Thistle & Weeds [Kashyyyk]

[Hazel Scheler]

Kashyyyk was not a planet Ivy would travel to if given the choice.

It was hot, humid, and crafted upon layers of death. The locals weren't exactly known for their open, welcoming demeanor. One had to handle introductions with them using tact and care. Given the likelihood that you were unsuccessful at whatever goals you might've set, you were granted passage not up and away, but down.

Next came the carnivorous, sentient flowers. Petunias with PMS.

Survived that? Fething Terentateks.

And then there was the complete and utter darkness to which you are banished. A place where not even the locals dared go.

Why, then, was Ivy Lasranae going to this planet?

Because there was a man hiding there. And because the Republic felt terribly inclined to pay good money to whoever found him and brought him back. Alive and mostly whole.

Very good money.

Money didn't help Ivy's stomach settle any better, but it would certainly help put more food in it. The presence of her mostly sane sister @[member="Sephoria Lasranae"] did make her feel a bit more at ease. Really, just a bit.

The Egris sat low over the brown sands of a scant marshy beach somewhere along the east coast of a broad-spanning continent. They'd been given a name, a face, a short background, a reason, and a very vague location to start. So vague in the grand scheme of things. On a planet of deadly jungles with seven levels to search, one could not get much more vague than Approximately 10 miles inland of the south eastern continent, within the region of the Kkowir Forest.

"That's a good trick," Ivy muttered to herself while eying the ridgeline of dead and gray trees to the west.

"Seph, you ready?" the call back to the ship echoed strangely over the sound of dull, heavy waves lapping at the shore.

 

[Sephoria Lasranae]

Sephora hadn't been far away. She kept a watch on their ship just to make sure none of the locals or local wildlife decided to take a peek at it while they were still there. Well it was more accurate to say that she kept an ear on it. Really Sephoria was using her dark gray hued Sith Sword to carve her name into the sand where they had landed by the shore.

She hurried the last two letters along after her sister called out for her status. Then she pulled her blade from the ground before wiping the sand off of it onto the plate of armor on her thigh. The Garhoon caught up to Ivy quickly afterwards.

"I'm ready. Maybe we'll get to give a Wookie a makeover if we're lucky."

The woman beamed with glee at the thought.

 

[Cedric Dorn]

Diana bounded form branch to branch. She moved like a squirrel did across the massive tree's of Kashyyyk, her comparatively small form bouncing across the woods like it was nothing. It only took her a few seconds to reach the branch she had originally intended and rather quickly she found herself standing atop one of the smaller tree's that graced the face of Kashyyyk.

As she finally came to a halt Diana frowned slightly. As she did so the young Jedi winced in pain. The tattoo's that were newly applied to her face still hurt quite a bit, portions of them were still scabbed over and others were in the process of peeling. Getting them done had been a personal choice, one she had chosen to take after her return to the Order. It was a piece of herself, a piece of who she was. She was glad she had gotten them, but that didn't mean they didn't hurt.

Diana let out a sight, trying to relax her face and bring it back to normal. The hot humid air of Kashyyyk didn't really help the situation, but then that was the way of things. She was here on her first assignment she had received upon her return to the Order.

Over the last few months Diana had become quite the expert in tracking. Her gift in Psychometry and her ability to find people was perhaps one of the greatest in the order, so when the Jedi had heard of this Criminal on Kashyyyk Diana had been a natural choice.

The Jedi Knight had eagerly taken the job, wanting to get off of Coruscant and away from the politics. Once she had arrived however her task had quickly become rather...daunting. Kashyyyk was massive and its forests did not help. Luckily however she had managed to track the Criminal within a seven mile radius. Now she just had to search thousands of feet of forest.

 

[Hazel Scheler]

Watching her sister's approach, Ivy briefly glanced back to the sand where the woman had been staunchly guarding the ship. Her eyes narrowed for a moment as she peered along the shore.

"You spelled it wrong."

The woman gave a sniff, a shrug, shouldered her gun and set off through the marshy sands towards the grey line of decaying trees.

