Dromund Kaas: Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own

[Velok the Younger]

It took a lot of doing to get an excavation and containment contract for Dromund Kaas. Mandalorian forces occupied the system, monitored all traffic to and from the surface. She'd taken a fething lie detector test inside a ysalamir bubble to get this gig. Posted a serious securities bond. Spent a long, long time building relations with the Mandalorians and guzzling Circe Green.

AEL had applicable subsidiaries, and those subsidiaries had applicable personnel and equipment. Mohc Extractives mining crews in hazardous conditions envirosuits moved ten-ton stone blocks in shin-deep snow, blew open crypts, strip-mined the palace's foundations. Marvand Publishing's in-house antiquities associates applied archive-grade indexing procedures to the many unidentified artifacts and items that the Mandalorians had already found, as well as every new find. Akure Executive Leatherworks staff handled guardian beasts (skinning them in situ) and advised work crews and archivists alike on secure containment.

It wasn't exactly a well-oiled machine, but the excavation/containment contract had only been rolling for a few weeks. Dromund Kaas, the Mandos knew, was something of a liability, a potential asset to their enemies, useless to them without a thorough and expert search. It was Rave's job, under the aegis of Field Marshal [member="Ordo"] and with the consent of that dreamboat Skirata, to track down and analyze every Force artifact and significant data archive on Dromund Kaas. Suffice it to say, she would be here a while.

Contract of a lifetime. Not something to jeopardize with petty selfishness, either. Ordo had made it clear enough that he fully expected a trinket here and there to disappear. His first priority was that, whatever valuable or dangerous information she unearthed, the Mandos got read in on anything that could possibly be used to defend the Mandalorian territories. Rave, as a daughter of Dathomir -- a Mandalorian-protected world -- and as a local businessperson, roots in the community, could respect that.

 

[Velok the Younger]

The first order of business was the shipping container. Subach-made, Triton-class or something like that, a real interstellar freightbox the size of a corvette. It sat just outside what had once been Kaas City, surrounded by Mandalorian guards and automated defenses, plus barriers and suchlike things. Even she, as a Master with some access to stealth, might have had trouble getting in there if not for the contract with Ordo's signature thereupon. Labor droids followed her into the immense container, where piles of rubble and wreckage contained every treasure the Mandalorians hadn't been able to identify to their satisfaction.

The droids began laying out flexible sheets of nullification resin, easy enough for an alchemist to synthesize, blanketing the lot. The layout of that investment was absolutely worth it. Oh, sure, this container held everything from Kaine Zambrano's coloring book to the pedicure set of Desmius the First, and that was just what she could tentatively identify within her first five minutes, but it also held a couple of unseen nastinesses, buried in the clutter. The powerful Dark Side aura decreased markedly as sheets of nullification resin settled into place over the bulk of the deposit.

A crew of Marvand antiquities folks and AEL hazard handlers brought in their gear, and Rave got to work alongside them, cataloging her way toward the big knot-o'-troubles in the depths of the shipping container. Marvand was a recent acquisition, but so far it had proven its worth. Not bad for chance. Serendipity, it seemed.

 

[Velok the Younger]

There was, of course -- Rave said to herself as she took a shovel to the mess -- no earthly reason why she should expect to find treasure trove. The Mandalorians had lacked the background to make sense of it, so far as she was aware, but they had a couple of competent Forcewielders. Rekali, for one. Ordo himself for another. Rekali...there was something about that one. She'd heard something once, about a stint as the Jedi Order's wetwork man, and that meant Shadows. Artifact acquisition. That resonated unpleasantly with more recent tales of Rekali Force Lighting the Sith Council's holocorn vault to dust while [member="Siobhan Kerrigan"] telekinesced all over a Zillo Beast and the Council's finest.

Expert enough to recognize a real treasure? Maybe. Probably. But in a world full of bad history and secrets, not even Rekali and Ordo could cover the ground. Not with war on the horizon and so much else to do.

