qabbrat, the Reef;
Level xXx, Coruscant
// Arlo Renard | Kal | Alina Tremiru
+ PM for invite \\​

Motina had broached the idea one night when Damsy was helping her unload the dishwasher.

"Stand up?" Damsy asked incredulously. "Like, as in comedy?"

"Yes," the mother-figure of the Sithspawn repeated. She then turned to the Siren and held up a fork like a finger close to her mouth, commanding silence. She got it; Damsy shut her parting lips and swallowed her half-baked rebuttal. "That's what we used to do before you arrived in the Valley of the Lords." The little green lifeform shrugged, turned towards the drawer she had opened, and tossed the utensil inside. "Whenever they were gone, that is. And we had caught up with all our work. Neither of which were often, mind you.

"But, you should never underestimate the power of a little morale, my girl. It might even do you good—all those knots in your mind."

For all Motina's natural ability to sow seeds, she should have probably been working the greenhouse with Claudia rather than the rickety old stovetops. It was because of her Damsy stood in the semi-circular living hall (rather than room). Arisso, the resident factory foreman and mechanic probably since both were quite literally in his Technobeast blood-fluid, had hooked a microphone he had breathed life back into the qabbrat's surround sound, a remnant of Kel-Mar's bullpen intercom system. Instead of paging some poor underpaid technician, though, tonight it would see more jovial use than it ever had...

Damsy took a deep breath in time with pushing off her knees to stand. Arisso pat her on the back as she stepped to the makeshift stand she had constructed: a weird-looking podium with a cushion on which could rest the mic. She took it up and switched it on. The motor began to hum in the absence of wires but presence of age, giving slight static feedback little more than white noise.

"Hey, folks," she began with a strange combination of confidence in public speaking and lack thereof in...the rest of the concept. She waited to continue until the room's chatty ambience quieted. Looking out into the sea of faces, Damsy was somewhat surprised. She had lost track of the Sanctorium's exact numbers somehow. They weren't a large faction by any definition, but they had undoubtedly grown since Damsy had seen most of them in one place.

"Thanks for agreeing to this, but Motina's the real mastermin'." She nodded at her and Arisso started up a small round of applause.

Then came the moment of truth.

Pretend you're just shootin' the chit with Ty, she reminded herself for not the first time today. It had just been so long since then.

Still, she soldiered on.

"Y'know, before Kai an' I revamped this factory, I would encounter a lot of different people. Most of 'em weren't like me, like us, so when they would ask me where I came from I never knew what I was 'posed to say." She had been pacing, but now stopped to pull a face and a voice. "'Well, when a test tube and an eyedropper love each other very much...'"

 

[Alina Tremiru]

What. The. Hell.

She hadn't been here long. No, after she was captured (Well, she surrendered but that's neither here nor there) and brought to Alliance space, she expected a trial, prison time. Execution. There were plenty of punishment for the once Sith. But she hadn't been killed. Instead, she was brought here to The Raft. A sanctum for Sithspawn. A place for Sithspawn to try and go against their nature.

She nearly laughed at the idea. She tried, and failed, to go against what she was. Alina needed to feed on people. And the Light? She didn't think it'd burn, but it did. There was more of her past, how she was made, that she didn't know at first.

But now she was among others like her. Monsters. People who eat people, like does. And.. They were doing stand up comedy? Alina blinked where she sat, watching Damsy Callat go through her routin- No it wasn't a routine. This wasn't prepped.

And laughed. Not cause the joke was funny, just in disbelief. What had she gotten herself into?

Arlo Renard | Kal

 

[Arlo Renard]

“All of my jokes are too dirty for this,” Claudia complained. Her hoverchair was parked amid the rows of chairs that had been brought into the Qabbrat for the show. “Especially the ones about disabled people. Those are some of the filthiest ones in my repertoire.”

Kai gave her a concerned look from his chair next to hers. <Why are the ones about disabled people so filthy?>

“Well, there’s one involving a guy who dates a girl in a wheelchair, and she goes on a swing, and the girl’s dad thanking him for helping her down off the swing afterwards because ‘the last guy just left her hanging there’...”

Petyr, the Sith Changeling who was sitting in the row in front of them, suddenly broke into a coughing fit—a poor disguise for his wheezing laughter. Beside him Erictho covered her bunny nose with a paw.

