Pirate Prince
From a letter written in Shi-idese, given to Pygar for delivery to the Hoole family:
Dear Mom and Dad,
I’m sorry for not staying in touch. Know that I am alive and as well as I can be under the circumstances. I’m sure this letter and the person carrying it will come as something of a surprise, but I need your help. Or rather, the kid needs your help.
Remember the stories about how Great-Grandpa Mammon adopted those two kids who were left orphaned after Alderaan was destroyed by the Galactic Empire? They were the children of his brother’s wife’s sister (or were they his sister-in-law’s brother’s kids?), a distant relative by marriage, but he was the only family they had left. So he took them in, educated them, and kept them safe even when the two brats got themselves into all kinds of trouble with bounty hunters, fake Jedi, the Rebellion, and even Darth Vader. In return they kept him from being executed for the destruction he unknowingly wrought upon Kiva. Though they didn’t get along at first, Mammon and the kids gradually developed an affection and mutual respect for one another. He became Uncle Hoole to them, no more and no less.
Well, I now find myself in a similar situation. I have become “Aunt Inanna”, it seems, and this young man is my Tash and Zak Arranda.
His name is Pygar, and he’s a changeling like us. The circumstances of his life so far have been pretty rough, and he is badly in need of a proper home and family to guide him before he can make his way in the galaxy. With my current situation, I can’t provide these things for him—but I know you can. That’s why I’m entrusting him to you.
I don’t want you to think that I’m ungrateful or irresponsible. Don’t look at this boy as a burden being shifted from me onto you. Look at him as a sign of my appreciation for all that you’ve done for me, that I would think of you before all others as perfect parents. You raised my brothers and I well—don’t let anything ever convince you otherwise.
I’m sure he can explain himself better than I can, so I won’t go into too much detail. Suffice to say, he was experimented on and had his mind wiped; his memory only stretches back the last two years. Some of his ideas about life may be pretty wild and crazy, but he’s not dangerous. Please be patient with him. He has potential. Dad, I think you’ll like him especially—he reminds me in many ways of Ari when he was young.
All my love,
Inanna
Goshen, Lao-mon
Hoole Family Residence
Tammuz Hoole had been pacing all night. He held his bony, withered hands clasped behind his back as he walked from one end of the common room to the other, his long red robes trailing across the smooth boards. His reflection in the wide window that ran the width and breadth of the chamber was a blurred swath of scarlet and silver on the darkened glass, constantly moving.
Seated at the table behind him was his wife, Lilith. Clad in only her nightclothes and a white robe, she was pale and wraithlike. Her tapered fingers clutched the letter that had arrived earlier that evening, borne by the same strange young man who was currently sitting across from her, his head bowed and his one good eye closed as if in sleep.
The white-haired stranger’s arrival had been sudden and unannounced. Lilith was getting ready for bed; she couldn’t hear the knock on the door over the sound of the high pressure water as she showered, nor was she aware of the discussion that followed as the two moved up to the third floor of the house. But judging by her husband’s behavior and the contents of the letter he had shoved into her hands the moment she came upstairs, the proceedings had probably been hopelessly awkward at best.
She folded up the letter, quaintly written by hand on paper, and slid it back into the equally anachronistic envelope. At this sign of her having finished reading, Tammuz’s steps slowed to a stop.
“Well, wife—what do you make of this?” he asked.
She raised an eyebrow and pursed her lips. “I’m just glad to be hearing from Inanna.”
Tammuz nodded, grunting in approval. “What do you suppose she means by her ‘current situation’?” he asked. “Is it that she is currently employed by the Sith Empire?” He glanced at the young man, his voice lowering. “Or that she has smuggled you out at great risk to herself?”
The young man’s eye opened and flicked toward Lilith, hoping for a defense. She sighed.
“At least he made it here alive. And now we have some idea of where Inanna is and how she’s doing, after all these years.”
Tammuz snorted. “We know how she was doing when she wrote that letter. The borders of the Sith Empire lie at the other end of the galaxy. It took you weeks to get here, didn’t it, boy?” He shook his head. “And that was traveling in haste. Anything could have happened to her since then.”
“I told you my name, sir,” the young man said quietly. “I’d prefer it if you’d use it.”
The patriarch smirked. “Pygar it is, then.”
