Faction [Hutt Cartel & Friends] the Dancing Bantha Cantina, 902 ABY

[Whottoomuzz Chantin]

Previous Thread: 900 ABY

THE DANCING BANTHA
CANTINA – Hutt Cartel Safe Zone
A Refuge of Scum and Stubbornness

The New Normal​

The years have not been kind to the Bantha, nor to those who call it home. The air still smells of spice and stale ale, but now there’s a heavier weight to it—like smoke clinging after a fire that never quite went out. The bartender, the same gruff Duros with the cybernetic eye, still pours without looking, though the shelves behind him are less plentiful than before. What bottles remain are kept under careful lock, their glow casting fractured light across a room that feels more bunker than lounge.

The old bounty board is gone. In its place, whispers travel table to table—mercenary listings scrawled on flimsi, tucked into datapads, or passed hand-to-hand. Those seeking credits or desperate work know to keep their ears open, not their eyes.

The fight pits no longer roar with the glee of gamblers. Now they are quieter, harsher—used by the Deathmark Collectors to sharpen their blades and break in recruits. Training duels echo in the subterranean cage, the clash of electrostaff against vibroblade ringing louder than any cheer. Here, Jobbi Chantin takes her turn, a hulking youngling of a Hutt fighting with restraint, shaping herself through the Jedi teachings she clings to even after being separated from the Jedi Order in the fires of war. She does not kill without purpose, but when purpose exists, she does not hesitate.

Beyond, in the meeting rooms, the haze of cigarras lingers as always, but fewer voices rise in argument. Some debts were paid in blood, others left to rot in silence. In the back, Xoff Chantin keeps to a lonely glass, nursing it with a bitterness no words seem fit to ease. The relationship to his Kajidii and spouse had been rocky since the Hutt's clash with the Imperator, Lirka Ka , but like a lost Loth cat, Xoff always ended up crawling back home eventually.

At the heart of it all, Whottoomuzz Chantin remains. His massive form looms at the center of the common hall, clad still in the baroque Shyran Dol: its battered plates carrying the heritage of Shell Hutt ancestors and the scars of the Kaggath alike. Scarred as the cybernetic eye and durasteel grafted jaw that now adorned his face. A living monument to spite and survival.

He drinks among those who yet remain loyal. He lifts a glass, his jagged durasteel jaw catching the dim light, and with a rumbling laugh that shakes the rafters he bellows a toast:

"To the poodoo-brained sleemo who are too stubborn to die! May we outlast to see the top once more!"​

The glasses clink, the music of SLEEMO stirs once more, and the Bantha breathes again.

OPEN (to friends of the Hutt Cartel)
Loyalists, Mercs, Ne’er-do-wells, Mandalorians, underground rebels, and old ghosts alike

"Cobalt" | Makar Clyne | anyone else​

 

["Cobalt"]

Location: The bar, spending lots of money
Equipment: Shotgun, Customized WSS
Tags: Whottoomuzz Chantin /OPEN​

Cobalt slid aside his fourth empty drink, dourly eyeing his rapidly-depleting bank account as he did so. An expensive habit, and an example of his species' extraordinary resistance to poisons coming back to bite him in the ass. As far as his immune system was concerned, a poison was a poison. It kept the fun poisons out just the same.

As such, he needed to pound enough booze to kill a bull gundark if he wanted to feel anything, and lately, he really needed to feel something. So here he was, on a perfectly good night, making the barkeep a rich man and frittering away his remaining credits.

Those credits, he reminded himself, were purely because of Whottoo's generosity. He'd been paid well for the job, almost excessively so. It was more money than he'd scraped in a year, on average. Why, then, did the thought of it make him hold up two ragged fingers to the barkeep and demand another double?

He wasn't some hard-ass triggerman like some in here. Just a scav, one poor enough and down-on-his-luck enough to take any job, at that point. Sure, he'd put his share of assorted scum into shallow graves; he carried the sawed-off holstered over his shoulder for a reason. He'd killed his first man as a teenager, and hadn't lost sleep over it. It was reality. The galaxy was a harsh and uncaring mistress, and the only one she favored was whoever shot first and ran fastest.

That last job had been different. Something about gunning the poor bastard down like a dog for credits didn't sit right with him. Maybe it got easier with time. He looked around, spotting Whottoomuzz Chantin right as the kingpin let out a toast.

He figured old Whottoo had killed plenty of people for reasons a lot flimsier than a paycheck, and he didn't seem overly bothered by it. One didn't rise to the top by having a burdensome conscience.

Come to think of it, the Hutt looked like he'd been fed through a wood-chipper. Cobalt reckoned he'd be dead four times over if he was that torn up, but a Hutt's constitution was legendary for a reason.

He figured he should be glad. Ruthless he might be, but Cobalt knew well that Whottoo's largesse toward his underlings could be substantial. The number he was staring at in his credit account was proof of that.

Blood money, every credit of it, but here it was, fuelling his lifestyle months later. He'd been living off that one job for months. Was this what bounty hunters experienced every single day?

He wasn't sure he wanted to find out. Whacking one Jedi did not a bounty hunter make, and he didn't think he had what it took.

​

 

[Whottoomuzz Chantin]

"Da galaxy chu uba beskar, merca. Jee-jee da chee poorah."

The massive Hutt shifted in his seat, one scarred hand dragging a half-empty tankard across the table. His jagged durasteel jaw gleamed faintly in the cantina’s light as his single eye found Cobalt.

The floorboards seemed to quake with the low rumble of his laugh.

