The Business of Beskads

[Cathul Thuku]

For a while, Therapy Command seemed to be moored in port on Kriselist, awaiting the next move in this war against the Sith Order. Yes, many ships in Therapy Command needed repairs, and the same could also be said of enemy capital ships they engaged on Kaeshana, too. For the time being, Commodore Dawning, one of her officers (and padawans), is doing much of the actual work of patrolling the Copperline sector. Especially the FIV Contempt, which was Cyrus Tregessar's flagship, whose destruction would have dealt a crippling blow to the enemy naval morale, going so far as to claim that only the destruction of a Darr Itah (or a Resurgent if they engage one at a later date) would make the enemy fear therapists beyond the survivors of a direct engagement against Therapy Command. Meanwhile, [member="Stephanie Brown"] has now been in the business of forging beskads and other pieces of beskar equipment, such as beskar'gams, like the very one Cathul possesses (even though Cathul isn't one to wear it that often). She often found that Jedi were often people who neglect their personal finances; this time around, she would make sure Stephanie doesn't neglect hers. So she would be on Coruscant because she trained other people in things like economics and Electric Judgment at that very reviled Jedi Temple. Yet, today, she was to meet with Stephanie at the IGR bank branch rather than at the Jedi Temple:

"Welcome, young padawan. I know about the duels you fought on Coruscant but there is one thing that many masters overlook in their padawans: personal finances. I promise you that, after this financial planning ends, you won't fall to the dark side because of financial irresponsibility"

 

[Eli-Mae Forrest]

Its true that Stephanie had been pretty busy, she worked most days at the diner where she had always worked, at night she went on her normal patrols as she always had. She hardly slept, when she wasnt working at the diner or on patrol she would be in her forge, she had become very skilled at forging with Beskar. She still found time to train, her abs which used to just be flat would now be a rock hard six pack, her arms were toned as ever. She wielded her Beskad with skill and poise which added muscles to her arms. She would walk in dressed in a comfortable outfit. "Hello master"

[member="Cathul Thuku"]

 

[Cathul Thuku]

"Irresponsibility with one's finances can lead to the dark side by leading to anger or despair, but greed can also lead to the dark side"

She knew several people fell to the dark side of the Force because of financial irresponsibility but she couldn't quite point at who exactly did that. Probably some low-key dark-siders, Neimoidian, Muun, Hutt or otherwise, that either made bad, risky investments (mainly Muun or Neimoidian) or lived well above their means (mainly Hutts). But most likely these three species. [member="Stephanie Brown"] understood that, as a beskar smith, she didn't made that much of a name for herself yet, but that beskar items can fetch a pretty penny outside of Mando-land. That being said, the beskar itself also is pretty expensive. But as every financial planner would tell you, any discussion of planning for one's personal finances begins with an assessment of income and expenses, as well as of assets and liabilities. Few Jedi were comfortable talking about their personal finances. But Stephanie trusted Cathul for matters like these, just that she had little idea of what to expect from other financial planners.

"Let's review your sources of income. I heard that you started forging beskar. How much do you earn from the sale of beskar products? From your diner job?"

 

[Eli-Mae Forrest]

"I am not making very much from the Beskar forging as of right now, I am still trying to get all of my things out on the market and advertising." She says thinking of her forge, it was pretty nice but she was still getting started. "As for my waitress job I am making enough money to get through"

[member="Cathul Thuku"]

 

[Cathul Thuku]

"I'm not the most familiar with the hurdles self-employed artisans face, but for the advertising part, who do you envision your target market segment to be?"

Self-employed artisans often need some source of seed money to commence operations: it's often at the early stages of their artistic career that the starving artisan stereotype is more common. Where they just begin trying to make a name for themselves. She knew that Jedi Artisans often begged their respective orders to support their operations as they try to craft their Force-imbued items. Like one Chloe Galarza, killed in action on Kaeshana because she served in the Navy as the Trimaran's chief medical officer, who served in MedCorps to pay the bill for her art supplies. [member="Stephanie Brown"], on the other hand, was a waitress waiting for her big break as a beskar smith. In the end, she was more than willing to make sure that Stephanie would be able to get by and then progressively make it so that Stephanei could live off her beskar art. Usually many don't take padawans seriously on the craftsmanship market; for some their break as artisans come about when they become knights. On that count, Galarza could have held the command of some other Trimaran-class ship, and would have been knighted, had she survived Kaeshana. Or just give up on the navy altogether and become a full-fledged artisan.