“Wouldn’t you have sensed it if something had happened to her?” Lilith asked, hoping to keep the peace and focus the conversation. “Regardless of the distance?”
“I would have felt her die, yes. But there are worse things than death.” Tammuz spread his arms. “She could be sitting in a deep dark cell somewhere, paying for Pygar’s freedom with her own. Perhaps she has already been slated for execution…”
Aged eyes stared pointedly at the computer desk at the far end of the room. The data chip which Pygar had also brought with him in addition to the letter was still inserted. After seeing what information it contained, Tammuz had felt an immediate need to stand up and move away from his desk, followed by an irrational desire to burn it all and purge his memory of it.
"Would they really execute her for helping you escape?" Lilith asked Pygar.
He shrugged. "It would depend on whether I was deemed a traitor, and if she could be linked to me."
Tammuz glanced at Pygar over his shoulder, then turned to face him fully. “You still haven’t told us how you got that data.”
The Sithspawn hesitated, avoiding eye contact with either of them. “I stole it,” he admitted, rubbing his hands together in his lap. Though the gesture was a nervous one, the corners of his mouth curled up in a smile of proud triumph. “The data chip is mine. I broke into my… creator’s private residence on Dromund Kaas and downloaded the data directly from his personal computer.”
“Did anyone witness you doing this?” Tammuz pressed, knowing the answer would determine how much danger his daughter might be facing now. How much danger they would all be facing...
"Not that I know of. The place is managed by a Tsudakyr, or biological computer system—almost like an artificial intelligence, but it's a literal, physical brain in charge of all systems. They're hard to trick, but I think I managed well enough." Pygar's smile faded. “Though I did leave in a hurry. It was much easier to get in than it was to get out.”
“You were likely seen leaving the premises," Tammuz concluded sourly.
Hunching his shoulders, Pygar spread his hands in a beseeching gesture. “I don’t know—probably. It’s not like I was trying to get caught! I knew it was dangerous, I knew it was a risk, but I wanted word to get out about what Vandiir was doing—”
"What Mr. Vandiir is doing is not something which you or I can stop," Tammuz interrupted. "I would have preferred it if you had not brought me this... bestiary. It's bad enough living in hopelessly violent times without knowing that there are creatures like you and your ilk running amok."
The Sithspawn stared at him. Lilith stood up at once and moved to his side, placing her hands on the young man’s shoulders.
“We’ve been inconsiderate hosts,” she said soothingly. “You must be very tired, having journeyed so far. Come on, I’ll show you to your room…”
Tammuz turned away as she led the boy downstairs to the guest room, clenching his jaw in restrained anger. He gazed through the window at the wilderness beyond, and permitted himself to feel the waves of stiff-lipped anger and suffering still pouring out of the retreating Pygar through the Force. Already he regretted his words, but he could not bring himself to apologize. Quite frankly, he saw the data chip as a horrible burden being heaped upon him in his old age, one that he didn't want and didn't deserve.
Minutes later Lilith ascended the stairs alone, having put Pygar to bed. Rather than resuming her seat at the table, she approached her husband, standing at his side. “I thought you said you didn’t want any more children.”
He snorted, one corner of his wrinkled mouth curling upward. “Eight ought to be enough.”
“Well, what’s one more?” She rested her head on his shoulder. “Don't be so hard on him. He had no choice in the matter of what he is."
"I don't resent him. I resent the responsibility being foisted upon us."
Lilith sighed. "Well, at least he’s fully grown—if Inanna had sent us a baby, it would be another story.”
“I’m afraid she’s sent us more than that,” he said darkly. “The Sith will come here searching, if not for him, then for the data he stole. They will not care about the spirit of adoption.”
“So, do we hire a few bodyguards? Spend money on a fancy new home defense system?” She frowned. “We certainly can’t throw him out now, after all he’s been through to reach us…”
“He told you how he lost his eye?” he inquired, wondering what might've been discussed between them downstairs. People tended to find Lilith easy to confide in, whereas they were intimidated by Tammuz because of his reputation and stern gaze.
She hummed sadly in reply. “Gouged out by a bunch of common thugs who thought he had credits they could steal, because he bought a weapon to defend himself and paid for it with all the cash he had left.”