Her personnel fanned out behind her, working closely with each other but not with her. She couldn't exactly blame them. In the earliest days of AEL she'd done her best to keep her profile low, but it didn't take much to look at what AEL made and whose name was on the door and put two and two together. The newer acquisitions, the subsidiaries, were fresh to the employ of this particular Dathomiri witch (her ooglith cloaker hid her Nightsister bruises along with her Vongforming scars). But she paid generously, and trust could grow.

 

[Velok the Younger]

She'd suspected her first days at this job would be boring, and they'd met her expectations almost exactly. Without question, the most useful tool of the intrepid artifact hunter was the shovel. The rake was a close second. Oh, a properly trained archaeological team would have been infinitely better. Toothbrushes and soft cloths and gridlines. But the Mandalorians had made it clear that priorities were priorities, that the dangerous things needed handling in the short term, that better some things fall through the cracks than that major problems remained unfound and un-dealt with.

She was not immune to the pull of that methodology. In fact she embraced it. But part of her, the part that filed holocrons and scrolls so carefully, wished that she had enough staff and enough time to do all this properly.

The shovel and the rake, and a heavy team, saw to it that the sheets of nullification resin were stacked one by one against the wall over the course of the next three days. A specialized categorization system, a taxonomy of sorts, had taken form before this operation commenced, and the last few weeks had seen it adjusted to the realities of the field. Subcategories within subcategories largely eliminated the need for extensive notes, or at least delayed that need. Resin-nulled crates and even Mandalorian ysalamiri contained those items with an actual Dark Side presence. When her senses grew numb she used a thaissen crystal at close range and blanked her signature to avoid false positives.

The crates began to fill, and her crews shuffled them off to containment sites on- and offworld. Some went straight to vaults on Myrkr, others to intermediate study locations in deep space, well within Mandalorian territory. A few went to Yavin, which was more than interesting, but she never got much detail on that.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Yavin Four.

As a younger man, before extragalactic temporal distortion took its toll -- don't ask -- Ember had studied here under the Solusars. He hadn't been first wave, not one of Skywalker's handpicked, but Yavin brought back memories and then some. And when he'd come back here in this day and age, trained Mandalorians in the lightsabre and the Force, he'd used the temples where he'd learned the Jedi way.

When the crates of congealed nastiness arrived, though, he didn't keep them in the temples, secure as this system was. Instead, once the transport shifts left him alone here once more, he loaded the deadly cargo into a hoversled and set out into the jungle. Piranha beetles splattered on his windscreen, vines threatened to drag him into quicksand rivers, but he knew Yavin's traps of old, and had spent a good fifteen years in uncivilized forest after that. He knew how to read life, how to get where he was going.

Some time around the Krayt administration, some enterprising soul had taken refuge here, buried the entrance to the Lost City of the Jedi, only emerged when the coast was clear. That was Ember's best guess as to why the subterranean city's entrance was, itself, subterranean, accessible only by digging. On earlier trips he'd excavated it, descended the ancient turbolift, begun pouring more and more of his privateering gains into components that he and a handful of droids installed personally. The city had air, light, power, working turbolifts, even security.

Oh, and silence. Lots and lots of silence.

He'd prepared chambers here, nullification resin with ysalamiri nearby in case of emergency. It was here that the most dangerous relics of Dromund Kaas, complete with field notes, would find their most exhaustive study and potentially their final resting place. In the Lost City of the Jedi, miles below the jungle, knowledge came second and safety came first.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Ancient disaster had visited the Lost City of the Jedi. Blasterfire had destroyed the Grand Computer, the repository of unspeakable records. Imperial forces had broken and pillaged, led by Prophets of the Dark Side. Portions of the city had collapsed, and the city had been abandoned in Ember's day, even by the few who had called it home. And the more money he sank into repairs and repair droids -- easily twenty million by now, most of his good fortune nest egg -- the more he realized the Lost City of the Jedi would take increased everything to renovate back to even a shadow of its former glory.

Such were his thoughts, and he struggled against their bleakness, as he pored over the artifacts which Merrill's teams had marked as the most hazardous. Of course the artifacts enhanced that sense of despondency, but as a longtime Shadow in this era and something along those lines in ages past, he knew when to put them away in the resin vaults and go for a run.