Kai blinked. <What’s so funny? If he took her off the swing, that was nice of him.>

“You’re thinking of the wrong type of swing, kid,” Petyr rasped. “And hey, if you don’t mind, I’ll tell that one when I go up there, since you’re too young to be telling dirty jokes in public. Although it is a pretty old joke. I've heard it before, and probably most other people have too...”

Claudia rolled her eyes, then abruptly changed the subject as something beyond him caught her attention. “Who is that lady over there?"

They all followed the direction she had pointed. A fair-haired woman was sitting alone, laughing at Damsy's routine.

"Eh, she's new. Name's Leena or Alia or something."

"Damn, she so pale," Claudia muttered. "Ooo, and she's got sharp teeth. Is she a vampire?"

Kai had also noticed the vampiric traits. He inclined his head, staring at Alina fixedly. <I'm gonna go ask her.>

"Wha-You can't just go asking people if they're vampires!" Claudia protested. "You might get eaten!"

<I don't think vampires like the taste of my blood.> He stood up and started making his way through the maze of chairs and benches and thrift store sofas, until he reached Alina and plopped down next to her. <Hi. My name's Kai. What's yours?>

Damsy Callat Alina Tremiru Kal​

 

[Alina Tremiru]

She hadn't been paying attention to the rest of the room.

As Arlo Renard plopped down beside her and plopped down beside her, Alina full on jumped. Panic for a moment filled her eyes as she glanced towards him, though it quickly faded as she realized who it was. Well, no. She didn't know him. But he.. Was that him to introduced himself? She tilted her head. Hopefully it was his voice in her head. It was that, or she'd gone crazy.

Well, that was still a possibility.

"Alina." She turned her glowing yellow eyes towards the stage again, still watching Damsy Callat 's attempt at a skit. "This a normal thing here?"

Kal

 

[Arlo Renard]

He seemed to have startled the vamp—Alina—though he didn’t know how or why. Probably the telepathy, he realized. His mouth didn't move when he "spoke".

"This a normal thing here?"

<Nope. We just decided to do it.> He shrugged. <Maybe it'll become a thing.>

He watched Damsy stumble through her routine (hey, at least she tried), then asked Alina, <You're new here, right? Where are you from? Are you one of the refugees?>

They had recently taken in a group of Shi'ido refugees who, while not Sithspawn, had been victimized by the Maw. Since they were shapeshifters, he supposed she could be one of them.

Damsy Callat Alina Tremiru Kal​

 

[Alina Tremiru]

"If it does, hopefully she'll be able to get better." Not that Alina would ever entertain the idea of going on stage herself. In that, Damsy Callat had the Vampiress's respect. And pity. At least some of it was funny, in an ironic way.

<You're new here, right? Where are you from? Are you one of the refugees?>

"Dromuund Kaas. Formerly of the Empire." There was no reason to hide that, right? Still, the faint smile that had formed from the act on stage thinned to a frown. Refugees? It was odd to think of Sithspawn as refugees. Her family had experimented and made countless of their own. She never thought twice that they could very well be more than the weapons they were made to be. Alive. And suffering.

".. Not a refugee, that I know of at least. Just.. Here to help, I guess."

 

[Kal]

The Reef and its inhabitants were nice enough, despite their occasional stints of gloomy self-loathing. While Kal was hardly a resident, he was prone to occasional visits, especially when something of interest was going on.

Given his fantastic performance at Mr. Heartbeat, standup comedy seemed a natural choice.

True, he hadn't won the event, but that was surely due to a bias against bodiless contestants.

---

Damsy was clearly somewhat uncomfortable with the current activity, but she wasn't doing poorly, all things considered. Kal found her performance amusing enough, though admittedly his sense of humour diverged from the norm in a few key areas. 'A normal sense of humour' was not something he had learned to mimic just yet.

He couldn't be too far off, though - no one was booing her.

<You seem to be running low on material, would you like to borrow some?> Kal was by no means a natural, but he was rather good at memorisation and in possession of a HoloNet connection. He was more than capable of producing verbatim the contents of a dozen and one 'stand-up' events, if need be; shameless plagiarism, in other words.

Damsy Callat​

 

[Arlo Renard]

<Ok good, ok fine.> Kai’s signature catchphrase was accompanied by him bouncing a little with excitement in his chair. <We’re happy to have you. Don’t worry, it’s not always like this. Things are usually a bit more lowkey.>

Glancing back at Damsy, he belatedly added, <But there’s never a dull moment.>

Sure enough, at that very moment something was happening in the reception area of the Reef. Three figures had arrived unexpectedly. Two were recognizable to the members of the Sanctorium—a couple of smugglers who had been ferrying Sithspawn refugees to Coruscant from the remnants of Sith Imperial space. The third member of the group was covered by a large black cloak and hood that completely obscured their form.