“Perhaps a cybernetic replacement...” But even as he spoke, Tammuz knew it was unlikely to work out that way. Changelings either regrew their body parts naturally, or they found ways to hide what they were missing and compensate for the loss without compromising their shapeshifting abilities. From what he could tell, Pygar was already on his way to accomplishing the latter, though the colorful scarf he wore tied around his head was certainly an interesting temporary solution. The fact that he had not regenerated his gouged eye actually came as a relief to Tammuz. It alleviated one of the many fears he had spontaneously developed upon his brief first viewing of the smuggled data files from Vandiir’s computer.
Though she was not Force sensitive, Lilith could pick up on her husband’s shift in mood and even guess his thoughts with all the familiarity of a spouse who had been married for three centuries. “He’s not one of us, is he?” she asked. “The letter mentioned experiments, mindwipes…”
“I believe the official Basic name for his kind is ‘Sith Changeling’,” Tammuz replied. “I won’t perpetuate the Sith tongue by speaking their ‘true’ name aloud. For now, simply referring to him as a changeling will suffice. We’ll have to keep his nature a secret anyway.”
The two fell into contemplative silence. “That was sweet, how she compared herself to your grandfather,” Lilith remarked after some time had passed. "He had his rough patches, but Mammon was a good person at heart."
“Many comparisons can be made between my grandfather and the various elements of this matter,” Tammuz murmured, turning back toward the window. Outside, the jungle was in darkness. It was very late, but he was still clad in the scholarly raiment he had worn to the ceremony that day at the newly opened Mammon Hoole University of Anthropology.
“The timing is certainly apt,” she said. “Do you suppose she knew?”
“Word doesn’t travel that far, especially not from—" He halted in mid-sentence, a faraway look coming into his ancient gaze.
“What is it?” she asked, concerned.
His head tilted to the side, his lips parting in surprise. “Arimanes just entered the system,” he said, glancing at her in disbelief.
She covered her mouth with her hand. “Ari? Here? And right after Inanna—”
“She isn’t with him,” Tammuz clarified quickly. “Although his presence in the Force is… strange. I don’t know how to describe it.”
“We’ll find out why soon enough.” She couldn’t help but smile in excitement. “Ari is coming home—I can hardly believe it! Oh, I won’t be able to get any sleep tonight at all!”
Dear Mom and Dad,
I’m sorry for not staying in touch. Know that I am alive and as well as I can be under the circumstances. I’m sure this letter and the person carrying it will come as something of a surprise, but I need your help. Or rather, the kid needs your help.
Remember the stories about how Great-Grandpa Mammon adopted those two kids who were left orphaned after Alderaan was destroyed by the Galactic Empire? They were the children of his brother’s wife’s sister (or were they his sister-in-law’s brother’s kids?), a distant relative by marriage, but he was the only family they had left. So he took them in, educated them, and kept them safe even when the two brats got themselves into all kinds of trouble with bounty hunters, fake Jedi, the Rebellion, and even Darth Vader. In return they kept him from being executed for the destruction he unknowingly wrought upon Kiva. Though they didn’t get along at first, Mammon and the kids gradually developed an affection and mutual respect for one another. He became Uncle Hoole to them, no more and no less.
Well, I now find myself in a similar situation. I have become “Aunt Inanna”, it seems, and this young man is my Tash and Zak Arranda.
His name is Pygar, and he’s a changeling like us. The circumstances of his life so far have been pretty rough, and he is badly in need of a proper home and family to guide him before he can make his way in the galaxy. With my current situation, I can’t provide these things for him—but I know you can. That’s why I’m entrusting him to you.
I don’t want you to think that I’m ungrateful or irresponsible. Don’t look at this boy as a burden being shifted from me onto you. Look at him as a sign of my appreciation for all that you’ve done for me, that I would think of you before all others as perfect parents. You raised my brothers and I well—don’t let anything ever convince you otherwise.
I’m sure he can explain himself better than I can, so I won’t go into too much detail. Suffice to say, he was experimented on and had his mind wiped; his memory only stretches back the last two years. Some of his ideas about life may be pretty wild and crazy, but he’s not dangerous. Please be patient with him. He has potential. Dad, I think you’ll like him especially—he reminds me in many ways of Ari when he was young.
