Star Wars Roleplay: Chaos

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Private The Prince and the Smuggler



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The rain on Keren's streets wasn't the gentle kind. It fell like a warning, hard, relentless, and indifferent. Aurelian Veruna stepped out of the speeder with the kind of deliberate grace that suggested he had never been rained on in his life. His boots met the puddled ground without so much as a splash, his tailored coat catching the wind like it had been stitched to do so. Two House Guards followed behind, less graceful, more armed.

Merrick's stood like a stubborn memory near the spaceport: unimpressive on the outside, the kind of place you pass unless you know better. Aurelian, naturally, knew better.

He didn't hesitate. The door opened with the low hiss of tired hydraulics, and the smell of fried protein, engine oil, and bad decisions met him like an old friend. The interior was dim but warm - wood, real or otherwise, wrapped the place in a sort of rugged elegance, the kind that tried to forget the world outside. Men in grease-stained uniforms played sabacc with half-smuggled cards. A mercenary with a cybernetic jaw laughed like a speeder engine misfiring. Somewhere, a slow, bluesy tune hummed from the wall speakers.

Aurelian fit in about as well as a crown jewel in a toolbox.

He walked to the bar with his usual confidence - a smile sharp enough to cut glass, posture relaxed like he owned the place, or at least would within the year. His guards flanked him, their presence as subtle as a declaration of intent.

He leaned a hand on the bar, ignoring the sidelong glances from the patrons who hadn't expected nobility with their midday ale. His rings caught the light as he gestured to the bartender.

"I sent word ahead. I'm here to see Joran Del-Finn. A business matter. Malastarian fuel contracts, diplomatic handshakes, all that noble rot. But tell him this one smells like opportunity." he said, voice smooth with just the right amount of danger curling beneath the words.

He tapped once on the bartop. "Also, I hear the Corellian black label here doesn't taste like engine coolant. I'd like to find out."

He smiled again - too charming, too clean, too amused - and waited to see if the smuggler-turned-senator would bite.

It wasn't every day a prince walked into a smugglers's bar. But then again, Aurelian Veruna had never liked waiting for invitations.



 

Joran Del-Finn

Smuggler by day. Snuggler by night.


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"Senator Veruna," said a voice like black velvet. At the end of the bar a devaronian woman greeted Aurelian. She stood where the bar met the wall on the opposite end from Merrick's entrance, say six or seven seats away from the nobleman. If there was seating at the bar which there was not. No one sat bar. The bar was where the work was done and the money collected, not for needing to keep an eye on customers. She was dressed in white, save for heels which were, except for the bottoms which were red as blood. She stood out as overdressed for this particular establishment. A busnsss woman in a room full of blue collars. Her outfit cost a months salary of every port worker here.

Her voice was smoky and seductive. She was red-skinned like most Devaronians and in her middle thirties. That voice though. It was ageless. "Captain Del-Finn is looking forward to your discussion. May I show you to the lounge so you can conduct your business privately?" Oraura made a sweeping gesture toward a room near the entrance way. Oraura was no stranger to dealing with important men; she'd made a living servicing men of all sorts but that was before, when she was a different woman with a different name and a different life. She snapped her manicured fingers sharply gesturing for the bartender to expedite their retrieval of an unopened bottle of Corellian black label.

Her bloody heels clacked sharply on the floor puncturing the din of low conversations in the room as she led the young noble toward the private room. With a professional word and the polite suggestion that the man leave his security detail without, Oraura would excuse herself to collect Joran Del-Finn.


Joran Del-Finn…Captain Joran Del-Finn…Senator Captain Joran Del-Fin.

That still required getting used to

Joran Del-Finn sat in his dimly lit office, at the heavy dark wood desk, stooped over a glass of dark brown liquor, several datapads strewn haphazardly across the desk's face. An unlabeled bottle of that dark liquor, which stood three-quater full only this morning, now had less than an eighth remaining.

The door to his office opened with a soft hiss, and Oraura, his new senatorial aide, stepped inside.

