Heading WESTAR (solo dev thread)

[Gray Raxis]

Gray was being pulled apart in every direction between his two businesses. He had moved WESTAR once before after he first obtained it in the auction. There was tension between the United Clans and the Mandalorian Empire at the time, which still was not completely gone, so he had the company moved just in case something might be done to it in a form of retaliation. He had decided to move it into Empire space, but that had turned out to be a horrible, horrible mistake. The split in where his companies were located made it very hard for him to get any work done for either of them. He was constantly having to travel from one side of the galaxy to the other. Even using the hyperlanes, it took far too much time.

Gray was finally had enough of it, and decided he needed to move the company yet again. This time he was going to move his assets to be in the same sector as his other company Raxis Independent Designs. So here he was with as many freighters as he needed to move everything at his soon to be former Headquarters on Echol'ya. He had already loaded up his assets from Bastion, and those freighters were waiting in orbit. He watched as the men moved all of the equipment and all of the computers containing the heart of the company in them onto freighters. He had liked this building, he had liked it a lot. The office was perfect, but that didn't matter now. What mattered was getting his companies so they were close enough he could afford to do things with them. Soon enough everything would be loaded and the properties would go up on the open market.

 

[Gray Raxis]

Gray kept on directing the flow of labor. He had already loaded up his office into his personal ship. He was going to miss that built in liquor bar so very much, oh so very very much, but it needed to be done. He needed to move everything to a new location. He just had to keep reminding himself of that. This company was proving to be more costly than it should have been, but that didn't matter to him. He wanted to get the company back up off the ground, and the only way he could do that was if he got it over into the same sector as his other businesses. Perhaps he would even be able to get it to the point one day it just sort of ran itself?

Gray sighed as he watched. The work was almost done but it still felt as if it was taking forever. He would have to let his current employees go. They would not be willing to move so far for such a simple job. He hated doing that to them, but it was what needed to be done for the future of the company. The best he could do was give them all good severance packages and good references. He really hated having to do this again, but it was too late by this point. The last item had been loaded and the freighters were secured. It was time for Gray to met moving with the rest of the ships to the new locations. He had a few possible locations for the company, but he would have time this time. He wasn't in nearly as much of a hurry as before. So he got into his ship and off he went towards the first planet, Annaj.

 

[Gray Raxis]

The stars past by in blurry lines of light as was how it always did when one was in hyperspace. He was sitting in his room onboard his ship looking over the data. WESTAR had barely gotten started, so there was not much more other than the designs of old. The company hadn't had time to move towards newer item designs or revamped versions of older models. The only things they had were mostly inventory lists of the equipment on hand and old documents and records. He did find a nice little bit of stuff though with some new item concepts. The company had originally just been about making guns, but he had decided to move it to more general arms and armor when he bought it. And it seemed the designers had run with it.

The announcement of the quarter marker buzzed over Gray's com system and the com systems of the other ships. He couldn't believe they were only that far into this trip, even though he had made it so many times. He had to make sure all of the ships arrived at the same time though, so it was to be expected for things to be slowed down. He leaned back and rubbed the sides of his head by his eyes. He was losing a lot of sleep with all of this company stuff. What had possessed him to buy a second company that needed so much work getting it off the ground? It was as if he wanted to kill himself or something. Oh well, he would see the fruits of his labor eventually and he just had to survive till that day.

 

[Gray Raxis]

Gray was feeling kind of tired. It had been a long few months as he was working himself to the bone with both of these companies. Why he decided he needed both a company dealing in non-combat items as well as one dealing in combat items was beyond him, but he had done it. He also had started one company from the scratch, and the other might as well have been from scratch even though its name was well known already. He was just asking for an early grave, but that was the lot he had chosen for himself it seems and would just have to live with it. Why was he so focused anyways on how busy he was during this whole move anyways? He should look to better things and just enjoy himself while he was traveling.