Once the two smugglers had taken their money and left, the one-eyed receptionist turned to the remaining cloaked figure. “What’s your name?”

“Andromache,” a woman’s voice replied.

“Can you remove your cloak? I’d like to see you.”

Andromache pulled back her hood, revealing… a human face. It was almost a disappointment, after all the mysterious buildup, to be met with something so seemingly ordinary.

“All right. They’re having some sort of party or show in the qabbrat right now. Would you like to introduce yourself—”

“No.”

The receptionist blinked.

“I don’t intend to stay long,” she said. “I would rather avoid all but the most necessary social interactions for now.”

The receptionist couldn’t help but notice how emotionless she seemed, her face largely immobile as she talked, her stare dead-eyed and vacant. It was quite uncanny. “Well, you should at least meet Damsy. She’s the one in charge around here, and she’s currently attending the show.”

Andromache stared at him in such a way that the cyclopean receptionist could practically see the wheels turning in her head. “Very well,” she said in the same dull, stoic tone.

Leaving the reception area, the two found the qabbrat in an uproar. The members of the audience were either laughing at the show, eating popcorn and other snacks, or chattering amongst themselves. The level of distraction was such that no one paid much heed to the newcomer as the receptionist went to inform Damsy of her arrival.

Damsy Callat Alina Tremiru Kal​

 

[Damsy Callat]

"Well," she added, back to her normal voice, "they got more action than me on Big Stormy, that's for sure."

Kal's telepathy filled her head when, after a few more attempts at jokes achieving various levels of success at delivery, she stepped back to the impromptu podium for a drink of pre-salted water. <Goddamn, yes please,> she thought back his way. She was having a similar revelation as he was— that she wasn't doing bad—but she wasn't doing good either. Her slightly competitive nature didn't mind in the particular situation though, as she was happy enough to give the Sithspawn a uniting, light-hearted experience, even if it might be somewhat at her expense.

But even so, even she wasn't one to say no to free help.

Or, not from fellow Spawn. And at least Damsy assumed that the absence of terms meant free.

Both of them were saved by the bell, or rather the approach of a Spawn to the lackluster, very much level stage. As the receptionist, Jeff, neared, Damsy placed her glass down on the mic stand with one hand and motioned at Kal for him to hold on with the other. "What's up?" she asked him at a personal volume.

"I'm terribly sorry to interrupt..." he began.

Damsy shook her head. "No such thing. Someone else can take over," she assured before repeating her question: what's up? She began walking out of the spotlight towards him even before he began answering. At the same time, she scanned the crowd. Something about Petyr caught her eye. She motioned to him next. "Take over, yeah? I'll be right back."

It became clear that 'right' was not right; it'd be more like ASAP and who knew when that might be. Jeff didn't actually have time to say anything before they were on the Reef's newest newcomer. Then she understood. A refugee had been smuggled in ahead of schedule. It was great that the Sanctorium's trusted smugglers were evidently working overtime, not so that the Reef itself was still struggling to make ends meet. In such, this woman's room hadn't been set up just yet, but Damsy was already thinking of loaning her hers. She barely used it anyway; the bed was more an oversized queendom for Keziah more than a literal meditation space for Damsy.

Damsy extended her hand, but not to shake. She moved to usher the newcomer away from the audience and towards the elevator down to the Labyrinth. Everyone's quarters were down there, including her own. "What a night to stop by," she muttered good-naturedly. "Let's get to someplace quiet..."



--
Arlo Renard | Alina Tremiru | Kal

 

[Alina Tremiru]

"I can see that. It's.. Actually really nice." She smiled again, this time her gaze drifting back towards Damsy Callat and her set. As much as Alina was mentally making fun of her the atmosphere of this place with all these other Sithspawn was.. Delightful. More than that, it was hope inspiring, for vampire at least. "I hope to see more of this, at any rate."

Arlo Renard | Kal

 

[Arlo Renard]

<Me too.>

Kai was briefly distracted as Damsy left the stage to deal with someone—another newcomer, from the looks of it. A woman wearing a big black cloak that obscured most of her body wasn’t exactly unheard of in the Reef, where deformities and other physical abnormalities were just another part of life among the more unfortunate Sithspawn. It didn’t matter that they lived in a universe full of weird aliens. People were still self-conscious about how they looked, especially around members of their own group—and the new lady looked to be human, the most common species in the galaxy.