She required some getting used to as well

He thought that could be quite the enjoyable experience. Oraura was nothing short of stunning. Her thick black hair was done in big curls, flowing past her shoulders, streaked with red. It reminded him of a lava flow.

"Oh, you are back here. That's good." Joran could hear the relief in her smoky voice.

"Why is it good that I'm here?" He asked, weary of the conversation already.

"You have a meeting and he's here."

"What meeting?" Joran asked as Oraura claimed his glass of booze for herself and sat across the desk from him.

"With Aurelian Veruna." She clairified.

Oh right,

"Is it boredom that drives you to jeopardize everything?" She asked, taking a drink from the glass that was once his. Her tone was conversational, as if she were merely curious but Joran could hear the concern she tried so hard to hide.

"What? The man is interested in fuel." Joran said playing dumb.

"That's what he says,"

"You don't believe him?"

"Of course not. He chairs internal affairs. He wants you to open your doors so he can have a poke around."

"You're the one who always says I need to spend more time on Naboo. Political allies and all that, right?"

Joran had returned to Naboo a handful of years ago and made the planet more than one of a handful of places to hole up between jobs, which is exactly what it was for decades as Joran lived his life aboard his ship The Perseverance.

"So you choose the senator most likely to jam up everything you have planned?"

Joran shrugged. "Better he's my friend than my enemy."

"So I'm sure you'll be discussing your plans for Denon with your new friend."

Joran gave her a hard stare. Joran Del-Finn was a man that spent his life among some of the most dangerous beings one was like to find from one end of the galaxy to t'other. He had lived as Mando merc, a smuggler, a bounty hunter and several other less pleasant things beside. That was all to say that Joran knew how to express his displeasure with a look.

Oraura swallowed softly and managed a sheepish look of contrition, remembering who was in charge of this and any conversation between the two of them.

"Denon is not discussed with anyone who has no business knowing about my business there. That includes Aurelian Veruna and it includes you, it will not be said again, do you understand." His speech was slow and measured, leaving no room for misinterpretation.

"Well?" He asked expectantly, snapping out of his moment of menace.

"Well what?" She asked sharply.

"Your impression." Joran respected Oraura and her ability to get the measure of a man. It was in Joran's estimation her greatest talent, though to be fair he had not sampled all of the things she learned from her previous life. The woman had gone from working in a pleasure house on Denon to running the books for a spice dealer on Coruscant. Now she was the aid to the senator of Malastare

"Of the senator? I hardly shared a word with the man," she laughed dismissively. Joran did not responded except to merely look at the devaronian woman, suggesting he still expected an answer. "Seems a right royal prick if you ask me. He has the idea that he's done us all a favor by being here. He will expect you to be grateful."



The private lounge door opened to the shape of Joran Del Finn. A massive man, six and half feet tall, nearly three hundred pounds, and made, it seemed entirely of muscle. Joran took an over exaggerated sniff of the air not unlike a reek before it charged. In his hand he held two fresh glasses and an unopened bottle of the dark unlabeled liquor.

"Right," the old smuggler said, exhaling. His tone was not exactly inviting. Cold was too strong a word but there was certainly some frost. His eyes passed over Aurelian as he looked around the room making a tutting sound with his tongue.

What hope does the Republic have when she is ruled by children?

Joran was unimpressed by the young senator. Joran had no doubt the man would as soon smile at you as pull out a blade, though Joran suspect the man was likely to get distracted by his reflection in the blade.

"Raining again is it?" Joran asked his gaze seemingly fixed on the stain glass windows to the street.

The question was posed to the room or maybe Joran was talking to himself, it was difficult to discern. From the moment he entered a room Joran was putting on a show. The nature of the show was dependent on the audience and the goal to be achieved. The audience today was a nobleman who was certain his own flatulence made any room he was in smell better. The goal was to make certain the man knew exactly who held the power. In this bar and in this city that was him, Joran Del-Finn.

Joran ran a finger down the window. "I hope you stayed dry. Hate for you to get in my account." Joran now turned to fully face Aurelian. "I was told you asked for a bottle of the black label," he clicked his tongue again tc tc tc tc "that's a good bottle, mate. It impresses upon me that you may be a man of discerning taste."