He worried, too -- and the artifacts didn't help with that, either -- that Merrill had pulled a fast one, despite the ysalamiri lie detectors, despite the security bond, despite how much she stood to profit from this relationship, despite everything. Merrill was a Nightsister, full stop. That had implications. And he couldn't spend too much time away from the artifacts.

 

[Velok the Younger]

Her firmest link to the Order was [member="Domino"], and Domino got her status reports.

Mandalorian scrutiny is moderately high, but my patron's name opens plenty of doors. So far my teams and I have managed to locate fourteen significant hard drives or datacrons, all administrative and logistical in nature at varying levels of secrecy. As per the terms of the contract, all of the recovered information has gone to the Mandalorians. The datacrons themselves are irrelevant to Ordo -- Mandalorian personnel participate in the copying process for completeness' sake. As a result I've accumulated a tidy little archive of data and datacrons related to the administration and logistics of the Sith Empire, mostly from the Vulcanus and Zambrano regimes, though some of it dates back to Lussk, Ardik, and even Desmius.

In terms of actual Force artifacts and holocrons, most of what the Empire knowingly possessed was taken by Velok and Dissero in the Rudrig incident, or by Zambrano to his personal collection on Panatha. So far we've managed to unearth a few run-of-the-mill Sith swords and holocrons, nothing spectacular. Our most dangerous finds, such as they are, go straight to Ember Rekali, who's apparently working out of a base on Yavin. I've managed to keep a few in AEL hands for study, with the continued promise that all relevant and strategically useful information goes to the Mandalorians. It'll take a good while to glean that information from holocrons -- we both know this, and the Mandos do too. The best I've found so far is the Holocron of King Nakgru, which contains no useful insights on combat or the Force or superweapons, as well as no relevant modern data or serious Dark Side presence. In other words, it fits none of the Mandalorians' categories, and I've quietly filed it away as insignificant -- and then filed it out of the system.

As a result, the Order now owns a nineteen-thousand-year-old account of ancient Sith Pureblood sociopolitical history. I've used it already to find a handful of ancient crypts, which we're excavating, and that lets me categorize the Nakgru Holocron as a 'breadcrumb,' something insignificant that marks a trail.

It may be the least important holocron possible, but a glimpse nineteen thousand years into the past is something I can't ignore.

 

[Chloe Blake]

“Keep on frowning like that and I reckon them wrinkles just might stick,” the soft lighthearted quip would come from the right of [member="Ember Rekali"], their origin a small slip of a woman with pale blonde hair that fell in messy waves to mid waist, bright blue eyes, and an easy going smile.

Clad in the comfortable clothes of a salty spacer - tanned breeches, pale blue muslin blouse, and well worn brown nerf hide boots - the Warden of the Sky came ambling on over, careful as she could be, carrying a small crate in her hands, a datapad set up on top as its perch.

Who would have thought that a hot warm meal would eventually lead to the two hitting it off? Then again, Chloe had been told by her granddaddy that she had an old soul, the kind of personality more prone to enjoying long nights of conversation and fellowship rather than cantina hopping like some of her other kin.

Ember was a wealth of information, wisdom, and truth be told, companionship. It was nice to be able to simply discuss things about various Force philosophies, trade stories, and see the galaxy through another’s eyes.

Reckon Ember took a shine to her too, giving that she was here in the Lost City of the Jedi with him, aiding in the cataloguing and archiving of some of the nastiest bits of knowledge the galaxy had ever done dreamed of.

She would reckon that her Old Timer of a master, wherever he may be, would be bursting at the seams at what she was doing now. A thought would rest upon that she was doing right by the Order of Selab by doing this.

The Gods have a plan and a path, her granddaddy would always say. Things were just lining up for her to take a greater part in ensuring the most dangerous of artifacts never made it into the wrong hands.

If she could help out just in that small bit, she could call it a good use of her time. Not to mention gave her more time to enjoy Ember’s company and wisdom.

