Boost THE FIRST GALACTIC KAGGATH - RUMBLE ON RUUSAN

[Sael]

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It shouldn't have been this easy. It had never been this easy. Not even her first outburst — the Force seemed to flow so naturally to her here on Ruusan. Sael could feel the crowd folding around her like cloth pulled into a knot quickly, completely. Every breath she exhaled seemed to catch in someone else's throat. Her reach moved wider than it ever had before. Mercy had told her of Ruusan's power, and now she felt it.

All she had to do was weave them together. One thread at a time. Pride into reverence. Despair teased into hunger. Her pheromones softened the edges, coaxing the broken into a shape that longed to be filled with meaning, with direction, with Mercy .

And it was working! One man dropped to his knees. Another whispered Mercy's name like a plea. She felt it in their pulsebeats, in the widening of their pupils, the satiation of the beast inside. Then a sharp, foreign note in her atmosphere. Unaccounted for and cut sideways through her concentration. Her breath caught—shoulders tightening, chin twitched downward to brace against herself. Always just skimming the edge of control, all it took for Sael's chemical coercion to slip was someone speaking to her. Worse yet, complimenting her.

The spell snapped.

One of the followers, young, fanatical, afraid, blinked hard and staggered back as though he tripped over a low strung wire. He shook his head, and disappeared into the crowd. The emotion slipped fast from Sael's periphery, and her fingers stretched to grasp at the unspooling threads she'd knit together into the cast net.

Gone.

She stiffened. It wasn't just raw embarrassment. It was shameful loss. She had held that man's devotion too briefly. The nerve endings beneath her skin prickled, feeling like a wild animal caught mid-step. Her eyes sliced sidelong at him, feeling little more than discomfort's tingle.

"Nothing to hear. There's supposed to be nothing to see...either..." she mumbled, feeling defeat creep into her bones.

He held out the bottle in one hand, the joint in the other.

No master had ever offered her libations — and she could not disappoint her new Master with experimenting in the midst of curating a chemical-born fandom. Sael's answer came quiet, a beat late, barely above the noise: "Neither, thank you."

She blinked once, slow, and pulled her pheromones back inward like a curtain falling. Someone had seen her. And she wasn't sure yet if that was worse than being invisible.

"Who are you?"

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Isar
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[Isar]

The tattooed Zeltron shrugged and helped himself to another sip from the bottle.

"Me? Oh I'm nobody really," he chuckled, scratched at his earring with a thumb, "Just a dreamer, like you. Call me Isar."

The lass seemed a bit shy. Odd, that. So much power on display and then to be a shrinking violet. Two and two made five. Isar's chin tilted up and he looked down his nose at the going's on. Had he heard someone whisper "mercy" a moment ago?

Well, well. What have we here?

"Maybe the rest of them play see no evil, hear no evil. People like us, love?" He tutted, "We see it all. All those little threads of emotions coming together in a master weave. Fear and anger and lust and joy. Tantalizing, isn't it. Just to pluck at the strings and see the sound they make."

A lilac stare held her own, unblinking.

"What were you trying to do anyway, miss....?" He reached out, his mind brushing across hers - a whisper on the wind. Telepathically, "Don't think I got your name."

Sael

 

[Sael]

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"Okay, Isar." Unquestioningly, she'd do what she was told.

"Like us?" Her voice held a fragile lilt to it, like she wasn't sure if she was in on the joke or the subject of it. She couldn't say much more, she had to keep her concentration's majority on the net she'd created. Even now, she could feel it straining under its own weight. Not a single thread, but a web laced with too many variable and rethreaded logic: Joy braided into envy. Lust buried beneath adoration. Fear scaffolded with awe, turned inward until it curled around Mercy's name like a prayer.

It was delicate work. Every face out there was a reflection distorted just enough to shimmer the way she needed them to shimmer. One wrong pull, one fray, and the whole thing would collapse.

Then she felt it.