All my love,
Inanna
~~~
Goshen, Lao-mon
Hoole Family Residence
Tammuz Hoole had been pacing all night. He held his bony, withered hands clasped behind his back as he walked from one end of the common room to the other, his long red robes trailing across the smooth boards. His reflection in the wide window that ran the width and breadth of the chamber was a blurred swath of scarlet and silver on the darkened glass, constantly moving.
Seated at the table behind him was his wife, Lilith. Clad in only her nightclothes and a white robe, she was pale and wraithlike. Her tapered fingers clutched the letter that had arrived earlier that evening, borne by the same strange young man who was currently sitting across from her, his head bowed and his one good eye closed as if in sleep.
The white-haired stranger’s arrival had been sudden and unannounced. Lilith was getting ready for bed; she couldn’t hear the knock on the door over the sound of the high pressure water as she showered, nor was she aware of the discussion that followed as the two moved up to the third floor of the house. But judging by her husband’s behavior and the contents of the letter he had shoved into her hands the moment she came upstairs, the proceedings had probably been hopelessly awkward at best.
She folded up the letter, quaintly written by hand on paper, and slid it back into the equally anachronistic envelope. At this sign of her having finished reading, Tammuz’s steps slowed to a stop.
“Well, wife—what do you make of this?” he asked.
She raised an eyebrow and pursed her lips. “I’m just glad to be hearing from Inanna.”
Tammuz nodded, grunting in approval. “What do you suppose she means by her ‘current situation’?” he asked. “Is it that she is currently employed by the Sith Empire?” He glanced at the young man, his voice lowering. “Or that she has smuggled you out at great risk to herself?”
The young man’s eye opened and flicked toward Lilith, hoping for a defense. She sighed.
“At least he made it here alive. And now we have some idea of where Inanna is and how she’s doing, after all these years.”
Tammuz snorted. “We know how she was doing when she wrote that letter. The borders of the Sith Empire lie at the other end of the galaxy. It took you weeks to get here, didn’t it, boy?” He shook his head. “And that was traveling in haste. Anything could have happened to her since then.”
“I told you my name, sir,” the young man said quietly. “I’d prefer it if you’d use it.”
The patriarch smirked. “Pygar it is, then.”
“Wouldn’t you have sensed it if something had happened to her?” Lilith asked, hoping to keep the peace and focus the conversation. “Regardless of the distance?”
“I would have felt her die, yes. But there are worse things than death.” Tammuz spread his arms. “She could be sitting in a deep dark cell somewhere, paying for Pygar’s freedom with her own. Perhaps she has already been slated for execution…”
Aged eyes stared pointedly at the computer desk at the far end of the room. The data chip which Pygar had also brought with him in addition to the letter was still inserted. After seeing what information it contained, Tammuz had felt an immediate need to stand up and move away from his desk, followed by an irrational desire to burn it all and purge his memory of it.
"Would they really execute her for helping you escape?" Lilith asked Pygar.
He shrugged. "It would depend on whether I was deemed a traitor, and if she could be linked to me."
Tammuz glanced at Pygar over his shoulder, then turned to face him fully. “You still haven’t told us how you got that data.”
The Sithspawn hesitated, avoiding eye contact with either of them. “I stole it,” he admitted, rubbing his hands together in his lap. Though the gesture was a nervous one, the corners of his mouth curled up in a smile of proud triumph. “The data chip is mine. I broke into my… creator’s private residence on Dromund Kaas and downloaded the data directly from his personal computer.”
“Did anyone witness you doing this?” Tammuz pressed, knowing the answer would determine how much danger his daughter might be facing now. How much danger they would all be facing...
"Not that I know of. The place is managed by a Tsudakyr, or biological computer system—almost like an artificial intelligence, but it's a literal, physical brain in charge of all systems. They're hard to trick, but I think I managed well enough." Pygar's smile faded. “Though I did leave in a hurry. It was much easier to get in than it was to get out.”
“You were likely seen leaving the premises," Tammuz concluded sourly.
Hunching his shoulders, Pygar spread his hands in a beseeching gesture. “I don’t know—probably. It’s not like I was trying to get caught! I knew it was dangerous, I knew it was a risk, but I wanted word to get out about what Vandiir was doing—”
"What Mr. Vandiir is doing is not something which you or I can stop," Tammuz interrupted. "I would have preferred it if you had not brought me this... bestiary. It's bad enough living in hopelessly violent times without knowing that there are creatures like you and your ilk running amok."
