First Reply Through Dust and Chains

[Korda Veydran]

[Urban Market — Ryloth]
Dust and grit hung in the air, stirred by clanging carts and the shuffle of boots over uneven stone. Korda Veydran moved through the market with a predator's ease, leather vest tight across his broad shoulders, spikes catching the harsh twin suns, bare chest underneath. Cargo pants jingled with chains and bulging pockets; the skull-buckled belt at his waist shifted with every step. Combat boots thudded against the ground, each hiding a knife he could draw in a heartbeat.


He paused in front of a small stall cluttered with scraps: coils of wire, cracked durasteel plates, and an assortment of blinking dials. Fingers brushed over a length of braided cable. "Could use this," he muttered under his breath, voice low and rough, more to himself than anyone else. "Or maybe not… wouldn't survive a fall anyway. Useless if it snaps." He let it drop back onto the table and moved on, scanning the vendor's wares casually, though his mind was elsewhere.


Rynar. He couldn't stop thinking about Rynar. Alive. Somehow alive. Korda clenched his fists briefly inside his gloves, flexing the tension out. What if he hadn't returned? What if… he'd been gone before I even knew he was in danger? That thought sharpened in his chest, a cold spike he could not ignore. Relief mingled with guilt and frustration, a tangle of emotions he didn't usually let surface.


A Twi'lek kid darted past, selling small trinkets, and Korda's eyes flicked to a hanging chain of red crystals. "Worth a damn?" he muttered to himself, testing it in the sunlight. The crystals caught the light, scattering sparks of red across the dusty street. He shrugged, slipping a hand into a pocket and continuing down the aisle, letting the market's clamor wash over him.


He muttered again, quieter this time, almost a hiss: "Alive. He's alive… and I'll see he stays that way. No more surprises." The words carried with him like a silent vow, unspoken but weighty, as he moved deeper into the crowded, chaotic market.

Any passerby, merchant, or friend could step into his path. Korda didn't look for company, but he didn't shut it out either. The streets were open… and so was he.

Tags: open

 

[Allie J.]

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[]

Hellhound - DeathbyRomy ft. Jazmin Bean
​

Location: Ryloth - Urban Market
Tag: Korda Veydran


Allie completed the transaction with a speed that bordered on desperation, the exchange of credits and information goods feeling less like commerce and more like a quiet ritual meant to bind things that should not linger together. The market on Ryloth pressed in around her, a living labyrinth of canvas awnings and bone-framed kiosks, where merchants spoke in hushed cadences and the air smelled of spice, ozone, and sun-baked grass. And a great place to conduct such transactions.

She folded the purchased item into her satchel without inspecting it, some instinct urged her to be gone, to return 'home', wherever that word still retained meaning, before the planet's ancient gaze noticed her hesitation.

Yet Ryloth was never content to release its visitors so easily. As Allie turned toward the spaceport, her steps slowed, then faltered, drawn by the riot of stalls glowing with luminescent trinkets and impossible devices that hummed softly as if dreaming. Glassy-eyed idols carved from meteorite bone, data-slates etched with sigils older than hyperspace, and toys that skittered of their own accord crowded her vision, each whispering a promise of delight or ruin she could not quite distinguish.

The longer she lingered, the more the market's noise blended into a single, thrumming chorus, and she felt the unsettling certainty that the stalls were rearranging themselves around her, closing distance in subtle, predatory increments.

Amusement warred with unease as she drifted from kiosk to kiosk, fingers brushing curios that pulsed faintly at her touch, her earlier urgency dissolving into a guilty thrill. It was ridiculous, she knew, dangerous, even, to feel joy in such a place, yet the market offered fun with the same careless generosity it offered doom.

Somewhere beyond the awnings and shadows lay her ship and the cold comfort of escape, but for now Allie smiled to herself, unaware, or perhaps willfully ignorant, that Ryloth had already decided she was not finished with it yet.

 

[Korda Veydran]

Korda had already been at the market longer than he liked.


Ryloth's urban sprawl pressed in around him, canvas awnings snapping softly in the heat, bone-framed kiosks crowded together in defiant disorder. The air tasted of spice and sun-baked stone, with ozone clinging to the edges like a warning. He moved through it slowly, leather vest creaking across his shoulders, bare chest marked by old scars, spikes glinting as the light caught them just right. Cargo pants brushed against chains and pockets heavy with tools, and his boots struck the stone with a steady, unhurried rhythm. knives waiting in each, should the mood of the street shift.

He stopped at a stall near the edge of a cluster of glowing trinkets, one hand resting casually on the table as he examined a collection of half-functional devices. A cracked emitter hummed faintly beneath his fingers. "You're selling ghosts," he muttered to the vendor, more observation than accusation. "And they don't even scream right."


