Private Hotel Cantonica

[Nash Darklighter]

The twilight had just passed when I could see the shimmer of the city in the distance. The bright lights of Canto Bight took over for the sun as night set upon the desert. Bosco had finally stopped complaining about the intense, dry heat by then. It reminded me of home on Tatooine. Maybe I was too scared of my captain, or maybe I just didn’t care enough, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him to shut up. After all, that little adventure was his plan, and I enjoyed it aside from the long speeder ride. Bosco, the Bothan captain of the ship I’ve been hitching a ride on lately, insisted we land a decent ways out of the city. Something about the price of parking and rich assholes. I hadn’t really been listening.

I’ve been caught in a daze for some time now, and with the cool night air rushing past me on the speeder I had found a sense of peace I’d never known. In that moment I wasn’t sure where I was, or who I was. I was light years away from home yet somehow it felt familiar. And it wasn’t just the desert. I mean, that’s familiar, but it was more metaphysical. I was in a new place, a new time, and in a lot of ways I felt like a new me. Cantonica was a turning point, where I took my first real steps into the galaxy at large.

We checked our speeder into the valet outside a huge casino, the likes of which I’d never seen before. Right away I could tell it wasn’t even the largest in the city, but it dwarfed anything I’ve ever seen on Tatooine. Somehow though, this place seemed to draw similar clientele to the ones back home. It’s commonplace by now that Bosco knows where to find the worst places among the best of them, mostly because he‘s a cheap-ass.

We were greeted at a door by a scantily clad Rutian Twi’lek who immediately blew away any of my preconceived notions of what an attractive women was. I thought Bestine had the prettiest girls in the world, and maybe it did, but I was far beyond my world now. Bosco took two drinks from her serving try and smiled. He clinked them together as if he was toasting himself and quickly downed one and a half. The last half he passed off the me, as was usual. I’m the runt of his crew, and sure he’s tough on me, but if he big bastard really didn’t care he wouldn’t have taken me to Canto Bight.

We were on Cantonica that night for one reason: to get me acquainted with the underworld. My job was to talk to folks. To find buyers and sellers, movers and shakers. Considering the business we were in, that wasn’t hard. Mostly because I still don’t even know what business we’re in. In the few months I’ve run with the crew of the Easy Rider I’ve helped smuggle everything under the sun. Stuff for the good guys, stuff for the bad guys, stuff for the working man and the crime boss alike. I’ve been in three shootouts, a high speed chase with Confederate lawmen, and I’ve survived a crash landing. Honestly I’m surprised we even managed to land properly when we went to Cantonica, considering the people who Bosco considers to be “reputable mechanics”.

Once we were properly inside, Bosco and I separated. I was a little overwhelmed at first, considering I thought he’d at least walk me through what I was supposed to do. But no. He had to deal with something else. I’m still not sure what, but I’ve come to accept his odd and shady ways. So, like one does at a casino, I set myself up at the bar as the band began to play a spicy and raucous tune, working up the nerve to go and lose all my money at the Sabacc tables…

Cass Gemini

 

[Cass Gemini]

Spoiler: Gear and other links

Equipped: Calypso's Thunder, Harlequin sabers, Gravpack, Viper mk2 skinsuit
Ship: Midnight Kyber
NPCs: Crew of the Midnight Kyber

Tag: Nash Darklighter

The morning before..

Cass looked at herself in the mirror, applying her usual makeup, her light foundation, her red and black lipstick and the emphasising her eyebrow. As she looked at her eyebrow, she could just see the faintest bit of residual swelling from where her cracked orbit had to be operated on. Her hand shook slightly as she drew the eyebrow pencil through her lashes and she thought just how different things could have been. What it it hadn't been Shai, her new friend, she would be in an unmarked grave somewhere with nobody to mourn her, her birth family wouldn't even know it had happened. And a tear rolled down her face.

This had messed her up more than she cared to admit, she would get over it, she got over the last time she was captured and almost killed, but something just felt different. Maybe it was because it had happened when she was already trying to reach her family. She shook her head and snapped herself out of it, a couple of nights on Cantonica, some drinking some gambling and some anonymous late night fun would get the real Cass back. She snapped her makeup case shut having finished her makeup and looked down at her dress, it was cute, she was cute. Cass smiled, she would be alright, she always was, and this time she had genuine friends that were looking out for her.

She grabbed her bag, have her hotel room a quick once over to prepare it for guests and then headed out into the warm evening air. Casino time for Cass, well, lunch first, then, then the casino.

That evening...

Spoiler: Wearing

Cass was playing Sabacc when Nash spotted her. She would have stood out with her loud flirtatious laughter and then her interesting appearance, always coordinates around her red and black heterochromia. There were three men playing cards with her, and from her body language, she had the upper hand? Or at least she was telling everyone she did.

"Come on Gemini, pay up or kark off."

"Booo," she replied "hold your bantha, you'll get your money," and she counted out the cash from her pot using using smallest denominations possible, she had plenty left, and it wasn't her money she played with anyway so this was purely to irritate her opponent and get a rise out of him.

The next hand went on, and Cass continued to make little jabs at the man until he through his lot in and said "right you bloody woman, I'm calling you for everything and we get someone who is going to take this seriously in your seat."

Case feigned that she was offended and slowly pushed her cash in, pouting, one by one the players put their cards in and then it ways Cass's turn. Well, no need to try and guess who was sitting on the winning hand in that one.