She set the crate down next to him with a small thud upon the table, flashing that now familiar whimsical smile up at him briefly before turning her attention back at the crate. They contained just a fraction of the items shipped in from Dromund Kaas. More to pour over, more to keep out of sight and of mind from the known galaxies.

“Granted, my grandpa always said they just make a man look more distinguished.” she said in lighthearted tease, intending to bring some humor into the seriousness of their task. This was no walk out in the fields, there was a dark lingering presence among the items that littered the vaults, like a putrid plague ready to stick with a tar like quality to the very soul.

Was no wonder that they would mess with the mind and whisper like the very lost souls of the Nine Hells, despite all precautions.

Made her wonder if purgatory would feel just like this.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Chloe Blake"]

"Oh, hey there." He glanced back over his shoulder. "Come check this out. Latest find from Kaas. Minor artifact, minor effect, major history behind it. If Rave Merrill's notes are right -- that's the Dathomiri Witch Ordo hired to do the groundwork on Kaas -- this is called the Mirr. It's from Voss, from the territory that got blitzed past under Desmius but only solidified under Zambrano, after the Rudrig archive heist. It's not the most evil-feeling of the lot, but it's Sith for darn sure. Says here it's supposed to enhance visions and suchlike things, make farsight more clear. Which could be useful, I'll admit -- Keetael and Gand Findsmen can see visions of their targets and their targets' surroundings. Imagine if the Gand and the Voss had collaborated with this, and who knows, maybe they did at some point. Interestin' piece, this Mirr. What d'you think -- know anything relevant?"

 

[Velok the Younger]

Note to self. May be developing allergy to svoltan rhyolite through overexposure. This may be problematic. Applied Sith Magic healing for permanent fix, took four painkillers. Might be a little groggy today.

Every old crypt we found from the Nakgru Holocron has been raided twenty times over the last twenty thousand years. There's nothing but defaced hieroglyphics and broken tombs. Even the bones have been pillaged -- everyone wants the Clavicle of Clavicus or whatever. There's nothing of value there but memory, not even to me, but I've documented all the inscriptions and all the traps that got set off when Naga Sadow was just a gleam in his daddy's eye. Employed the Force and seismic sensors to find all the hidden nooks and crannies and passageways and hideyholes, and they've all been cleaned out at one point or another.

Net take thus far: eight slim black spirit urns, one crotchety Watcher, twelve incense chalices, a threadbare Natth cowling, and the empty chamber where the Sith Emperor once kept a phobis device, before they were all destroyed. Velok believed the last one was destroyed at the Battle of Polis Massa a while back. Dissero also believed them all destroyed, and if anyone would know, he would. The chamber feels like fear. Might be useful, but I'm not ripping a room out of the subbasement of the Citadel. For the Watcher, I'll write up a brief on them and keep the dang thing -- the Mandalorians have no use for a statue.

 

[Chloe Blake]

Curiosity would perk Chloe's expression as she took a step closer, a slight frown dribbling over her face as she began to inspect the the small pyramid like object. There was a subtle dark aura that resonated from it.

Fingers would hover, but not quite touch. A brief flicker of blue would rise towards [member="Ember Rekali"] 's direction at the mention of a Rave Merrill. There it was again. That name.

"Rave Merrill...hmm," a Dathomir witch at that? Well that would prompt some musing for a later time. Presently, the Mirr would be her focus. Blonde brows would scrunch a bit, digging into the mental files of spacer tales and what have you for what she could remember.

"Mirr... and the Voss.." she said repeating to herself, before the bits and pieces of the legend came from the fore of her mind. "Aye.. she's right. Legend has it that it had been used by the Mystics to help them with their visions. Clear out the cobwebs and the fog I reckon. Been lost for a while now, if I remember correctly."

Mental calculation would bring a dawning realization at just how old the artifact was, "But that be a story long since passed for ages, Ember. It's long considered to be a Voss artifact, well since the times of the Old Republic." That was well twenty-five thousand years ago.

"Wonder if the Mystics used it in meditation? Reckon that might be how it works. Risk be the potential of constant use might lead to corruption --- But my Granddaddy would say it ain't the item that makes a man fall, but his own choices."

