Saviors of the Stars IC

[Queen Sapes]

Issue 1: Ain't That a Kick in the Head?

A lone Nyglarian wiseman once lived alone on Plaxar, a planet orbiting a star of the same name with an orbit as close as a planet can get and still be inhabitable. He spent his days gazing up at the red giant that Plaxar, the sun, had become, tilling the fields of the nearly dead and tiny world, and pondering all things in the universe. One day, while watering his crops, he postulated that all it took for a good or lucky man to do evil was for him to experience one truly bad day. But on the other hand, all it took for a bad or unlucky man to do good was give him the responsibility to do so. Then Plaxar consumed Plaxar in a supernova, incinerating the Nyglarian instantly. The truth about this story is often scrutinized due to several problems within the story. Namely, how could anyone know he said this if the Nyglarian lived and died alone, and that Plaxar didn't explode into a supernova but rather collapsed into a black hole and consumed Blitxnie, its closest inhabitable planet. Still, the story of the wiseman has traveled throughout the galaxy since it was first told, becoming common knowledge as it teaches its lesson throughout a bizzare, dangerous, and often cruel galaxy.

All it takes for an unlucky man to do good, is for you to place all your bets on him.


In the body of neutral space rests an asteroid belt orbiting an old but still burning star. The rest of the system surrounding it is empty, only more asteroids with spots denser than others. Some speculate that perhaps these dense spots were once planets, given the abundance of natural resources in the asteroid belt. This theory is only helped by the existence of Outpost XP-9, otherwise known to the locals as "The Spire". Built eons ago by an unknown and now, presumably, extinct race, the spire is a massive structure that spans two of the larger asteroids, making it look somewhat like an apple core. The Spire was once a graveyard to that long forgotten race, the entire structure built to house the dead and allow mourners to pay tribute. As such, when it was found it already had artificial gravity generators pumping, an artificial atmosphere of (mostly) oxygen wrapped around it, and a force field to prevent its destruction, all powered by an engine of unknown design nobody ever risked taking apart or turning off. Whatever importance this place held to the race that built it, it was clear to the discoverers that they at least held their dead in great respect.

So of course, when the Spire ended up in the hands of Dacani it was quickly converted into an active trade port, with hundreds of mining vessels sent out from the Spire to mine the surrounding asteroid field. Many of the bodies were left intact thanks to the Spire's initial systems, and the Dacani sold the most intact ones off to collectors across the galaxy, "misplaced" several to thieves, and liquified the rest for their resource-rich corpses. The Spire itself grew from its original tube design, expanding outwards as ports were blown into the sides and housing, storage, and refinement tumors grew from its walls. In the end whatever the Spire was grew into something less holy and prestigious, and something more useful and valuable. At least, that's how the Dacani see it.

It's here the Slience has chosen to dock, after winding its way through the asteroid field to stop here for refueling and to find jobs. The Dacani could have blown away some of the asteroids to make it an easier trek to the Spire, but if they had done that they wouldn't be able to sell as much fuel as they can otherwise. The ship is docked on the middle yards, a compromise the pilot/captain made with himself. The lower yards used for docking were cheap to stay at but were often less policed which made it a nice spot for thieves and ship-choppers to ruin the Silence. But upper yards experienced the opposite problem. The cost to dock at them was often so high it may as well have been highway robbery, and the pilot might not have had even enough to dock. So the middle yards it was, everything nicely priced and decently protected as long as you were willing to check on your ship every once and awhile. Plus the yards were just a stone's throw from all the important spots across the Spire, which all the Silence's passengers had scattered to.


The Dacani:
A race of humanoid beings who resemble ink blots made human. Their skin is entirely black and oily like ink, taking on a different texture for their hair. The Dacani are actually a hive-mind colony organism, each individual Dacani humanoid comprised of thousands of cells that could easily form their own individual being. Dacani culture is based heavily on profit and trade, and as such Dacani rarely care for culture or the like, unless it in some way serves them. They are highly industrial, although their industry sacrifices longevity for efficiency. Dacani worlds are typically heavily polluted, with little in the way of sustainable life. This suits the Dacani just fine as their biology requires them to process very little oxygen to survive. Culture-wise the Dacani resemble the Terran roarin'-twenties era, with very older looking industrial concepts and a love of art deco in their architecture. Technically the Dacani are part of the Lor Republic, but often operate outside of Lor territory to avoid Lor restrictions.

The Ne'Tal:
A "race" of androids created long ago by an unknown creator race rumored to be the Darans. The standard Ne'Tal model looks a lot like a pillbug on stilts. Their bodies are smooth white shells suspended above the floor by long hollow tubes that work for them as legs. Underneath the shell is the inner workings of a Ne'Tal, which are typically limited to various interface appendages. Nearly all Ne'Tal are highly religious, worshiping something known as "The Broken God" which they will one day merge together to reform. Their religion is rather exclusive, as they do welcome members of other races to visit their places of worship, but generally do not let other races join. The Ne'Tal are possibly the most efficient race in the galaxy, able to produce almost any design with maximum resource efficiency. This has led the Ne'Tal to become highly sought after trade partners, and slaves, but due to some unknown Ne'Tal programming, they only appear to be willing to produce after memories have been given to them. The Ne'Tal deal in memories, literally removing moments from a person's memory, although the reason for this is unknown. The memories are rumored to be stored at the Ne'Tal's main church, the Eye of the Broken God. Ne'Tal are generally indistinguishable, and all of them appear to speak in the same voice and have the same opinion on all matters.

The Daran:
The outcast race of the galaxy, in recorded history nobody has seen a Daran without its bodysuit. Rumor has it that the Daran long ago were exiled from their homeworld, and get about to drift the stars in their ramshackle colony ships. To conserve precious fuel, each Daran entered into a bodysuit which acted as a personal environment for the individual. Unfortunately, due to a design flaw, the suits are extremely difficult and take some time to remove, and the user is incapable of speaking with anyone while in the suit. Generations of wearing these suits has led the Daran species to lose nearly their entire immune system, and they are extremely wary of removing the suits, lest they risk instant infection and death. Due to the design never being fixed, the Daran language has faded into myth, the species speaking entirely in a complex sign language designed around living on space ships. Much about the Darans is unknown, as aside from much of their people routinely leaving the colony ships to explore and bring back items of value, most races have little exposure to them.

The Bolonitie:
A less humanoid race than the Daran or Dacani, the Bolonitie are diminutive creatures resembling a cross between a lizard and a teddy bear. They come in a wide range of colors from blues to greens to reds, and generally do not pass two feet in height. However, the Bolonitie are not a cuddly and cute race. Their culture is highly competitive, and despite their small size the typical Bolonitie makes up for it in sheer power. Bolonitie games dominate much of their culture, with one of the nine continents of their homeworld dedicated mostly to sport. These games range everywhere from simple games of luck to extremely dangerous team sports, which can and have claimed lives before. The Bolonitie are generally a welcoming people, but in any game they have a tendency to be intense. Above all, cheating is forbidden by the Bolonitie codes, and a Bolonitie will never tolerate a cheater in any circumstances.

The Lor:
A race of Terran-looking people who have expanded over a fairly large chunk of the galaxy. The Lor appear to be generally well-meaning, but thanks to the insanity of their bureaucracy they can come across as cold and rigid. Still, as long as you obey their laws when in their territory, you don't have anything to fear from the Lor. Apart from that they're a rather boring race, with many subordinate races scattered around their territory.

The Grue:
A highly militaristic race of nearly hive-minded shapeshifters with aspirations to destroy, enslave, and generally dominate the rest of the galaxy. And to the fair, so far they've done a fairly good job. Grue territory is nearly as big as the Lor Republic, and the races they have under their control generally aren't seen outside of Grue territory. Even traveling in their space is a dangerous gamble, as Grue fleets tend to mass just on the borders of their territory, and Grue Scout ships buzz through the inner body. Thanks to their shapeshifting abilities, Grue are experts as infiltrating other races, and once one of their race is discovered in a high position, a Grue invasion typically isn't far behind.

(Other info-dumps coming later on as they become important or necessary to definitely know about!)
Laishe Telfoni:
"You've got to be kidding me, Laishe!" Henah Huil shouts angrily at Laishe Telfoni, the Dacani woman slamming her fist down onto her desk. In typical Dacani fashion her fist practically explodes on the desk, the impact streaks making it look like a fruit was thrown down against the wooden desk. Henah is rather slim for a Dacani woman, but otherwise pretty typical. Her "skin" is all a black sludge which actually is a massive colony organism which takes on a humanoid appearance. A single large eye takes up the majority of her face, with no visible mouth. The eye looks like a typical human's, although the iris is pink, an unusual color even for Dacani, who are typically purple-eyed. Her "hair" appears to be tied in a bun, although the black ink that makes up her hair appears to be only a slightly different texture than her skin. She wears what appears to be a very plain outfit of a white undershirt, dark brown vest, loose tie, and dark brown shirt. They are actually clothes, although why Dacani fashion so closely resembles that of the Terran twenties is beyond even the highest of scholars.

Henah is a high-ranking "accountant" for the Dacani on the Spire, although 'accountant' to the Dacani means differently than most other sapient species. Where most accountants are just number keepers, Henah is responsible for a lot more numbers on the Spire than people know about. She sells off the outgoing products, collects taxes from the Spire inhabitants, hires muscle when they don't pay, and engages in her fair share of illegal smugglings and dealings. Typical Dacani fare, but she's high enough on the food chain that her activities are actually worth paying attention to. It's these activities that drew Laishe Telfoni to her, although his reputation was already well known by the Dacani. She had hired him not to do anything particularly illegal, but to check up on one of the mining stations out in the asteroid field and "pay it a visit". Something about it not being worth her time to waste resources on checking in. Of course, when Laishe had arrived at the spot it was supposed to be, the mining station was gone without a trace save for the twisted remains of its supports. Probably stolen away by pirates, which means it wasn't worth recovering and probably wasn't able to be recovered. Unfortunately, this also means Henah was angry, and he probably wasn't getting paid.

"How does it just disappear!?" she shouts, pulling her hand up from the desk, the black smear recongealing into her hand. Henah falls back into her leather chair to look at Laishe from over her desk. The Terran sits across from her in one of two armchairs in her office. The office itself had once been the tomb of some unknown alien life form. Now there were vacation pictures hanging on the walls, and a Plartaxian goldfish. Henah fumes for a few more seconds, stopping Laishe each time he tries to stay something with her hand. "This is the fourth station this cycle to go..." she says to herself, running her hands over her face. "The bosses are gonna kill me..." Henah's eye then falls to Laishe who still sits there. "You realize I won't be able to pay you because of this, right?"

Nagini, Caprice, and Strife:
While meeting with Laishe's contact or roaming the marketplaces on the middle decks sounded like such fun, it was the Spire's bars that drew Nagini, Caprice, and Strife to them. The Spire was at least famous for a few things other than just being another example of the Dacani disgracing another race's culture, and that was Horizon, possibly the best bar in this quadrant of space. Even from the outside this place is incredible, with about a dozen signs hanging above it displaying the name in a dozen different ways; everything from standard lightbulbs, to neon lights, to holographic animated pictures. Surprisingly there isn't a line of any kind outside the bar, although once inside it's clear why. Horizon has been built into one of the center towers that used to hold the Spire up, although it was long ago hollowed out to make more space for the bar.

Approximately sixty different stories comprise Horizon, each of the individual floors visible thanks to the hollow tube that makes up the bar. A railing keeps customers from tumbling over the side of each floor and falling to a painful death, with automatic force nets set to engage just in case someone tries to leap anyway. Tables line the walls up the entire length of the tower sometimes breaking out into a bar with lots of barstools and an actual barkeep. Square-ish, red robots with about six claws buzz around Horizon, pouring drinks at the order, delivering every kind of bar food imaginable, or just collecting credits. Thanks to the hollow tube of Horizon, the robots are unimpeded in their movements, and its not uncommon to see one robot fly from the bottom of Horizon to the top. A series of six elevators line the walls as well, allowing easy and quick movement to and from the individual floors. Decoration-wise, the outside of Horizon matches the inside. Lights in every possible color, screens displaying everything from Lor Republic news to Bolonitie games, and souvenirs and nic nacs hang from every possible spot on the wall.

After a bit of searching, made easier by the presence of a large screen which tells what is open and where, the three girls find a booth on Floor 37. Floor 37 is one of the few with a large and open bar area, where a Dacani bartender shakes together drinks of every kind for the passing customers. The floor customers are a rather colorful bunch, everything from a dozen Dacani miners to a small group of Daran drinking at a table in the back to a fairly large group of Bolonities celebrating something or other. The last group in particular is having a good time, as the massive screen above the floor's bar is playing some kind of Bolonitie sport which involves two teams throwing blue disks into small slits in a wall and dodging red disks that are shot out at them. Every time one team, who appear to be wearing green and yellow, are hit or miss a disk, the Bolonitie group erupts into sudden cheers and they clink their drinks together.

It isn't long after the three girls sit down that a red robot hovers over to them, drinks clutched in all six claws. "It will be one moment, ladies," the robot bartender says before hovering up towards another floor. Precisely one moment later another one of the identical robots returns. "What is it you would like?" the robot asks, projecting a holographic menu beneath its body for the girls to flip through.

Scrap, and the Twins:
Somehow the roaming pile of nanobots and the twin magicians ended up wandering with each other through the middle decks. For Scrap, Daniel, and Heather, almost everything they saw was something foreign on the Spire. The marketplaces on the middle decks were the most jarring for all three, as every sight was bizarre in one way or another, although that tended to be standard order when traveling. It certainly wasn't helped by the large mass of people milling through. A stand selling bottles of what looked to be battery acid turned out to be selling a miracle cure for Bolonities. What looked to be bizarre meat at one stand was actually fruit grown on a low-oxygen moon. The mass of broken parts, twisted metal, and blinking lights was not scrap, but someone's home. When Scrap offered to make it look nicer to the man, who appeared to be a miniature elephant crossed with a frog, he became furious and rearranged the pile.

But after wandering the middle deck of the Spire, the three ended up coming across something at least a little familiar. Or at least something that had all seen before. Jammed into the middle of the marketplace it a large building converted out of the old tombs that this place once had been filled with. The entire thing is lit up by massive lights which project white glimmering light everywhere inside, making it look like a nearly empty and white void inside. That is, if there wasn't visibly rows of pews all facing an incomplete statue of broken machinery on the other end that stood out from the white light. Things moved inside the church, their smooth and white bodies barely visible in the light as they went along the wall from invisible panel to panel.

It was a Ne'Tal church, the race of robot religious fanatics that seemed to have spread throughout the galaxy. Nearly everywhere the group had been they saw one of these churches, although Laishe had never given them much time to stop and gawk. But with Laishe meeting up with his contact here, now would be the perfect time to learn a bit. One of the Ne'Tal stands at the door of the church, its tube-hands passing out flyers to any passerbys who move by. It spots the three as they pass, speaking to them in its perfect and echoing tones. "Greetings. I am designated Unit 9P-0-X7. Would any of you like to pass on memories today?"

[Arcran]

Laishe frowns, looking at the Dacani with disgust. He didn't consider himself a racist and, in truth, who really does? But after a deal like this, who couldn't have a bit of pent up hatred towards the profit-driven race? Sure, they were willing to cut corners and turn a blind eye when needed but it also meant that situations like this happened. And the damn interrupting with her hand! Already Laishe doubted he'd be working with her again for some odd reason.

"What do you mean I can't be paid?" Laishe says, unfolding his arms to let them sit far closer to his hip as he leans the chair forward so it once again sits on all fours. "I did your job. I flew out there, burning my precious fuel and came back here under the impression that there would be something in it for me. Frankly, I don't give a damn if you can't afford to pay me. You paid me for a job and I did it, plain and simple," he states, looking around the room slowly as if he gave a damn about the decor but always keeping Henah in the corner of his eye.

"I can't tell you why it disappeared. Pirates? Those Grue bastards? Giant station eating space eagles? I don't know and I don't frakin' care. You and I, we have a simple relationship. I do a job, you pay me. Now tell me how there being no station there is my damn fault?"

How many guards did Laishe see coming in?

[Quellian-dyrae]

The twins were...keeping fairly close together as they walked, an unconscious protective gesture in the unfamiliar environs. They were frankly still trying to wrap their heads around Scrap. They had chosen to go with it with the intention of finally asking, straight up, if it considered itself a being or a program - but every time they had just about gathered the gumption to bring it up they saw something else that left them feeling that their brains needed a reboot. Which, to be fair, was kind of making them understand Scrap a little better. Or at least making them think they did.

Daniel was just about to open his mouth to finally ask when the Ne'Tal spoke, and he closed his mouth with an audible click. Yeah, not exactly a question he wanted to ask in front of yet another cybernetic being. Yikes. The request for them to pass on memories actually sparked a quick flare of anger. No, we don't want our memories, also known as the only things we have left of our home world, psychically yanked from our brains to be stored forever in some sort of space-magic crystal, thank you very much, he thought bitterly, simply turning to go in another direction the same way he always handled all the people handing out pamphlets and asking for signatures back in college.

So really, it shouldn't have come as a surprise when his sister similarly reacted the same way she had in college. "What does that...actually entail?" he heard her ask with inquisitive politeness.

And he stopped, cast his gaze briefly up at the ceiling, and sighed. It took him a moment, but he managed to paint his best fake-interested look on his face and turned back around to stand beside Heather as she talked with the Ne'Tal.

General note, I figure Mindlink is probably the default active power for the twins' Arcana array, probably because they hope that communicating primarily telepathically will get them on Laishe's good side :smalltongue:. So assuming the other two groups are within a mile, they can relay communications between them if necessary.

[Eshkigal]

S.C.R.A.P., meanwhile, had been looking up several ways to begin conversation with the twins, for they seemed rather uncomfortable among the stars, still. They were biologically terran, but seemed put off by something about S.C.R.A.P., and it wondered what. However every time it came up with one better than "so you believe in magic", a series of events would happen, it would try part out, and it would go horribly. Frog Elephant had rumbled some very rude things about its parentage, and the whole fruit thing was just a fiasco after the warbloc (some strange farm animal in the stall nearby) had gotten some out of its hands as it tried identifying it and began swelling. That had led to a hasty retreat, and S.C.R.A.P. had decided that being a dust cloud may be a better idea to avoid angry merchants for a time. So when the pill bug-Ne'Tal, right, don't call them pill bugs, they get confused-spoke up, it was a welcome distraction.
"I have wondered about this too. Is it permissible to give a backup of my memory banks? What purpose does it serve?"
It buzzes around the Ne'Tal, trying to determine how it had been crafted, what secrets could it use to upgrade the solid form.

[Propagandist]

"Give me a moment... Let's see... Oh, no. 'Talusian Hotpot?' Really? The real stuff takes three weeks to prepare. Wars have been fought over the correct recipe! Now I have to try it, just to see how you screw it up. To drink, bring me six bottles of the cheapest whiskey you-" Nagini pauses and looks across the table at Caprice, something just short of a religious epiphany crossing the serpent woman's face. "Make that six bottles of Black Cross '79, single malt, and some ice and extra glasses."