A chain ran from his belt to his pocket, and hanging from it was a worn pendant, Mandalorian in make, its clan sigil scarred and dulled by years of use. It tapped softly against the chain as he shifted his weight, a quiet, metallic punctuation amid the market's hum.

His thoughts, however, were far from the wares.
Alive, he reminded himself. Rynar came back alive.


The relief was still unfamiliar, edged with something colder. If he hadn't returned... if he'd been lost out there without warning... Korda would have never known. The thought settled heavy in his chest, and his jaw tightened as he exhaled slowly through his nose. "No more blind spots," he murmured under his breath. "Not again."


That was when he noticed the shift in the crowd. Not a disturbance, something subtler. The way the flow of bodies bent, slowed, rearranged itself around a single figure drifting from stall to stall. A presence the market hadn't decided how to digest yet.


Korda didn't stare. He rarely did. But his eyes tracked movement out of instinct, catching the faint smile, the way her fingers brushed over curios as if testing fate itself. Ryloth did that to people, offered wonder with one hand and a knife with the other.

He straightened, letting the device fall back onto the table. "I'll pass," he told the vendor, already stepping away. As he moved, the pendant swung once, catching the light before settling again.


Korda continued on, unhurried, close enough now that paths might cross or not. He wasn't looking for anything in particular.
But Ryloth rarely cared what people were looking for.

Allie J.

 

[Allie J.]

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[]

Hellhound - DeathbyRomy ft. Jazmin Bean
​

Location: Ryloth - Urban Market
Tag: Korda Veydran


Allie lingered before an object as though caught in the gravity of some inimical star. The box, if it could still be called a box, squatted atop the vendor's table, its surface worked with angles that hurt the eye when stared at too long, each groove seeming to shift when attention drifted. The metal was neither warm nor cold, but possessed a corpse-like neutrality that made her skin prickle. Symbols crawled along its edges in a language that felt remembered rather than read, and when she leaned closer, she swore she heard the faintest whisper, like breath forced through ancient stone.

Allie straightened, folding her arms, unimpressed by the thing's quiet blasphemy. "You know," she said lightly, "for something that looks like it wants to summon a nightmare from between the stars, it's got a real cracked-hinge problem."

The vendor's eyes narrowed, and he named a price that was clearly meant to frighten off the curious and the sane alike. Allie laughed; a short, sharp sound, and tapped the box with one finger, ignoring the way the air seemed to recoil. "That much? Please. Half the corners are warped, and whatever curse this thing came with is leaking out the seams."

The vendor sputtered, protesting its antiquity, its power, its provenance from places best left uncharted. She leaned in closer now, her voice dropping. "I'm doing you a favor taking it off your hands before it finishes whatever ritual it's halfway through." A long, uncomfortable silence followed, broken only by the distant din of the market. At last, the vendor sighed and named a lower price. Allie smiled, already reaching for her credits, while the Codex box pulsed once, almost petulantly, as if offended by the bargain struck over its slumbering, terrible secrets.

Allie drifted through the marketplace as though half-dreaming, the Codex box cradled beneath one arm like a relic stolen from a mausoleum that had never known the mercy of burial. Its weight seemed to fluctuate with her thoughts, growing heavier whenever she imagined the figures it might command among certain antique collectors; men and women who trafficked not in credits alone, but in forbidden histories and half-remembered cults.

The crowd pressed close, voices and colors blurring into an indistinct smear, while the box's etched sigils seemed to writhe subtly in the corner of her vision, as if savoring the prospect of new custodians. She smiled to herself, already calculating margins and favors, blind for a moment to the way the air thickened, as though something solid and implacable had stepped into her path.

The impact was sudden and unyielding, like colliding with a walking monolith. The Codex box thumped against beskar plating that drank in the market's light without reflection. Allie stumbled back, then looked up, up at the armored figure looming over her, helmet unreadable, presence oppressive in its silence. She huffed, more annoyed than frightened, and adjusted her grip on the box.

"You know," she said, squinting at the Mando's chestplate, "with all those gadgets you guys cram into your beskar'gram, you'd think you'd have a proximity alarm to warn you before you run into people." For a heartbeat, the market seemed to hold its breath, and somewhere deep within the Codex box, something old and patient stirred, as if newly aware of the armored shadow now cast across it.

 

[Korda Veydran]

The impact still landed hard.
Not beskar. Not armor.
Just solid mass and poor timing.

Korda's boots slid half a step back on the dusty stone as the box thumped against his chest, chains rattling sharply against his cargo pants. The leather vest creaked as he steadied himself, spikes catching the light, bare skin beneath marked by old scars and newer burns. A skull-buckled belt sat heavy at his waist, and a pocket chain swung once before settling, the small Mandalorian clan sigil hanging from it clicking faintly as it brushed the metal.


"Watch where you're..."
The words snapped out of him on instinct, sharp and edged, shoulders tensing as his hand twitched toward a place armor wasn't anymore.
He stopped himself.