Gray decided to take a look through the product list of items WESTAR already made. He saw a bunch of pistol designs and one for a rifle. All of them blaster tech as well it seemed. They had all seen a good amount of use at different times, and one of them was even modified for Jango Fett. That was very interesting. He did notice that they could be updated and there for upgraded a bit to with modern tech. Why hadn't that already been done though? Whoever was in charge before him and Gael needed to have their butt kicked. As he thought about that, the alarm for the half way mark in the journey went off. So he was half way to doing his search for facilities then.

 

[Gray Raxis]

Gray kept going through all of the files from the company. It looked like the company specialized in pistols, which was no surprise seeing how Gael had said as much about the company. The thing was though, that he didn't want to take it in that direction....well not entirely. He did like the idea of making it a good stop for pistols still, but he also wanted to expand the product listing to be more generalized than it currently was. He had one weapon that wasn't a pistol in his list of products as it was, so he wanted to change that. The company could use more products to get a wider customer base.

The ideas for some new products came to mind as he thought it all over. Gray was familiar with this area because of his mercenary past. He had plenty of experience with different situations needing different kind of weaponry. He could come up with some more product ideas to provide not just his company with more for their stores to sell, but also provide the people out there with more products to choose from to suit their needs. The only problem was what to design first? He wanted to update and upgrade the existing products first, but that wouldn't and shouldn't stop him from adding some other products to the list. The real question was what would be good items to add? As he thought about all of this, the alarm went off signalling the three quarters mark for their journey. They were almost there.

 

[Gray Raxis]

Gray had typed up all of his ideas for new products, and even eliminated of few of them for being either bad or impractical, when he saw a message pop up on his screen. He saved his work while it beeped repeatedly to let him know it was really there. He then pressed the button and it pulled up the message. It was not a holomessage it seemed, but was a text based one. It was from a real estate agent with some links to possible facilities on both Annaj and Xal 3 for him to look into. Seemed some of his work might have been cut out for him. He just needed to check out and narrow down his choices here.

Gray looked over all of the links, and found two places that looked good on Annaj. They both were two part facilities with a business headquarters and a factory right behind it that was a little out of sight. They also had room for some expansion for a design building as well, which would be good. The problem was that one of them was a little bit older and the other was relatively new with it hardly seeing any activity. The older building had a lot of info on it as well as records, but the newer building was a little....shady. It had been closed down for some reason, but no real record existed as to why. He would need to look into that, and the alarm going off that informed him he had arrived at his destination. The first stop was Annaj to set up a headquarters, and he needed to check out this shadier facility to figure out what was going on himself.

 

[Gray Raxis]

Gray waited for his ship to land as they got to Annaj. He had gotten the data he needed on the places he was going to check out for potentially being the new headquarters for WESTAR. The trip had taken some time as they had to cross the galaxy to get here, but it was finally time to get to the meat of the move. He needed to check out that newer place first though, because he had a bad feeling about it. The place looked great on paper until you looked into why it was on the market. That lack of information was troubling, but it could be the previous owner was lazy. He hoped that was it, but he had a feeling it wasn't.

Gray got out of his ship. On the way out, he was met by the captain of the ships containing his assets. He spoke with him for a bit and worked out a deal for the man to leave the old Echol'ya assets here and to take the Bastion ones to Xal 3. From there he could wait for Gray to arrive on Xal 3 and tell them where to take everything. The ones on Annaj he would direction himself before he left, and then they could take a shipment of his RID goods for him somewhere. It would be a win win for the captain as he wouldn't need to spend a lot of time looking for a new job. So with all of that handled, Gray rented a speeder and went out to check out the first factory.

 

[Gray Raxis]

Building after building after building passed Gray by as he rode his speeder bike towards the factory he was going to inspect. He was still not sure exactly what he was going to find at the place. A factory and office building with room to expand that had mysteriously closed down after it had newly been built and barely been used was not exactly the best sign when it came to picking a place to set up shop. He didn't have nearly as much experience as a business man as he did as a mercenary, but he had seen the shady side of the business world working as a merc to know that a lack of records or vague wording was an immediate red flag. So he just needed to look into and see if this turned into a windfall or a plague upon his company should he move it there.

