Lords of the Fringe Dominion of Thakwaa

[Yasha Cadera]

"Mad props to you and Alna. She did amazingly. Before the Suma, I was living on a Naboo Lifter. Yeah, the 5 person shuttle. It fits inside the Suma and well, I'm loving the feel. It's exactly what I needed an was the perfect gift. Hope you got a healthy commission from that one." I love my ship, that's clear. I love how I got it, I love the surprise, and I love that my droids have taken to it individually. Each of them has some of their own space carved out (some's the size of a broom cupboard, but hey! They're droids). Wait till Jared he- I cough.

Yes, wait till he hears. "If you need any help with sticking, let me know. I may know some people." I wink at Jorus, leaning back to Lia. "Help you get on feet. Pay it forward you know?"

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Her throat comm had taken the brunt of a zombie claw, all fingernails and eurgh; she couldn't buzz Orbital to double-check the significance of the ardanium cargo. The door, half-choked by the bodies of the re-killed, finally yielded to a new wave, and the cargo hold became a killing ground once more.

It occurred to her, absently, as she laid about her with Winterlight, that if this was a Rave Merrill project gone wrong, Merrill was dead.

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Anders Sivas"]
"Oh, the commissions came through well enough, and we thank you for your patronage," he said with a broad grin. "Not that we own Silk anymore-"

And then he was on his feet with half the audience, yelling as one of the very large Sith Lords put the other very large Sith Lord on the ground. Not for long, but still.

 

[Yasha Cadera]

"Any time, let me know if you come up with any Pathfinder Mods that'd rock my Suma." It was the last of cognitively solitary me as the crowd goes wild. Alen and Luci are on the ground and it's coming on quick. Alen is a far bit less cumbersome than I'd expect for a man his size, he's got ground control and Lucianus is--oh he's off tot he side! He's got guard!

"He got guard! Dude!" The crowd yells and my head spins, I slump back down in my chair staring straight at the two fighters brawling in the ring. Elbow, fist, death from above reigning down.

 

[Marselia Urstalis]

"I will definitely be taking you up on that, Anders," she said, finally using a name, "In fact..."

But she, too, rose with the crowd, more in surprise than in cheering for any of the two in particular. There was a lot of energy here, it was alive, and... more sober than the last time she'd been in a crowd, on Zeltros. Her eyes were fixated... and then she relaxed slightly when the one on the ground didn't stay there.

"Whoaah. I'm going to have to get one of those two, or someone with that much skill, to teach me to fight."

Eventually, the crowd fell back into its seats, and she finished her sentence, speaking a little louder over the continuing roar of the audience.

"...in fact, it seems I'm in need of a lot of non-piloting-related training, if you know anyone that could be of assistance with that?"

[member="Anders Sivas"] | [member="Jorus Merrill"]

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Anders Sivas"] [member="Marselia Urstalis"]
Jorus squinted into the rising dust. "They're both aching for a changeup -- mighta estimated each other wrong. Consensus in five, four-"

As the two men broke apart and reoriented, he snorted. "Clean fair break. Don't often see that between Sith Lords. Yeah, kid," he said, glancing at Urstalis, "there's plenty around that could teach you what you're after, both under these folks' flag and on others. I could hook you up, or this fether between us could."

 

[Yasha Cadera]

[member="Marselia Urstalis"] [member="Jorus Merrill"]

"Get up! Get up, take down, get the take down Alen! Get th-" The crowd rushes through my head.

The sounds of the crowd overtake my ears with hums and cacophony drifting through the cochlea into my brain like thunder in an ion storm. I sit transfixed on the fighters, the only two things I can understand for they're in the eye of the mob. My hand tightens around the back of the chair and I breathe deep. Eyes blink, I look over at Lia and see a girl with potential - a girl to be moulded and guided after the upheaval in the Imperium. I give her a good look, telepathic mind peering on the up front inside for intent.

Honest intent. She needs to be taught right. "I'll do it." I say, an emphasis I didn't know I had on the words. "Lia, I'll set you up. Teach you what I know, pass you off when you need amore significant handle on the things I don't. Sure Jorus can set you up, too. Might not learn the fine art of punching someone's lights out from me, but I've got other strengths."

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Anders Sivas"] @Jorus Merrill

"That, and if you've got the knack, there's more to piloting than piloting. Made a hyperlane, my wife and I. Wasn't by luck, at least not by luck alone." He tapped his temple and gave a crooked grin. "Been tortured a time or two by Fringers looking to know what I've been known to give out free."

 

[Ilias Nytrau]

This was quite the fight. She was glad she had come. There was a lot she could learn, simply from watching, and more still, putting into practice. She had learned to watch, watching Rhuan, and had learned to do, in turn. Though... she was partial to having a weapon in hand, usually something as long, if not longer than she was tall, the telescoping staff usually at her side and the electrostaff she left with her other armaments back on the Mitternacht being her preferences.

This, she had to admit, was still more relaxed, and less strenuous, than that mission that had put them up against that rather impressive space monster. She smiled when she heard the redhead ask for help - it always made her feel a small swell of contentment when someone sought to take their destiny into their own hands where so many people did not or were simply too afraid of the change.

"It's good to know that this... group takes care of its own, to have it confirmed that I've chosen the right place to be..." she said, with free admittance, "...it's hard to see, sometimes, having spent so long relying on myself. I think, given time, I could settle a little. Maybe."

