Private We Who Survive - The Stone Freak

[Ghrom the Molten]

​

Location: Lothal - Outer reaches - Exotic slave market

Behind a field of energy and metal sat what would look like to most a pile of rock. The beast of Earth was now waiting to discover his fate, to learn who would pay the most to take control of him, who was to be his master and he their slave.

Sadness gripped the unique specimen, possibly the last of his race. Watching from his cage as the filthy flesh bags haggled over him he wondered what they would do with or to him as person after person offered ever higher sums of coin for possession. They had no right, they were not his master. He had been tricked, so desperate to get home he had been fooled by slavers into a trap with the bait of passage home. Now his foolishness in trusting these carbon beings had lead him to this fate, his enslavement.

Time passed and when the auction came to an end he found himself in a great warehouse. Around him were creatures of all sorts most none sentient but some like him who were people, living beings who were now reduced to properly. All was lost when he heard the clicking of heeled boots walking toward him.

"So come to collect your property?" Ghrom said in a low rumbling voice.

 

[Skajin var Imret]

Ghrom the Molten

"Bzzot buzbuz wew."

"Sava Skajin var Imret has indeed purchased your compulsory indenture," a fussy voice added. The silver protocol droid was the source of the clicking heels. Its Kubaz master walked softly.

"Azoot za."

The droid tapped a code on a forearm keypad. "The indenture is nullified. You are a free being."

The Kubaz shook his head and turned away, though it wasn't like his trunk and goggles revealed much sentiment worth hiding. "Zuuratoppizza."

"The Sava calls your freedom a gift between survivors of the Bryn'adul genocides."

 

[Ghrom the Molten]

Skajin var Imret

The monster of rock pulled his head out from behind his hands and looked up at the silvery droid, then to the Kubaz. He truly did not believe what was happening.

"Is this a trick metal man? You talk of gifts and survivors. I only want to go home. I felt my family, they miss me, need me. Visions of red skin monsters haunt my dreams. They are visions the future I fear. My world is in danger, I must get back there."

Ghrom didn't know why he was talking to these two so much but freeing him from imprisonment granted them a amount of trust. As he left the cage he rose to his full height of almost 3 meters. Heavy stone footsteps thundered as he walk out and into the open.

"It is good to be free, thank you. Can I ask of you one more thing. I need passage back to my home on Hurikane, are you able to help or to point me towards an honest being that can?"

Ghrom had been off world for years, study this wierd religion called the force. He had no knowledge of the fate that had befell his world and his people.

 

[Skajin var Imret]

Ghrom the Molten

For all the pride that Skajin took in properly honing his thought processes, the leash he kept on his fury, simple animal emotion still had a grip on him. He remained turned away from the hulking Hurikanean as if concealing weakness. In truth, he supposed he was nurturing strength. Grief was a path to strength, if one had the will to master it.

"Gzzitzaa."

Q-ZP0 ahemmed. "Sava Skajin says he hears the fury of the Force in you, as is right and natural in these times. He asks if you have been trained in the ways of the Jedi or the Sith, or neither."

"Szimmisglaa."

"The monsters you saw in vision are the Draelvasier, the Bryn'adul horde. They exterminated everyone on your world, on the Sava's home planet, and on many others."

The slave warehouse shook. Locks began to break - on shackles, on pens, on cages.

 

[Ghrom the Molten]

"YOU LIE!"

Like the rumble of an exploding volcano the words spilled forth from Ghorm's mouth. Pain, anger, fear like a wave of hot emotion flowed from him as he lifted a near by crate the size of a speeder and flung it into the wall like an angry child would throw a toy ball during a temper tantrum.

"Speak the truth metal man, why do you speak such falseness. They can't be dead, Hurikanean can't be dead. We are hard as stone, with hearts of crystal."

Ghorm continued to thrash as other slaves left their pen, the locks suddenly broken by an unseen force. He was in a rage, the force that bonded him together turning dark and hot. Objects began to move around him even without being touched. His rage and pain were palpable, and being unleashed for the first in his left.

 

[Skajin var Imret]

Skajin whirled on Ghrom the Molten , eyes glinting dangerously through his goggles.

"Annd the Draelvaszzier pick my people from theirrre teeth with yourrr crrrystal heartszz."

A pair of quasi-felinoid Zygerrian slavers roared and charged them, energy whips sizzling. They lashed out indiscriminately at fleeing slaves. Other slavers did comparable grim work. No doubt some of the escapees, maybe most, would wind up in a cage again. But some would find a permanent freedom - those that had the will, or those that Skajin had purchased and earmarked for extraction.

Skajin raised both hands. Thirty meters away, the hissing whips knotted around their owners' throats.

 

[Ghrom the Molten]

Ghrum watched as two filthy slavers threaten the fleeing slaves, whipping them with with lightening whips. As two seemingly forgot how to use their weapons and whipped themselves more began to enter from the backroom.

"No you wrenched scum, you will harm no more!"

As his deep earth toned voice boomed like thunder he lifted the cage that held him and threw it into the pile of entering slavers. As the weight crushed them the cage slid into the door to the backroom blocking them from entering for a time. Any that survived his attack he ruthlessly ripping them apart limb from limb till no slaver drew breath.

Skajin var Imret

 

[Skajin var Imret]

Speaking of leashes, letting oneself off a leash felt appropriate here. Fitting. Skajin pulled out a compact disruptor pistol and began turning slavers to ash. He recognized, of course, that the Dark Side and his emotions amplified each other in a dangerous feedback loop - and that like any mood-altering substance, the Force could be addictive. But today a little excess seemed appropriate.

He did his best to keep up with the effectiveness of Ghrom the Molten . Admittedly, he couldn't. The big Hurikanean Darksider was caught in the first full torrent of an existential loss. Skajin had been there, but not with such obvious targets on hand. No, he'd felt absolute helplessness.

And for all Ghrom's strength and unalloyed wrath and rising body count, Skajin figured Ghrom felt the same.

"We szzhould go," he said over the sounds of the dying. "Thisz iszz the Empire. Szzlaverzz are tax-paying buszzinesszz."

The blood-spattered and most confused protocol droid toddled around aimlessly.