"Give a wookie a makeover? Weh," the woman shook her head as she stopped along the top of a grassy sand dune, "I'm not sure there's much to be done for them. All that hair will probably hide a bloody lip." She removed a device from beneath her traveling cloak, keying in commands that would launch two refitted DRK-1 Dark Eye Probe Droids she'd found in a warehouse while employed by the Empire. It hadn't taken much to fix them and make them operational again, though surely she could have spent far more money on buying their modern counterparts. There were a few more on her ship, waiting for her to finish repairs, so this would be a good test to see if her efforts hadn't been wasted.

A droning sound came from behind them as the black specs appeared from behind The Egris, taking off into the air to buzz out past them towards the dead forest. They disappeared shortly after, on the search for warm-blooded lifeforms.

 

[Sephoria Lasranae]

The slightly younger sister-in-law raised her eyebrows for a second before narrowing her eyes in return.

"No," Only she had to turn and stop herself she she then noticed the hasty mistake at the end of her name. Sephorsa? Perhaps her birth name had creeped into her head for a moment. Never the less she naturally responded by scrunching up her face and hissing at Ivy. A regular woman might do this to sound like a cat for humor. When a Garhoon did it, it was an actual sign of deep aggression and threat. She was after all a creature that could rip a person's throat out with her fangs if she had the inclination to do so.

Of course Ivy knew Sephoria to be full of hot air in this regard. The was further reinforced when the woman stuck her tongue out at her sister and mouthed the words 'you spelled it wrong' in a mocking fashion to Ivy's back.

The drones seemed to catch the Garhoon's attention as they ascended from the Egris and moved for the treeline. "Good now I won't have to do all the hunting since you can't smell or hear worth a damn." She chuckled to herself lightly as she pulled the blaster rifle from where it was slung over her back and began to follow Ivy.

 

[Cedric Dorn]

Diana sat perched in her tree for quite a while, her eyes closed and her senses extending as far as she could manage it. She tried to look for some sort of signal or life, for some mark that she could use to hunt the criminal further, for something anything at all that could help her bring this man to justice. She attempted to concentrate, her sealed shut like a pair of blast doors.

That was until she began to hear the loud droning of a repulsor lift break the serene silence of the woods. Her eyes opened up in an instant, a scowl covering her face. The sound came closer and closer zooming towards Diana's location.

In a matter of seconds the Jedi Knight stood face to face with the strange black orb. Her shinning bright eyes stared into the camera lens of the pod, her dirty and newly tattooed face reflecting in the black. She stared at it for just a few seconds, and then in an instant drew her blade. With one swift sharp motion Diana drew her blade Tyrfing and used it to slice the drone into two large chunks.

The drone fell down into the tree's below, disappearing from her view in almost a second flat. The scowl on Diana's face grew deeper. This drone meant someone else was here, it meant someone else was looking for her target. This was not good. She knew that no other Republic agents had been sent, or at least no Jedi. The scowl creased her face for a second more, and then she bounded off her tree branch. She had to move fast.

 

[Hazel Scheler]

The pair hadn't gotten far - less than an hour of walking - when the control device on Ivy's belt bleeped.

"Hold the phone," Ivy remarked and pulled the device out, brows aloft in surprise. She couldn't really say what got her more; the fact that the things were working, or the fact that they had picked something up so soon. Engaging the screen soon gave her another surprise: she'd lost one of them.

"I lost a droid," she grunted to Seph as she keyed through to the last recorded video feed it had relayed, "must have been a wookie or a plant or-" her words came to a halt, "another fething Laserbrain."

Seph would know this very fond pet name as Ivy's way of referring to Force Users.

"That's not good. We've got to move, fast." Triangulating the last recorded location of her lost droid was easy enough, though she doubted the assailant would stay for long. At least they had a lead, but not one she had prepared herself to deal with. The Republic never mentioned sending Jedi out for the job.

 

[Sephoria Lasranae]

"Perhaps you didn't feed it good enough," responded the woman to the news about the loss of the droid. The follow up comment about another force user didn't make any change to Sephoria's facial expression. Ivy lost a husband and Seph lost a brother to a Sith many years prior. Her sister no doubt blamed all force users for the trajedy, but the Garhoon could only blame that one particular Sith.

"Lets go then and see if we can pick up a trail. Did they say he had to be brought back alive?" After all it might have been easier to compete with this force user and bring back the fugitive if they just killed him.