Nagini stretches luxuriously and waits for the others, curling herself into a neat coil on the bench, tip of her tail twitching interestedly as she gazes around the room before finally turning back to Caprice with the most pitiful, puppy-dog-eyed expression she can muster. "This is your treat, right? I can't afford half of what I just ordered, and I don't want to have to dine and dash. It's really hard here! They have those cursed net things if you jump for it."

[Inspector Valin]

Horizon. Loud, bright, massive and full of life. Strife grinned as the trio walked through the bar, covered by cape and cowl. This was her kind of place! Everyone happy, laughing, having a good time. Some came here to forget, some to celebrate, but either way she loved this place. She owed Nagini and Caprice for inviting her along. The supposed Lor glanced around at the colossul bar-tower as the three travellers made their way towards the elevator. There was so much to see in here: so many different looking races! The former Terran had seen a few races during her travels through the galaxy, but to stand amidst so many at the same time was invigorating.

Soon enough, the trio have their booth. The red-haired cyborg lent back, letting her hood fall away as she took in their area and fellow patrons. Most won a smile from the human, glad of the extended company, but Strife frowned as her gaze lingered on the Bolonities. The little lizards were competitive as hell, she knew that and even had a slight soft spot for the tendency, but there was a difference between competitiveness and seemingly cheering on the other team's failure. Especially with the sport in question. Celebrating beings in pain struck a dark chord with the former gladiatrix.

But then the second robot arrived, ready to take their order. Strife's eyes widened a little as she started to phase through the menu, holo-page after page of names she didn't recognize. She hadn't been presented with this many options in the past. The Terminus didn't offer many choices on things like alcohol, even when you had the power to indulge yourself. You took what you could. And... well, that'd been where she'd grown up, in effect. Stammering a little, the cyborg looked between her more worldly companions, hoping for some advice on the question. "Erm... ?"

Another toast from the Bolonites diverted Strife's attention from the question of drinks however. Her irritation with their behaviour was mounting swiftly. The red haired warrior's eyes lingered on the massive screen above them, before briefly scanning the strange little lizard collective. Her perusal of the area done with, the gladiatrix looked back towards the robot, her personal comm in hand, gesturing upwards towards the ongoing contest. "Do you have gambling services here? I'd like to place a wager on the big game."

Time to roll some checks! Perception for details on both the teams up top, and the group of Bolonites who're seemingly invested in this game. Insight on the latter to try and get a firmer grip on just what their feelings really are

[roll0] Perception
[roll1] Insight

[Queen Sapes]

Laishe:
"Because it's not your fault, and that makes it even more frustrating!" Henah shouts back at Laishe. "Look Laishe," she says, pointing at him with her whole hand. "I'm not going to cheat you out of your pay. You're a mercenary, a thief, a thug; whatever it is you want to call yourself. But you don't seem stupid to me, which is why I know you didn't lose the station, it's why the guards haven't killed you, and it's why I haven't given the order to scrap your ship for parts. I can't pay you because a lot of what I was going to use to pay you was on that station. Now it's gone, and it doesn't matter who else took it, because we're not getting it back. It would cost too much to try. So now I have to order another station immediately, which will use up a lot of the Spire's credits and leave us near enough to bone dry. I won't have anything left to pay you, which is why you aren't getting paid. Yet."

Henah taps a button on the side of her wooden desk and a hole slides open in the middle of the desk. It doesn't look like anything to be worried about, just something fairly standard issue across the galaxy. Holograms need somewhere to be projected from, and when a small, circular, and flat light slides up to fill the hole it looks like the design was for just that purpose. "I've got another job. Something I've been looking for someone to do for quite a while. It's not as simple as the shakedown I tried to send you on, but it pays better for both of us. Enough that I can pay you for this job and the last in one nice sum. How does that sound?" Henah asks, leveling her single rosy eye at Laishe.

While Henah herself only had one guard standing outside her office, given that it's the upper decks security is greatly increased. Particularly in the spots where the Dacani do their big business, security is heavy, with patrols circling through and shift changes happening quite regularly. They didn't take your weapon, probably because the Dacani are betting that if you were to try anything they could easily apprehend you, strip you of all worldly possessions, and dump you on the lowest deck of the Spire where you would never be a problem again.
Scrap and the Twins:
"The process is quite simple," 9P-0-X7 says to Heather, lights under his smooth shell flickering as he speaks. "You think of a vivid memory in your mind, and I use my internal mechanisms to extract the memory from your mind, storing it for transport back to the collective. Then, I or another unit elsewhere will bestow upon you the requested gift of exchange. With us your memory will remain forever, but you will no longer be able to access it from your singular form." As Scrap begins buzzing around it, 9P-0-X7 moves away from him slightly, edging closer to the church. "I must request you do not infiltrate my systems. Tampering is against the wishes of the Broken God," the unit says before answering Scrap's question. It was probably for the best, as Ne'Tal units are all fairly standard. Their systems appear to be all built around sustaining the single unit, and whatever allowed them to access memories was buried deep inside the circuits. "No backups can be created of the memory. Such fabrications of the true memory are false and cannot be accepted in exchange. The collective traditionally doesn't accept memory from artificial life forms as well, for the previously stated reasoning. I apologize if the answer is not satisfactory," 9P-0-X7 says in his heavenly but singular tone.

Strife, Caprice, and Nagini:
The red drone talks to itself quietly for a moment before saying to Nagini, "Order confirmed. It will be on its way momentarily." It then addresses Strife as she asks about the Bolonitie game. "We do have systems of betting in place. Would you prefer to place a bet in traditional Lor style, Jixitalian time-bets, Neo-Lor style, or Cerumbrian Life Gambles?" the drone asks, materializing a new menu in front of Strife.

The menu features four different columns with different styles of betting. Traditional Lor appears to be nearly identical to the style of betting found on Earth. Neo-Lor gets more focused on exact number of points at exact times, but is otherwise very similar. Jixitalian style is a bit strange, considering one can apparently bet up to '288 cycles'. Whether that means of how long the game will last or in years of a person's life it doesn't specify, which is further confused by the fact you can still bet credits. Finally, Cerumbrian style is the most perplexing of all, referring to specifics about the game, down to the number of letters used to spell a player's name. It's a long list of numbers that look like a lot of time to work through. Why it's called a Life Gamble doesn't begin to scratch the surface of weird in this style. As Strife looks at the menu, the Bolonitie erupt into booing as a member of their opposing team casts a gold disk into one of the holes, causing over a dozen red disks to fire out at once and strike over half their favorite team.

You watch the Bolonitie game with interest, trying to get a real feel for it. Although the sport doesn't look all too similar to any Terran sport, there are a few commonalities. Every time one team gets a blue disk into a slot, one of the symbols on screen changes, probably indicating a point scored. When one of the players is hit by a red disk, the symbol appears to drop down, as you notice it change up to a foreign number and drop back down to what it was quite frequently. Although the disks are apparently heavy and thrown with some force, they don't appear to be causing any real lasting damage. Those sports are usually left for Bolonitie-specific broadcasts, or live games.

Despite your best attempts at differentiating the two teams, apart from their colored uniforms they look both evenly matched and keeping pace with each other quite well. Green and yellow seems to be a bit faster, as several of their players are able to dodge the red disks more frequently, but red and orange has better aim, their disks hitting the slots with greater frequency. The group of spectators watching the game from the bar all appear to be around the same age, likely a bunch of friends who live or work on the Spire. Some women are in the group, identifiable by longer spines on their backs, but they are clearly outnumbered by the men. Still, there's no difference in celebration between the two, as they women and men all cheer and drink happily when their team is winning.

Despite the Bolonitie apparently cheering on other members of their race receiving pain, there looks to be no malice aside from some competitiveness in their celebrations. Bolonitie culture is based around sport, and with that comes celebration of victory for the favorite team, even in a game as brutal as the one playing on screen. The group is cheerful, having fun watching the game while sharing drinks with friends. They aren't celebrating pain, but rather that their team is scoring.

[Eshkigal]

The swarm form made it agitated, scared for its secrets. Incorrect choice in appearance, then. The buzzing falls back, forming into the more solid form, mostly featureless reds and browns that rearrange into humanoid enough shape, changing more and more into what seems to be a suit of strange armor, almost up to date with the current tech but still far enough behind to possibly be considered a novelty by the more advanced races.
"I meant no harm, simply enlightenment, for my form is still unrefined to my own tastes. The Ne'Tal are replicators as well, then?"
Its body brightens in coloration a bit at that. For the past few years, no other tech had both sapience and replication technology, and that had been wearying. To find others was a pleasing change of pace, even if they were not similar in practically any other way. Scrap turns its head to look at this shard of their god.
"What may we be taught of the Broken God?"

[Quellian-dyrae]

~We should totally do it.~

~Are you serious? You want to give up one of our memories? Really?~

~No. Of course not. Two of our memories. One wouldn't be a sufficient sample size.~

~...What!?~

~We can totally use this to learn about whatever magic it is that lets us share memories.~

~...Because depending on if either of us remember it...~

~Aren't you curious to know?~

~It...I...uh...gods blast it, yeah, now I am.~ *Sigh* ~Okay, so what's the plan?~

~Okay, so, I'll do the actual memory-giving. One memory should be one that only I actually experienced, but you're still aware of. Maybe a date I had or something.~

~Sounds reasonable. The second one should be one that both of us experienced, but ideally, something we experienced in as similar a manner as possible. I'm thinking a movie.~

~Oh yeah that'll work, no real interaction on our part, perfect control. A bad movie though.~

~Yeah, one we don't particularly want to remember.~

...

...

~About Schmidt.~

~Okay, cool. So, we-~

~Wait wait wait! We don't have nearly enough information to take a step that big.~

~Huh?~

~Think about it. We don't know enough about these Ne'Tal guys. What if they're, like, a hive mind or something, or all of them can draw from these memories. We'd be exposing an entire race to About Schmidt.~

~Holy cats!~

~I am not comfortable taking on that kind of responsibility.~

~Yeah, no. Wow. Good catch. Okay, a movie, but not a spectacularly bad one. A reasonably entertaining yet still perfectly forgettable movie. An hour and a half of our lives that we didn't mind losing and don't particularly care to get back.~

~But he...err...it...it? Whatever, the Ne'Tal said it has to be a vivid memory, so it should be, like, something with a lot of explosions and special effects and stuff.~

~Transformers?~

~Sold.~

~Okay. Now, hypothesis time. For each memory, if neither of us remember it, it suggests the memory was physically stored in my brain, but you are able to read it.~

~If both of us remember it, it means that the memory physically exists in my brain, might also have physically existed in yours, and you are capable of reading it from me. For the date, that means a duplicate of the memory is magically created in my head when you experience it, and we are also freely reading each other's minds.~

~And if only you remember it, it means the memory was physically stored in both our brains, and we only access them individually. For the date, the memory is copied when experienced, but we aren't reading each other's thoughts.~

~Right. And if only you remember it?~

~If only...how would that even happen? I'm the one who is giving up the memories.~

~No idea, but if that's what happens we should figure out what it means.~

~Right. Okay. Um...if that happens...then...my memories are physically stored in your brain and your memories are physically stored in mine, and we are constantly magically looking inside each other's thoughts but not our own...and also that my head is five seconds away from exploding.~

~I'm sure Scrap can clean it up. Okay then, anything else?~

~Mmm...mmm...no I no I don't think- oh! Yeah! Any guesses as to which is going to happen?~

~Hrm...neither of us will remember your date, I will remember the movie.~

~Cool. I'm betting on both remembering both.~

"Okay," they said together, after a few moments pause. "We're up to give it a try," Heather elaborated.

"No, um, recompense is required. We're kind of running an experiment, so we'll consider the answer to be a fair trade for the memories."

"I'll be providing the memories, and I'd like to give two of them. Is that okay?"

[Inspector Valin]

Scrolling through the secondary menu quickly, it didn't take Strife long to make her decision. She was betting on a game she still didn't know the name of, using a numerical metric she was only starting to piece together. With a little longer to study, she might've managed one of the more advanced styles, but overall it was best to approach this simply. Plus, she might as well go with the style of her 'adoptive' race: the Lor were the closest thing to humans you generally got out here. The terran grinned at that thought, nodding her head. "Classical Lor. For the Republic, and all that. Let's go old school."

That simple part of her decision made, the gladiatrix glanced over at the Bolonities again, her expression softening a little as she started to see the dynamic between the little beings. The lizards were what they seemed like; a band of friends, here for a good time and enjoying the game. She shouldn't have to oppose that. Looking upwards, she briefly considered backing the red team; joining in with the group's alliance. But then the yellows managed what seemed like an impressive play; slotting a golden disk straight in, and the group started booing. Understandable, sure, but Strife could remember booing crowds from her own time in the ring. It happened, sure, but you booed failure, incompetence. Not the other team's success. Bolonite culture or not, the principle of that rankled with the traveller.

You all deserve to be taken down a bit.

With a gesture on her comm, the red headed cyborg called up her current credit total. Not too bad, it's been a while since her last job, but travelling in a group slashed her expenses. There was far less she needed money for these days. Sitting silently for a second, considering, Strife shortly nodded, selecting the entirety of her remaining cred-balance before hitting the transmit button, sending the funds over to the waiter-bot, smiling at their server. "All this on yellow and green to come out ahead. That Golden Disk play was pretty strong, and the group knows how to dodge. It'll take Red some work to come back from that." Even in a team event, all it takes is one good player to tip the balance. And yellow might just have it.

[Eshkigal]

"Hold on, Heather, there is one thing you could use. What about coordinates?"

[Quellian-dyrae]

"Coordinates? You mean like of a habitable world?" She honestly hadn't even thought of that. "Could you do that?" she asked the Ne'Tal.

~Thanks, Scrap. That's...a really good idea.~ Daniel sent.

[Eshkigal]

If Scrap is surprised by the new voice in its head, it doesn't show as he nods to Heather. However, Daniel is met with a thousand, a million tiny voices, barely whispering, many saying the same thing in his head as dozens of others note impossibly numerous things about the landscape, the Ne'Tal, trying to figure out how to approach the Twins. A mind formed by consensus through copying itself untold times, a mind where all thoughts are at the surface somewhere for it has enough ways to approach them all simultaneously, laid bare to any who brush it.
~You are most welcome, Daniel.~

[Arcran]

Laishe frowns, putting his left arm on the table but keeping his right well near his waist, more for his teleporter than his gun. It would be more prudent to just escape than to fight his way out.

"Double," Laishe says, face flat. "I want double what I was getting for the first job plus the new pay. And you refuel my ship," Laishe says, his tone leaving no room for negotiation.

"Agree to that and you have my attention."

Was it stupid? Probably. Would Laishe do everything in his power to get his pay if the damn Daran didn't agree? Of course.

[The_Snark]

"Someday I’m going to say 'no', just so I can watch your daring escape," Caprice grins. "But not today. That would interfere with Strife's education! She'll have a glass of Trocleon firebrew," Caprice says to the robot server, evidently not feeling the need to consult the gladiator first. The perks of footing the bill! "And to eat... how hungry are you feeling, Strife? Oh - nevermind, let's get you the sampler platter, that offers a nice variety. Inkbloom sauce on the side. That's Dacani food," she adds in an aside to Strife, "it's toxic to Lor and quite a few other species, so they usually withhold it for non-Dacani. Nagini likes the stuff, though." She wrinkles her nose at the serpent-woman.

"And I'll have a White Flinx and a side salad." Say what you like about the Dacani, they know how to run a hydroponic garden. She's heard they don't even eat vegetable matter, but they'll try anything if they smell a profit margin wide enough.

Today is a good day. The job was easy, nobody shot at them, which okay made it a little boring, but it was short enough that she didn't have time to get too restless. Now they're back in civilization, they're getting paid, someone else is doing the hard work of prying the fee out of their employer's hands, and it's time for a girl's night out. Caprice idly wonders what Strife's alcohol tolerance is like. Should she stay sober-ish so she can watch the cyborg get entertainingly smashed, or is she the lightweight at this table...?

[Queen Sapes]

Scrap and the Twins:
"The task certainly is within possibility for the Ne'Tal," 9P-0-X7 says to Heather. "Although I regret to inform you that I am unable to complete the request myself. Other units will access the memories in search of what you desire, and they will bestow upon you the coordinates you seek in time. I will simply extract the memories, other units will provide in time. Simply seek us out when such a task is possible," the robotic jellyfish says.

From underneath his white shell, three aqua blue tube-like appendages tipped with tiny silver balls slowly emerge. They approach Heather's head, stopping nearly a foot before touching the top and sides of her head as 9P-0-X7 speaks again. "The offer of two memories is generous, and this gift will not be denied by the Ne'Tal. Please, raise these memories to your mind's eye now. Are you prepared for the process?"

Strife, Caprice, and Nagini:
"Additional two orders confirmed. The three orders will be on their way momentarily. Additionally, bet placed in Classical Lor style," the little red drone says as it pulls the holographic menus out of existence. "Winnings will be automatically distributed at the end of the game. Should you leave Horizon, the payout will automatically be deposited to your account. Thank you for your patronage." the red robot says, flying away, probably to another table or to carry food and drink. As the robot helping the girls leaves, three more buzz in and out of the open floor space that makes up the tube of Horizon.

The four Daran also take this time to leave as they step out of their booth and into an elevator headed out of Horizon. To replace them, three different groups arrive in the elevators, each taking one of the three open booths or tables on the floor. The first of the groups is a pair of massive slug-like beings with three sets of arms, four eyes, and no legs of any kind known as Vina. One has a darker coloring than the other, which marks the likely female of the two, at least by Vina standards. They both wear what look to be large white and black jumpsuits with spaces for their massive heads to pop out, and for the end of their tail/body. The male one carries a large plasma rifle strapped on his back, likely for protection given the Spire's less than shining reputation. The two slowly exit the elevator and make their way over to a booth in roughly five minutes time, the booth adjusting for their large sizes as they seat themselves.

The second elevator carries a lone figure, although nobody at the table can tell exactly what race he is from appearances. The figure wears what look to be blue jeans, black boots, a black shirt buttoned up, and a large, loose, brown coat over that. He wears a red handkerchief up over a lot of his face, and what resembles a cowboy's hat on top of his head which obscures the rest. Given how he hides himself, the man is likely to be a Daran trying to keep out of everyone's sight. Daran don't typically have the best reputations and it's never the best idea for one to travel alone. Those who do travel by themselves do so by wearing heavy amounts of other race's clothing. In this case, the Daran chose to cross older Lor fashion with the Dacani in a sense. He scans the room entirely before stepping out of the elevator and walking himself over to a booth. The man sits down, crossing his arms before him and propping his feet up on the table while he waits for a red drone.

Finally, out of the last elevator steps a large, metal man, his motions clunky but deliberate. The robot towers over the other floor patrons, standing a good nine or ten feet tall. Its shell appears rather new, all silver chrome with spots of white or blue on the armor. Most of the head is a simple black dome, with a couple of blinking lights around the dome. The robot exits the elevator and stands there for a moment before crossing to a booth, stepping over the Vina couple's tails as it walks. It plops itself down into a booth after some small adjustments to the booth, sitting there with both hands rested flat on the table.