A hand would tuck blond strands of hair behind her ear, "I wouldn't put it past a Voss and Gand Findsman collaberation, " she gave a nod, but then added, turning towards him, "But it wouldn't put it past to be also due to the Gormak."

Forearms came to rest against the table, "Did you know the Gormak and the Voss were once one people? Same species and all, but the Sith and the Jedi changed that.


Long ago, the species sundered, with those who learned to use the Force from the Jedi becoming the Voss, while those who did not -- seeing the Force as a 'corruption' - became the Gormak. From this tales say that it created the dark side entity in the Nightmare lands...

Maybe that has something to do with this?"

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Chloe Blake"]

"Now that is good to know," he admitted. "I've never been to Voss, I barely know who the Gormak are -- what Dark Side entity, and what're the nightmare lands? I-"

His chair spun as his comm went off, and a message scrolled across the screen. His eyebrows rose drastically.

"You'll like this. The witch, Merrill, she's stumbled across a functional Watcher, a living, immobile statue for guarding doors. She's looking to hang onto it -- hasn't marked it for transfer here. Sent me a quick brief instead, on what they do, how they work. Which is polite of her, and also hilarious, because I can make Watchers. My wife taught me ages back. I've been known to make'em from old statues and trade'em to the Jedi for things I need, though it takes a while. The brief she sent is pretty complete -- I don't think she's trying to pull a fast one on us."

 

[Chloe Blake]

Her eyes would start to sparkle with mirth at what could only be said as a shift in roles. A least, normally she'd been the one to be constantly asking him questions. About the Gand Findsmen, the Keetael --

Ears went perking when his comm went off and she was quiet until he relayed the comm message. Both brows rose high, matching [member="Ember Rekali"] 's as she went drawling out in piqued interest,

"Watchers eh?"

Annnnd just like that, they switched roles. Again.

However, to the root of the first concern, "Well.. I ain't too familiar with Rave Merrill." she admited, and there was a small shift of emotion over her face as she added,"The only Merrill I know is Jorus."

Her blonde head went sweeping around the room, landing upon the various crates that the witch had sent over, "But she has been sending the big and bad over. " a question would form, however, "I mean, they appear to be just about anything with a dark side presence on them.

Ain't seen anything yet that fits a category beyond that. What exactly was the agreement for?"

Ahh but the mention about the Watchers would pop up in her mind again. Leaning forward, Chloe began her questions, "So, you can make Watchers?!" there was no mistaking the mischievous devilry in her eyes. Do you wanna build a watcher...?!!

Now there was a sight she'd love to see!

Everytime they had a conversation, she would learn a little bit more from him. Like discovering he was married. So he had a family.

"Got yourself a pretty talented wife there, then."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Chloe Blake"]

"That I did." He smiled faintly. "I was a lucky man. The agreement," he added after a moment, "far as I can tell, it's basically 'cause the Manndalorians have exactly two people that can handle Dromund Kaas in any real way. And Mia Monroe's got her troubles, and I can't handle a world alone. Merrill's done her best to persuade Ordo, Skirata and the rest that she's got her share of reasons to play us straight, and maybe she does at that. And she's got the manpower, the setup, the gear. What's important is that world gets sorted out. Every rock of that place built on unearned pain, by men like them that cut down my-" He coughed, held up the Mirr to the light.

 

[Chloe Blake]

[member="Ember Rekali"]

Chloe could see the subtle tells that ran across Ember's face as he spoke. A face was like a map to a life and the eyes that of the soul. There was a love, a deep set love that he would express in the hint of the smile. In the lines of his face. In those deep set eyes.

She didn't miss the past tense. He did. The 'she was.' A widow now, from the sounds of it.

She'd listened to it all with rapt attention, but the observer in her would pick up on cues. Course she wouldn't pry, but the curiosity in her expression would relay her unspoken question well.

"Well...reckon it works out right." she added with a hint of smile, still leaning forward against the table, one foot swinging behind her to hook against the other's ankle.