Petyr took the stand. Looking out at the audience, some of which consisted of parents with children, he decided to do away with his raunchier jokes, instead launching into a story involving a neighbor who asked him to dogsit a very old hound. The day after the owner went on vacation, he entered their apartment to find the dog had passed away in his sleep. He called the owner, but it was the wrong number. Rather than leave the body in their apartment, he put it in a big suitcase and tried to drag it down the stairs. Someone noticed him and asked what was so heavy.

“I’m not going to tell him it’s a dead dog, of course, because that would be weird. So instead, I tell him it’s these big, expensive speakers. He says, ‘Oh, let me help you with that.’ So he goes to pick up the other side… and then he grabs the suitcase and takes off with it. Rather than run after this thief, I just stand there thinking, wow, I wish I could be there to see his face when he opens it, expecting big fancy speakers… and instead he finds a dead dog.”

The audience’s laughter carried down the corridor, where Andromache was following Damsy into the labyrinth...

Damsy Callat Alina Tremiru Kal​

 

[Alina Tremiru]

Alright, that was finny. Actually really funny. Alina tried for all of like.. Five seconds not to laugh. Mostly because the idea of a dead dog might be off putting to post people. But the others laughed, and she pretty quickly joined in. Alright, these were people she could hang around with. Fangs on full display she continued to laugh even as the jokes trailed to the next, though much more quietly. Her gaze would drift back towards Arlo Renard , watching him for a moment. There were a lot of things she wanted to ask.

"So, where can a girl go and drink someone's blood around here?" Eh, probably could've asked in a better way, or literally any other question. But if this was a place she was going to live in and be.. Her, well. Hopefully the question wasn't going to scare anybody away.

 

[Kal]

Before he could share 'his' material, Damsy was rescued from the stage by a sudden arrival. She went to greet the newcomer, of course - and Kal glided along after her, motivated as ever by his insatiable curiosity.

What stories could a newcomer tell? Perhaps he was even lucky enough to find a unique lifeform.

<I was not aware you also house automatons.> Its nature was evident to him the moment he saw it, for droids lacked the presence possessed by even the least sensitive of organics. They were closer to the Force Dead, in that regard. He was able to recognise that some could be fully sentient, but it was difficult to view them as people without a soul.

Even so, the treatment some received from their organic masters left a bad taste in his mouth, so to speak. Only a human would be unstable enough to program a droid to feel fear and pain only to send it off to give its 'life' in a war.

Damsy Callat | Arlo Renard​

 

[Arlo Renard]

Kai’s head jerked around to stare at Alina, a surprised reflex. Petyr had launched into another humorous story involving an amusement park, consuming the attention of the previously restless audience.

<I don’t know if you can do that,> Kai said, not very helpfully. <Not from the people in here, anyway. Maybe a blood bank? Are you really a vampire?>

On the surface it was a stupid question, given that he had seen her fangs when she laughed. What he really meant, however, was do you really need to drink blood to survive, or is it just an addiction, like mine?

In the Labyrinth, Andromache could not "hear" Kal’s telepathy, so she remained unaware that the Shadow had just revealed her true nature to Damsy. The placid human visage she wore wasn’t really her face, but a hologram; the rest of her body from the neck down remained hidden beneath the loose, long cloak, obscuring its mechanical nature. Among other things…

Damsy Callat Alina Tremiru Kal​

 

[Alina Tremiru]

"Ah. .. I hate blood banks." Alina frowned. There was nothing she didn't like more than packaged blood. Who knows what could be in that processed stuff. Well no, it's blood. But the stale taste reminded her so much of the highly processed food she used to eat. She still could eat, but it did nothing for her. She nodded though. "Yep. Drink blood and hate the light. Though sunlight doesn't actually bother me. Blood though? I'd go feral without it."

Not an exaggeration, unfortunately.

Arlo Renard | Damsy Callat | Kal

 

[Damsy Callat]

"Hmm."

Damsy hummed out some interest at Kal's silent revelation but kept any other reaction under wraps. She didn't have any qualms about droids in general, really—oceans' tides did she miss Squish and Flotsam and Jetsam. Her opinion, however, of human replicants was storied, colored by a child- and teenhood that she only found out as an adult had hinged on one profound lie: that her Father had stayed.

That he, from her perspective, had ever wanted her.