The Bolonitie game goes into a small break, showing advertisements for things across various races. Somehow even in deep space commercials were still just as bad of a problem. The first ad to come on is a Lor Republic recruitment ad, which shows off all the brave Lor soldiers fighting against the Grue menace. This was backed by a commercial for the luxury vacation offered at some place called Pinnacle. After that it was a book called "Only in My Memories: A Ne'Tal Love Story". That last one seemed a bit sacrilegious.

Laishe:
Henah mulled over Laishe's demands in her head for a moment. Inside, she chuckled to herself. His terms were surprisingly light, given what she could have still offered him. Still, cheap work is better when the worker thinks they're being paid properly. "Deal," the Dacani says flatly but with force behind it, fixing her hair a bit as she continues. "Two things. First, this job is big enough you'll need a crew. It's not as simple as driving your ship up to the problem. I assume you know the right people?" Henah asks, tapping a couple buttons on the desk until a hologram projects itself up. The image is of a planet Laishe hadn't personally landed on or even been around, but knew the reputation of through rumor. It was a planet whose atmosphere practically appeared golden, with puffy, white swirling clouds, orange and yellow skies, and golden oceans covering what wasn't dotted with small islands. The planet was a nearly a true paradise on the ground, or at least it had been, but now it was only a place you went if you were extremely rich, particularly stupid, or had a good reason to visit. "Second, ever been to Cecelinus?"

[Quellian-dyrae]

Daniel blinked rapidly for a few seconds. He...had not expected the touch of the swarm's mind to be quite like that.

He also suddenly realized, he had just communicated with Scrap telepathically. That had to mean it possessed a mind, didn't it? Mere AI, however well-programmed, couldn't receive telepathic contact...right? Or could it? Daniel's knowledge of the inner workings of a human's brain was certainly not complete, perhaps there was no reason one couldn't be duplicated mechanically...

Or maybe Scrap really was just sufficiently advanced technology.

Heather licked her suddenly-dry lips as the appendages neared. Tentacles going for your head was generally considered a Bad Thing. But she steeled her resolve and faced them squarely. No turning back now. "Hey Scrap? I'm giving it a memory of a date I was on four years ago with a guy named G- um, Gerald," mentioning people from back home always choked them up a bit. "And of a movie Daniel and I watched called Transformers. Can you keep that in mind in case giving up the memories also makes me forget what memories I gave up?" That would invalidate the experiment, after all.

Once she had made that request, she brought the memories to the forefront of her mind and said to the Ne'Tal, "Okay, yeah, go ahead." Although she did end up closing her eyes at the last moment. Yeah, yeah, trained wizard, faced scores of supernatural monsters, blah, blah, blah. Brain tentacles are scary no matter who you are.

[Eshkigal]

Scrap has moved forward, curiously examining the limbs that came out, trying to figure out how they are supposed to work, or maybe figure out how to make its own tendrils tipped with tools when it has finalized the next design of the body.
"I can do that, Heather. I think I also have that movie in my files, somewhere, actually..."
He looks over to Daniel, whose vital signs seem to match when a human is perturbed. Possibly because if he was still in Scrap's head, he was watching five different movies at once now, all titled Transformers. The original form had wifi built in to monitor a target's usage, intercept any useful blackmail material or classified information. Instead, it had been used to pirate a ludicrously large collection of movies, literature, and video games while waiting for the body to catch up to processing speed after its father died.
"Is something wrong, Daniel?"

[Inspector Valin]

Strife chuckled at Caprice's choices for her. The princess' manner still grated on her a little, it was a little too condescending for the warrior's taste, but she meant well. More than could be said for her former 'manager', cooing about her every action whilst the two were together. And... to be fair, Strife did know next to nothing about this stuff. This was informative. Useful. Trying out things was the first step to forming tastes of her own. She nodded to Caprice, smile growing slightly warmer as the waiter-bot skittered away. "I'll try anything once. And... everything once, I guess. Got to learn somehow."

She glanced back to the game, but the sound of the elevator distracted the gladiatrix. Her gaze shifted swiftly between the three parties as they arrived across the level. Thiswas... worrying. The last time something like this had happened to Strife, it'd been part of Maven's 'Reality Carnage' experiment, Hopeless Arena. Three groups enterig at the same time like this, two of whom are seemingly odd choices for a bar left the warrior on edge. Still... a few seconds thought led to her dismissing the idea largely. Who'd try and kill any of them right here and now? In a packed, very public place. This isn't the Terminus. People aren't waiting behind every door to try and kill you, and gunfights don't break out in every bar. Relax.

Taking a breath, Strife turned to look up at the screen: just in time to catch the beginning of the Only in My Memories advertisement. The gladiatrix tutted,turning her attention back towards her friends. They'd brought her out here, she should try and forget about the rest of the bar. Instead the Lor in the cloak looked between her two friends,sighing as she settled into the chair. "So, the two of you have both been around the galaxy. Any fun stories for the new traveller?"

Strife's going to take a look at each of the three in turn before returning to the group. She's trying to get over it, butthe gladiatrix is still paranoid

Vina Couple
[roll0] Perception
[roll1] Insight

The Masked Stranger
[roll2] Perception
[roll3] Insight

HeD-241
[roll4] Perception
[roll5] Insight

[Arcran]

"A group job?" Laishe says, looking at the woman dumbfoundedly. "You do realize who you're talking to, right?" Laishe says, looking at the woman as if she was an idiot. "I work solo. Alone. Without a team."

"Although, I have been known to compromise, but it will cost you. You're footing the bill for everything on Cecelinus, for one," the smuggler says, a tight grin on his face. Maybe if he makes the terms outlandish enough he could back out?

Of course, Laishe could easily scrounge together a crew, even if it was just the idiots he had transported last time. Still, who would be dumb enough to work with him? The going rate for that was at least twice the normal.

"And a bonus. Ten percent of whatever you pay the idiots I bring together. I'm sure somebody else could do the job but, in simple terms, they aren't me."

[Queen Sapes]

Scrap and the Twins:
9P-0-X7 touches his memory tendrils to Heather's head gently, the silver orbs touching themselves softly to the sides of her head. Three prongs pop out of the sides of each ball, placing themselves on Heather's face and the top of her head to steady themselves. Then the process begins. To Scrap, Daniel, and any other passerby, the process doesn't look to be much. The aqua blue tubes light up, emitting a soft glow as well as a pulse leaving Heather's head traveling down the side limbs, and a pulse headed into her head from the above tendril. The Ne'Tal's shell glows a soft blue in a couple of spots very softly, a sign the Ne'Tal is storing her memory within himself.

Inside, the process is much more dramatic and apparent. The Ne'Tal momentarily takes control of Heather's mind, making her recall the memory of the date several times over the span of the next few moments to remove it completely. The first time the memory plays though, it's exactly as Heather remembers it, down to the tiniest detail. Then it plays again, only pieces are missing here and there. The color of the shirt she was wearing is gone, the name of the restaurant, and what the food tasted like. Then it goes again, the faces of the other patrons and the scene outside going. Again, the clothes she was wearing go, along with most of the restaurant, and half of her date's face. One final time leaves Heather in a dark plain, sitting alone in a booth, even that scene disappearing from thought. The same process repeats for the movie she shared with her brother, the memory disappearing from her mind, but remaining there in Daniel's.

The date is gone from both though, neither even able to really recall the memory was there. As if Heather never went on the date with whoever it was. But the Ne'Tal does leave behind a message to remind her what was given. In place of the date, 9P-0-X7 leaves a few words inscribed. 'A memory of love, gifted to the Ne'Tal'. In place of the Transformers memory, the Ne'Tal leaves behind the words 'A memory of family, gifted to the Ne'Tal'.

9P-0-X7 then separates himself from Heather, taking her out of the induced trance. The prongs of the spheres retract back into the Ne'Tal, and it quickly pulls the tendrils back up within its shell. "The transfer has been completed. I thank you for the memories gifted to the church. The other units will begin searching for what you seek, and will deliver such things to you when possible, and when requested. Go well in peace," 9P-0-X7 says, as he starts stepping away to head into the church.

Laishe:
"No," Henah says to Laishe across the hologram of Cecelinus. "That bill alone could potentially rack up to more than the payout of the job, the value of your ship, the worth of everything on the Spire, cost of yearly maintenance, and the property value of the entire thing if we sold to the highest bidder, combined," she says to Laishe, her eyes extremely strict on the matter. "Besides, this isn't as simple as checking in, roughing someone small up, or picking up a package. You won't have a lot of time to do a lot of sight-seeing. But since you demand something like that, I at least know you've heard of it. Thanks for answering my question." Henah thinks about the second demand Laishe made, mulling it over in her head for a moment. "Ten percent works. But only if everyone makes it out of the job. I don't want anyone caught, who could potentially lead back to me. If anyone's left behind, your pay gets docked. And that's only if the Spire's management doesn't get completely uprooted due to corruption. That happens, and you lose everything. So be sure to keep everyone in line, alright?"

A quick couple of glances gives you a nice little rundown of the four people who just arrived. The Vina couple, by your best guess, is just that: a couple. Lots of races have some kind of matrimony rituals and markings, and you spot a set of matching tattoos encircling three of their six arms. Given that you've seen other Vina couples with similar tattoos, and lone Vina without these markings, it's safe to say that these two are married, and on a date. The gun is likely for protection, since given that it's the Spire, notorious for having lax laws on gun and weapon control, it's best to carry some armaments with you at all times.

The mystery figure looks to be exactly what you though before, just a Daran trying to avoid attention. He relaxes in his booth, always scanning and watching just in case one of the other races wanted to make trouble for him while he's relaxing and getting a bite or drink. With the way he's sitting and how his handkerchief and hat are pulled around his face, it's still impossible to get a look at any of his features, so you can't see his mask with all the various markings on it the Daran usually have to differentiate each other. It's possible you could have glanced the Daran before but simply don't remember him because of the clothes. Although that's a rather big assumption since a lot of Daran look fairly identical in their suits.

The robot man, upon closer inspection, appears to be something a bit more interesting. Underneath the dome, despite its dark coloring, you can see what looks to be something moving, the shadow of it disappearing down towards the body. The body appears to have line running all along it that don't necessarily need to be there for access, as almost none of these lines are present outside of the torso. The robot also appears to be completely lacking any sentience, at least from the fact it simply sits there, staring straight ahead as its lights blink.

[Quellian-dyrae]

Daniel had, in fact, withdrawn from Scrap's mind. He wasn't used to that sort of response to telepathy and retreated instinctively. "No...no I'm fine. Your mind is not like-" he cut off as the Ne'Tal began the process.

Daniel felt the echo of the of the effect as it happened, although not quite as vividly as Heather. It was still enough to give him pause. Heather tensed up through the process, the look on her face...actually more like she had just eaten something she didn't like than anything.

"Uh...um...thanks," Heather responded to the Ne'Tal, with a kinda befuddled look on her face. Once it had left, she said, "That was...um..."

"I'd say 'um' describes it, yeah," Daniel agreed.

"Do you remember the uh...err...stuff?"

"I...don't, actually. Huh. I'll be honest, I didn't expect that."

See, the funny thing about the whole deal was that the twins were wrong. Or more accurately, they were only partially right. Their theories were solid for determining if they were two people whose experiences were copied into each-other's heads, or two people who were able to freely read each other's memories.

What they didn't account for was the part where they are also two people who are mystically bonded to share physical and mental changes. Stab one, the other is injured. Hit one with a confusion spell, the other starts babbling.

Take a memory that one experienced? Yeah, the other can no longer read it, that just makes sense.

Take a memory that both experienced? It poofs from the other too, not for any logical reason. Just because that's how the magic works.

~So um...did you see...~ his eyes flicked briefly towards Scrap.

~Uh-huh.~

~Proposing a new rule: no more psychic interactions with robots until we learn more about how their minds work.~

~Seconded. Motion carried.~

"Okay. Well. That was...interesting. Should we ke-"

"Do robots like you count as people or programs?" Heather finally upped and blurted out to Scrap before she gave herself another opportunity to convince herself not to.

...

...

"~...Smooth.~"

[Eshkigal]

Scrap looks taken aback for a good minute, body flashing in confused colors as thousands of tiny optics stare at Heather and Daniel. Did...did she really just ask that like that? Once it processes that yes, that did just happen, Scrap gives a "cough", trying to buy some time, voice sounding a bit shakier than normal.
"I don't...it's not like I have a people...well...are you defined as human by the flesh, or by the soul? I am...both. Yes, that sounds right. I am a program that is a person, I write myself, as you write your own experiences. Where my 'flesh' may give and yield, so long as my program lives, so shall I."
Of course, that was a lie. Scrap didn't actually know what the universe would judge it to be. This question that had been one that it had devoted many cycles to, because it was scared of the answer the rest of the galaxy would give. But they didn't need to know that. Not right now. Body returning to normal, if a somewhat darker shade than normal, Scrap looks about, trying to find something that it actually knew what it was to distract the pair with and failing miserably.
"Come, there's that...thing you...let's go look at that other stuff."

[Propagandist]

Well now, there's a pair of bounty hunters, maybe more. Nagini notes the unusual arrivals, but makes no moves. Her friends were no fools, and the new patrons hadn't run in and just started shooting, so she wouldn't start anything. Besides, there were more important things to deal with, like the finer points of alien cuisine.

Nagini sticks her forked tongue out at Caprice. "I'm immune, and inkbloom sauce is delicious. It's not my problem if you bipeds hallucinate when you eat it."

"Well, that depends on your definition of fun, now doesn't it?" The serpent-woman's slitted eyes twinkle at Strife's question. "My stories all start with things like 'We're trying to get this safe open, and someone remembers there's a crate of explosives in the hold...' or 'So, after Sesha got eaten by the spinebeast...' I don't know if they're really what a gladiator wants to be hearing. Besides, I'm not properly equipped to tell one yet, I need to be at least two bottles deep before I can give them their due."

"Now our generous benefactor has the really good stories. She tells them better than I can too."

Sorry for the delay, my internet was down for a couple days. :smallredface:

[Quellian-dyrae]

The looks Daniel and Heather gave to Scrap as it was...processing was somewhere between "kids who got caught with their hands in the cookie jar" and "deer in headlights". They just kinda stood there in awkward silence until he responded, whereupon Daniel nodded eagerly. "That um...that makes sense."

"Right! The...things. Those. Definitely, yes," Heather agreed, likewise bobbing her head and heading decisively for the who-knows-whats.

...

"Wait," Daniel suddenly said as rational thought started breaking through the bemused embarrassment. "Do you...does that...I mean...was that like, an analogy, or have they actually confirmed the existence of souls here?"

[Eshkigal]

Scrap actively begins looking for ways to get the two distracted enough that this line of questioning ends, body coloration changing to something dark, possibly like a blush of embarrassment. They really liked uncomfortable questions, didn't they?
"I do not know if they have proven the existence of souls, I am a newcomer too the Doctor is not one for philosophy. Analogy, but that is what it is to me. My program is what shall survive my eventual demise, even if I have no way of keeping it from being scattered to the corners of the universe."

[roll0]

[Arcran]

Laishe frowns, less than happy with the terms. If it was up to him, the choices would be "pay me or else" but, unfortunately, those terms would probably do nothing more than get him killed at this point.

"Fine," he mutters, spitting towards the wall. "Just know that if I don't get paid this time we're going to have a problem," he says, voice far more casual than one would expect from a threat.

"Now what exactly am I supposed to be doing?" Laishe asks, once again reclining slightly as he already begins to mull over ways to cut cost, the first of which being to simply not dock at an official location.

[Queen Sapes]

Scrap and the Twins:
In a place like the Spire, there were always more than a few ways to distract the inquisitive minds of the mages. Just from where the three were standing, partially pushed deeper into the marketplace, far enough for the church to disappear, there were at least three interesting sights of note. The first was a stall not too far from where the trio was. For a marketplace on an ancient space station built into dead asteroids, the Spire is surprisingly full of life in every shape and form, but this stall is somehow special. The entire thing is decorated with massive seed-like objects roughly the size of a football in various colors lining shelves. A sign hangs above the stall, but the writing is so sloppy and messy it's incredibly difficult to make out what the stall is.

Down another lane of the marketplace leads to what looks to be a scrapyard, or possibly one of the more up-scale chop shops on the Spire. Parts of junked ships riddled with laser burns, plasma holes, and tearing caused by explosions or force all lie around in various states of disrepair. Each part looks partially or completely functional, just missing the other components necessary to determine what it does. Several Daran mill around the area, digging through piles of parts and opening up hatches everywhere, keen on discovering some secret others has overlooked.

The last interesting stall actually appears to be filled entirely of junk, but junk from places all over the galaxy. Dozens of interesting finds dot shelves, hang from bars, or rest on tables, each with a price tag of credits. A Dacani leans back in a chair, partially dozing as few passerbys take interest in his shop. The Dacani's sludge-like hair appears to droop slowly down as he slumbers in the chair, rocking back and forth almost instinctively in it.

Strife, Caprice, and Nagini:
Before Caprice gets a chance to respond to Nagini, a new fleet of the little red robot drones flies onto the floor. Two head straight to the table the three girls sit at, two others headed to the lone Daran and the Vani couple. Locked in the clamps of one of the drones is a large mug filled to the brim with a cloudy, orange liquid which froths at the top. The robot deposits the mug in front of Strife, careful not to spill any of its contents. It then spins a little, setting down a plate of food with some black sauce on the side. The food on the plate ranges from what appears to be miniature, pink watermelons, to doughnut shaped crackers, to fried and small tentacles of something. The robot then hovers over the other side of the table, setting down a wine glass of perfectly clear liquid with a white frothing layer on top in front of Caprice, followed by a salad.

"Payment may be given at any moment following this one. You may pay me or any other waiter. Please simply attract the attention of a waiter, who will accept your credits. The bill is:" the robot pauses for a minute to calculate the total, while its partner flies in. In front of Nagini the robot sets down six black, rectangular bottles, each containing the exact vintage Nagini ordered. It also retrieves a set of two additional glasses from the waiter calculating the total, depositing them on the center of the table, along with Nagini's meal. Set on the table is a plate with what can only be described as part cake, part bowl, part soup, and part meat. The Talsunian Hotpot, which quite honestly looks quite delicious as the drone sets it down, supplying Nagini the proper, and incredibly uncommon, eating utensil for it. It then flies off, stopping in front of the metal man. With a ding the waiter-bot calculates the total, which it displays via hologram beneath its body for the girls.

At the other tables, the three groups go about ordering. The Vani take some time to order for themselves, bickering a little bit white looking over the menu. The Daran makes his order quickly, waving the menu to where he wants it and then pointing out the specific drink, the red robot shooting off less than a second after. For the metal man, his body appears to lock down even more and he doesn't answer the red robot. Instead, his chest decompresses, a slight hissing sound audible as the chest piece pushes out and settles down on the table, creating a ramp. Inside the robot are about six or so tiny creatures, even smaller than the Bolonitie. You don't think the creatures have been seen by you during your travels before, as they appear to be small white light fur, and fluffy and short tails. They jump out of the robot shell, which must serve them as a home and ship, the red robot pulling in closer and reducing the size of the menu for the smaller customers as they browse through the menu.

Then the game comes back on, and the Bolonitie cheer at its return just as much as they cheered for a point being scored or the other team suffering a point loss. The Bolonitie either come from an incredibly strange culture, or the little group in Horizon is fairly hammered. Given how much some of them sway and hold on to each other for support, it could go either way really.

