First Reply Found in the Gloom

[Amos]

"In darkness, there are no masks. No pretense. Only truth—and truth is rarely kind."
-Darth Vitiate​

Coruscant - The Slag Pits

Stone and steel. That was Coruscant. An expansive ever-growing man made jungle that stretched from the very skies to the roots of a surface that hardly even existed anymore. The roots of this world were long gone, replaced by teeming tunnels and lines of sewage. Over the long millenia Coruscant had been destroyed and rebuilt so many times that even the eldest records in the galaxy were little help in finding a way through the maze of structures. A labyrinth, constructed over untold centuries teemed upon the world itself, growing to heights and digging down until the light of the sun no longer shone.

The jewel of the galaxy, they called this world.

It was far cry from the wilds and forests that Amos had grown up in, and yet there was something familiar about it. Away from the neon lights of the upper-city, down beneath the steel buildings where few wished to tread, Coruscant still echoed with it's own heartbeat. Amos could not have named it and he doubted that any other would. The feeling was distant. Not the impression of the Force untold billions made. Not the echo of the lives that had been lost in countless battles.

No, it was something else. Something deep within the planet itself, forgotten and left behind.

It had called to him since his arrival on this world, since Hedda had brought him here.

His revulsion of the world above had faded the further down he ventured, the deeper he delved into Coruscant itself. The light above him no longer came from the sun, but bare flickering bulbs powered by some long forgotten conduit. Paid for by inertia and nothing more. The smell of sewage and rotting steel was strong down here, but Amos walked through the massive tunnel unabated.

Something called to him down here, and he would find it.

 

[Tibera Jessen]

Deep in the lower levels of Coruscant, there were no places of solace anymore. No bars, no nightclubs, no places of escape. The only people that came down here were those with purpose. Tibera, had purpose... She was on an espionage mission assigned to her by a company she'd been working for. The objective was to slip in and gain intel on Sith production on Coruscant. The Slag Pits were a large part of what she was meant to see.

There was no team, there was no extraction promised, it was all about survival. Once she had the necessary pictures and video, it was run the hell away time. Hopefully things would be just as simple.

The industrial-sized furnaces and crucibles were constantly moving. Everything was hot enough to cook the poor merc in her armor. She kept herself sealed up in the face of the incredible heat, preferring not breathing in fumes over comfort. There were heaps of old metal, rusted and ready to be melted down. From old war droids, to broken down starship parts, even old speeder wrecks, all of it was being turned into parts for The Sith's war machine.

There was no end to the marvel of machinery, it was staggering just how much space was taken up just by the scrap processing. A small town was taken up by just the foundry. It was enough to spiral the mind into a stupor.

"Just what the hell are they building down here," She asked herself, knowing no answer was coming.

Even as she stood on top of the mound of scrapped machina, it all felt unreal. There was no time for awe though, she had a job to do. She lifted up a small camera, snapping pictures of all the contraptions she saw. Whatever her benefactor wanted, it was here somewhere. Hopefully it was in these first few pictures.

There was a moment where she felt a twinge in her spine, thinking she was being watched from afar...

 

[Amos]

The sound of metallic calamity echoed out before him as he stepped from the tunnel, head slowly turning as he peered through the great foundry ahead.

It was like an ant mound. Teeming masses of droids moved around, scrapping, biting into steel, and taking what they could to be reforged into something else. Amos watched it for a moment, unable to hide the disgust on his face as he fires of industry burned before him. Lips pressed to a thin line, and then slowly his gaze turned towards the floor of the great pits.

There he felt it.

Fingers tightened for a moment, furling and unfurling as he debated what steps he would next take. Biting back his revolution, the Sith stepped forward and began to move into the great factory. Ignoring the droids and the great machines, stepping past the maze of machinery and moving towards the center of it all.

The noise became cacophonous, drowning out all else around him as he came closer and closer to the middle of the Slag Pits. His eyes flickering upward only for a brief moment, spotting a figure up high in the distance. Amos cocked his head to the side, wondering what the wanderer was doing in this hell.

Had Hedda set someone to follow him?

It did not matter, he would continue down.

From his belt he pulled the small cylinder that he had taken off one of the many corpses left in his wake the last few weeks. The blade igniting in a bright blue, foreign to the hands of his people, but still familiar enough. The blade plunged into the floor, and slowly began to carve a circle.

 

[Tibera Jessen]

There was nothing to tell Tibera something was coming, no sound could be heard over all the grinding of metal and whooshing of hot air. She felt something though, a great rumbling in the trash pile under her feet. The mercenary looked around, before seeing the metallic maw of some great scrap beast. It was a droid, one made to grind huge piles of metal into usable components.

Sadly, it was not programmed to stop for biological life! It became clear her only recourse was to sprint for safety. She had to do something, and her firepower wasn't going to save her this time. It was beat feet or be meat for the grinder!

Every footfall came with a silent prayer to any force in the galaxy that would listen. Don't let her get squashed! In the frantic moments of chaotic retreat, she saw something. A man with a blue saber in his hand cutting into the floor. There wasn't much time to explain the plan to the strange man. The brick of durasteel and muscle just dove to safety.

The sight was, for all the world, crazy. A scrap iron goliath mere meters behind her as she dove over a railing. She fell over, tumbling to safety behind a smelting furnace. The droid was unable to give chase anymore.

"Crap's sakes, how do I even get myself into these messes," She asked, her helmet having been flung off her head. One hand held onto her head, the other aided in standing. "Never been almost eaten by a scrapper droid before..."

She looked down at the man as he carved away at the floor, shielding her eyes as the saber melted through. "The hell are you doing anyway?"

Amos