Jaw tight, he exhaled slowly through his nose, eyes flicking down, not to her, but to the box. To the way the air around it felt… wrong. Familiar in a way he didn't like.

Still. Market. Crowd. No threat yet.
He straightened, forcing the edge out of his posture. "...going," he finished more quietly, then paused. A beat longer than necessary.
"…Sorry."

The word sounded strange coming from him, like a tool used for the first time. He dragged a hand through his hair and shifted his weight, chains clinking softly. "Didn't mean to cut you off. I'm a little…" His gaze returned to the box despite himself, brow creasing. "On edge."

He glanced back to her then, finally taking her in properly, eyes flicking from her face to the object tucked under her arm and back again. "You alright?" A rough question, but genuine.


The market noise rushed back in around them. vendors shouting, something mechanical whining nearby, but Korda stayed where he was, not crowding her, not backing away either. The pendant at his chain caught the light again as it swung, a quiet marker of who he was even without the armor.

His eyes lingered on the box one last time.
"…That thing always do that," he added, voice low, "or is today just special?"

Allie J.

 

[Allie J.]

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[]

Hellhound - DeathbyRomy ft. Jazmin Bean
​

Location: Ryloth - Urban Market
Tag: Korda Veydran

Allie shifted her weight and let out a quiet, almost amused breath, the words slipping from her as if they had been waiting in the air for someone reckless enough to claim them. "I'm all right," she said, tone light but threaded with something deeper, "no blood, no foul." She kept the box tucked beneath her arm, fingers curled protectively around its edge, even as she felt the Mandalorian's gaze return to it again and again.

His visor lingered there too long, like a needle hovering over a vein, and Allie could not shake the sense that the object hummed faintly; not with sound, but with intent, as though it recognized scrutiny and welcomed it.

She turned her head slightly toward him, sunglasses hiding her eyes but not the subtle tightening of her jaw. The space around them felt wrong, stretched thin, as if reality itself were holding its breath. "You feel that too, don't you?" she asked, voice lowered, stripped of humor. The box seemed heavier now, its unseen contents pressing against the laws that pretended to govern such things.

Allie gave a short, uneasy laugh and adjusted the box under her arm as if it had grown even heavier while no one was looking. "I bought it here in the market," she said, gesturing vaguely toward the labyrinth of stalls and shadows behind them. "Figured I knew a few people who'd pay a nice price for it, no questions asked."

Her voice wavered just enough to betray her confidence, the words thinning as the truth crept in around them. The market's din seemed distant now, muffled, as though the box were quietly drawing the world inward toward itself.

She tilted her head toward the box, considering the thing as one might regard a sleeping animal whose dreams had begun to leak into waking life. "But now…" she continued, lowering her voice, "now I think it's haunted, or worse."

Her fingers tightened unconsciously. "Feels like it's looking for someone. Like it remembers its original owner and doesn't much care who gets in the way. Or what attention it attracts" She let out another breath, half a scoff, half a shiver. "Crazy, huh?" Yet the word rang hollow, swallowed by the oppressive sense that whatever lay inside the box had been waiting a very long time to be found.

 

[Korda Veydran]

Korda didn't answer right away.
He shifted his stance instead, boots grinding softly against the stone as the noise of the market seeped back in around them. The leather vest creaked as he folded his arms, chains along his cargo pants clinking faintly. Bare skin caught the heat, scars pale against sun-darkened flesh. The skull buckle at his waist sat heavy and still, and the small Mandalorian sigil hanging from his pocket chain tapped once against the metal as he leaned forward, just enough to look, not touch.

"Yeah," he said finally, voice low. Not awe. Not fear. "I feel it."
His gaze stayed on the box, not the way a mystic might stare at an idol, but like a soldier sizing up an unexploded charge. The way the air seemed… crowded around it. Pressurized.

"Doesn't mean it's haunted," he went on. "Plenty of old tech feels wrong when it's half-alive. Feedback loops, residual power, bad shielding. Seen reactors do worse with less drama." A pause. "And sometimes people want it to be cursed. Sells better."
He glanced up at her then, reading posture more than expression behind the glasses. Her grip. The tension in her shoulders.
"But," he admitted, quieter now, "sometimes it's not nothing either."


Korda gestured with two fingers toward the box, slow, deliberate. "Mind if I take a look?" Not a demand. A professional courtesy. "Not to pry it open. Just see it. Check the casing, seams, power bleed, unless you already know what's inside."

His eyes flicked briefly to the crowd, then back to the object. "If it's just junk tech, you're carrying around a headache. If it's not…" His jaw set. "Better to know before it decides for you."
He held her gaze, steady, waiting.

Allie J.

[OOC note: he isn't in his armor he is in his casual clothing, leather vest, no shirt, cargo pants, combat boots. and wallet chains, he is a anarchist]