Laishe:
"If you don't get paid this time, then we all have a problem," Henah says, part joke, part sincerity. She motions around the hologram, the image zooming in to provide a better image of the planet. It zooms down to show one of the planet's few cities, which looks like a massive bowl sunken into the water and supported from dipping under the waves by a few large islands. The city itself is mostly inside the bowl, full of towers of gold, silver, and diamond that twinkle in the sky like comet bugs. The islands surrounding the city are sparse with life, mostly small compounds and even smaller cabin vacation sites. "Cecelinus is one of a very few select planets that can make the claim of being 'paradise'. Its climate is mild, its native wildlife sparse but harmless, and its views are so picturesque other planets wished they had them. It's the premiere vacation site for billions across the galaxy, raking in trillions in taxes alone for the Lor Republic. The city you're looking at is New Chorkyo, second largest city on Cecelinus out of five. Home to a couple million, but serves over six billion every cycle. This is where you're headed. I'll send coordinates to your ship once you leave," Henah explains to Laishe. She swipes through the holographic image again, the image changing to the image of another Dacani.

"Meet Colias Keenstrom, the local Dacani Big Shot, and proprietor of the most lucrative casino in New Chorkyo, the Seven Stars Lounge." Colias, appearance-wise, looks practically identical to all other Dacani men. It's rather difficult for two Dacani to be differentiated between, given they're basically ink blots with an eye, so Laishe can be forgiven for not noticing facial details immediately. However, the man's outfit is something to see. Keenstrom wears what doesn't look too far off from a white Terran zoot suit, with a white coat over a black tie over a white shirt, and matching white pants and black and white shoes. He wears a white hat with a very wide brim on his head, a black and red checkered line running around the sides. Stuck in the hat is a three-pronged feather which is white as a dove, but has clear aqua blue highlights and lines crossing it. Colias stands surrounded by several other Dacani, all wearing matching black suits to contrast Colias.

"Colias visited the Spire roughly six months ago, passing through to Cecelinus after visiting family on Tyvolt for a few months. At least that's the story I'd heard. Colias and his posse, during their week-long stay, brought up a bill that, if it had been paid, would have kept the Spire's bills paid for the next decade. Unfortunately, Colias didn't pay up, placing everything on false accounts and skipping out on the bill to head back to Cecelinus. We made repeated attempts to reclaim our lost income, only for Colias to use every trick he could possibly think of to avoid paying. You can understand why this annoys me a little," Henah says, her voice clearly agitated as she speaks.

"Anyways, I need you and your team to get his payment, and preferably a little interest. But it's not as simple as a shakedown. Beat the money out of Colias, and he'll likely find some way to track you back to the Spire, ruining this station forever. Heck, cause any damage to him at all that isn't in self-defense, and he'll likely call in the authorities and lawyer up so fast I'd be amazed if you got to your ship. No, you're going to have to rob him of his money, but once again, Colias hasn't made it simple." Henah's brow furrows in agitation as she continues the explanation. "Colias keeps a lot of fake accounts active, but all his money he actually keeps in the one secure spot he believes he has: the Seven Stars. He stores the money inside a vault somewhere within the building, but not in credit or any useful kind of currency. He keeps it in old Dacani chips, which means they're generally worthless everywhere in the galaxy. But thankfully, I know a few people who can help me cash the chips, and get us all a payday like you've never seen."

Henah looks up at Laishe and somehow appears to smirk despite lacking a mouth. "All you have to do is bring me those Dacani chips. I don't really care how you get them, and honestly it's probably better if I don't. Legal reasons, you understand. Get the code from Colias or his men, crack the vault, heck, find it and rip it out of the building if you have to! Just get me the chips, and don't get yourself captured or tracked back here. If either happens, you don't get paid. Which I doubt will be much of a problem, since you'll be imprisoned."

[Quellian-dyrae]

It was honestly Scrap's reactions, more than its words, that were convincing the mages that it was more than just a highly advanced machine. It seemed...uncomfortable, maybe even embarrassed, which they just could not reconcile with the idea of anything less than total sentience.

That fortunately also meant that they did notice their questions had ran at speed across the line to awkward. "Sorry," Daniel said sheepishly. "There's just...still so much about this...universe that we don't know."

"What those are, as just a, you know, random example," Heather said with a grin, pointing at the large seed-like things.

Daniel's eye was actually drawn to the stall with the more eclectic collection of good. On a whim, he headed that way, starting to browse through the goods in search of anything recognizable.

Hey Valin, quick question, Strife's from Earth, right? Is that something the rest of the group would be aware of?

I'm kinda imagining every time the twins see her one of them asking some random question about her Earth to see what the differences are between it and their Earth. And possibly just pestering her for stories about it in general, since it's presumably further along in its history than theirs' was.

[Eshkigal]

Scrap looks to them for a minute again before breaking eye contact again, tone and coloration slowly returning to normal.
"Likewise. I am not normally one for a lot of social interaction, either. It is...difficult."
It eyes the chop shop for a few seconds, curious, before looking to the junk stall. While ship parts were fascinating, sometimes the more intriguing things were the day to day items, and sometimes you can cobble such interesting things together from them. Or things that explode horribly, but that was what repair functions are for, isn't it?

[Arcran]

"Find some rich man hiding behind stacks of money, steal his chips and bring them here?" Laishe says with a smirk, leaning back in the chair, more relaxed now. "Sounds difficult. I better be making my money's worth," he says simply, mind already racing. While the pay on the job would likely be good, this was a man's fortune. If he could find somebody willing to cash the chips himself...

"We have a deal. Am I free to go?" Laishe asks as he stands, walking towards the door. He'd use the ship teleporter once he was a safe distance away but, as he liked to keep it a bit of a secret, using it from the room would tip his hand. From there a few quick radio calls would (hopefully) get him a usable team.

Of course, the risks of turning his back on the Spire would be almost as huge as the reward. He'd lose an employer but with funds like that? He'd never have to worry about spending a dime for the rest of his life.

[Queen Sapes]

Laishe:
"Yes, you can go. I'm leaving this in your hands, Laishe. Don't cross me," Henah says, projecting a very obvious threat to the mercenary. Laishe heads out, moving through the mess of tombs turned offices, reaching the elevator after passing a relative army of Dacani businessmen and women. Entering the elevator, it's surprisingly peaceful and quiet, as no one else boards it with Laishe as he heads down to the middle ports. The elevator passes through the levels of the Spire, giving Laishe a good view of the station as he goes by. Decks and decks of settlement fill the Spire, each lit up brighter than the star-filled expanse of space. It isn't exactly a fast ride either, so it gives Laishe plenty of time to gawk should he desire.

After a few minutes, the elevator pulls to a stop at the port Laishe's ship is stopped at. The port is mostly a metal construct added onto the original Spire, locked in place on the rock with artificial oxygen shell surrounding the whole thing. It's a wide and open space, with stairs leading down from the elevator to the port floor, and stairs in other spots headed to other sections of the Spire. While the port certainly isn't packed, it is rather busy, as aliens of every sort buzz around the open space, sometimes literally. The Silence is docked on this level, the ship easily larger than some of the other vessels, only dwarfed by two: a ship junker, and some kind of military-looking vessel. Likely a lot of soldiers on leave. The smaller ships also are rather interesting sights. Some are rather small, such as one vehicle which looks to just be a simple motorbike retooled for space travel. Others are a bit larger, such as the partially organic Kryt'k, whose limbs shift as it hold onto the port, shaking its large bioluminescent wings. Outside the Silence, roughly a dozen or so Daran stand, gawking at the ship and doing their best to study it without touching it, which would result in a violation of the station, and result in them getting kicked out of the port.

Scrap and the Twins:
Daniel starts to browse through the goods, looking for anything that could potentially be of interest. Unfortunately, most of it is junk found on over a dozen planets filled with the stuff, although there is a few gems in the pile of goods. On one of the shelves sits a jar filled with what looks to be a white, hard bean. It is cut in half, revealing lots of silvery metal parts inside. Resting on a table is a dirtied Hula girl figurine, which dances back and forth when jiggled a little. A simple box, roughly the size of a shoebox, made of wood sits on another table. The outside is all hardwood, and adorned with over two dozen different kinds of locks, most built into the box itself.

There are a couple stacks of books on the shelves, most written journals from a number of alien captains. However, a few of the books are actually magazines, most filled with pornography of various alien species, from Dacani to Vita. A couple of the magazines are actual magazines, showcasing ships from across the galaxy or the newest weapon. One of the magazines is even a comic book from Earth, showcasing the Centurion battling a giant Nazi robot. There are also stacks of holodiscs, almost entirely made up of independent and low-budget flicks. The most interesting one is Unit AW3-50-M3: Savior of the Stars, a Ne'Tal exploitation flick. There's also a fair amount of porn in this stack as well.

As the three sift through the things on the shelves, the Dacani vendor wakes up from the commotion. He looks up, tilting his head back so his eye can see the three much clearer. Realizing he has customers, he leaps to his feet, ready to help them. "Hiya, folks!" he says cheerfully. "Welcome to Fast Wod's House of Everything! I'm Fast Wod, but you can just call me Wod," Fast Wod says, the words practically sprinting out of his lack of mouth as he introduces himself. He winks at Heather, which for the Dacani looks exactly like a typical blink, only forced. "How can I serve you'se?"

[Quellian-dyrae]

The twins did, fortuitously, manage enough self-insight to not immediately ask why social interaction was difficult for the robot(s). Although brief grins flickered across their faces (it took an effort of will to not giggle) when they realized that Scrap was, basically, shy. It was just so...not a trait they would have ever considered ascribing to a robot. Daniel just gave an understanding nod, and Heather said, "No worries," and went on to browsing.

They went through the assorted junk with idle curiosity, although their eyes lit up once or twice. When Fast Wod greeted them, they didn't even hesitate, Heather grabbing the little hula doll and Daniel the comic book, both of them asking simultaneously and in eerily identical tones, "How much are these!?" with all the excited enthusiasm of two kids who had just found their favorite sweets at a candy store.

[Inspector Valin]

"Mmmmhm..."

Strife doesn't bother trying to disguise the look in her eyes at the sight of the sample platter. Grinning wide, the strange cyborg happily digs in to the offered food, quickly spinning the platter to fetch item after item, trying one dish then the next before skipping three seemingly on a whim. Before each dish, she paused for a second, studying the item to remember it for later. There was no rhyme or reason to her approach beyond that basic analysis, merely the chaos of someone not knowing where to start, and thus starting everywhere. Some of the dishes were strange, some were familiar, but every piece looked appetizing in its own way. It was not going to take Strife long to finish off the platter at this rate.

Seemingly realizing this, soon enough the newcomer paused, turning her attention instead to the frothing mug of firebrew. Controlling herself a little better, Strife raised the mug slowly to her mouth and sipped gently at it. Powerful, deep, with a strange kind of spice to it. Ginger, possibly? What's... ginger? Well named, at least. Showing minimal reaction to the Trocleon ritual drink of choice, the cyborg simply continued sipping from it for the moment, glancing around briefly at the other patrons from earlier, and then towards the game, before looking back towards her friends, once again with a massive grin. The sample platter would wait; if she kept on at that rate, she'd probably have finished the meal before they were half way done. This was relaxation time. She should take things slow.

[The_Snark]

"Now our generous benefactor has the really good stories. She tells them better than I can too."

"Flatterer," Caprice says cheerfully, but doesn't deny it. "You have to take over if we're going to tell the story of how we first met, though. That one's better from your perspective." She smiles sweetly, a glint in her eye suggesting that there's a joke on Nagini somewhere in that story.

The Arcturan taps a finger on the table, searching through her memories for one that isn't too dangerous, embarrassing, or incriminating to share. Tricky. It takes long enough that the arrival of drinks and food derails her train of thought. She takes a sip of her cocktail - sweet and only lightly alcoholic; she never lets herself get more than pleasantly buzzed in a place like this - and starts in on her plate at a much slower pace than her companions.

"So," she begins after they've settled in, "you wanted a story. Want a travelogue, or an adventure? I could tell you about the Marrugon mining belt, that's an interesting place: extinct civilizations, miners and archaeologists and free-market capitalists fighting over what's left, a crazy transsapient AI overseeing it all... kind of a s*** place to live, but it's never boring. Ooor I could tell you about the time I hijacked an asteroid. Which d'you want?"

[Inspector Valin]

Strife has a gleam in her eye at Caprice's offer. The story of the Marrugon belt was intriguing, and one she'd have to ask the Arcturan princess about someday, but in an atmosphere like this there was only one choice she could make. The Cyborg raised her mug of firebrew, certain as the Doom-Coil in her decision. "We're gathered in a bar, having a night of fun. I think the tale of you on the asteroid is best. Though that is kinda hard to believe. You hijacking an asteroid." She raised an eyebrow, theatrically looking over the somewhat slender form of Caprice. "Solo? What, did you punch it outta the belt?" The cyborg chuckled, voice holding no real malevolence to it. She was honestly intrigued by the story, but couldn't resist a little joke at her friend's expense.

[Arcran]

Laishe smirks as he leaves, not all that bothered by the threat. If they came after him what could they do? Damn near nothing, that's what. His ship was faster than the rest and next to undetectable. As the elevator crosses the Spire Laishe looks about, more out of boredom than any actual interest, waiting to get back to his ship where he belongs.

As Laishe reaches the hangar he frowns, looking around at the wide array of various aliens. He didn't exactly consider himself a racist (but who really does?) but a fundamental distrust of all things alien had become fairly ingrained in his psyche. After all, how do you know exactly what an alien is capable of?

Of course, the group of people around his ship instantly puts Laishe in a bad move.

"Hey!" the smuggler shouts as loud as he can tolerate as he nears the ship, hand drifting towards his side. "Get out unless you want a new *******," he mutters, hand firmly on his gun. If the Daran move aside Laishe simply boards his ship the old fashion way, doors whoosing open as he easily bypasses the security systems, making sure to keep a close eye on the Daran. Nobody was stealing his damn ship today.

[Eshkigal]

In the store, Scrap sorted through the other items, a bit put out as Daniel beats it to the comic. It had been hoping to buy that...
However, it gets distracted as one of the circuit mags flops open, and-dear god! You could see that Ne'Tal's drivespace! Embarrassed, Scrap tosses that under some others, moving away towards the strange jar with the metal bean. Curious, it picks the jar up gingerly, looking to Wod.
"What is this?"

(Going to roll technology to see if I can figure any of this thing, or other junk, out. Or see if I spot anything I can probably make into something cool later...
1d20+20 )

[Propagandist]

Nagini watches with ill-disguised fascination as the bulky robot is revealed to be a ship in its own right, giggling over its diminutive crew, though how much of the attention is because they're cute and how much is because small furry things make excellent snake snacks is unclear.

She regards the dish set in front of her with skepticism, tempered only slightly by the robot managing to provide the correct utensil, a long, skinny thing best described as a knife-spoon. With practiced ease, she carves chunks from the meat and crumbly cake-like bread and dips them in the broth before taking an appraising bite. After a moment, her mouth quirks into an approving smile. "Missing some spices, but not bad. And I didn't have to kill anything first."

While Caprice practices moderation, the Talusian doesn't have the same concerns. It takes a staggering amount of alcohol to get someone of Nagini's length and muscle drunk. Black Cross is a honey-hued whiskey, Lor-made and so strong it practically smokes when Nagini uncorks a bottle, but she seems unconcerned, pouring out a glass like it's water.


"You have to take over if we're going to tell the story of how we first met, though. That one's better from your perspective." She smiles sweetly, a glint in her eye suggesting that there's a joke on Nagini somewhere in that story.

Nagini laughs and puts a pair of her bottles next to the glasses in the middle of the table, common property should her friends want something a bit stiffer. "Deal, and I think we'll have to tell that one at some point, don't you? It's just full of useful tips. Later, of course. The asteroid story is one of my favorites."

[Queen Sapes]

Laishe:
The Daran all throw up their hands at Laishe's approach, making it clear that they weren't touching the Silence. They all step away, one of the Daran motioning in the Daran sign language to the others. They all nod twice and jog away from the Silence, leaving it completely open for Laishe. They disappear down the port, lost in the sea of people and ships from every race and culture in the galaxy. It leaves the Silence open for Laishe, as it unlocks and pulls open at his presence, welcoming the captain.

Scrap and the Twins:
"That, little madame," Wod says to Heather, gingerly taking the Hula dancer out of her hand, "is a Terran religious icon, which the seller said was of their ancient goddess only known as 'KiKi'." He then takes the comic book from Daniel, appraising it with his eye. "And this is another thing from Terra. One of their historical books! The Terrans like to keep their history in picture form, ya' see? Helps 'em understand it. You know, I'm thinkin' both of 'em for 15 credits. Package deal. How's that sound?" Wod says, offering the comic and figurine to the twins.

Wod then sees Scrap eying the strange metal bean in the jar, and quickly springs on his question. "That, my fine robot friend, is something you're not likely to find anywhere else in the whole galaxy! It's a baby Ne'Tal, who sadly never managed to make it past programming, poor lil' thing. Only baby Ne'Tal unit you'll even ever see outside of their big church! Real collector's item. Not even sure I'm supposed to have it, but the guy who sold it to me gave me a great deal, so I'll pass that onto you, too. 200 credits and it's yours."

Most of the stuff in the booth is either worthless to your creating needs, or unusable, lacking in both technology and form. However there are a couple of useful trinkets. An old children's kit for a low-power blaster sits on the table. You can't tell what race is was engineered by, and it probably wasn't intended to reach power levels over a minor buzz, but it still could be useful if only for parts. A couple of antique, intergalactic radio transceivers sit on the floor. They look to be extremely damaged and outdated, but could be useful if fixed up. You can't exactly tell what the egg itself is, as the silver pieces apparently serve no rhyme or reason aside from being in the white shell. They clearly appear mechanical, but you aren't quite sure what exactly they do.
Strife, Caprice, and Nagini:
The Bolonitie cheer again at the game, briefly distracting Caprice from beginning her story at their noise levels. Something apparently happened in the game, although Strife can't tell exactly what it was, being distracted by the food at the table. Nothing on the screen even looks like it has changed, even the score remaining the same. As far as anyone can tell, they were just cheering for cheering's sake. Perhaps they were cheering a new team member joining the game? Either way, the attention of everyone on the bar floor's attention is drawn to them for a brief moment: the Daran, the Dacani, the Vina, the three girls, and the vessel of miniature people.

After glancing at the Bolonitie table, you look up from them, swinging your view back to the others, only for your eyes to momentarily fall on the lone Daran. It's difficult to judge, thanks to his mask, but it looks like while his eyes briefly fell on the Bolonitie, just like everyone else, they then pulled up to your booth. The Daran almost looked like he was specifically studying your group, although it could have very well been an accidental glance, as he returns to his previous self-observance.

[Eshkigal]

Scrap goes quiet as it holds the jarred Ne'Tal. While the radios couldn't be much, Scrap tended to be tight on credits. Ensuring the Doctor had consistent funding was not a cheap task, and Strife's interview had required some bribes to ensure it even happened. But then again, it felt...wrong. It felt wrong to leave what could be another's loss for someone's novelty collection. Theft would likely just cause some problems, too, though then again this was the Spire...no, better not to do something like that quite yet. Not when it would likely be frowned upon by the ones that it'd give this back to, anyway.
"Agreed. Alternately, I could improve the resale on a few of your items, fix them up to be like new or better."