Unnaturally irisless eyes opened wide, surprised, afraid. She hadn't had someone touch her mind before. It felt slippery. Unnatural. Could she just...think...back, or would that further damage the foundations she'd laid for the net to gather followers for her Master?

Sael. As in, for sale. The only way she'd ever been referred to prior to Mercy — who affectionately referred to her a little goblin or worm instead.

"I—I'm.." earning my keep. Trying to prove myself. Pursuing power. Trying to understand what's inside me. "..working."

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Isar
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[Isar]

"Sael. Say-elle... Hmm. I like it. Reminds me of some kind of flower."

Azalea.

The man puffed on glitterstim, watching those irisless eyes, and wondered if she was blind or not. But she seemed to perceive him, and not through the Force. He had not seen eyes quite like those.

"I can see your work. Wish I knew what it was for, love."

In her mind, "Might lend a helping hand."

He leant it anyway. Reaching out with his mind, he drew on the aphotic flow of energies dwelling within the space between passion and pain. Wielding the power like a painter, he traced the threads drawn taut by Sael , heightening the emotions she drew out as if brushed over in bright reds and neon greens. Lust bled to yearning, twisted to raw obsession. Adoration grew to reverence, then fountained into worship.

All around them, the threads of Sael's weave hummed as if strummed upon, reverberating with the echoes of creation and chaos. And the result?

"MER-CY! MER-CY! MER-CY!"

The crowd roared for their favorite. Tore their clothes off for their favorite. Fell to the ground sobbing for simply getting a glimpse of their favorite.

Isar let out a soft little snort.

" Mercy . Of course, it would be her."

 

[Whottoomuzz Chantin]

Spoiler: The Deathmark Collectors Roster

1. Krexar: A Nikto sharpshooter with a penchant for poisons, his leathery skin bearing the scars of countless battles.

2. Gorruk: A towering Gamorrean enforcer, wielding a massive vibro-axe, his brute strength matched only by his loyalty to the Cartel.

3. Sskeer: A Trandoshan tracker, his cold, reptilian eyes always calculating, known for his expertise in hand-to-hand combat. Slain on Fondor by Nos Voros.

4. Vexla: A Rodian explosives expert, her green skin often camouflaged in urban environments, with a mischievous glint in her multifaceted eyes.

5. Durok: A Duros pilot and tech specialist, his smooth blue skin and red eyes concealing a mind adept at slicing and infiltration.

6. Nymara: A Nautolan seductress and intelligence gatherer, her head-tails often adorned with jeweled ornaments, using charm to extract secrets.

7. Kholak: A Kaleesh warrior-priest, his face concealed behind a traditional bone mask, blending spirituality with deadly precision.

8. Zarin: A Nagai swordsman, his pale skin and jet-black hair giving him a ghostly appearance, his vibroblade an extension of his will.

9. Threx: A burly Weequay brawler, his weathered skin and topknot marking him as a veteran of many skirmishes.

10. Lorra: A lithe Twi'lek acrobat and thief, her blue lekku often wrapped around her neck, skilled in stealth and infiltration.

11. Mordo: A hulking Houk bruiser, his thick hide making him a formidable opponent in close quarters.

12. Siv: A sly Devaronian con artist, his red skin and sharp horns often hidden beneath a hood, adept at deception and disguise.

They didn’t come as warriors.

They came as workers. Spectators. Journalists. Janitors. Spice vendors. Fire suppression techs.

Nobody remembered their names at the checkpoints. Nobody noticed the shipment logs overwritten in the droid manifest. Nobody questioned the lanky Twi’lek who slipped through the lighting rig scaffolds overhead, or the Nikto custodian inspecting the viewing glass with oddly military precision.

They were Deathmark Collectors.​

Twelve ghosts of a dead cartel — now stirred by zealotry, betrayal, and an oath signed in blood.