"Taa Cobalt, whoo proves Jedi bai du bo gagwa. Patogga, sleemo, an bu kava—jee-jee moopa, jee-jee doubta, moopa uba chu wake an chuba da life? Dat proof uba enduro, wen othersa rotto."

He raised the tankard high, the plates of Shyran Dol catching the dim light, then slammed it down hard enough to rattle the bottles behind the bar.

"Taa bolla sleemo. Jee-jee chuba geejeee die clean."

The toast echoed through the cantina, rolling into laughter, curses, and the clatter of mugs as the Cartel faithful drank deep. For a moment, their scars, their doubts, their blood-stained credits all became one thing—shared survival.

With the crowd successfully distracted, Whottoomuzz slither-scraped closer the killer. He could recognize the fatigue in the scavenger-kin. The doubt. The slug Lord felt it himself, more than once – being born into a syndicate did not leave vocational options.

He switched to basic for a moment, lowering the grumble of his tone and motioning with a massive, gantleted, four-fingered hand to the duros bartender to transfer Cobalt's tab to Chantin.

"Do you regret killing the Jedi?"

A pause, heavy and deliberate. His single eye studied the scavenger-mercenary, not without understanding, but still carrying the hard edge of a life of cruelty.

"You need credits to survive, and against the Force-types hesitation is death."

The jagged smile tugged across his steel jaw, dark humor in the grease-blood on his lips.

"Some of them see the future, read and influence minds. How many futures do you think that Jedi saw resulting with your corpse in the snow? Do you think they would have doubts after cleaving you? Perhaps. But just as likely they wouldn't bat an eye at either of our corpses."

Whottoomuzz ordered a gallon - served in a modified stormtrooper helm converted into a goblet.

"Not because he was Jedi, but because he was human."
Distaste seeped into the Hutt's tone. This was clearly not his first goblet.
"Empires and Republics, Jedi and Sith they all got one thing in common: survival of the human-likes are given priority. Unless you're pretty enough for the human-likes to ogle, nobody's putting our wellbeing at the top. So that's what I do. What we do. Black Sun's taken over — the Empire's arm is so far up their poodoo chute they may as well be a puppet. Or the other way around, probably. You ever seen a non-humanoid Emperor, Chancellor? Me neither."

The Hutt grumbled a moment. He had intended to reassure the Merc, but his digression had gone off-track.

"You want to know why that Jedi had credits on his head? He interfered with our lifelines, our operations, narrowed our venues to get credits to distribute to the uglies of the galaxy, then murdered one of us for some old vendetta. Wosi Joc Pridbu. She had a Kajidic that relied on her. Hundreds of people who probably have hundreds of people they help out, bringing core credits to the outer rim. Killed her in her own shop to find a building full of stone. And here we are, not enough Kajidii left to keep Nal Hutta from paying dues to a syndicate of Falleen and Empire puppets."

"You did what you had to; to survive. For the rest of us uglies to survive. Boonta knows no one else would if we don't."

The Hutt took a moment to cool the heat in his tone. The broader room had taken notice once more.

"Do you know what the direct translation of Kajidic is, Cobalt?"

Somebody's got to own it. Why not us?

"Patogga. No ta forgotta. Patogga ta remember... uba no lo same... an uba lived anywaa."

Cobalt | OPEN​

 

["Cobalt"]

Location: At the bar, nervously talking to his boss
Equipment: Unchanged
Tags: Whottoomuzz Chantin /OPEN​

The mutant's pale eyebrows arched in surprise as the big man himself came oozing over. He was familiar with Huttese. If you did any kind of dirty work anywhere, you spoke Huttese. It was perhaps a testament to this species' expertise that their tongue was the galaxy's de-facto crime language.

He knew Whottoo was right, of course. Having hangups got you killed. Hesitating got you killed. There, in the moment, when it had just been him and the Jedi, he'd not hesitated. He'd gone for the throat and came out alive.

"Regret? I don't know. It was me or him, and I took the job. Not my first scalp, but it was my first scalp for coin. First-time jitters still ain't worn off, I guess." He said.

He listened as the Hutt explained the gravity of their situation. Made clear the bigger picture. If Whottoo had been trying to reassure him, it worked.

What he'd done had been for a reason. That was, he supposed, what he'd needed to hear.

"Guess I should've figured his hands weren't clean. End of the day, I don't think anyone's are. He sorta..." he searched for the words. "Sorta changed near the end. Like something took over his body." The mutant shook his head.

"I don't wanna come across as ungrateful, boss. You did me a real favor, offering me that gig, and I'll be more than happy to take any others you got going forward."

Things might have been on the downswing, what with the Black Sun and all. All the same, Cobalt felt a bit better. Maybe it was the Hutt's words, maybe it was the booze finally kicking in.

He wasn't sure whether to be flattered or insulted that he was considered an "ugly", but it was an honest assessment. Cobalt could maybe pass as handsome if an observer closed one eye and squinted. The luminescent eyes and weather-beaten skin ruined the whole impression. Cobalt kept some of his more... obviously mutant features well under wraps. He drank through a straw in his respirator for good reason. It helped to have people think you were an exotic alien rather than someone with a few too many rads in their bloodline.

Some of his kind had it worse. A few of the older specimens in his extended family had bone-white hair, forked tongues, or more than the usual number of eyes. All things considered, he'd gotten off easy. He'd also been tossed out of a few bars when someone recognized him for what he was.

"Do you know what the direct translation of Kajidic is, Cobalt?"

Somebody's got to own it. Why not us?

This elicited a grunt of polite amusement from the mutant. "I like that." He said. "Cuts straight to the point." Another drink. "For what it's worth, I'd like to help. Get things back in business, I mean."

​