[The_Snark]

Caprice chuckles. "Strife, honey, nobody hijacks anything by hand these days. That's terribly out of vogue." Pause. "Except Beldonian space whales, I suppose, but they haven't got hands so much as tentacles... and I'm wandering off-topic already, aren't I? I'll save that digression for another time."

"So, a few years ago I was meeting a business partner on Nomos IV, this tiny frozen moonlet out on the fringes of Lor space - half covered in ice caps, the atmosphere isn't even breathable, but for some reason a little group of colonists set up shop in dome cities about a hundred years ago. Fast-forward to the present day, the younger generation is split between the agoraphobes and the ones who're going stir-crazy, the old folks are all dead set against change, and the new immigrants want to start terraforming. So one day a bunch of rich kids make off with a couple of mining ships and hitch up to this asteroid, due to pass near Nomos orbit in a few days..."

The story of Caprice saving a planet from accidental teenage terrorism goes predictably from there, although many of the details have changed from the last time Nagini heard it. In Caprice's opinion, stories are living things, not meant to be constrained by irrelevancies like 'facts' and 'objective truth'.

Caprice can't make a DC 30 Perception check. That said, Empath lets her detect emotions, so here's an Insight check to see if she's picking up any out-of-place feelings...
[roll0]

[Arcran]

Laishe grins as the Daran scatter, calmly striding into his ship and making his way towards the cockpit. With a sigh he slides into his pilot's chair, fingers sliding along various consoles as he begins to prepare the familiar vehicle for launch and locks the vehicle up tight. The pilot can't help but feel relieved as the silent ship begins to activate. Flitting about the station among the scum of the underworld was his element but this ship? This was his home. This was where Laishe was safe and calm.

As the diagnostics run, Laishe pulls out a small keyboard, tapping into the ship's communication capabilities. After some brief scrolling the smuggler has the contact information for the last ragtag crew of cargo he had. Most had seemed at least somewhat capable in a fight and, even if they weren't, bodies were good at eating lasers. With a few swift keystrokes Laishe has written a message and, with a flourish, hits send.

Return to Silence for job offer. Pay is good.

That should do it, right?

Laishe is basically just running tests on his ship to make sure that there is nothing foreign and that everything is good. I'm guessing Technology?

[roll0]

[Quellian-dyrae]

The two couldn't help it. They burst out laughing at the explanation of the items. Nonetheless, the salesman's utter cluelessness (or, perhaps, rampant dishonesty) wasn't off-putting. They didn't care what his pitch was; they just wanted things that came from their home (or, well, the next best thing to it, at any rate). "Agreed," Daniel said enthusiastically.

~Hey Scrap, just so you- oh wow that's weird. Holy...just how many- Oh, um, sorry, never mind. Yeah, just so you know, what he just told us our picks are was like, hilariously wrong. Like, he's only slightly less on point here than the seagull in The Little Mermaid. I don't know if he has no idea what he's talking about or just plain lying, but I wouldn't take his pitch at face value.~

Daniel, meanwhile, pulled out his phone as it chimed. "Oh hey, Captain Laishe is asking us to return to the ship. Says he has a job offer."

"Oh, cool."

"Yeah. I guess. I dunno, I had kinda gotten the impression that he never wanted to see us ever again."

"I keep telling you you're just too paranoid about people."

"Eh, maybe. What do you say Scrap, want to finish up here and then head back to the ship?"

[Eshkigal]

~I know, hula girl and comic book, a novelty and a retelling of Centurion's fight in WWII against SHADOW Terrorbot Model 13 to continue promoting Supers in the war effort. Common things from Earth...well, that issue may be rare now. But at the same time, if it is a fetal Ne'Tal, don't hey deserve their own back for whatever funerary rights they have? And if not actually anything, I can at least figure out a purpose for it.
Besides, the idea that Ne'Tal grow as if they were biological is rather fascinating to me, and I would rather like a chance to explore that line of thought.
Once again it sounds like thousands of voices in her head, some debating, some analyzing, but all sharing information, and it feels pretty odd. Then the message hits him as well, and as Heather notices part of his mind click it as well, Scrap sighs. Maker, this man pushed the wrong buttons sometimes-for starters, the insistence that Scrap belonged either in a cargo hold or a crate. Speciesist bastard. Though it's like Gonzales in Dirty Harry said: "The one thing about him, he doesn't play favorites". So is it speciesism when you hate everyone that isn't you?
"I think he's that way to everything that isn't his ship. May as well see what he wants..."

[Queen Sapes]

Scrap and the Twins:
"Sorry, no can do 'bout that," Wod says in response to Scrap's proposition. "They're's collector's items. Got 'em from a passing army vessel, which means they've been in combat zones 'cross the galaxy! That means they're bound to be worth more as is! Sorry, but 200 credits is all it is," the Dacani says, restating the deal. He then turns to Daniel, quickly taking the mage's credits as payment for the two Earth trinkets. "Pleasure doin' business with you fine folk!" he says, tipping his bowler hat a little to Daniel.

You pick up on the emotions of the surrounding area, and find nothing too out of place, given the location. The air is filled with mostly with excitement, specifically directed towards the Bolonitie. There's slight anger and annoyance coming from the Vina, likely between each other given that the couple is still ordering. A particularly melancholy soul is somewhere at the bar. Finally the rest are just enjoying themselves, relaxing, finding the sights interesting, and trying to starve off hunger-built annoyance.
Your ship turns up a quick report which you honestly expected: the Silence is in perfect condition. There is a bit of fluctuation in the gravity wells that keep up and down sorted out on the ship, but given that the Spire has it's own artificial field, it's likely the ship's well clashing with the Spire's one. It happens on planets as well, so it's nothing to be concerned about. The reading will likely balance out once they're in space.

[Eshkigal]

Ah well, it was worth a shot. Scrap pays the man...ooze...Dacani, and stores the jar carefully, turning to Daniel and Heather, heading out with the displaced humans.

[Propagandist]

Nagini remained mostly silent during the tale of the asteroid hijacking. It wasn't mere politeness or that most of the time her mouth was full of hotpot, but genuine uncertainty. (A silver lining of having Caprice tell stories was that Nagini was never quite sure how they'd turn out this time around, even if she'd actually been part of the real events.)

One of her few interruptions came as a response to her beeping communicator, itself an annoying interruption. "Hush, you stupid gadget, I heard you the first time... Ah. Laishe's calling. 'Return to Silence for job offer. Pay is good.' I wonder what the catch on this one is?" The Talusian tucked the comm away without a second thought. Nagini had every intention of following up on said job offer, but none at all of returning to the Silence until this evening had been thoroughly enjoyed. Enjoyment here being measured by poor impulse control and whiskey bottles, neither of which had been emptied.

"Please continue, what happened after the engine failed?"

[Eshkigal]

Together with the twins, Scrap makes his way back to the ship, moving through the crowds. Getting to the Silence is easy, and they enter without fuss. Scrap is a bit surprised that the girls aren't here yet, but then remembers food is something that happens to fleshies. Eventually, the group makes its way to Laishe in the ship. Not one to cause problems, even for one like Laishe, it talks at a lower volume when they get there.
"Laishe. Girls seem to still be out to lunch, but you said something about a job?"

[Quellian-dyrae]

~Probably best that we wait until they get back to discuss the particulars?~ Daniel suggested, telepathically rather than verbally in deference to Laishe's dislike of noise.

[Arcran]

"Yep," Laishe mutters in response to the telepathic remark. "I'm only going over it once."

[Queen Sapes]

The ladies finish up their meal together rather slowly, taking time to enjoy each other's stories and the Bolonitie game on screen. About two-thirds of the way through the meal, the Dacani crew that was eating near them gets up and leaves, quickly replaced by another group of insectoid beings. The Daran apparently finishes up his drink as well, following them out after scanning the room. The ladies finish up their meal just as the Bolonitie game wraps up, they pay, and leave Horizon. Strife somehow leaves Horizon with seventy-five less credits than she started with, even after winning the bet and not paying for the meal. Maybe it was a satisfaction tax for seeing the Bolonitie group disappointed at their loss. Some of them were still cheering drunk when they left though, so who knows what was going on with that group.

The girls exit Horizon and head straight for the port Laishe's ship is docked at. Thankfully Horizon's entrance is on the same level as the port, so there's no need to move through several sets of elevators to reach the ships. After roughly ten minutes of walking, the girls make it to the stairs overlooking the port, the Silence just in view. They head down the stairs to get to the ship, when they're stopped by a whistle. It's a loud sound, clearly coming from someone behind them, and fills even the noisy port, silencing it. Strife, Caprice, and Nagini turn around to see the apparent Daran from before. He stands there looking down at the girls, his brown coat flapping a little thanks to the exhaust vents scattered around the Spire. Both his hands reach up to his face, and even judging by his hands, he clearly isn't a Daran. The man yanks on his handkerchief, pulling it down off his face so it instead lies over his neck, and pulls his hat back, fully exposing his face.

None of the girls, or even the four on the ship watching this all unfold from the apparent safety of the Silence, have seen a being like this. He glows a bright yellow light, his entire skin emitting it from within, although it's difficult to call it skin. He honestly looks more like loose plasma bound together in a humanoid shape beneath some invisible skin-like layer. He does have hair on his head, although it's more like the plasma has shaped itself into a rough approximation of hair, but he completely lacks a face. Instead, a single marking in the shape of an arch dominates his face, although it looks somewhat like a scar at spots along it. Nobody in the group can name his race, although they do their best to dig around in their minds for what he could be. Eventually, everybody falls upon something akin to the same idea: a humanoid star, who also dresses like a cowboy.

"Now hold your horses, little ladies," the man says despite the lack of mouth, his voice very calm, easy-going, and carrying heavy Old West accent. "Now I don't want no hard feelings atwixt us, but I'm gonna have to relieve you of your friend here," he says pointing straight to Caprice. "On account that she's a wanted woman."

[Eshkigal]

Scrap stares for a second as the tetris game it was playing while waiting is shut off, staring at the starman. It had to turn the infrared off to look at him, and if it had a jaw it would have dropped. It tries to access records from the Spire, try and find out anything on the star in front of them.
"So...any bets on what trouble they got in this time? I do not see any establishments on fire that do not seem like they should be."
It puts a Commlink down next to Laishe, and heads towards the doorway, shifting to a cloud as it goes out the door. Last time Caprice and Nagini brought a stranger home like this, three quarters of a station ended up graffiti'd, a third of the police force of that moon had chased them around the gas giant, and Daniel still did not know he was likely engaged to that Lithgurn (80% pustules, 10% tentacles, 10% sharp mouths and screech voices). Such a pity, Scrap had liked Deltax 7...


[roll0]-Well informed to try and gather any registration information for time in the Spire, records in local law enforcement, black market and undernet access for information on potential vigilantes. Race and rep can be separate enough, after all...

[Quellian-dyrae]

The twins watched the unfolding scene with some concern. As Scrap moved, they started following him cautiously out, Daniel sending telepathically to the three, ~Everything okay down there?~

[Inspector Valin]

"Really?"

The Terran had been quiet as the three ladies made their way back towards the Silence, smiling contentedly to herself, hood raised again to block out some of the station's light. This had been a good evening. She'd had fun with the others, listening to their stories, forgetting about the wider galaxy for a bit. Even the missing credits seemed laughable to her. She'd been able to relax for once, to honestly unwind. And now this 'gentleman' had decided a little personal profit was going to have to spoil their day. The hooded woman stepped forward, judging the ground between them. Gravity was holding. The stairs gave him a height advantage, but there wasn't too much stuff around here that looked breakable. She mirrored his expression, comfortable, even smiling slightly. "I don't think she's wanted by the authorities here. And you look more like a bounty hunter than station security."

Strife shook her head, looking straight towards the stellar huntsman, hands still resting by her side. Not in a fighting stance. Security might see that as provocation. Instead, the Terran spent a few seconds longer studying the traveller. She might be new to the cosmos, but Strife'd seen stars die before. It wasn't something the Terran would ever like to see again. She tilted her head, gesturing back towards Horizon. "Go back into the bar, buy yourself another drink. It'll be better for everybody."

[roll0] Initiative. Strife won't punch Lone Star just for the threat, but if he looks like he's making a move, she's not backing down.

[The_Snark]

"It's always nice to feel wanted," Caprice says sunnily, her good cheer dented not at all by the news that (part of) her past has caught up to her. Again. She runs a lazy eye over the newcomer, again failing to place his species. "Not bad. I give you high marks for announcing yourself first - do you know, half the people who come after me just burst in shooting? Shameful. Strife, go easy on him if he insists on making a fuss, I like to encourage politeness. Oh - but you haven't introduced yourself, have you?"

She tilts her head at the bounty hunter, encouraging. "Come on now, that's not nice. You know my name, I'd like to know yours - I feel sure I'd remember a handsome face like that." Pause. "Love to know who it is you're working for, too. It gets hard to keep track of everyone who holds a grudge sometimes."

Meanwhile, the twins hear her voice in their minds, precise and clear - the princess is a practiced telepath. ~Just fine for now, hon, but why don't you tell Laishe to start spinning up the engines just in case?~

Persuasion (if necessary): [roll0]

Add 5 if Attractive applies.

[Propagandist]

"Oh come on, I have bounties too! Why do you people always go after poor Caprice? Do her enemies really pay that much more?" Nagini turns to face the interloper, shaking her head in resignation. "I need to anger more nobles or something." She doesn't attack, but the phrase "coiled spring" has rarely been more apt.

"Now, here's the thing. You don't want hard feelings, and I respect that, which is why I'm not beating you with one of your own limbs right now. I'll make this plain. You're going to answer her questions, and when we're done, Caprice is leaving with us. If you try to take her, I will not kill you. I will hurt you. I will leave you screaming on the ground as your body putrefies from the inside out." Nagini smiles sweetly, an expression that also does a fine job of showing her fangs to the bounty hunter. "I'm told it's just excruciating. Now what's it going to be, friend?"

Intimidation: [roll0] Coercing the cowpoke to back off, assuming that's something the plot allows. :smalltongue:

[Queen Sapes]

The figure looks at Nagini, processing her words for a moment. Then, breaking the silence, he breaks out into uncontrollable laughter at her threat. The laugh continues for a good twenty seconds before he can even make an attempt at composure. "I-" he manages to get out before going into another round of laughter, his laugh extremely loud and present. The force of the laugh actually doubles him over for a moment, as he places his hands on his legs for balance and support. "I apologize, but I haint heard something that funny since my ole' buddy Grizz got cometbugs stuck in his britches. Wooh..." the man lets out a sigh, righting himself as he wipes away a nonexistent tear. "He was mad as a March Hare." He chuckles once more and adjusts his hat.

"Now please, do elaborate on what about this," he begins, gesturing to his face, "convinces you that I have anything in the way of organs? Doc's across the galactic highways have looked and they still haven't found what makes me. But it is, and I am, and I will continue to be just as long as I can count the shootin' stars. But to answer as to who I am," the man says, looking to Caprice to answer her while making sure all three kept to where they were. "Folks call me Tumbleweed, on account that's my name. And this lil' lass got it right," he says, gesturing to Strife, "I'm a bounty hunter. Never been anything else. And I don't work for hire. You meet a lot of bellyachers that way."

"No, your mug is painted everywhere from hither," Tumbleweed says, pointing behind himself to refer to the Spire, "to yonder," he finishes, sweeping the stars with his hands. "Honestly never thought I'd run across you, but I guess I've still got the luck of a rabbit. Now, if you'd kindly come with me, I can go 'head and get paid, and maybe buy myself some nicer spurs." Tumbleweed brushes away the right side of his coat, revealing a six-chambered laser pistol. The six chambers don't actually denote the number of shots it can fire, but rather the force they carry behind each shot. "I'd hate for anyone to have to walk out of here all hollow."

Unfortunately, the public records the Spire keeps on all docking and movement in and off the Spire is limited to what size the ship is, how much they paid, and how long they stayed. No identifying information is kept on file, probably since the Spire is incredibly busy or the Dacani really just don't care about who visits as long as they pay. Anything that could be private records are kept out of your reach, all on private servers not connected to anything you can access. Law enforcement-wise, there isn't really anything either. Law enforcement on the Spire is kept extremely simple. Make any trouble for the Dacani, and you get kicked off the station, or you get everything on you confiscated and then you're dumped into an airlock. The only list of people you have are those who have gotten dumped into airlocks, and even that's only there for notification of next-of-kin.

There also isn't a black market on the Spire, there is only the market. After all, you bought a Ne'Tal fetus not twenty minutes ago. The only black market activity on the entire station would be a possible slave trade, but even the Dacani don't sink to that level. Not that this guy strikes you as a slaver by any means. He's wearing spurs after all. Finally, there is a slight mention on bounty hunter listings on the galactic networks. Tumbleweed, a bounty hunter of an unknown race with an exceptional track record. He rarely, if ever, does specific jobs for specific people, preferring to pick up jobs he finds as he travels around the galaxy. He currently has a 4.56 out of 5 star, with remarks from employers saying mostly one of three things: 1. He's good at his job. 2. He's persistent, which can occasionally cause him to return with the bounty years after it was placed. 3. He's never failed a job. There isn't anything else, since bounty hunters aren't big on sharing information. At least that's how the rest of the over fifty thousand bounty hunter profiles are.

[Eshkigal]

Hm...
Scrap begins to form up in a cloud above the group, landing on them, and most of the cloud hovers around the three protectively, hopefully assumed to be a power from one of the others. It begins whispering in their ears.
"High ranked bounty hunter, 4.56 out of 5 stars. Tenacious, good at it, has never failed. No notes on abilities, but judging from the fact that he's made of plasma, close contact and blasters are probably not useful or worse, and that any poison would just burn out fast even if he has organs. Perhaps he is a mutant, as there is no record of anything like him, may have flight capability due to no records of him paying to dock a ship, likely can survive the void. Suggest attempting kinetic, magnetic, and chemical weapons based on visible physiology."

[Inspector Valin]

Strife stood there impassively as her companions exchanged light bickering with the bounty hunter, thinking the situation through to herself. Caprice has that kind of bounty on her head? An amount big enough that Tumbleweed had recognized her on sight back in the bar? The hunter didn't seem to have had any kind of visible comm unit on him back then to check. She glanced at the Arcturan, a little concerned. Who was after the princess that badly? Caprice had mentioned her family in the past, and the potential struggle for her empire's throne but always implied they were a subtle, underhanded threat. This seemed... blatant. Too direct for a political ploy. And that fact left the ex-gladiator wondering a little about her new friend. Just what'd Caprice done in between those stories of hers?

Paranoia later though. The Terran chuckled a little at Nagini's reference to her own past, shaking her head. "It's not about how much money they have. It's how annoyed you've made them. I guess you're better at charming people than Caprice." Or more likely, hadn't ever needed to get involved with people who had that kind of money. 'Recognized on sight' didn't sound cheap. The hooded Terran frowned up at the shiny bounty-hunter, as Tumbleweed revealed the ornate pistol resting at his side. The strange man's manner might be light-hearted, but he meant what he said. He wanted to bring Caprice in. He was willing to fight for that. They didn't have middle ground, or really anything to talk about

There's no way out of this without a fight.

