The Planet of Fog

[Lord Ajihad]

As soon as Ajihad heard the word prophet, he relented with the aura. So that's what she was. A prophet, an oracle, a soothsayer, there were many words for what she was. She had probably figured out some time ago some large faction would want to twist her ability to their own agenda and had fled to Dagobah to escape. Smart.​

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He gave himself a moment to take it all in. He was quite unsure as to what a prophet could do. Was she randomly besieged by visions from the force? Did she have to go through some sort of sacrificial ritual to achieve it? Or did she simply have to close her eyes and concentrate on a question.​

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His gaze returned to her, before asking the golden question. "So, if I ask you a question, you can answer it?" He ignored the viscous tone she had just adopted, returning the informal tone he had been using before. Could she be the answer to his wishes?​

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[member="Kiara"]​

 

[Kiara]

It was only a few times she had been asked such a question, and even then she had known the person very well through the course of either a few days or a few months. She laid eyes on the Sith curious to his intentions, though did not begin digging around for anything. Not yet, at least. That wouldn't be necessary at all. ​

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"No." She flatly responded to his words, her scowl still digging into her dirtied forehead. "Not correctly. I don't know what your questions are or if they should even involve me, but you're welcome to give me information on what you want or what you're searching for. All the more for myself." ​

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[member="Lord Ajihad"] ​

 

[Lord Ajihad]

Ajihad scowled beneath his half-mask. She was a prophet. She knew things nobody else did. There was a chance she knew something about what he was after, and asking her was a chance he had no choice but to take. Almost without thinking, he knew what he had to do.​

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"I seek three things. They are the Gauntlet of Kressh the Younger, the Heart of Graush, and the Orb of Passage. Each are extremely powerful artifacts of the force, and I doubt locating them could be too much of a challenge for you. Where are they?" It was true she said she couldn't answer his questions with any degree of accuracy. However, if things were to go well, she had better try her best or things would get messy. He wasn't leaving without the information he seeked.​

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[member="Kiara"]​

 

[Kiara]

Kiara gently rose a hand and nibbled on her overgrown thumb nail, with two watchful eyes landing back and forth across Ajihad's form. Was that it? Just to become powerful? It sounded surely simply enough, and artifacts were left and right in this day and age. With the right people and right communication you could find anything, including a one way path into the Force.​

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"What makes you so sure I won't send you on a wild goose chase?" She asked plainly, pulling her thumb away from her lips as she hunched forward a little more against her staff. "You've given me nothing to convince your worth for this information. No amount of wood or life threats and scars can guarantee my information is correct." ​

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[member="Lord Ajihad"]​

 

[Lord Ajihad]

What the girl didn't know was that Ajihad's cybernetic eye functioned as a pretty efficient lie detector (among other things). He would know if she attempted to mislead him, no matter if she tried to use the force to conceal her thoughts or not. Such things didn't work on mechanical enities as they did on organics.

"I don't know if you'll attempt to send me on such a fruitless chase, I suppose I'll just need to trust you." As a master of his thoughts and emotions, the Sith Lord gave no thoughts or indications that he was lying. If she tried to read his intentions and thoughts she would see what he wanted her to see, which was not by any means the truth.

[member="Kiara"]
(Sorry for crappy post quality, on my phone)

 

[Kiara]

"Well I don't know yet. You can go away until I do." She flatly spoke again, and with a hint of plain truthfulness in her voice. She tilted the staff forward toward the door to indicate her directions for the Sith, however old or young he was, she wasn't just going to give him information, even if that meant him staying around her hut for years with negative vibes. It was all in all his lost of life.​

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Kiara didn't wait for him to move, and went back to sit down on her bed and poke at a mechanical engine built for a mouse droid with the tip of her wooden sandal before it was dragged over and she began to toy with it to ensure it was working properly.​

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[member="Lord Ajihad"]​

 

[Lord Ajihad]

Ajihad nodded his head. It couldn't be expected she would know his answers off the top of her head. She would need sone time to perform her rituals or whatnot. Still, he wanted his answers soon.

"Very well, you have until tomorrow morn to get at least one of my answers. I will not leave until I have what I came for, and I do not wish to stay here long. You would do well to remember there are other ways I can get what I want, and not all of them require you to be alive." With that, he would exit her abode and journey out into the swamp.

[member="Kiara"]

 

[Kiara]

Threatened by death? Kiara could have sworn she remembered telling him that would not get results - probably because it wouldn't have. She was getting old for her wise stupidity, and it was about time she was let go from the world always. As her eyes watched the man turn to leave, she reached down and gently picked a small bit of dirt, carrying it away.

She started the fire bigger and threw in three stones, with the trickle of dirt, and closed the door with just the butt of her staff before beginning to chant in an unknown language, though the process and intentions could easily be seen. Burn the rocks, seek their purpose, find what she was looking for... it only took fifteen minutes before she reached a droid's arm in and grabbed the rocks out, putting them in a vase of dirty water, and after, she threw in a fruit to the massive boil.

Time to eat.

[member="Lord Ajihad"]

(Also on mobile now.)

 

[Lord Ajihad]

Ajihad would venture back to his ship, grabbing some supplies he had brought along with him. A wise man, he had figured he might be spending the night in such an environment. His kit included rations, clean water, and a hawk's nest set along with a bug net.