Gray finally arrived at the place and saw the realtor standing out front. They were dressed in a cheap set of clothing designed to give the illusion of niceness, and he might not have cared so much in the past but now he knew it was a bad sign. He parked the speeder bike and walked over to them. He smiled to as he held out his hand. He said, " Greetings there. I'm Gray Raxis. You must be the realtor selling this factory and office building right?" The realtor smiled back with that overly large grin too full of teeth as they took Gray's hand and shook it vigorously. The realtor said enthusiastically, " Mr. Raxis it is a pleasure! Rigron Rel, but you can call me Riggy. And I would be the one here to handle your buying of this fine, fine property. Care to hear about it and then perhaps over drinks?" And so it began, oh joy.....

 

[Gray Raxis]

Gray listened to the realtor and almost physically cringed as each word hit his ears. He was getting the business from this used factory salesman, and they were really trying to fast talk him into not inspecting the property. That was to be expected, but what was not to be expected was that the realtor's name did not match the one he had received the list of listings from. He knew the other realtor was legit because they had helped him with getting RID set up on other systems in the sector, but this Riggy person, he didn't know anything about them. This felt a little off to him......but maybe he could get something out of it. So he just smiled and said, " Well Riggy, why don't we take a look around the property first then I will be happy to buy the place......assuming everything is well."

Riggy was a little cautious at first, but they never did drop the cheesy smile. They began to lead Gray around the property and described everything like a regular realtor would, well except for the fact they did know anything about what it was they were showing off. They kept making up words and terms that half sounded legit and might satisfy someone who was less informed or not paying enough attention. Gray just half listened to them as he closely inspected everything along the way, shifting between his regular vision and force sight. Everything looked in order and was well built. It was kind of surprising that it would EVER be closed down, and to make it more surprising the place looked unused. This whole situation was even more mysterious now.

They came to the end of the tour around the entire facility, and Riggy had that used speeder salesman smile still plastered to their face. Riggy said, " So do we have a buy or do we have a buy?" Gray raised his brow a bit, but he saw no reason not to buy the property. He held out his hand and the salesman hesitantly handed over a holopad. Gray began to read over the contract for the property. It seemed official and legit until he got to the end. He chuckled a bit as he saw the fine print of one section. It seems his bad feeling was dead on. This salesman was trying to get him to sign over all of his property over to some organization, which would include this purchase. It seemed there might be a gem to make out of this lump of coal.

 

[Gray Raxis]

Gray pretended to sign the holopad as he said, " Well everything seems in order here. Is there anything else I should know about the property before we finish up here? Maybe something along the lines of a scam to steal all of my stuff?" As he had spoken, the realtor's grin had shifted into one of utter satisfaction at the beginning but then began to falter into one of feigned confusion. They began to throw off a combination of nervousness and fear as they tried to say something in response. But they couldn't get anything to come out because they knew they had been caught. Gray just smirked as he crossed his arms. They hadn't expected to be found let alone called out on it right away.

Gray had spent a little time getting the details of the scam from Riggy. It seemed to be a sector wide scam, and they were using various types of property on every planet. He had been in luck, and the only other property they had like this one was on Xal 3, the other planet he wanted to hit up. He got the deeds to them both from the "realtor" and then completely shut down the operation. He got the equipment for each facility sent where it needed to go, and just made sure it was all unloaded into the different buildings then upheld the other end of his deal. He got RID products loaded up and gave the captain of the freighters the coordinates of where it was going and name of to whom.

Gray stood in his new office, which sadly lacked the amazing bar the last one had, and looked at his stuff. He had it set up how he wanted it and was satisfied. He needed to focus on getting some new employees now though to replace all of the ones he had to unfortunately let go. He did have some luck in that department though already because most of the designers and more experienced workers were actually willing to move with him. So while he was still needing a majority of his work force, he wasn't starting completely over from scratch. He also had some experienced beskar smiths on hand, which always was needed. Seems he had managed to keep the Mando in his Mandalorian company somehow. He still needed to get it back up to its former glory though.