Ghost Town - A DM'ed Investigation

[Darth Empyrean]

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“If memory serves me, it dulled the… maelstrom.”, the droid’s voice suddenly dropped.

It hobbled a bit closer to Diranor, turning to watch the two men still whine and struggle on the ground in their silent pains. Obviously, the protocol droid was just as uncomfortable around them as Diranor was, likely from the many things he saw them do, the crimes they likely committed in the absence of both sanity and people.

“There was a man in the club who did this, but I don’t know why.”, it said once more as it looked up to Diranor with a cybernetically longful gaze.

“Can we please go? It's unsafe here.”

[member="Diranor Cadain"]

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[Diranor Cadain]

Maelstrom. It wasn't the word Diranor would have picked based on the video footage he'd witnessed; the disappearances had been so abrupt and complete that they'd felt more like a sudden eclipse than a storm to him. But he hadn't actually been there when it had happened, hadn't been inside the club that was the epicenter of the strange event. All sorts of questions invaded his mind unbidden. Had there been a sound when it had happened? A wind? A sudden chill in the air? What had it been like to be truly present as Alusi's people were snatched away? Perhaps it was more than just the sight of it all that had driven these poor people mad.

And then the droid said the words that answered one question only to raise a greater one. A man had done this, a man in the club. It was no fickle act of dark and alien gods, no rip in spacetime or planetary anomaly, but the word of a living, thinking being. That explained why Gomorrah had been the epicenter - it was where the creator of... whatever this was had stood. But it left behind why. Had this man been a Sith, testing some new and powerful ritual that the Empire might employ on any world that displeased them? If not, who was he, and what did he hope to gain? Had he been empowered by Alusi's death, or had he vanished, too?

That latter possibility was probably too much to hope for. The man might well be lurking nearby; Diranor would have to be ready.

As ready as he could be for someone so powerful, anyway. But one thing had resisted that power already. The young agent glanced again at the voidstone, considering his options. He wondered how it had gotten there, what kind of strange coincidence had brought the one thing that could resist Alusi's doom to the same building in which the event had begun. Unless it wasn't coincidence but a planned refuge from the storm... But the droid had not identified either of the survivors as the man who had begun it all, so if he had planned to take shelter here, he'd either come and gone or never made it to this back room.

Either way, it was Diranor's best chance of getting out of Alusi without being made to vanish as almost everyone else had. He scooped it up, weighing it in his gloved hand, and sincerely hoped that touching it was not a dire mistake. "Yes," he told the droid, "let's go." He glanced back at the two survivors. He would be taking their only protection if he left without them, and he wanted to help them if he could, but he didn't know if they would follow him. Their minds might be too broken to leave, and he couldn't carry them both - or even one, if he wanted to have a weapon ready. He could at least try to persuade them, though.

"Come with me and I'll get you out of here," the young agent offered, holding up the voidstone. "You'll be safe if you stick close to this." He hoped that was true.

[member="The Slave"]

 

[Darth Empyrean]

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Neither of them moved, simply staring at the agent in silence. They had hatred in their eyes, and obviously didn’t trust him enough to follow; though their use was debatable in the first place what with losing their minds and all. They practically growled at him as the protocol droid slipped ever closer, likely nervous just by their mere presence;

“We… We should go…”, it tried to whisper through it vocalizer. It didn’t work, but the message came off clear enough as it began to walk through the curtains and hobble on its way to the rest of the nightclub.

The two who remained in the room seemed to calculate what they’d use to attack him with if he stayed, but something else seemed to catch his eye in the corner of the room; a small surveillance system he hadn’t noticed prior.

Likely due to being attacked, and it being slightly covered by a group of sheets itself.

It seemed he had two choices, attempt to deal with the two and gain the surveillance, or retreat at the whim of the droid.

[member="Diranor Cadain"]

---

 

[Diranor Cadain]

It isn't your job to save everyone.

That was one of the first lessons that Gallant had tried to drill into him. Agents of Royal Intelligence were just one part of a bigger mechanism; they supplied the information that allowed the military and the politicians to figure out how to save people, and even then they were only really interested in saving Artorian citizens. It was a big, dark galaxy, and no single planet could shoulder the burden of protecting everyone everywhere. Vast coalitions of star systems had tried - the Republic, the Galactic Alliance, the Silver Jedi - but even they had found their limits. Sometimes all you could do was look out for your own.

It was reality, but it had never sat well with Diranor. He'd gotten into this business out of duty, but also out of compassion. He saw a galaxy full of suffering and wanted to do whatever small part he could to help alleviate as much of it as possible. His fellow trainees had branded him a bleeding heart, predicting he would wash out within the month. But he hadn't. He'd stuck it out, made the hard decisions, recognized that some people couldn't be saved - or wouldn't let themselves be. And yet here in Alusi, he wasn't convinced he'd hit that point yet. The question was how much risk he was willing to take on to see it through.

"Alright," he told the droid, turning back toward the door. Then he let training take over, instincts and movements he had drilled so many times he saw them in his dreams. Pivoting back on his heel, he drew his blaster in one smooth movement and squeezed off two stun blasts at the pair of survivors. It was, perhaps, a dangerous decision, putting himself in combat again. If his blasts didn't connect - though he liked to think that he was a good fething shot - he would find himself fighting for his life, outnumbered, and in a space with little room to maneuver. But if he turned his back on these two, they might well come at him anyway.