Joran set the glasses down on the table top and filled them both half full of the mystery booze. He took a large swallow of his own glass. Aristocrat types spent so much time worrying about poison.

"That is the finest rye whiskey on the planet, probably the finest in all the republic, from crop grown here on Naboo, naturally sweetened with best figs credits could buy. Drink up tell me what you think, I'm hoping to have her on the market by months end. Drink and then we talk business, yeah?"

Aurelian Veruna Aurelian Veruna


 


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Aurelian raised his glass halfway in salute, eyes never quite leaving Joran's face. He wore that lazy, feline grin that made people nervous without ever knowing why. It was the kind of smile that didn't reach his eyes, but promised it could - if you were clever enough to earn it.

"Found the rain rather poetic, actually," Aurelian said, swirling the whiskey and glancing toward the stained-glass windows with feigned reverence. "All that cleansing fury trying to wash the city clean, like anyone down here gives a damn. Makes you feel nostalgic for dirt, doesn't it?"

He took a sip. Let it linger. Let Joran see him savor it. The Core-world nobles called it 'performative appreciation,' but Aurelian did it with enough flair to turn theater into threat. He placed the glass down with a soft clink.

"You weren't lying. That's dangerously good. If you'd told me it was Naboo-grown before I drank it, I'd have assumed you were trying to sell me on swamp rot and sweet talk. But this-" he gestured with the glass, "-this is legacy in a bottle."

He leaned back in the chair like it was a throne and he'd just been crowned, rings catching the dim light, boots crossed with relaxed arrogance. Then, as if it were an afterthought:

"Speaking of legacies," he said, voice a touch lower, silkier, "where in the galaxy did you find her? Oraura. You'll have to pardon the forwardness, but talent that polished doesn't just grow on Devaron. If you ever get bored of her competence - or if she gets bored of your... rustic charm - do send her my way. The Veruna estate could use a little more sharpness."

He let that hang, just long enough to provoke, before he returned to the matter at hand.

"But we're not here to trade compliments, are we?"

He straightened just a bit, the smile still playing at the edges, but the warmth behind it cooled. His tone shifted from flattery to business - still smooth, still charming, but now underpinned with steel.

"I'm here for fuel. Malastarian fuel, to be specific. Plooriod III's processing plants are chewing through our reserves faster than expected, and the local distributors are bleeding us with their prices. I'm not interested in paying for loyalty from middlemen with oily hands and inflated egos."

Aurelian met Joran's gaze evenly.

"I want a direct supplier. Someone who can get the product where it needs to go without a dance and without drawing too many eyes. I hear you know how to move things - and people - through channels most senators pretend don't exist. And I want it cheaper. I want to know if you're open to that kind of arrangement."

He took another sip, then set the glass down with a deliberate gentleness, as if the table belonged to him.

"There's profit in it for you, of course. Influence, too. And considering your… ambitious return to politics, well. You and I both know that fuel buys more than just ships. It buys favors. Votes. History."

The smile returned, a little wider, a little hungrier.

"So, Captain - Senator - smuggler, kingmaker, what have you… tell me: do you want to make a deal, or do I finish this glass and find someone less interesting to disappoint me?"



 

Joran Del-Finn

Smuggler by day. Snuggler by night.



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Joran Del-Finn misliked that smile. He misliked it so very much.

For some, a smile was a shield. For others, and Joran suspected this of Aurelius, a smile was a sword.

In the life Joran had lived, the life Joran had loved, the one where a missed shipment was the difference in paying for repairs or paying for a meal. A life of blood and hardships, Joran learned smiles were lies. As were most politicians, and the aristocracy even more so. In a contest of liars, Joran Del-Finn liked his odds.

But whether this smile was a lie, or a shield, or a blade waiting to slit his throat was not what troubled Joran today. No, the trouble was all from the fact that no matter what it was, Joran must choke it down. Joran may have ruled Keren City like he was king, but that was truly where his influence ended. Senator of Malastare or no, he had no allies in the assembly, and none in the senate.