[member="Anders Sivas"] | [member="Jorus Merrill"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

Another deep breath. My hand strengthens on the chair again, nails digging into the soft top and I push my concentration enough to have the force behind it seep into the air around - if anyone could sense it…. Another push to continue the barrier protecting my mind helps reinstitute it enough to bring me back from the second take-down. Won't be long until one of them won't be able to fight.

"A good navigator is worth as much as a good pilot. Epic, eh? Sounds like your wife and yourself are closer than a tight knit sweater. How long've you been together? How old's your daughter? 'Best' part of the Fringe, eh? We take care of each other and sometimes some of us get heated. Gotta keep the air clean and cool. Level it out."

I think I'm going to win this bet.

 

[Marselia Urstalis]

[member="Anders Sivas"] | [member="Jorus Merrill"]

Her eyes ripped from the fight and shot right over to Anders, widening above the smile the spread on her face.

"You're... really?" She couldn't believe it was that easy. "Great! Um, I mean, thank you. Really."

And there was the matter of 'more to piloting than piloting'. That was intriguing.

"More than just piloting, hm?" She said, leaning on the arm of the chair, and fixing Jorus with a look. "I'd like to know more..."

She glanced back to the fight, then returned her gaze to Jorus.

"...and it'd be a torture-free experience. Honest. Maybe later?"

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Anders Sivas"] [member="Marselia Urstalis"]

"Daughter's five, wife's amazing, and yeah," he added, retaking his seat, eyes never leaving the match, "there's some pilots that can learn to do flat-out huttclart crazy things by instinct. Fly too close to a black hole, bounce around a supernova, find a new course through stellar hazards or oceans of flak." That was the base level of what he could do, but he wasn't about to talk about creating hyperspace events. "But all in all, what I do is niche. If you want broadly applicable functionality'n'such, Anders here will hook you up with a decent education."

He speech grew slower as his focus intensified. The match might be nearing endgame.

 

[Yasha Cadera]

[member="Marselia Urstalis"]
"I mean really. I can take you on." The more than piloting did hit me with a mystery. What would Jorus mean? I navigated a fair bit, picked up some skills but nothing like [member="Jorus Merrill"] was talking at. Maybe I could learn a thing or two from the man, to boot. Hah. "Five's a great age! I'm sure you guys are rocking it."

The words? Well, there's a few but the fight itself is winding. Alen is indeed heaving with a decent amount of strength behind his strikes. His tactic's worked: He's kept up his combos and with the amount of shots Luci's been taking over time, the wear is beginning to show on the well shaven Sith Lord.
"Yes, let's stay torture free. Anyone tries to, they've got my personal shut-down policy." I grumble it out, putting both hands on my knees and leaning forward. "Lucianus's almost down."

One hand goes to my med pack. "First lesson, Lia: always help someone in need of medical attention. We're about to do just that once the crowd is out. Gotta keep their pride."

 

[Velok the Younger]

Elsewhere, on the bridge of the Chimaera, Rave pondered two new items of intel. The first was that her brother was here, and not killing things, and in the company of at least two High Councilors. Including the fragile Sivas. The second was that Ashin Varanin, zombie killer extraordinaire, had taken refuge from the horde, and had done so in a crashed ship that had been of some interest to Rave for the Sundiver project. Or Sunrider, as some called it stubbornly.

She set out for the surface.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

"Force, I'm tired."

Her booted feet sloshed in accumulated gore, two inches deep or thick on the deck plating where it sat level. Where it didn't -- warped by the crash or by her telekinesis -- the blood pooled, thick with chunks and slices of the dead. She slogged around the pallets to the door and stepped out, just barely, just enough to make this a choke point. Defensible was the word.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The Hood-class artillery support cruiser, essentially a six-hundred-metre-long sniper rifle capable of firing at twenty percent of lightspeed in a fully automatic manner, continued to remove overrun villages from the planet with surgical precision. Only those villages most thoroughly zombified, naturally.

It wasn't like he was a monster.

 

[Yasha Cadera]

"Hark, I feel a disturbance in the Force." I mutter, while the crowd goes wild.

"It's about something…. fragile?" I ponder and shrug. Must be in the air.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

And here they came. She had no other option, nowhere else to go, cut off from reinforcement through her own dogged, aimless maneuvering. Marching straight ahead had gotten her here, it seemed, and as she raised Winterlight she contemplated following an old course. Lightning and darker things could handle this situation.

She set that aside, with some effort. She did not, as it happened, want to die.

 

[Marselia Urstalis]

"Oh, I'm interested in almost any knowledge I can get my hands on, Jorus," she said, with a nice smile, "even if it turns out in the end that it's not something I can do. I'll never know until I give it a go, right?"

'Never know until I give it a go' - that was a favourite phrase of one of her younger step-siblings. She worried, but somehow she knew that between her mother and stepfather, they were safe.

"Medical attention. Got it." Short. Simple. This was a mode she applied in the cockpit, one of action, and short-action, short-reaction. Short moments, barely enough to think. Focus.

 

[Velok the Younger]

Pandorum-class gunships escorted her down, buzzed the local mess, annihilated zombified Thakwaash for half a mile around Ashin's position at the crashed starship. Least she could do. Mass-drivers chucked proton torpedos, bays released dozens upon dozens of thermal detonators, and a figure in powered armor dropped from one of the gunships toward the broken ardanium transport.