"From the looks of it, your forge is still living on from the seed money you had to spend to get the forge to operational status. You might find more success in advertising if you know 1) your target audience and 2) the advertising venues that your target audience would be more likely to exploit. Provided of course that the venues aren't too expensive to advertise in"

 

[Eli-Mae Forrest]

"Yes master that is correct." She said listening closely

[member="Cathul Thuku"]

 

[Cathul Thuku]

"Beskar items are usually Mando playthings. However, Coruscant being mostly non-Mando, perhaps you should try advertising in a bounty hunting guild or maybe even join one, if you think that you can take those bounties that ask for evil-doers to be captured alive"

As a Mando, she used to be the governor of Azure; even though she had a wide range of patients, weapons and armor were often not discussed outside of therapy sessions. By now she was grateful that she could actually salvage something from her time as a therapist, with the last third of her therapy career being by far the most troubled, and not just because she became one of the main fixtures of the Alliance navy. She knew her fellow Mandos were fond of high-quality beskads, and that, while most people would usually think of beskade as simply being short, broad-bladed sabers with a beskar blade, someone commissioning a beskad had to be mindful of the size, shape (and, with it, weight) and the traditional beskad was actually near the shortest of the gang, with [member="Stephanie Brown"]'s own beskad being among the longest. But she knew better than to be distracted by discussions of Mando weapons and armor, and back to their financial implications. But how much of the seed money was actually spent, while relevant for fiscal purposes, is a sunk cost in the context of this meeting.

"I understand that beskar forging often comes with irregular income streams, so how much do you have in your emergency reserves?"

 

[Eli-Mae Forrest]

Stephanie would think of her resources, she had been saving a pretty big chunk of every paycheck. She would look at her master in the face and say "10's of thousands of credits, I have saved since I got my first job."

[member="Cathul Thuku"]

 

[Cathul Thuku]

"Now that we know what you can count upon if the diner closes down or something, we can now concentrate on the costs of making those beskar items"

For sure Cathul knew that makes starving artists, well, starving, is twofold. Often people will think of starving artists as simply people whose incomes are sketchy at best, and who don't even earn that much either, but that's only part of the origins of the myth. The expenditure part is what makes up the lesser-known half of the myth. Painting and sculpting (from a financial standpoint, beskar forging is comparable to sculpting) are the main arts whose reputations for high expenditures are well-known, in which case it seems expensive to live off one's art than would be the case in, say, music. But Cathul knew that performing arts are also equally precarious from a professional standpoint, just that the operating expenses of the art come from different sources: travel tends to take up a higher proportion of the operating expenses of a musician or actor than for a painter, sculptor or beskarsmith. [member="Stephanie Brown"] may well know where the seed money comes from, but, however valuable that information is, that, in itself, provides an incomplete picture.

"Perhaps someday you will break even and not only be able to make enough money making and selling beskar items that you can live off your art, but you would need to understand the cost of practicing your art. If I'm not mistaken, the main two costs of forging beskar items are the beskar itself and the cost of heating said beskar to shape it"

 

[Eli-Mae Forrest]

"I hear you master"

[member="Cathul Thuku"]

 

[Cathul Thuku]

"To be honest, I'm much better at getting the finances part right than at marketing"

Luckily [member="Stephanie Brown"] was one that understood that the art of forging beskar was not free to practice. True, she might have had a patient or two that forged beskar items, like beskar armors or beskads, and she knew that beskar was more expensive on Coruscant than it was on even Azure (when it was still Mando property; now that the Mandalorian Clans disintegrated, it can no longer be considered a Mando planet) because of the shipping costs of the beskar. But beyond the heating and the beskar being the costliest of these items, she would not know in which proportions, nor in which order: patients tended to remain somewhat vague over finances with her when she still practiced therapy - usually Mandos did not trust their psychiatrists when in financial distress. And yet, somehow, they were more willing to talk about weapons and armor especially when PTSD is involved, but that's perhaps because of the passionate nature of Mandos when it came to all things combat-related.

"Luckily there aren't a whole lot of regulations regarding the sale and manufacture of beskar items, beyond the more generic stuff that affect all self-employed"