His name held a dubious Royal connection, yet that only took him so far, and so far that was only Malastare, far at the northern end of the republic on the edge of Alliance space. A world known primarily and nearly exclusively for fuel production and podracing, Malastare was not of much concern here on Naboo and with Malastare’s population being less than ten percent human, Joran’s appointment as Senator had raised some eyebrows on the capital and on Malastare itself which had presumed to be represented by one of the majority Dug or Gran from the world but Joran had pushed for the appointment seeing the potential in the world.

He just hated the taste of what it took to make that potential a reality.

Joran could appreciate the show the young senator put on as he tasted his liquor. Joran had a show of his own to put on after all.

“Nostalgic. For. Dirt.” Joran spoke each word as though he were savoring the sound, slow and deliberate, with a discernible edge to his tone like thunder beyond the horizon. A storm was forming.

“When I was younger than you, I spent a year in some chithole war zone, yeah? I was young, right? Not so big as I am now and not so smart either, so when there was a call for volunteers to act as tunnelers, well, I said okay.” Joran swallowed another swig from his glass. “Not the most technologically advanced world either, so when the droids broke down, we went and dug with our own hands. One of those tunnels collapsed one day and six of us were lost in the dark for I think eighteen hours. Do you pray, mate? I don’t but the locals I was trapped with, they prayed, I could hear them, couldn’t understand them what with the dirt and then speaking their native gibberish but I knew it was a prayer, I could feel the holy divination through their words. Five voices, then four, then three, two, none. None but me came out to see the light again.”

Joran finished his glass and poured another.

“I don’t much get nostalgic for dirt.” Joran was a big man who spent more time than was reasonable dealing with other big men. Big in size. Big in ego. Big in danger. He knew how to sound like the big, scary, hardened Mandalorian when it suited him.

He also knew how to play a jovial host and found switching between the two to be a show of its own. It kept people guessing and left them wrong-footed in many cases, trying to suss out whether Joran was going to hug them or hit them.

“I will make sure to send you home with a crate,” he said with a smile.

“Find her? No, no, no, I took her, mate. A good friend of mine was in a spot of trouble and well, all things have their price, don’t they? If you want some Denon brothel worker sharpening your estate, you’re welcome to a conversation with her. I hear she no longer charges for those.” Joran said as though he couldn’t be bothered to care whether Aurelian spoke to her or not.

Joran was eager to see how the young man reacted to that statement. Every show was for a reaction. Every reaction decides the next show. It would hurt if Oraura left him. She was smart and knew how to look the other way, but all things have their price, and Joran lived by the principle that you never wagered something you couldn’t afford to lose.

“Mate, trade is my business. One of them, at any rate, but let’s hear what you propose, eh?” Joran leaned back in his chair and folded open his hands in an inviting gesture.

Joran listened to the young senator’s proposal, his face impassive, unchanging, and unreadable. Behind his stony face, however, Joran’s mind whirred with the power of a navi comp’s processor. He weighed every word that was said and twice the words that weren’t. The man sitting across from him with the false smile and real sense of superiority was chair of Internal Affairs, yet here he was in smog choked Keren City, in a pub with a less than reputable reputation, looking to make a deal with a man with no reputation at all, outside of official channels and undercutting any fair and legal bidding process that should likely go with a deal of this Magnitude.

If it were a trap, it was baited just right. Joran needed a deal like this. He needed the influx of credits, and he needed the chance at an ally, even one that he could not trust as far as he could throw.

“Cheaper? Mate, there is nothing cheap about the fuel on Malastare. Inexpensive? Perhaps, but not cheap, yeah? It’s a shame when the credit-hungry middlemen forget their place, bloody extortion, sounds like. I may be able to solve these issues you have so smartly brought to my attention. First, cut those money-grubbers right out. Fortune Fuels can supply your demand; say no more about the shipping; we will handle that as well. No dance required.”

Joran sipped his drink.