The Sithspawn stared at him. Lilith stood up at once and moved to his side, placing her hands on the young man’s shoulders.
“We’ve been inconsiderate hosts,” she said soothingly. “You must be very tired, having journeyed so far. Come on, I’ll show you to your room…”
Tammuz turned away as she led the boy downstairs to the guest room, clenching his jaw in restrained anger. He gazed through the window at the wilderness beyond, and permitted himself to feel the waves of stiff-lipped anger and suffering still pouring out of the retreating Pygar through the Force. Already he regretted his words, but he could not bring himself to apologize. Quite frankly, he saw the data chip as a horrible burden being heaped upon him in his old age, one that he didn't want and didn't deserve.
Minutes later Lilith ascended the stairs alone, having put Pygar to bed. Rather than resuming her seat at the table, she approached her husband, standing at his side. “I thought you said you didn’t want any more children.”
He snorted, one corner of his wrinkled mouth curling upward. “Eight ought to be enough.”
“Well, what’s one more?” She rested her head on his shoulder. “Don't be so hard on him. He had no choice in the matter of what he is."
"I don't resent him. I resent the responsibility being foisted upon us."
Lilith sighed. "Well, at least he’s fully grown—if Inanna had sent us a baby, it would be another story.”
“I’m afraid she’s sent us more than that,” he said darkly. “The Sith will come here searching, if not for him, then for the data he stole. They will not care about the spirit of adoption.”
“So, do we hire a few bodyguards? Spend money on a fancy new home defense system?” She frowned. “We certainly can’t throw him out now, after all he’s been through to reach us…”
“He told you how he lost his eye?” he inquired, wondering what might've been discussed between them downstairs. People tended to find Lilith easy to confide in, whereas they were intimidated by Tammuz because of his reputation and stern gaze.
She hummed sadly in reply. “Gouged out by a bunch of common thugs who thought he had credits they could steal, because he bought a weapon to defend himself and paid for it with all the cash he had left.”
“Perhaps a cybernetic replacement...” But even as he spoke, Tammuz knew it was unlikely to work out that way. Changelings either regrew their body parts naturally, or they found ways to hide what they were missing and compensate for the loss without compromising their shapeshifting abilities. From what he could tell, Pygar was already on his way to accomplishing the latter, though the colorful scarf he wore tied around his head was certainly an interesting temporary solution. The fact that he had not regenerated his gouged eye actually came as a relief to Tammuz. It alleviated one of the many fears he had spontaneously developed upon his brief first viewing of the smuggled data files from Vandiir’s computer.
Though she was not Force sensitive, Lilith could pick up on her husband’s shift in mood and even guess his thoughts with all the familiarity of a spouse who had been married for three centuries. “He’s not one of us, is he?” she asked. “The letter mentioned experiments, mindwipes…”
“I believe the official Basic name for his kind is ‘Sith Changeling’,” Tammuz replied. “I won’t perpetuate the Sith tongue by speaking their ‘true’ name aloud. For now, simply referring to him as a changeling will suffice. We’ll have to keep his nature a secret anyway.”
The two fell into contemplative silence. “That was sweet, how she compared herself to your grandfather,” Lilith remarked after some time had passed. "He had his rough patches, but Mammon was a good person at heart."
“Many comparisons can be made between my grandfather and the various elements of this matter,” Tammuz murmured, turning back toward the window. Outside, the jungle was in darkness. It was very late, but he was still clad in the scholarly raiment he had worn to the ceremony that day at the newly opened Mammon Hoole University of Anthropology.
“The timing is certainly apt,” she said. “Do you suppose she knew?”
“Word doesn’t travel that far, especially not from—" He halted in mid-sentence, a faraway look coming into his ancient gaze.
“What is it?” she asked, concerned.
His head tilted to the side, his lips parting in surprise. “Arimanes just entered the system,” he said, glancing at her in disbelief.
She covered her mouth with her hand. “Ari? Here? And right after Inanna—”
“She isn’t with him,” Tammuz clarified quickly. “Although his presence in the Force is… strange. I don’t know how to describe it.”
“We’ll find out why soon enough.” She couldn’t help but smile in excitement. “Ari is coming home—I can hardly believe it! Oh, I won’t be able to get any sleep tonight at all!”