"Thinking of using the Mirr then? Figuring out how it works and all?" she asked.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Chloe Blake"]

He appreciated her discretion with a glance, before purple Vahla eyes focused back on the Mirr in his hands. He held up the heavy artifact before his face, palms under the edges, fingers curled up over the metal and oddly warm blue crystal. "Using it? Not my style. Oh, I won't deny it'd be useful. I'm as much Keetael as I'm anything else, and those long-range tracker's visions we talked about could sure benefit from this. Not exactly portable, though, and I'm not fond of the Dark Side. I started as a Darksider, when I was a boy. My son, my oldest boy, Rach, he went bad and got led astray, starting in on underestimating Dark Side artifacts. Of course, his Dark Side artifacts of choice involved lingerie." He grimaced and set the Mirr's back edge down on the desk, then let the heavy artifact rest level and stood to look out over the Lost City of the Jedi. "And there's other factors. For one, this ain't mine. I don't ascribe to the school of thought that holocrons and suchlike things belong to people."

He turned away from the view, spread his hands. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I'll probably be the one watching it and I'll probably use it here and there. It's not exactly malevolent, and I've been doing this enough years to know what's what. I'm just not wild about it. As to figuring out how it works, that's alchemy straight up, and not my department.

"So. Watchers. You ever encountered one?"

 

[Chloe Blake]

She could respect that. And truth be told, she was glad that he wouldn't be keen on using it. More information about the Mandalorian came in. So he had a son, named Rach. One who didn't put much gumption on the adverse effects of sith artifacts.

Then he got to the lingerie part. Blonde brows rose high on that. Well then... All she could do is nod, and pretty much have the same sentiment.

Alchemy, hmm? would be her silent musing, a subject she wasn't too keen on. Loremaster was more her game, and the specific whathaveyou and whatchamacallit to get an artifact works via alchemy wasn't her kind of thing. If she could talk to it, then she was just fine. Anything else beyond that ... well.. not her cup of tea.

At the mention of Watchers again, her expression would perk, eyes brightening. "Ain't had one face to face yet," she admitted, "But I have heard of 'em..." there came a sheepish grin, "Most folk have the craziest stories round them things. Saying that they'll follow you without ever moving, just the eyes... all kinds of creepy like.

Others make the claim that they would get run off by stone men." her blue eyes would dance with amusement at that, "Granted, that sounds a bit more silly than truth."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Chloe Blake"]

"No, that's something else, but it's real enough. There are animate statues out there, in the deep crypts, possessed by who-knows-what and made with genuinely nasty rituals. Sith did like to get creative with their tomb guardians. Probably a form of one-up-manship, same as anything else they did. But anyway, Watchers. They're simple enough, when compared to people. Not alive, just...well, the best analogy is a really dumb surveillance monad, the kind of underachieving A.I. they put in a fire alarm. Imagine making that with the Force instead of circuitry, though I know that raises way more questions than it answers." He clamped nullification resin blocks around the Mirr. "Matter of fact, there's some statues in that green stone cylinder, around the topside main entrance. Fitting enough guardians for this place, wish I'd thought of it sooner. I think I'll get on that, and if you want to help out..."

 

[Chloe Blake]

[member="Ember Rekali"] did not have to ask twice.

"I'll help!" came her excited cry, straightening to her full height -which wasn't much but still - rocking on her heels as she took the last nullification resin block and set it to the right of the Mirr to complete the task.

"I have two hands see!" both hands rose to flutter by her head. Enter wiggling of fingers. "What do you need me to do?"

Oh yeah, she was excited.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Chloe Blake"]

"I just realized how much you remind me of my daughter," he said after a moment's silence. Shaking his head, he smiled and made for the door and the ensuing turbolift. "Let's make sure, first, that the green stone entryway has decent enough statuary to make it work."

Long vertical turbolift shafts, at least a couple of miles long, connected the Lost City of the Jedi with the Yavin jungle. Some o the shafts had collapsed, and remained that way; others had been repaired by Ember and the droids. Twenty million credits went a long way. The capsule shot up toward the surface, leaving the Lost City behind.