“Three and a half credits a gallon. Standard shipping rate, which is cutting you a deal mind, if less than standard shipping lanes are to be used. I want to establish a presence in the southern end of the Republic as well, so Oraura will make a visit to Plooriod III and, with your help of course, find suitable accommodations.”

His words suggested that this deal was over. Terms agreed to and all that was left was signatures. He knew, however, that this was a negotiation and the first number was never the final number.

Aurelian Veruna Aurelian Veruna
 


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Aurelian's eyes didn't blink, not once, through the war story. He took it in like someone reading a cautionary tale in a gilded library, with interest, certainly, but also the faintest flicker of clinical detachment. When Joran finished, Aurelian raised his glass in quiet salute again. Not to honor the story, but the sheer theater of it.

"Eighteen hours in a collapsed tunnel," he said softly. "No prayers of your own, but you made it out. That's the sort of thing they put on statues. Or war crimes tribunals. Depends who's writing the history."

He drank. Just a sip this time. More measured. His eyes finally left Joran's only long enough to glance down at the table, then back up with a touch of slyness returning.

"And here I thought I was going to have to impress you. Turns out I just had to ask about dirt."

The grin came back, brighter this time, but with a glint. Then came the Oraura comment. The brothel quip. Aurelian didn't react outwardly, no flinch, no raised brow, not even a shift in his posture, but a note was made. He stored it away like a blade tucked up a sleeve. Something about calling a valuable woman disposable never sat quite right with him. Especially when the man saying it clearly knew better. He laughed lightly, but his reply had edges.

"Denon's got the best brothels this side of the Core. That explains the posture," he said, lounging again, back into that careless sprawl of his. "But if you ever do feel like gambling with your staffing arrangements, let her know the Verunas believe in upward mobility. Or at least upward escape velocity."

His hand flicked lazily, dismissing the conversation's detour, though not without a glint of challenge in his gaze. Let Joran see it, a reminder that the boy with the noble blood wasn't all silks and seduction. Sometimes, there were barbs beneath the brocade.

When Joran moved to business, Aurelian leaned forward again, slow and deliberate, like a cat finally ready to pounce.

"Three and a half," he echoed, running his thumb along the rim of his glass. "You're not wrong. Not cheap. But not theft either. Acceptable, if we add a few ornaments to sweeten it."

He ticked off on his fingers, casual, like he was placing an order for dinner rather than designing a piece of geopolitical architecture.

"First: an exclusivity clause. I don't want the same backdoor deal going to my competitors. At least not while I'm still bedding Plooriod. That's bad manners."

A second finger.

"Second: control of the port authority for your shipments. My people. My hands. I'll make sure they look like yours, but they'll report to me. I want to know what's coming and going. No surprises, unless I plan them."

A third finger.

"Third: Oraura can come inspect whatever she likes. But she stays in my housing on Plooriod. Not because I don't trust her, but because I don't trust you." He smiled. Again. Too bright. "And we both know trust is earned, not inherited."

He folded his hands then, set them on the table, rings gleaming like little planets in their own orbit.

"And in return, I'll ensure Assembly approval for the trade routing. I'll write the supply into Plooriod's emergency resourcing act, which I also happen to be rewriting. You'll be exempt from customs inspections on four designated lanes, two of which run directly through the trade route, which means whatever empire you have can go galactic if you want it to."

He leaned back once more, one boot now perched on the edge of the low table, obscene, but aristocratically so.

"Do that, and I'll pretend I didn't hear you refer to the chair of Internal Affairs as 'mate' more times than you should if you want to keep your license. Do it well, and next time I bring you a bottle from Alderaan's royal cellars and ask you what you think."

He raised his glass again, just slightly.

"But let's be clear, Senator Del-Finn. If you cross me, I won't come back to this charming grease-stained cathedral of yours. I'll come for your licenses. Your ships. Your seat. And then, when you're back to stealing food off trade lanes in a bucket of bolts, I'll still be drinking this whiskey… but I'll be drinking it with your bartender."

The smile remained, dazzling and dead-eyed.

"Deal?"



 

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