But that was one experience in the solar winds, a standout personal bias. And Damsy understood now, having gone though it initially, that it was the droid's programmer she had more problems with than the replicant itself. In fact, if it ever happened across the Reef now, Damsy would be the first to set in on the path to true self-sentience.

The sentiment already applied to this newcomer.

"I'm Damsy," she introduced as she ushered the others into the working elevator ahead of herself. She followed soon after and then pressed one button to close the doors, another to decend. "And this is Kal. Welcome to the Reef." A small ding notified them that they had come to their destination; Damsy led them out into the Labyrinth's corridors. "Sorry 'bout double-bookin'; I thought you were coming next week or so."



**
Arlo Renard | Kal | Alina Tremiru

 

[Arlo Renard]

Kai shifted uncomfortably in his seat. <You hate… the Light, or just light in general?>

Probably the former, if she qualified as Sithspawn, but not necessarily.

<I don’t know where you’d get blood. Probably not from people in the Reef. Maybe you could hunt in the city? You don’t have to kill people to eat, do you?>

Andromache entered the lift. She nodded slightly as Damsy introduced herself and the strange silent shadow creature who accompanied her. “I am Andromache. My departure was earlier than I planned. It became necessary to leave quickly.”

As the elevator chimed and they stepped out, Andromache added, “You may have been told to expect two of us. There was supposed to be another with me, one called Hera. She changed her mind and decided not to come.”

Her delivery of these lines was as emotionless as ever, revealing neither sadness at the decision nor any trace of dishonesty. In actuality, Hera’s memory had been wiped at the hands of their master, who had thankfully only noticed that her behavior was not quite up to standard. He had no idea that she was planning to run away. The incident had prompted Andromache to flee at an earlier date, in hopes of avoiding a similar fate.

Damsy Callat Alina Tremiru Kal​

 

[Kal]

This was the part where Kal would normally be studying the surface thoughts of the newcomer, but seeing as he was not a technopath her artificiality made that a challenge. Even body language could not be trusted with such beings.

No more than they could be trusted for his kind, really - they shared an element of bodily self-control.

"Greetings Andromache. What brings a being such as you to a place such as this?" His voice, as it were, had an unearthly quality. That was only natural, given that it was produced by manipulating the air that surrounded them in the absence of vocal cords. A relatively straining exercise which he preferred to avoid even though he had gotten better at it.

Worse yet, it was so primitive - how was he to know if his intent was understood or not?

Damsy Callat | Arlo Renard​

 

[Alina Tremiru]

Alina blinked, peering back towards Arlo Renard rather curiously. Did she upset him? ".. It's a joke. I drink blood, look pale as all hell. Should hate the light, right? As in sunlight?" Was her joke really that bad? Not like she had time to practice her humor sober before, or among her fellow Sith. Still, she chuckled and shook her head. "I don't need to kill to feed. Usually I just walk through the city, pulling some blood from people as I walk. It's.. Not that good of a taste, but it's better than harming someone or y'know, inciting a witch hunt."

 

[Damsy Callat]

Damsy's lips turned slightly up into a sympathetic smile. "I understand," she replied. "And am glad you didn't, change your mind that is."

By now, the trio had come to Damsy's quarters. She put a hand on the door, about ready to push it open off its chitty lock before remembering what lay inside. The feeling threw her up a few levels, to 1997, when she had first welcomed Dagon Kaze into her other digs:

"'ey, fair warning, Dragon. . . . I have a pet. You'll get 'long great, 'm sure. Real similar. Blue-eyed, clingy, must got a fethin' death wish." Kinda cute.

She would have laughed if the memory's figment was not a little more than touchy for her at the moment.

Instead, she warned, "Mind the dragon. She's friendly if not hella skiddish." She led the way into the room. Surely enough, a lanky blue streak skittered under the bed at the first sign of introduced hallway light. "Kezi. I'll take her with me, don't worry." The Siren propped the door open against her foot so she could cross her arms. "This is my room. I barely use it anyway, so it's no problem moving you in for a few days."

As much didn't appear to be a lie. The desk was clear, the bed crisply made, signs of living few. In fact, it seemed like Keziah was the only one who had called these quarters home in at least the last month. A rectangular aquarium sat atop a dresser, water offering a soft and shifting glow. A little mess proved that she had gotten in and out a few times over.

"In the meantime," Damsy continued, "we'll find you a place to set up of your own. I don't know how you run, but if you need a rechargin' port, I'll holla at Arisso an' he'll get somethin' ran through here by tomorrow morning."



**
Arlo Renard | Alina Tremiru | Kal