He trudged back to an area some a hundred yards from the hut, quickly setting up camp in a high-up tree. He draped the net over top, and began to eat his dried foodstuffs. He washed the unsavory substances down with a draft of lukewarm water before settling down to sleep. He wasn't too worried with the girl trying to escape, as his senses would likely alert him of such things. He would see her again the next morning.

[member="Kiara"]

 

[Kiara]

Kiara stayed up most of the night, cooking and eating, occasionally taking a small nap or playing with her droids, and besides some occasional typing on one of her many holopads, Kiara did not seem all too modivated or, at all in fact, preforming any secret rituals of the witchcraft sorts and finding positive answers.

When morning finally rose, Kiara did too with an armful of sticks she had gathered, taking them away into her hut so that no little insects and tiny beings may hide beneath them for a secretive surprise.

[member="Lord Ajihad"]

 

[Lord Ajihad]

The following morning, Ajihad was pleased to see that the bug net had done its duty and he hadn't been eaten alive in his sleep. He put together a quick breakfast before leaping down from the large tree and strolling towards the hut. The only creature he encountered on his way was a yellow banded snake, but even it quickly slivered away in the wake of the approaching Sith Lord.​

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He arrived at the door, raising his fist to deliver three rapid knocks. He lowered his arms to his sides as he waited for the young girl to answer the door. Had she discovered the answers to the questions he had asked? Or was he going to have to employ one of his nastier methods to extract information from her? He would soon know...​

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[member="Kiara"]​

 

[Kiara]

Soft thumps of materials falling to the ground made a terrible disrupting noise, as if the ever going croaks and screeches of animals in the swamps weren't enough. A few moments after the tiny disaster, the door creaked open noisily to reveal once more, the hermit who lived there.

Kiara didn't wait for a greeting as she pulled herself away and grabbed onto her staff, going back to sit on her bed and kick away some small bowls made of polished clay.

"What do you want?" She said in a croaking voice, not bothering to look up. Her mind was the chaotic set it always was, calculating and moving pieces of mechanical around rapidly, but her main focus right now was how dull her shoes were becoming, and she didn't take half a moment to try to hide it either. She was not interested in the Sith.

[member="Lord Ajihad"]

 

[Lord Ajihad]

Ajihad stepped into the earthen home, scanning the mess the floor had become. There were droid bits and pieces scattered every which way, and the air smelled of scorched earth and smoke. The smell didn't bother him in the slightest, as he had smelled the stench of a thousand burning corpses during the atrocities of the Mirialan genocide under Zambrano the Hutt. Still, he didn't know how she was content living in such conditions every day.​

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He looked at her, an expectant look in his eyes. "You know very well what I want. Do have have answers to any of the questions I asked you yesterday evening?" He somehow doubted she had any clue what he was talking about at the moment, as the absent minded hermit stared down at her scuffed and worn shoes.​

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[member="Kiara"]​

 

[Kiara]

There was a blank moment where the hermit lazily chewed on her inner cheek and slowly rose her head, avoiding her eyes to get glued to another distraction before she could finish her discussion. "What did you say?" She said a bit with a tiresome voice, clearly not too well paying attention.

[member="Lord Ajihad"]

 

[Lord Ajihad]

Ajihad's eyebrows knit together. She wasn't even listening to him, obviously labored by exhaustion. He hoped she had stayed up all night getting his answers, or she would most definitely be getting a wake-up call of sorts. Again, the assassin repeated his question. "Do you have the answers to the questions I asked you last night? About the artifacts?"​

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[member="Kiara"]​

 

[Kiara]

"Oooh, those things." She pondered softly, drawing a small circle in the dirt with the heel of one of her sandals. "If I did have the answers, I don't see exactly what's in it for me. Don't worry about the torture and death threats, those don't really effect me." Her mind quivered again to the dirt, keeping her focus off the main Sith's goals for now.

[member="Lord Ajihad"]

 

[Lord Ajihad]

A quick smile played across Ajihad's concealed face. One was all too sure they weren't affected by torture until it actually happened. However, that's not what he exactly had in mind. Torture was a waste of energy, he had other ways of getting information from rebellious hermits. Still, her question had merit.​

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"If you answer my question correctly, you will be rewarded with an ageless servant that will obey your every command. It will chop wood, it will gather food, it will protect you land. If you withhold any answer from me, I will take them by force and turn you in for a bounty. Now, I grow tired of this talk. Answer my question." Ajihad was not even remotely bluffing. He was indeed getting bored of the useless talking. He wanted answers, and he wanted them now.​

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[member="Kiara"]​

 

[Kiara]

"Well you are talking to a hermit who has years of time to waste, mister Sith Lord. We can negotiate what I want in trade for the exact location of your precious gauntlet, unless of course you would prefer to waste the resources on making my life terrible and not get any answers at all." Kiara gently slid a shoe off and began to knock off some of the dirt she just scrapped up.

[member="Lord Ajihad"]

 

[Lord Ajihad]

Ajihad shrugged. She could have it her way.​

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The Sith Lord was a masterful mentalist, training under the great Sith Lord Darth Venefica herself. It would take a master trained years in the art to stand toe to toe with him, much less successfully defend their mind again him. The Lord would invade her precious mind, staying concentrated on the task at hand. Only Sargon knew what the depths of a prophet's mind might look look, so he looked only for the information he needed. The ordeal would probably be quite painful for her, but he cared not. The Lord moved to tear through her memories, hoping to quickly find the answers he required and leave.​

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[member="Kiara"]​