• Krexar set up a perch behind the camera scaffolds, calibrating a disruptor scope.
• Gorruk posed as a cargo hauler, hiding a vibro-axe under his fake ID and bulk-shifter exo.
• Vexla played the arena’s pyrotechnics assistant. She knew exactly where the structural faults were.
• Durok was already slicing backstage badge records.
• Nymara had two executives wrapped around her fingers and three more on the way.
• Kholak meditated alone in a utility access tunnel, murmuring prayers to forgotten gods and sharpening his blade.
• Zarin waited silently in a VIP shadow booth, vibroblade sheathed in cloth.
• Threx passed through crowd barriers with a forged badge and a crate of concussion mines.
• Lorra clung to the steel rafters, lekku coiled tight, her footfalls softer than wind.
• Mordo didn’t need a disguise — just a lanyard and a scowl.
• Siv already had a vendor permit, a shell company, and six burner accounts pumping credits through arena kiosks.

They moved like parts of a machine.

Not one spoke Whottoomuzz’s name aloud. Not one wore a sigil. But each carried a final instruction etched into memory, signed with his voice, just hours before the match:

“If I fall… there will be no Round Three. Only a collection.”​

And they would collect.

Not with haste.
Not with warning.
Just names, debts, and a desire for blood.

They were already inside.​

You will know if and when they target you
@closed for now​

 

[Mr. Usher]

PINSTRIPE PARASITE​

The crowd was a living wound.

Laughter, screams, spiceclouds thick enough to stain memory—spilling through the gladiatorial gullets of the Black Sun’s opulence, built atop Jedi graves and desecrated myth. The perfect place to rot something holy.

A man in a black pinstripe suit and wide-brimmed hat sat five rows behind the blood-slicked barricades, the brim tilted just enough to keep his glass-lens eyes from catching the light. Too still to be comfortable. Too smooth to be real. His hands were folded neatly over a cane he did not need, and where his breath should have fogged the chill-stabilized air, there was nothing. Only a subtle flicker where his form didn’t quite belong.

One proxy among many.
One drone of the Choir.
But this one was watching.

"Curious, isn't it..." the husk murmured to no one. "How something presumed carrion can still inspire panic in scavengers."

He meant Whottoomuzz. An ally of a past agreement.

That name had not rattled its way across the hive in cycles. Mr. Usher had assumed the Hutt dead—swallowed by bureaucratic voids and cartel purges. But here he was. Still breathing. Still loud. Still dangerous.

And very much alone.

Beneath the arena’s floor, deeper than any crowd could cheer over, a gentle slither began. Not of rats. Not of cables. But of repurposed biomass—slipping through ventilation seams and security tunnels, slow as growth in a dark cellar. The kind of thing no one noticed until it was too late. The kind of thing that could listen. And, in time, do more than listen.

"He was betrayed, then." A pause. "Strange that betrayal still offends me."

A flicker dripped across neural relays as memory reasserted itself.

The first time Mr. Usher had seen Mauve, she’d been poised in a stolen lounge above a club burning itself clean. He'd been there to assist the theft of a sith Wayfinder device. He still remembered the scent of the pheromones exchanged. The taste of Falleen Flesh.

As for Razmir, that was older. Simpler. Back when he was just an apparent slicer-for-hire on Makeb, eking out credits working a job for Tera while the team cracked open Stronghold One for its Isotope-5. Black Sun had come later. Or perhaps it had always been there, waiting to offer more than either of them could refuse.

Neither were visible now. Hiding, perhaps. Or waiting for new odds.

"All debts revisit their lendee, in time."

Elsewhere, dozens more of Mr. Usher's quiet-faced emissaries were threading through the crowd like docents of entropy. Some smiled. Some did not. All were listening.

The stage is charmingly elaborate. But I did not come to wager.

The brim tilted down once more. Silent. Patient. Hungry.

Location: In the bleachers. In the walls.
Objective: infiltrate the swarm
Tags: None. Not yet.
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