And Diranor had other reasons. There was the surveillance system, which the mission demanded he not leave without - Gallant would want all the information he could provide her on whatever had gone down here, and if they could use the system to identify the person who had started it all, that would be vital intel. But it was also his bleeding heart getting him in trouble again. So he couldn't carry them both out of Alusi on his back. But the streets were choked with vehicles, and hotwiring one would be easy for someone with his kind of technical skills. He could carry them one at a time to a speeder and get them to safety, willing or not.

But he would have to be cruel to be kind. He hung frozen in the moment, sighting down his blaster, watching the blue stun bursts stream away...

[member="The Slave"]

 

[Darth Empyrean]

---

It seems he chose right.

As the stun rounds hit each, and their bodies hit the ground with a disturbing thud, a single thermal detonator rolled from his hand onto the ground, unactivated and null. Whatever they intended to do, the room was too small to simply escape the blast radius, and they’d all of likely died; a quick glimpse into just how far these two actually were.

The droid however was gone now, out of sight while Diranor now sat in the quiet silence of the red lit office space; nothing to stop him, nothing to make noise or set off his heightened senses. What stood now was a quiet danger that Alusi seemed to fill everyone who walked its ghostly streets. The question now wasn’t who he’d fight, more what he’d do with the bodies and now free reign of the room.

Before him was a few objects; a desk pushed into the corner, a bookcase loaded with holotapes marked with dates, and a few supplies they seemed to have collected in the corner of the room. In addition, the surveillance system in the corner lay quiet and dormant, no signs of life but a great likelihood of finding answers within.

What would the agent do now?

[member="Diranor Cadain"]

---

 

[Diranor Cadain]

Diranor almost jumped out of his skin when he saw the grenade. He'd gotten sloppy, and very nearly paid the price.

He looked around and, finding the droid already gone, cursed violently. In trying to secure one piece of intel, he'd lost track of another. Maybe the skittish machine had just wandered outside, desperate to get away now that it wasn't being guarded. With his handheld sensor, he might be able to pick up its trail; he produced the datapad-sized device from his gear harness, calibrated it to scan for droids, and set it down in the center of the room. If the droid hadn't scampered out of range, and if there wasn't too much interference, he'd hopefully be able to pinpoint where it'd run off to. No point in starting a wild bantha chase just yet, though. Plenty to deal with here.

Bending over, Diranor scooped up the thermal detonator and tucked it away in one of his pouches, then grabbed the first of the mad duo and began to drag him across the room to a clearly-visible corner. He would've killed for some stun cuffs about now, but he hadn't though he would need any. Instead he tore down some of the sheets of fabric, ripped them into long strips, and tightly bound each of the survivors at the wrists, elbows, knees, and ankles. If it turned out that he couldn't extract them, he would cut them loose to take their chances in the silent city. Then he stalked over to the surveillance system. Maybe here he could finally get some answers.

Of course, he'd had that particular thought many times today, and had always ended up disappointed. Alusi kept its secrets well.

Checking the shelf, he scanned the range of dates. The most recent data might already be in the system, but it might be important to look back a little ways, too. There was no way he could carry the whole catalog of them with him, but he could at least get a little context. He pulled the tapes of the most recent week from the shelf and tucked them away in his gear harness, saving space for one more just in case there was a holotape in progress still in the surveillance system. Standing sideways so that he could see both the stunned men and the screen - they probably wouldn't wake for an hour or more, but he was on edge - he booted up the system.

Hopefully this would have something worth the mistake of letting the droid go. He should've just blasted it and taken its head with him. Heads couldn't run.

[member="The Slave"]

 

[Darth Empyrean]

---

The surveillance system booted to life with a whir and click. It was obviously archaic, as many newly created ones preferred to store all data on foreign servers or the cloud. Eventually however, it brought up a high definition profile of the nightclub, but much of the footage of the last week showed nothing but the two in the room with him moving about frantically; searching this or that, or simply standing around for a few hours doing nothing.

Eventually however, just as the footage from before, there was a point that life sprang out. Playing it back, Diranor watched as the club moved about its usual life, music blaring and drinks flowing. Everyone seemed to be having a good time, but as his eyes wandered around there seemed to be no immediate indication as to why they all simply disappeared. Here one moment, gone the next; but a few rewatches of the same cycle revealed only a singular detail.

Far in the corner of the nightclub, a single person sat. Head in his hands, and silver hair adorning him. The camera had trouble picking him up at the distance he was at, and the angle, but there was enough to tell he was a sith of younger proportion. Minutes would pass as he seemed to grow more and more perturbed by some unknown force before eventually he stood and clenched a fist.

In the other hand, something long and dark appeared, shattering reality in a moments notice. That was all that appeared, a flash of light and then darkness, only to come back on the video with all those present nothing more than a pile of clothes. The man in the corner hesitated there for a few seconds, the same smoke from before seeming to faintly swirl across the floor around his feet before ceasing.

And then he too vanished.

No cameras picked up his movement, and no time skips were visible. He simply disappeared. Once more, where any answer came it too would be taken from Diranor just as fast, replacing itself with more questions that didn’t care to be pursued.

The tracker he laid down went quiet as the droid he had been attempting to track disappeared as well. It’d seem after everything, he was now without a lead, and given only the most basic assessment as to what might have happened.


[member="Diranor Cadain"]

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