 

[Cedric Dorn]

Diana dashed through the tree branches like a squirrel. She bounded from branch to branch like it was her sole mission in life. Whoever was out there was looking for the same thing she was. She knew this was true, and she had to get their first. Diana was a confident tracker, and she was pretty sure that the man was close, though finding him in such an area seemed nearly impossible.

Quickly and quite lithely Diana moved to the forest floor. She knew that the man was more than likely hiding within what the Wookiee's dubbed the “Shadowlands”. The lands were unexplored and unmapped. It was the perfect place for anyone to hide, it was where Diana would hide if given the chance.

With a soft thud Diana landed on the ground of the forest. The darkness here was almost perfect, no sunlight touched the forest floor. From her face she pulled her goggles, revealing her shiny eyes. She looked around calmly and quietly, the light of her eyes bringing out small details that normal people would not be able to see. She began to search for a trail, a track, something she could use to trail the man.

Slowly she crept across the floor, until finally she found a small bit of metal. Diana looked at it, and then knelt down. It seemed to be a piece of a chain, or perhaps shackles. She frowned, reaching towards it and touching it. In an instant her psychometry kicked into effect and Diana caught flashes of memories. She saw chained Wookiees, Trandoshan slavers, and more importantly...her target. Diana frowned. She had another clue.

Quickly she stood up and began to head east, further into the shadowlands.

 

[Hazel Scheler]

"Alive," Ivy replied gruffly while keying in several new proximity commands to her remaining Probe Droid. She'd rather not lose this one as well.

"I've got the location of the last transmission, let's go." Without another word the woman headed off.

The pair passed through a forest of dead trees and a valley of ash and shale. It was quiet save the call of greener jungles further to the east. Finding a worn trail in the ground they followed it out to the edge of the Kkowir Forest where she paused for only a second. Beyond the gray, colors of life brewed in the higher canopies. Her research gleaned her enough information to know about the dangers of Kashyyyk's jungles, especially that of the ground level, but that was their best choice until the Probe Droid told her otherwise.

Like the Jedi, the Mercenary had come to a similar conclusion. It was likely that an enemy of the Republic would not take refuge with those who served it - the Wookies. So, he'd head for darker grounds, where they weren't likely to simply stumble across him. Ivy pulled her blaster and set it to stun, "Let's not make a mess of things. The Wookies are Republic jurisdiction now and I'd rather get paid at the end of the day than chastised for a few downed walking area rugs."

@[member="Sephoria Lasranae"]

 

[Sephoria Lasranae]

The response Ivy received was a light chuckle. "I'll be sure to set the sword to stun." Sephoria said this while slicing a withering sapling out of her way. She had a blaster rifle, but seemed to be enjoying the chance to cut down any bit of vegetation that encroached on their path.

The forest was getting thicker as they traveled, which meant that the canopy began to consume more and more of the light. This lead to the smaller under-foliage being unable to survive. In it's place large gnarled roots were were popping up as they started to cross larger more aged trees. None of the fading light or the rough terrain seemed to hamper the Garhoon sister however. She jumped from one large root to the next with a flaunted grace as if she was treating everything like a game.

"I think I saw a Wookie once. It was a merc or smuggler of some sort. I thought it was slow and clumsy. I don't know what the big hype is with them. Did you bring your night vision? I sense some beasties that might be stalking us soon. We'll probably get pounced at some point." Sephoria was talkative as usual, but said everything all quite nonchalantly. The tone almost made it seem like being pounced by some creature that inhabited the depths of these forests would be a fun game.

@[member="Ivy Lasranae"]

 

[Cedric Dorn]

The Darkness suited Diana just fine. The unique spectrum that her eyes functioned under seemed to love it here within the shadowlands. Where this area might be dark for a normal human, to Diana it seemed as though the sun was shining brightly. A smile was on her face as she continued following the tracks that had been layed out by the Trandoshans and her query.

She was a Jedi on a mission, one that had been accelerated by the presence of others. The Jedi did not know if the others were Sith, or mercenaries, or any sort of other nasty thing but she knew that they knew she was here. That bit of information was enough to cause her to worry. She had to move, and she had to do it fast. With every ounce of the force she could muster infused into her muscles Diana ran at the edge of the forest, avoiding the path at all costs.

As she ran she could feel the eyes of creatures bearing down on her. The feeling of being watched did not escape her and a slight chill settled on her spine.

The Shadowlands were dangerous.