The man stood up, swore something that sounded like "stick it up your hunt?" It was loud, it could have easily been something else. And stormed off leaving his chair and his drink going spare.

​

 

[Nash Darklighter]

The bartender poured me a Tequila Sunrise as he raved about the quality of Cantonican Agave. It was a little on the expensive side, but I was in possession of more money than ever before in my life. A tasty drink is far better on the credit chip than even a single round of Sabacc, so I savoured the few minutes before I crossed the killing floor.

Once I had my drink I turned around and leaned back against the bar, casing the place. It was at that time I caught my last glimpse of Bosco for a good few hours, heading into some private back room with a gaggle of sharp-dressed Pykes. The scruffy Bothan scoundrel‘s out of place look gave me a good chuckle.

As I scanned the room, my eyes stopped at the commotion near my destination, the Sabacc game. To say the dame looked out of place would be rude. There was no out of place in a place like this, but she certainly had a unique quality about her, one that made me get up from the bar and join at the newly opened seat next to her. I certainly didn’t want to end up like the last poor grifters she cheated, or at least who thought they were cheated. It didn’t matter to me, because I wasn’t aiming for the jackpot.

I pulled up alongside the table and handed a few credit chips totalling the minimum buy in to the dealer, who nodded in silent affirmation that I was officially part of the game. I placed my drink down beside the one that had been left, which I promptly picked up and slid it closer to the woman.

“Free drink here if you want it. Can’t imagine what you did to that fella to make him leave it.” I joked,

The dealer dealt me my hand of two cards. They were decent enough, but its the betting and bluffing where the real game happens. I was having a hard enough time composing myself just sitting at the grown-ups table. A baby-faced kid of 20 sipping away on a fruity drink wearing a gallon hat and a coat too big for him, handed down from his rancher father. It must have been a sight to behold. Thankfully the place was already its own brand of weird.

“The name’s Nash Darklighter. Who might I be up against tonight?”

Cass Gemini

 

[Cass Gemini]

Spoiler: Gear and other links

Equipped: Calypso's Thunder, Harlequin sabers, Gravpack, Viper mk2 skinsuit
Ship: Midnight Kyber
NPCs: Crew of the Midnight Kyber

Tag: Nash Darklighter

Spoiler: Wearing

Cass looked at the newcomer as he sat down, he looked pretty young, not so young she wouldn't welcome him to her table, but young enough to make her curious of his story. He didn't have the look if the rich kids that came out to Cantonica to play at being a bandit while they spent their parent's money.

"Hi Nash, I'm Cass Gemini, and these chaps are Cylim Mort and Devin," she took the spare drink off the table, gave it a drink and then knocked it back. "Man's an ass but no sense in wasting good liquor now is there." One of the other gamblers looked at his cards and seemed to fidget impatiently wanting the bets to start, he huffed as Cass delayed the game to introduce herself.

"Oh come on Derrin, make it a challenge for me, you need to stop dancing around in your seat every time you get dealt a good hand" the man's expression dropped and he looked at her with a mix of frustration and lighthearted amusement. Cass was the sort of person that people seemed to like even if they didn't really like her.

"So what are your tells then, Mr Darklighter? Little glint in the eye when the hand swings your way, maybe a little itch that won't go away when you are looking at a whole lot of nothing." She grinned, clearly trying to get into his head, but her demeanor was nothing but friendly. Cass enjoyed playing the game for the people, not the money, although the money was always nice, she had a knack of pulling people's tells out of them.

She called over to the bartender and signalled for more drinks for the table, she was drinking some rum cocktail, she liked good quality rum and the other two didn't seem too bothered when it was also offered to them. "You having one Nash? Then we can get this game moving again. Just don't bet angry, that was the last guy's mistake."

​

 

[Nash Darklighter]

Cass Gemini. Our meeting at the Sabacc table was just the beginning of a peculiar relationship. At the time I didn’t quite know what I was getting myself into. She was a pirate. A no good, good-looking, rum downing, getting-me-into-trouble pirate. Nothing was off limits for the Easy Riders and Bosco’s insatiable appetite for credits, and the odd job with Cass and the Krakens turned out alright for us.

When she asked my tells, I replied with what little bravado I could muster, which no doubt seemed out of place for a scrawny kid. “I can’t go around telling secrets to the first pretty lady I meet.“ it was my stupid way of saying that she’d find out soon enough.

I’ve never been a gambler or a good Sabacc player. I’ve picked up the basics and little more, but my tell is crippling. A common one, enough so they’ve got a name for it: The Tatooine Blush, AKA compulsive checking of one’s chips. Where I come from, Sabacc is more than a game, its a way of life. There ain’t much on Tatooine, and a lot of folks get by hustling, so much so that knowing exactly what you stand to gain or lose has just become a common thing among the planet’s players. To the rest of the galaxy it can be quite obvious, especially when someone like me is doing it. I think the Tatooine Blush probably runs in my family. I’ve lost 3 uncles and an aunt to gambling addictions.

When the server came over bearing drinks for Cass, I was hesitant. Bosco expected me to keep a sharp edge tonight, but I felt like denying another drink would be a bad look to start off whatever was happening at the table in that moment.

“I think I will take one.” I said and took a light sip. There was far more rum than anything else in it, and the strength caught me off guard. I tipped my hat to the waitress, then tossed two chips from my pile into the pot. Nothing exciting to begin with. Then I began stacking my small chip pile into a neat stack.

“So Ms Gemini, are you from around here?”

Cass Gemini