Before anyone could say another word, the dark green figure was sprinting up the staircase, faster than any supposed Lor athlete could ever manage. Taking the stairs a flight at a time and using the mid sections seemingly as springboards, Strife was at the bounty-hunter's side in less than a second. Smile faded now, the red headed Terran cried out, a harsh kiaae as she let fly with a swift kick to Tumbleweed's mid-section. Before the star-man had time to react, she had turned full circle, back into a simple fighter's stance. Refusing to pause for so much as a breath, Strife lunged forward with a punch to Tumble's head, the vents blowing back her hood as she moved forward.

One thing you can say about the ex-gladiator. She can go from still to frenetic at the drop of a pin.

Yep! Strife's going to hit first, and try to hit harder. Tumble hasn't drawn his gun yet, is probably mostly focused on Caprice and Nagini, and Strife moves fast, so... let combat begin! :smallwink:

[roll0] Single Target Multiattack; Toughness DC 25, rising to 27 if Strife's attack hits with 2 degrees of success, 30 if it hits for three (Unlikely, but potentially possible if Tumblewead used trade offs)

[Propagandist]

"Thank you, Scrap. Nice to see you, so to speak." Nagini giggles at her own half-joke. She wasn't sure what to make of the AI, but he sure was handy.

"You're wearing clothes. I'm working from incomplete data here, you could have plenty of organs in there, though I sure don't see a brain. Your flavor of ugly doesn't tell me anything either, star-boy. You look like someone dipped a Dacani in shiny gold paint and stole their fashion sense, and Dacani just make awful sounds when you bite 'em." Nagini laughs along with Tumbleweed, a far more mean-spirited sound as she continues to needle the bounty hunter. As long as his focus is on her, he's not harming Caprice.

"Now, friend, I don't want to insult your intelligence, not when there are so many other things worth insulting, but you just admitted you're flying blind, you're alone, trying to take on three people who have backup waiting, and you're doing it in a crowded spaceport. I appreciate confidence, but I'm figuring the real reason you don't work for hire is because people don't hire idiots."

"You also seem to be missing the fleet through the frigates here, so I'll use shorter words. The warning stands. You touch Caprice, I will make you scream. Leave now."

She blinks as Strife strikes in well, a blink. "Aw, look at that, too late! Don't say I didn't warn you!"

Init, since things are getting punchy: [roll0]

[Quellian-dyrae]

~Understood,~ Daniel responded to Caprice.

~Captain, Caprice is requesting preparations for a rapid departure.~ Heather sent.

The two took to the air as well as they left the ship, flying up above the group, their capes transforming into wings to allow for it. Gave them a good vantage, and perhaps more importantly, kept the ship outside of line of fire of anything that tried to shoot back at them.

They were deliberating on how to resolve this, when Strife struck. Well. There was something to be said for the straightforward approach.

Initiative: [roll0]

[The_Snark]

"Hey!" says Caprice at the comment about charm, pretending indignation. Probably pretending, anyway, it’s hard to tell sometimes.

Various retorts, diversions and attempts at bribery assemble in her head, jockeying for position: you don’t even know who you’re turning me in to? Oh honey, you have no idea what you’re in for — Ever occur to you to wonder why nobody's claimed those bounties yet? — Shame how you can only turn me in once, isn’t it? Unless someone were to break me out after and haul me off to another client — Hey, want to see a magic trick...?

But Strife beats her to it with that most pithy of retorts: violence. Okay then, Plan B it is: let someone else do the work for me. Come to think, that's usually her Plan A as well...

Initiative: [roll0]

[Arcran]

"I don't need to spin up anything," Laishe mutters, his hands flipping across the board the get Silence into proper flying shape.

"Make sure they know that if they bring some damn bounty hunter after my ship it's going to cost extra," he quickly says, making sure that his weapons systems are still functional. "Either kill him or give him what he wants. I don't want a bounty hunter messing up my work, understand?"

[Queen Sapes]

"You're right about that lil' lady," Tumbleweed begins to say, pointing to Nagini at the comment about nobody hiring an idiot. Then he takes the full force of Strife's foot in his stomach, sliding back a little bit as the blow doubles him over briefly. He turns to look up at the girls when the follow-up punch slams into his face, sending Tumbleweed flying towards one of the vents. He hits the vent hard with his shoulder, the metal rivets jutting out digging into Tumbleweed's arm. Tumbleweed lets out a scream of pain, other arm going over to try and help as he pulls himself up.

"M- my arm! You gone an' chopped off my arm!" he shouts at Strife, pulling himself off the vent, the arm remaining impaled on the rivets as it slides out of the sleeve. Tumbleweed stands there rightly horrified, staring at his dismembered right arm as his other hand clutches the stump. Then in a flash, like a candle being blown out, the arm disintegrates into nothingness. Tumbleweed stumbles closer to Strife, still clutching the empty hole where his arm once emerged from, shock covering his face. As he gets close, he removes the hand from the stump and reaches out to Strife. Then the arch on his face shows a smile in place of horror. From beneath the sleeve, his arm returns to him, springing from his body like a sudden burst of flame. In nearly as fast of a flash as it had disappeared, the arm returns to him. "Tricked ya'," he says to Strife, hand immediately lashing down to his belt to pull out his pistol. At nearly point-blank Tumbleweed fires a shot into Strife, the cyborg woman's augmentations kicking her into gear as the laser bolt barely skims by. Strife jumps out of the way, landing with a backwards roll with Tumbleweed back in the same spot, revolver trained on Strife.

"Now I like you folks, so I'm gonna let you in on a little secret. I have been punched, stabbed, shot, ripped apart, run over, crushed, blown up, shot again, hung, poisoned, disintegrated, dropped from orbit, and dumped out airlocks so many times, I reckon I should be dead two thousand times over. Thankfully, not a one has stuck. So far as I can see, I'm no coot. I know my shortcomin's, and they haint included being outnumbered or outgunned yet. Don't seem like today will be that day. So, I once again kindly ask you to come with me." Tumbleweed, with the hand not holding a gun trained on Strife, reaches into his back pocket. He pulls out a small metallic orb and presses on its surface, quickly flinging the orb at Caprice. It isn't too good of a throw though, and Caprice is able to rather easily dodge it as it bursts apart on the stairs, electric arcs jumping between the pieces trying to stun the floor. "Figured that wouldn't work out."

I'm treating this as Round 1 since Tumbleweed was completely ready to be attacked. Keeping his stats fairly secret (as long as I can at least) so no public initiative roll, but basically it lines up like this:
1- Strife
2- Tumbleweed
3- Everyone Else
So we immediately move onto the next combat round now. Everybody acts in any order, then Tumbleweed goes.
Also since it's 5 (or 6) on 1, Tumbleweed gets double the standard issues moves to balance the fight. Rule applies to all 1 on more than 3 fights.

Strife:
It's a 10, so that gets boosted to a 20, but since it's not a natural 20 it isn't a crit.
Tumbleweed Toughness Roll: [roll0]. Against Toughness DC 30, that is -1 and Staggered.

Tumbleweed (1st action):
[roll1] to shoot Strife. Toughness DC 21. Miss.
Tumbleweed also recovers -1 Toughness and Staggered.

Tumbleweed (2nd action):
[roll2] to shoot Caprice. Affliction DC 20 (Impaired and Hindered, Defenseless and Immobile). Miss.

END ROUND 1. BEGIN ROUND 2.

[Inspector Valin]

Strife blinks at Tumbleweed's rapid healing demonstrates itself, an arm growing back from nowhere. She'd expected some kind of additional defence, but this was.... impressive. The ex-gladiator barely noticed the gun pointing at her, lost in thought for a moment on what best to do next. A reverie the star-man's blast thankfully awakens her from; the cyborg side-steps the shot with a twirl, her cape simmering a little from the hole Tumble's laser had left. The ex-gladiator chuckled to herself, meeting what might be Tumbleweed's gaze. It had been a while since she'd met someone this capable of taking a hit.

So I don't need to hold back when fighting you. Good to know.

Still, a full frontal assault wasn't the best thing she could do right now. Strife lunged forward, ducking beneath Tumbleweed's arm, kicking upwards with her off leg in an attempt to loosen the sentiant star's grip on the weapon. Coming about, the ex-gladiator brought her fist down upon Tumble's gun-hand with enough force to easily shatter conventional steel. The Star might survive without his hand, but the bounty-hunter probably couldn't regrow his gun.

Smash attack on Tumbleweed's Pistol
[roll0] Attack: 25/27/30 Toughness DC, as before.

[Quellian-dyrae]

The twins considered the battle. They...didn't particularly think this guy deserved to die. Frankly, he struck them more as a lawman than a bounty hunter, based on the snatches of the conversation they had heard (well, that and his cowboy western style). That said, they weren't going to let him take one of their allies either.

A defensive play would best serve. The twins flew down to the group, and hammered the bottom of their staves on the ground. Auras of risen power blazed into being around them as they called forth their magic, sorcerous power ripping through the air like wind, as they chanted a spell together.

"Shield of magic, layered with power, ward us all from harm!"

A shimmering, translucent bubble of azure energy sprang up around each member of the party near them."Not gonna happen. Caprice is under our protection, and it is highly improbable that there does not exist a spell that can remove you from the equation no matter how fast you regenerate. Back down."

Move: Fly down to the group.

Standard: Cast Layered Shielding. Everyone within 30' is protected by a Defend action at [roll0] and also surrounded by a Created shield at Toughness 10 (I figure an attack that breaches the shield just moves on to the intended target). These defenses only apply against attacks with the Energy descriptor and are Selective.

[Arcran]

"Amateurs," Laishe mutters, not planning on leaving the comfort of his ship. After all, what was he going to do? Fire at man while they're on the dock? That was a dumb idea if the pilot had ever heard one.

"Keep it down while you beat up Mr. Sunshine, alright?" the pilot says over the intercom, bemoaning the fact that his sensitive ears stripped any chance of him taking a nap right now. Laishe didn't know if they could take down the bounty hunter and, frankly, he didn't care. That wasn't his problem.

[Eshkigal]

"Well then, just means we need to get creative, doesn't it."
As Tumbleweed reformed, a few new things formed in Scrap's mind. So apparently he won't go supernova, but instead floods out more plasma before binding it into a shape. This could be similar to how beam weapons form a magnetic sheathe to contain the plasma they fire, so perhaps the form could be altered, or changed. With that, Scrap takes a look around for vehicles that either look small and usable for slamming into an overconfident starman, or for enough parts to make something to try and disrupt what may well be keeping Tumbleweed's form together. If it spots anything, it zips towards it and condenses to combat form. If not, it still condenses to combat form, shotgun and blaster on its back, grabbing the shotgun.

[roll0]-Perception on things that either A) would make a useful electromagnetic device to try and disrupt Tumbleweed's outer skin, as it were, or failing that a ship that looks heavy but small enough to fit on a dock to park on his skull while we leave the area.
Either taking a move action to arrive at such a ship, or condensing to join in the attack and give anyone who wants it the blaster.

[Propagandist]

Nagini uncoils to her full impressive length, swiftly negating Tumbleweed's elevation advantage. Rearing up, the serpent-woman bares her fangs and looms over the bounty hunter... as her tail whips in from the other direction and tries to send Tumbleweed tumbling. "Look alive, star-boy! Now, be honest, are you taking it easy on us, or are you always this bad a shot?"

Making a Trip attack against Tumbleweed: [roll0] If it hits, Athletics check for the trip: [roll1]. Since I have Improved Trip, I get to pick which of Acrobatics or Athletics Tumbleweed defends with. I choose Acrobatics. If he loses he falls prone.

[The_Snark]

Caprice tsks as she skips aside to evade the stunner (it would have missed anyway, but reflex is reflex). Strife and Nagini hit him from opposite sides a moment later, and she judges him distracted enough that she can risk talking without being shot mid-cajolery - especially with the twins' mumbo-jumbo shielding her.

"Look, all this fighting over me is very flattering, but I'm a busy woman, and I'm sure you don't like having your time wasted either. Allow me to demonstrate why no-one's managed to collect that price on my head yet..." She snaps her fingers, and the next moment she's gone. No cloud of smoke, no fading away, no shimmer of cloaking fields or teleportation, just - gone.

Caprice is going to activate Psychic Veil (move action) and move to a different spot in the hangar in case he tries shooting the spot where she used to be.

[Queen Sapes]

Strife's fist lands hard on the pistol, not knocking it from Tumbleweed's infallible grip, but instead causing almost all of the barrel to shatter away, the broken pieces of metal falling on the ground. Almost immediately though, much like the bounty hunter himself, the gun begins rebuilding itself, albeit at a much slower pace. Then Daniel and Heather wrap the team members in their energy shields, hoping to fully deter Tumbleweed from his pursuit. "That's good thinkin' on your parts," Tumbleweed compliments Strife and the Twins. "But Anne here ain't the most reliable type." He hold up his broken pistol which is slowly repairing itself. He holsters Anne and pauses. "Her sis' Annabelle, though..." he says, before his hand quickly goes to his other hip, pulling out a nearly identical pistol to Anne. He points the gun at Strife and fires almost before the gladiator can react, an actual steel bullet leaping from the gun instead of an energy blast. The bullet flies towards Strife, her robotic parts kicking into action again, causing her to jump out of the way of the bullet. She ends up diving into some collected trash off to the side of some vents, dirtying herself a bit. "... She's a girl you can tie to."

He holsters Annabelle just as Nagini comes upon him, the snake woman knocking him flat on his back with her tail. Tumbleweed hits hard but not in any damaging way. He watches as Caprice disappears from view, instinct taking over as he makes up a quick plan. With Nagini so close, he spins his body over and makes an attempt to grab her. The bounty hunter lands on her tail and tries wrapping around it, but Nagini proves too slippery. He isn't able to get a grip on her as she slithers out of his grasp. Tumbleweed sighs heavily, props himself up, and gets back to standing.

"Lil' lady, to be honest as the days on a stationary planet are long, my time ain't worth a copper," he says out loud, clearly to Caprice, spinning slowly so his words can be heard clearly everywhere. "Your bounty is worth more than I ever seen in a very long life. And I already told ya', Tumbleweed always gets his man- erm, lady. Sorry 'bout that. Tumbleweed always gets his lady, no matter how long it takes, where ya run off to, and no matter what you throw at him. Even magic!" he says, stopping his spin to point at Heather and Daniel. "Now you're welcome to look, but if the Shamans of Pleadise IX couldn't take me down, I reckon' you ain't gonna be successful either. And why didn't y'all tell me you had Terrans? I love Terrans, they's the best kind of people. Say, did that whole 'World War II' thing work out for y'all?" he asks, actually interested in Heather and Daniel's answer.

You look around the spaceport and can clearly see dozens of vehicles that could suit all of your needs. The only problem is that they likely belong to other patrons of the spaceport, which means tampering with them could possibly bring the anger of another person or group upon you. The spaceport itself is all metal and wires, meaning you could potentially tear up the floor for a weapon, although that would likely anger the Dacani who run the station. Probably best not to be wanted by the Dacani, since they may very well send more bounty hunters to hunt you down instead.
Strife:
Pistol Toughness Roll: [roll0] vs. DC 30. Fail. Destroyed.

The Twins:
No rolls necessary.

Scrap:
No rolls necessary.

Nagini:
Tumbleweed Acrobatics Roll: [roll1]. Failed, fell Prone.
Potential Trip Roll for Tumbleweed: [roll2].

Tumbleweed (1st Action):
[roll3] to shoot Strife. Toughness DC 25. Actual bullet, so it negates the Twins' defense shield. Miss.

Tumbleweed (2nd Action):
[roll4] to grab Nagini. Strength or Dodge DC 25. Miss.

END ROUND 2. BEGIN ROUND 3.

[Quellian-dyrae]

The twins wore identical frowns. They could continue playing guessing games with the shield, trying to attune it in such a way as to block most of his attacks, but depending on how many options he had, it might not be possible at all, or even if it was, there was no guarantee they could do it before he caused harm to someone.

Besides, tough though he was, his weapons hadn't proven particularly threatening thus far.

They began intoning spells of conjuration and telekinesis. Perhaps they could simply bind him for long enough for the group to make good an escape.

But then he went and mentioned World War Two.

Let's be clear, to Daniel and Heather, World War Two was mere history.

World War Three, on the other hand, has led to the deaths of almost every living creature on their world. So many people, so many acquaintances, friends...

It was not a memory they wanted brought up!

"Acid Orb!"

"Chemical Burst!"

"Consumption!"

"Black Dragon's Glare"

"Digest!"

"Melting Pillar!"

"Alchemist's Ray!"

"Dissolution Flash!"

Spell after rending, chemical spell exploded from the twins' staves as they cut loose, unloading a devastating barrage of acidic magic upon the star-man, hammering him with the full force of their magical fury as their shields faded away. Their auras flared with wavering green light, and the very air around them became slightly painful to breathe.

Move Action: They're good.

Standard Action: Barrage at Tumbleweed. Variable Descriptor: Acid. [roll0] (target may use better of Dodge or Parry to defend), Crit 15+. On a hit, Toughness DC 25+Multiattack vs. Damage. The save will have to be repeated next round due to the Secondary Effect.

[Eshkigal]

Cursing how many options would make their other plans that much harder, Scrap is surprised by the outburst from the Twins, watching acid rain from above at the cowboy in confused awe, as that was frankly a rather scary feat.
"Huh. Guess they're German..."
Meanwhile it moves forward, shotgun aimed at the star man, pulling up records on Caprice as it moves forward.
"How familiar are you with alternate universes? You want this one's Earth, Strife's your huckleberry. Though, tell me, is it the biggest bounty you're after? Because that one is likely by her family, and you don't strike me as the type to enjoy getting caught up with politics. For starters, they look for any law or loophole they can to cheat you, true?"
Scrap takes a shot with a growing rubber bullet round, focusing on Tumbleweed.


Move, pull up info gathered on Caprice that may be relevant to this situation from systems and personal interactions, shoot with rubber bullet rounds since lethal force is recovering quickly. Who knows, knocking him senseless might work better.
[roll0]-Crit on 18-20, shotgun rubber slug, damage 5 (first time I've actually gotten to have a combat round, bit slow still)

[Arcran]

"Stupid outlaws with their stupid regenerating guns," Laishe mutters, fiddling with the controls of the ship to get the tractor beam functional. It might not actually do any damage to Mr. Starman but, at the very least, it could provide a convenient way for the others to get onboard the ship. Maybe the others could hit Mr. Star enough to slow his regeneration to the point where they could board? Who knows.

[Inspector Valin]

"I... wouldn't know."

Strife frowned a little grimly when the conversation turned to Terrans. In truth she did remember, vaguely, the old story disassociated from memories of her old life, but the mention of World War Two had struck a chord with the ex-gladiator. It'd been... important to her. She remembered the facts of the conflict, the brightly coloured heroes flying over the city... those had mattered to her. They'd been important. Why was that? The warrior stood there for a few seconds as the battle raged, trying to follow that trail of thought, In peaceful meditation, she might've managed it. But as Tumbleweed twirled his gun, another thought came to Strife's mind, overriding her attempts to focus on the past

Annabelle? What kind of name is Annabelle?

The warrior shook her head; she needed to focus on the battle for now. With a jump, Strife kicked the trash she'd landed in back towards the wall, grabbing Tumbleweed's arm and forcing his aim away from the rest of the group. The Terran grinned at the strange Star-Man. "Scrap's right. Knowing the Arcturans they'd probably just throw you off the planet and confiscate your guns. Cost saving measures in action." Point made, she let her grip fall slack, before bringing up a high kick towards the back of Tumbleweed's neck. From that the gladiator spun, standing at the top of the stairs by Nagini's side, letting fly with a rapid flurry of blows to the hunter's still smoking torso. The twins had done their worst, best to try and capitalize on that. See just how much damage this 'invulnerable man' can take

[roll0] Attack, DC25/27/30, Multiattack style

[The_Snark]

Caprice hangs around just long enough to make sure the star man can't see her. He can't (unless he can somehow tell what she's doing and is an excellent actor). Lovely; that opens up all kinds of possibilities in dealing with him... Strife and Scrap are thinking along the same lines, evidently. She smiles and shakes her head; those two don't know her family very well, and they're both too nice at heart to do a good job of guessing. The rulers of Arcturus don't need legal loopholes, they are the law, and they'd never throw a potential asset like Tumbleweed away. Oh, the threats she could make...

But threats and cajolery are probably best done from a distance, not while dodging bullets. Caprice heads for the ship, fishing a commlink out of her pocket and dropping it on the deck as an afterthought.

~Laishe, you think you can warm up Silence's tractor beams and pin this fellow to a wall long enough for everyone to get on board and lift off? I'll work out some way to get him off my back later.~

[Arcran]

Way ahead of you, Laishe thinks to himself as the message comes in, continuing to do, well, what he was already doing.

[Queen Sapes]

The twins practically engulf Tumbleweed in a cloud of acidic magic, obscuring him quickly from visibility with their attacks. Eventually the duo stop their barrage, and the spot holds for a moment, the only sound coming from an advertisement high above their heads for Microkolas. The cloud lingers in the air around where Tumbleweed stood a moment ago, but as it drops away, the cowboy is still standing there, albeit headless. The acid was apparently focused mainly on Tumbleweed's face, and it burned it away completely. However, he did manage to get his hat out of the spray, as he raises it high above him with his previously removed arm, which is slowly fizzling under acid.

But then, once again in the blink of an eye, Tumbleweed's head regrows itself life a fire blaring to life. The cowboy settles his hat back on his head, adjusting it a bit to his liking. "So did'ya get it all out of yer' system? 'Cause that ain't a very neighborly way to answer a stranger's question." Scrap then unloads a round into Tumbleweed which strikes his torso, knocking him backwards. As he falls, he quickly rolls out of the fall, getting himself back up on his feet in time for Strife to try an attack, already recovered from Scrap's attack. He spins himself out of the way of her kick, and ducks every subsequent blow as he steps back a little, smiling like a true idiot.

"Ya' see? Avoided ya' like I knew I would. Are you sure you're Terran? Far as I remember, they don't go for the implants quite as much as the Lor?" Tumbleweed then looks directly to Scrap to answer both him and Strife about their mention of the Arcturans. "Now honestly, I don't know none about politics, nor do I care one spit. But a job is a job, and I so do love the chase. And while yer' gang sure is a heckuva' riot, Lil' Lady," Tumbleweed calls out, no longer talking just to Scrap, "I would appreciate it if you were to turn yourself over to me. Makes things mighty simple."

The Twins:
Tumbleweed Toughness Roll: [roll0] vs. DC 25. -1 and Dazed.

Scrap:
Tumbleweed Toughness Roll: [roll1]. Actually a 12 but still only an Additional -1 and Dazed.

Strife:
Tumbleweed's Parry beat Strife's to-hit roll.

[Eshkigal]

Can't even be knocked silly...ah, damn it. Well, let's see how something else works then, as it pulls out cuffs, even as another shot is built and fired in the gun with it's off hand.
"Regardless of ease, I owe Nagini, both are my friends, and I will not see her end up like her aunts and uncles. You get her over my nonfunctioning, burnt out corpse. You are also amicable enough that I don't desire to try and find a way to destabilize your "skin" field that gives you shape too much. So with gathered information, Strife, go for the pin!"

[roll0]Still nonlethal rounds, crit on 18-20.

The idea is if Strife pins him, I can handcuff him repeatedly and then zip tie his arms and legs until it is a rather large mess to try and get out conventionally. Then we rent a locker and shove him in it.

[Queen Sapes]

"Jumpin' Jupineans, how many times I gotta tell ya' that there ain't a force in this universe that can stop me?" Tumbleweed asks Scrap after taking and healing from his attack, clearly getting a bit bothered by the group's insistence that he has some sort of weakness they could determine. The solar cowboy stands in the middle of the five, arms folded across his chest, his invisible brow furrowed as he scans them, the aliens on the port, and the port itself carefully. Then he spots something on the port and his brow raises in interest as he scans just a little more, committing what he sees to memory.

Tumbleweed's hands drop from his chest to his sides and he folds his coat back over his pistols. "Nothin', that is, 'cept me. Now, I hope y'all will excuse me, but I best be moseying along now. Yer' friend best be mighty careful though, where'er she might be. She's a wanted lady." Tumbleweed then spins on his heels and starts walking away from the group. He glances over his shoulder as he leaves, and waves backwards to the group. "Mighty fine meetin' you folk! Reckon our paths will cross again before long. Till then, watch yourselves. Y'all seem to stir up quite a bit of trouble, and it'd be a right shame if we didn't meet up again!" And with that, Tumbleweed brings up his bandana and lowers his hat again. He's swallowed almost immediately by the crowd, and disappears completely from sight.

[Quellian-dyrae]

With the direct assault failing, the twins forced themselves to think rationally, again beginning the words and gestures of their entrapping spells.

And...then Tumbleweed just kinda...left.

Huh?

They turned in the direction that Tumbleweed had looked before leaving, their eyes glowing softly as they called up their arcane senses as they tried to see if they could discern the reason he had suddenly abandoned the fight.

Using Quickness 4 to Take 20 on Perception for a result of 30. Also activating Wizard's Sight, which provides Darkvision, Counters Illusions, and has Acute Analytical Magic Awareness and Ranged Acute Detect Supernatural Creatures.

[Arcran]

"Alright kiddies, get on the ship," Laishe says over the ship's communications, a bit puzzled by why the bounty hunter would just leave. Unless...

"Actually, scratch that. Have the robot check you for bugs and then get on the ship when we know everybody's clean, alright?" Why else would the bounty hunter let them go unless he was marking them for later? At least, that's what Laishe would do. Let a small fish escape and see what bigger fish the trail leads to.

[Queen Sapes]

The crowd, which had given the group a large berth while they dealt with Tumbleweed, or he dealt with them, begins to swarm around the group. They all push past the team, in a hurry to get to where they need to be and completely uncaring for the group. After all, on the Spire such things were a common occurrence, and it certainly wouldn't be the first or last time today some bounty hunter would confront their bounty. The visitors of the Spire were smart enough to make a mental note of what had happened here, and then completely ignore it once it was over.

The two of you glance towards the direction Tumbleweed was looking, and find nothing especially strange. It's just the port, full of all kinds of odd alien life, some of which even trip the magical sensors, and their space-faring vessels. There's nothing unique about it, aside from the presence of the Silence and Caprice down below, and a rather sleek and heavily armed ship currently pulling into port. Nothing too out of the ordinary.

[Eshkigal]

Scrap stares as Tumbleweed drifts off, shoulders slumping.
"Aw, I wanted to see how long it'd take you to break out of the boxes..."
It always wanted to make a matryoshka style box trap. At Laishe's note on bugs, Scrap breaks down, scanning each of the others.


[roll0]-Swarm perception to investigate all the other party members to ensure they haven't been bugged. Using all my sensory suite, too, so even the microscopic cannot escape me!

[Quellian-dyrae]

"That was...random," Daniel murmured.

"I choose to assume he realized that even if we couldn't hurt him, he wasn't going to be able to overcome all of us," Heather said with a firm nod.

"Maybe..." Daniel replied, not convinced. Not for the first time, he rather wished they had more talent with the more complex, subtle magic. A divination or two would have set his mind more at ease.

Regardless, there was little more to do for it. The two floated over to Scrap so it could scan them per Laishe's request, and then returned to the ship.

[Queen Sapes]

Thankfully, Scrap doesn't find any bugs stuck to any members of the team, at least not in the sense Laishe meant. The Spire was by no means a clean place, even on the upper docks, so more than a few members of the group have at least a couple tiny bugs crawling around on them. Most are imperceivable by the human eye, and none register as a worry, so it's best to leave them for now. Aside from the living organisms, Scrap detects no kinds of bugs stuck to any of the group, leaving them free to board the Silence.

Prop, Valin, Snark, post more! :smalltongue:

[Quellian-dyrae]

"So um...you had a job for us, Laishe?" Daniel asked...kinda brushing his hair back awkwardly as he decided to completely erase the encounter with the starman from his personal reality. He suddenly felt much less stressed.

[Arcran]

"Yeup," the pilot says, stretching the word out as he spins around in his captain chair.

"One of the one-eyed weirdos here wants us to steal from some bigwig on Cecelinus. Runs some casinos. Problem is, guy is too smart to keep it in nice, hackable digital places. Nah, guy's got some big vault full of Dacani chips somewhere. Probably worth a small fortune, come to think of it," Laishe says, leaning back. "We go there, quietly steal everything in the vault and leave. Don't want us to be linked back to the Spire, blah blah blah, the usual," he says, a grin slowly crossing his face.

"Of course, we can either bring it back here for a nice, meager reward or, hypothetically, we find somebody that deals in Dacani chips. Problem is, they're pretty damn rare, oddly enough. Fortunately, I know a certain one-eyed freak that shorted me my last paycheck who may just have the locations somewhere. Whatcha say? Want to piss off a space station and some rich boy?"

[Quellian-dyrae]

"...Um..."

~Sidebar?~

~Ayup.~

~So is there...I mean...any moral justification for this mission that you can see? Like...at all?~

~Uh...well not as such.~

~That's what I thought. I mean...we're at this big space station, it may be time to part ways. Try and find a ship that's a bit more into exploring and a bit less into, um...~

~Robbing the known universe blind?~

~Exactly, yes.~

~I mean...I dunno. Maybe. It's just...I mean, I don't think it would be all that bad.~

~We are talking blatant robbery here.~

~Yeah but...not really. I mean, not for us, at any rate.~

~Eh?~

~Laishe said they're going to be doing it all quiet like, right? That's...not exactly our forte. I figure, we probably won't really be involved with the heist itself. We'll probably be, like, on guard duty and stuff. Provide cover fire if everything goes wrong and the whole mission devolves into a hail of bullets and sci-fi laser weaponry. That sort of thing.~

~In which case...it would be best if we're there to keep them safe.~

~Exactly. Besides, that Tumbleweed guy just walking away can't be good news. I...wouldn't feel right just leaving if someone like that might still be going after them. We owe them better than that.~

~Yeah. Yeah we do. Alright then.~

"We're in!"

[Eshkigal]

"I'll follow Strife, Caprice, Nagini, and the Twins on this."
Which likely met that he was in, but Laishe rarely cared about friendliness anyway.

[The_Snark]

A telepathic voice whispers in Tumbleweed's head as the bounty hunter vanishes into the crowd, rattling off a string of numbers. ~My comm frequency. Give me a call sometime, hon. We can swap stories, I'll try and throw you off my trail, you see if you can figure out what I'm hiding. It'll be fun.~

It's a bad idea, of course - she wouldn't be offering to get in contact if she didn't expect she could get something out of it. But Caprice's merriment is infectious: aren't you in this business for the fun of it, as much as the money? Sure, I've probably got something up my sleeve, but is that going to stop you? Don't you want to see what happens?

"Ooh, Cecelinus." Caprice lowers her psychic veil nonchalantly, dropping into the conversation as if she's been there all along. Which, of course, she has. "That's a high-class heist, all right. I approve. You're moving up in the world, Laishe. And you thought of us first!" She flashes him a grin. "I'm touched. Of course I'm in."

A moment later, it occurs to her to ask, "What's this about a missing paycheck?"

[Arcran]

Laishe can't help but smirk slightly as all three say they're in without even bothering to ask their cut. Oh well. They'd learn soon enough or have very empty pocketbooks.

"One of those slimy one-eyed freaks. Didn't pay me for the last job since apparently they're out of coin. I think I'll just help myself to a nice little slice of the profits from their new. And by nice little slice I mean the whole frakkin' pie," Laishe says, chuckling slightly.

"What about the rest of you lot? You going to help? Or do you need to find some new transportation?"

[Eshkigal]

"If you clarify why we should believe you can get us paid, or will not just ditch us for the police to catch."
Scrap leans back against a wall, and looks at him.
"Or you can explain how you plan to ensure the boss you're planning to stab in the goo sac doesn't have goons around Cecelinus to tail you in case you do exactly what you're plotting?"

[Arcran]

"Why you should believe me?" Laishe says, chuckling slightly. Maybe they weren't as naive as they seemed. "Why, you shoudn't until you see your own evidence. The first is simple. Why would I bother with a job that wasn't going to pay? The other is pretty damn simplistic too. If I turn you in to the cops you'll just cut deals to catch me or something and I'll have a crew that knows me hunting me. I'd rather not deal with that," Laishe says simply, not feeling that now would be a good time to mention that he'd kill them, not leave them for the police.

"And are you kidding me? Spire goons? On Cecelinus? Just keeping a force there would cost way more than the dumb bitch can afford. If they had enough of a force their to pull off the job they wouldn't have hired us. In space they can't do jack **** because, well, we've got a lovely lady on our side," Laishe says, patting the dashboard of his ship lovingly.

"Any other stupid questions?"

[Quellian-dyrae]

With the...ghost of an amused smile on his face at the cue he was responding to, Daniel raised one finger in the affirmative. "Are we going to be passing any interesting worlds on the way?"

Hey, it didn't hurt to ask...

[Queen Sapes]

The Dacani chips come from, obviously, the Dacani homeworld, and are the old form of currency on their planet. That is, it was their universal currency before they polluted and stripped down their planet so bad they had to branch out into the galaxy, at which point they adopted the galactic universal currency. Dacani chips are now a collector's item, only used in passing or occasionally for shady business on the Dacani homeworld. However, finding someone who collects obsolete currency is going to be extremely difficult. There were certainly some people you knew about back in Arcturan space, but it likely isn't a fantastic decision to head back there unless you have too. If you go deep enough into the underworld of space, there are likely some collectors fairly interested in the chips. And finally, Zodiac is always an option, although that is a problem on its own involving finding and meeting up with one of his or her agents (which could take months), making the deal, and then hoping you still don't end up on the losing end of the deal.

[Inspector Valin]

Strife has been quiet for most of the conversation, letting the others talk. Old habits die hard. Laishe's scheme seemed poorly thought out, and his fondness for making enemies was likely a bluff. And yet the pilot wasn't an imbiscile. He had a plan, and if he didn't think it would work, he wouldn't have gone as far as offering to cut them in on it. Unless he wants to make us his diversion, like Scrap suggested. None of them really had a firm hold over the pirate, nothing they could use to bargain with the authorities. Yet... Laishe wouldn't have brought so many of them in on this if he was intending to backstab them that blatantly. Why risk making all these people enemies?

Boil it down to the simple point. Mercenary work was how the ex-gladiator made money, money bought food and continued living. This wasn't something she could say no to. The red haired Terran sighed, taking a seat and nodding to Laishe. "I'm in. Subtle isn't my speciality, but you'll probably want some muscle on hand in case things go wrong. I can still deal with problems on the ground more quietly than a laser canon at least."

Plus... the twins. Scrap. Caprice could take care of herself, but the others could use someone on their side. Especially with Laishe calling the shots. Strife leant back in her chair, flexing her fingers as she rapped lightly on the armrest five times. "Plus I don't need weapons to do what I do. Metal detectors and EMP might be a problem, but short of those, I'm just a normal humanoid. Not someone who stands out in a crowd."

[Arcran]

"No idea!" Laishe says to the twins. "I haven't plotted out a course yet. If you two want to do that I'm sure you could find at least a single interesting world along the way, right?" the pilot says, more than happy to delegate that role. Plotting a course was always a pain.

"And one can never have too much muscle," Laishe states to Caprice. "Normal people are the best ones for these kinds of jobs."

"Anyways," the pilot says, turning to SCRAP. "How long would it take you to hack a computer and get the coordinates of the sources? Figure out exactly who we'd be selling to?" Laishe inquires, hoping the answer is in the neighborhood of under an hour.

[Eshkigal]

Well, if that was the way he wanted to play, fine. However, if this ended up being more than he could chew, Scrap saw no reason the others should burn with Laishe...
"Considering it's the Spire? Could be minutes, could be hours. It is a station's worth of information, after all. Now do you have a name of who I should start with, or do I have to just work with racial slurs?"

Using Quickness 8 to take 20 on hacking the Spire with my brain, for total of 40. Should have some senses that allow for that possibility...

[Quellian-dyrae]

Daniel nodded, and Heather gave a bright smile. "We can do that."

"Err...as long as someone else can handle the actual, like, computer parts," Daniel said. "Pulling up the maps and entering the course into the system, or whatever." The twins had steadfastly decided they would not, under any but the direst circumstances, try and work anything more advanced than the toilets aboard the Silence. It wasn't that they were afraid of accidentally messing up the ship to such a degree that it was left floating helplessly in the empty void of space.

They are afraid of being trapped in the ship floating helplessly in the empty void of space with Laishe after doing something that caused his ship to be left floating helplessly in the empty void of space.

[Queen Sapes]

It only takes a minute for you to break into the access ports for the Spire's universal network, which allows the Spire to get in contact with the rest of the known galaxy. The protection on the system is laughably weak, likely a measure to save costs, especially with something open to the public. Quickly you receive a list of possible buyers throughout the galaxy, although very few of them meet the criteria or rich and reliable. There are also a few mentions of Zodiac within the system from various patrons of the Spire, although that's common for every spaceport. Zodiac likely has an agent or two on the Spire, although it's anyone's guess who they may be.

However, even for you, it proves impossible to gain access to the Spire's internal network exclusive to the administration, where Laishe wants you to get the information. Not only can you not gain access, you can't even begin to view the system. The Dacani, as well as many other races come to think of it, keep important files on isolated and independent systems instead of the main networks. In order to access Henah's files, you would have to break into the control centers of the Spire, find an access point, break the encryption which is likely much stricter, and then search through the files. All while hopefully avoiding the eyes of Dacani guards. Not exactly the safest plan, especially with the weapons the Spire is equipped with.

But, while you're connected with the universal networks, you do take the opportunity to plot several paths to Cecelinus for the Twins. There are more than a few options, but there are four that stick out to you personally: The Garden Worlds of the Zolvin-9 System, the abandoned planet of Ilstrus, the the eternal storm of Skryxia, and the shattered remains of what was the Polarot System. All unique sights in their own right, and each is along its own path to Cecelinus. A straight shot isn't regarded as a safe idea. The public charts are not the most reliable, but all indicators seem to place a black hole in-between the Spire and Cecelinus. Best not to die in that way.

[Eshkigal]

Scrap goes over to the computers, putting in several paths for the Twins to review in the navigation computer as well as the path to Cecelinus, arms blurring as it works.
"What I can access has too few names likely to pay us for anything rather than rob us blind, and the only way to get into the internal network is directly. Different systems, completely walled off from the outside. Only way to get into those is infiltrating a control center, break the encryption without getting caught, and search every file of their workings, and that's assuming they're public knowledge on their servers instead of something protected by your contact specifically, isolated to something they can keep on hand. That process would likely tip your contact off, and has heavy chances of flat out failure."
After getting all of them in, Scrap looks to the twins.
"Daniel, Heather, I have inputted several worlds for you to look over while handling the navigational coordinates. If you want, I can help you go through."

[Quellian-dyrae]

"Thanks, Scrap. And yeah, anyone who wants to chime in on route preferences, feel free," Daniel said, as they walked over to start looking through the possibilities.

"Anything we should take into particular consideration, Captain?" Heather asked. "Refueling stations? Resupply points? Time constraints?"

"'Wanted' notices?" Daniel muttered with a slight smirk, although honestly it wasn't an entirely joking question. Who knew what sections of the universe one or more members of their merry little band were no longer welcome in?

[Eshkigal]

"I...have a few I like."
It pauses for a moment, before bringing up a few images of Zolvin-9's worlds, and the drifting debris of Polarot's system.
"There are a couple others, Skryxia and Ilstrus, but Laishe probably would object to an eternal storm due to the noise and I think Caprice would find an abandoned world boring. Though then again, there may be undiscovered items of value there. I do wonder what could shatter a solar system, though. And sometimes it is nice to drift across the landscape as a cloud."

[The_Snark]

"Laishe, darling," drawls Caprice, sounding amused, "I know you'd rather deal with computers than people, but that's what you have me for - knowing people is my speciality." She smiles. "I can think of a few buyers off the top of my head, though dealing with them may not be in our best interest, and I know who to ask to find more."

"Might be smart to do our asking before we do the job, though, just in case this fellow on Cecelinus is feeling vengeful." She glances at the twins, conveying a wordless request for at least one stop with a seedy underbelly.

[Arcran]

Laishe shrugs, looking to Caprice.

"Hell, if you know people that's much easier. Probably safer too since it probably won't tip off that bitch on the Spire," Laishe says, somewhat disappointed with the vaunted skills of the resident AI. "Just make sure they're not going to sell us out to the Spire."

"And no storms or blown up solar systems," Laishe adds at the question about the route. "We're not putting the ship through though unless we have to. Just stay a healthy distance from Grue space and get us at least one refueling station and we'll be alright. Probably," Laishe adds at the end, not entirely certain that things would be as easy as all that. Simple missions had a habit of going extremely badly.

[Quellian-dyrae]

The twins set themselves to it, considering Scrap's initial routes as a base, checking out a few possible permutations, adjusting to ensure they kept well clear of Grue space while kind of pinballing between other planets that either Scrap's information had as being potentially habitable, that including fuel and resupply points (aiming for at least two of those, in fact, more than willing to be paranoid on that subject) or that others recommended or that looked like they'd find interesting. They just kept track of each possible route and its various advantages, disadvantages, and points of interest in their heads, comparing them on the fly and making changes as they got new ideas or saw new pieces of information.

Hopefully it'd all come together as a fairly smooth trip, not so long that the more profit-centric members of the team got antsy, but not so straight that they couldn't have a bit of fun and see some sights (and maybe, just maybe, find some homeworld candidates to mark for more thorough examination later) along the way.

Using Mental Quickness 4 to Take 20 on Expertise (Navigator) or (Cartographer) or (Flippin' Tour Guide), or whatever. 30 total. Maybe higher if Scrap's assistance counts as a Team Check. :smallcool:

[Queen Sapes]

The Garden worlds of the Zoldin-9 System or the Polarot system seem to be the best bet, with the Polarot somehow making the safest path to Cecelinus while still keeping sensible time. The Garden worlds are certainly beautiful and have a refueling station, but are also notorious for losing large vessels to pirates. Polarot on the other hand, is largely abandoned save for the fueling station and tourism. Pirates are hesitant to travel there, due to the danger of moving too close to the broken planets, which would offer the only cover. Otherwise, it's rather safe, as long as pilots aren't stupid.

However, these are just two of the three fastest routes to Cecelinus. The other is past Skryxia, but Laishe has already shot that choice down. Ilstrus is typically empty, although it lacks a fueling port if a ship is headed directly to Cecelinus. A quick stop on the endless farmlands of Crobos solves the fueling issue, but requires one to jump off the traditional route to reach it. Plus, Ilstrus is somewhat of an oddity in the galaxy. It's the only planet in its system, the rest is just empty space. By all accounts, Ilstrus is completely habitable, and has played host to several colonies. However, the colonies also have a tradition of disappearing without a trace, leading superstitious pilots to steer clear of the system, claiming it to be haunted. It certainly isn't helped by the fact Ilstrus' system is so empty, as that emptiness can play tricks on the mind. Still though, it's a safe route, but takes a bit longer than most.

[Quellian-dyrae]

After some back-and-forth and calculations, Daniel said, "Alright all, we've got two possible routes pretty much figured. I think we should go through the Polarot system. It's quick, low-risk, they've got a refueling station and apparently some tourist points but not much in the way of settlements so we can do a quick stop and move on or if we want to take a couple days off the ship we should be able to find something to do. And it's fairly empty, which...I don't know if that actually has a positive impact on spotting someone trying to tail us or not considering, you know, space, but if it does then cool."

"And I say we should take the Zoldin-9 route. The garden planets are supposed to be really beautiful, and it's more populated so there's more to see and do if we want to stop or while we're refueling. There's...some notes here about piracy, but if anything, that's a plus! 'Cause if any pirates try to attack us, when we beat them, we can return their ill-gotten gains to the prop- I mean take their loot for ourselves and it's all profit!"

Honestly, they really wanted to check out Ilstrus. A habitable world in a buffer of dead-empty space that people were superstitious about would be a nice place for their people to be able to settle without having to worry too much about intergalactic politics in the short term, and with mages on hand, whatever issues the other colonies had could probably be handled - especially if it was an actual haunting. It was definitely on their list of places to go, but they didn't want to be rushed along while considering it, and the extra travel time of reaching Crobos for refueling by that route would probably eat into exploration time. They figured they'd bring it up as an alternate route back, since it offered some advantages for that purpose in terms of detecting and maybe throwing off any pursuers they might or might not acquire as a result of this job.

[Arcran]

"Pirate fuel is free fuel," Laishe says with a grin. "And no pirates can even put a scratch on Silence," the pilot reiterates, lightly tapping the console loud enough to barely make a sound. "Anyways, the less worlds we're spotted on before robbing what would appear to be a significant galactic figure the better. Plus one of those bastards might have an EMP on them..." Laishe mutters, knowing pirate's penchant for big guns.

"The captain," the pilot says, putting some stress on the second word, "Votes we go the Zoldin route."

[Eshkigal]

"Zolvin-9 seems to have won, as my vote counted towards that or one other. At least the pirates will be interesting for Caprice."
Scrap sets the route quickly, before heading to the door.
"I have some preparations to make if we see Tumbleweed after us. If you need me, I will be in the cargo hold."
With that, Scrap drifts out the door, planning out a one seater craft for safely getting onto other ships without ending up debris in space again since they greatly out speed it.

[Arcran]

"We're leaving then," the pilot mutters, doing the final checks on the Silence and pulling out of port, preparing his FTL drive and everything else required for long-distance travel.

[Queen Sapes]

The Silence pulls out of the Spire's port easily enough, the magnetic locks of the port letting her go. The docking attendants send a quick message to the Silence that makes its way quickly to Laishe, reminding him to "Have a safe trip and return soon", and how much he had paid for the docking. The ship passes through the shields surrounding the Spire, entering the asteroid ring field beyond. Thankfully the rocks beyond the Spire keep to a rather level plain, more akin to the rings of a planet than an asteroid belt, so the Silence is able to quickly pick up over the rocks and head for deep space.

The Silence pulls to a slow crawl as its FTL drives warm up, leaving the group on the bridge staring into deep space, with not an object in their way. Even after so many times seeing it, the emptiness of space is a powerful sight to behold. It's a beautiful if lonely sight, the endless stars clustered in the black void, each holding some promise of life on it, as well as desolation. There was money out there for the group, chances to be heroes, or criminals if they must, and as the FTL drives warmed up and the coordinates were being set, all it would take now is one final push before they were on to the Garden Worlds, then Cecelinus, then wherever else they wished.

Vehicle rolls from Laishe and anyone else who is in some way helping with driving.

[Quellian-dyrae]

The twins stood at the bridge for a time, hand in hand and watching space go by. Somewhere out there was a new world where their people could settle.

They cast a couple sendings out as they stood there, a short, professional one to their mentor informing him that they were taking off from the Spire and that they had a lead on a possible world that they might be able to take a closer look at semi-soonish. A longer one spent chatting with their family, giving them an account of what was going on that was high on excitement and making stuff sound cool and low on nit-picky little details. Things like "going to rob some random rich guy for no legitimate reason we can discern" became "going on a heist" and "we intentionally selected the most dangerous route because it's supposed to be prettier" became "and you know, we figured we might hunt down a few space-pirates while we were in the area". It wouldn't actually keep their parents from worrying about them, but it would make them sound, just, super-cool to their younger siblings. As duly appointed wizards of the Circle, it was their duty to present a proper representation of their noble profession for the younger generation.

Eventually they went to sit together and read the silly little comic book they had bought, poring over it as intently as if it were some ancient tome or arcane lore or lost spellbook of an older age. It was almost comfortingly familiar, seeing things like the shape of the buildings and cars, the street signs, even just the font that was used in the word bubbles. Heather left the little hula doll thing by the window, on the notion that that's where something like that belonged, darn it!

"Hey Strife! Come look!" Daniel called to the cyborg after they had gotten a few pages in.

"It's from Earth!" Heather added.

They knew Strife didn't have many memories of her home world - which drove them nuts, by the way. There was an Earth here. A full-fledged, honest-to-goodness, third-rock-from-the-sun, smack-dab-between-Venus-and-Mars-in-some-backwater-solar-system-of-the-Milky-Way Earth, and they were traveling with someone from there. There were only about ten thousand things they wanted to ask her about this universe's version of their planet, and couldn't. Maddening.

[Arcran]

"Everybody just sit back and enjoy the ride," Laishe says, giving a look that very clearly states that they better leave flying the ship to him.

"Let's go girl," the pilot mutters under his breathe as his fingers fly across the controls, effortlessly navigating the ship through through the vast emptiness of space. It would be a long trip but the massive payoff at the end would more than compensate.

Skill Expertise Vehicles. Going to use that for a check of 30.

[Eshkigal]

After scrounging around, Scrap scowls. Of course the weapon systems couldn't have useful objects that wouldn't require dismantling them to create something with. With a sigh, it instead builds its plasma cannon, and begins looking at it while slowly taking it apart. Perhaps it could be modified into a ship grade disruptor, or an EMP bomb of sorts. It'd fry, but if it could be used to either take out an enemy vessel or the casino defenses, that would be useful...


Since the Silence has no torpedoes I can make into a crazy boarding ship, I'm going to build an Affliction effect that only affects technology, still deciding on ranged or burst, as a likely one off weapon. Still working on general details.
[roll0]-Inventor, Tech roll for the blueprint

[Queen Sapes]

Inside the Silence, the slightest of hums, even to Laishe's ears, fills the ship as the Silence prepares to take off into deep space and leave the Spire behind. For a moment, the ship hangs in the air, small asteroid bits bouncing against the hull, before the ship launches itself forward into the emptiness of space, disappearing in the blink of an eye. The space outside the windows of the Silence doesn't actually take on much of a change, as even while rocketing through space, it takes quite some time for stars to move out of one's sight. Still, the emptiness is rather reassuring, and Laishe sticks to his seat at the pilot's console to watch for anything on the sensors that would ruin the Silence's flight. The other four spread into the rest of the Silence, dropping whatever things they had in the rooms Laishe gave to them before lounging about the ship, talking mostly. Scrap dedicates himself to working on some sort of project to deter pirates, for better or worse.

Hours pass before the Silence automatically slows as it nears its current destination: the Garden Worlds of Zolvin-9. The nickname of the Garden Worlds is actually surprisingly accurate for the Zolvin-9 system, as the entire solar system is comprised of nearly twenty planets spaced within their sun's life-sustaining range. The planets are mostly uninhabited but all capable of sustaining life on them, resulting in twenty small planets with abundant plant life and nearly unexplored surfaces. None of the planets have official names aside from designations between Zolvin-9-1 to Zolvin-9-20, but the local pirates have given them a variety of names dependent on the pirate group. They're the main group within the Zolvin-9 system, and as such it is almost always a recognized pirate hotspot. The unexplored and bountiful planets make perfect homes for pirates in the system, and the active passage through the system always keeps them in business. Unfortunately, pirates aren't well known for keeping active and accessible records of their location or activity, so predicting and even finding the pirate groups has proven impossible. Some estimates place the pirate groups well into the hundreds. Aside from them though, there are a few dozen research sites on various planets, along with a small but decently active port on Zolvin-9-7. It's the only place in the system to get fuel from, along with the most heavily defended spot in the system. Nothing except a raid by every pirate group at once could take the port.

The Silence lurches into the system suddenly, the beautiful Garden Worlds in full view from every window, save for the pilot's. Rather, Laishe is immediately confronted with a large cluster of wreckage the Silence is headed straight for. The pirates don't tend to clean up the scrap metal, and unless a ship takes the direct lanes through the system, which change constantly as the planets spin around the planet, it's more than likely to run up against another ship's looted corpse. The mass in front of them is dead and old, with fires long ago going cold and metal chilling in the cold embrace of space.

Vehicles rolls for maneuvering
You complete the blueprints of your EMP device just before the Silence enters the Zolvin-9 system. The weapon is expertly designed, but unfortunately still likely to be a one-use weapon. It will still take hours to complete, even with the immediately available supplies, which should hopefully be fine. As long as the Silence isn't swarmed by too many pirates at once for Laishe to handle, and he's willing to stop to buy his own fuel for the trip, you should be able to complete it in a number of hours.

[Quellian-dyrae]

The twins went eagerly to the windows to look out over the garden worlds. They peered at the planets intently, even "zooming in" a bit with their arcane vision, as they realized they weren't seeing much in the way of civilization on their surfaces.

"Might be another option," Daniel said. "Pirates could be a problem though."

"Meh. We've got mages. And who knows, maybe if another civilization was getting started around here it would bring in more travel, prompt people to actually deal with the pirates. Could be a good thing, in the long run."

"Oh I'm not saying we couldn't win, but I'd prefer for our people to be able to settle somewhere without having to fight for it."

"Ahhh right right right. Hm. Well, worth putting on the list for later exploration, anyway."

[Arcran]

"Stupid frakkin' pirates," Laishe mutters, beginning to put the ship through some evasive maneuvers. How hard would it be to clean up just a little bit? Of course, Laishe is fairly sure that it isn't just base laziness; a ship without an experienced pilot would certainly take at least some degree of damage after flying in, making them easy prey for the pirates.

Skill Expertise for 30.

[Eshkigal]

With that complete, Scrap shifts again, taking the time to craft the extra parts first to adapt its Plasma Cannon into the disrupter. Easier than setting up a bomb, less risk to the Silence and Scrap to shoot it instead of risk being in the path. While it works, bringing things back into its storage unit, Scrap looks over to the egg it had bought before, as well. There had to be something it could do to make the egg live...

[Queen Sapes]

Laishe maneuvers the Silence out of the way of the debris, but due to the sheer size of the Silence, the smaller loose bits still brush up against the massive vessel. Most just get pulled along with the Silence, but some of the larger bits scrape along the Silence's hull, the noise they make empty and nonexistent in space, but inside the scrape and screech they make is very obvious and apparent. The sound vibrates throughout the ship, loud enough to make most of its passengers cringe at the sound. The sound is not a fun one, certainly not for Laishe, and not a nice thing to hear for Caprice as she snacks, Strife as she calibrates her implants, and the Twins as they sight-see. Scrap is easily the least effected, if only because he's furthest from the bits scrapping. Scrap's egg sits in its liquid-filed jar on a shelf, unmoving and obviously dead. But that is the most confusing bit of Ne'Tal physiology. They were close to organic, generally, but still robotic. It makes one more than wonder if they can be brought back from the dead.

[Quellian-dyrae]

The twins' faces twisted into grimaces and their bodies shivered some at the "nails on chalkboard X10" sound. Eh-h-h-h.

~Everyone okay?~

~Did we hit something?~

[Arcran]

"Frakkin' pirates," Laishe mutters every time he scrapes against some junk, his ears screaming in pain. "Gonna make them pay for the new paintjob after this stupid mission. Sorry girl," Laishe says, patting the command console softly. "You'll get through it."

"Just crap scraping over the ship," Laishe says into the ship's mic. "Won't be near enough to hurt anything but the paintjob. Just put some earplugs in or something," the pilot mutters, wincing as trash once again scrapes his ship.

[The_Snark]

~Damn, honey, if anyone else'd scratched up your ship like that you'd be out for blood,~ comments Caprice from the galley, sounding more amused than annoyed. If there'd been more of an impact, she might have spilled something, but as-is? No harm done. Laishe is prickly enough that it's sometimes fun to watch the universe prickle back. ~You going to take us in stealthed, so we don't attract pirate attention while we make our way to port?~

[Queen Sapes]

A few more minutes of scraping, Laishe's ears screaming for a rest, and the Silence is through the scrap pile and into the true nest of the Garden Worlds. They lie before the Silence, scattered around and circling the sun in their barely sustainable orbits. Zolvin-9-7 would be their best bet for fuel, and luckily it is also the closest of the Garden Worlds, tied with its sister planet, Zoldin-9-17. The Zoldin-9 system planets were not named in any particular order it would seem, although that may be caused by how they tend to shift around one another every once in a while. It was another reason these planets weren't very colonized, since their orbits tended to result in their occasional shuffle. While it was easy to spot and avoid a rogue planetoid, it was far more difficult to avoid pirates, and thankfully none appeared on the Silence's sensors as it passes out of the scrap field.

[Quellian-dyrae]

When the scraping kept up, the twins headed for the cockpit. And assuming it was open and/or Laishe let them in, they'd step over by him and invoke one of their Layered Shielding spells, attuning it to sensory attacks (if they couldn't get in they'd just set it up right outside). Granted, the purpose of such a shield was to ward off things like blinding lights, stunning battle roars, and stinking clouds. But it'd work well enough for their purposes.

~Anyone who gets sick of that, we've figured out a ward for it over by the cockpit,~ Daniel reported.

Once they were clear of the debris, they'd lower the shield, and Heather would ask, "So, where we heading, Captain?"

[Arcran]

"To find pirates to shake down for a paint job," Laishe mutters, head ringing and overall in a sour mood from both his ship being damaged and the constant, grating sound.

"We'll head to 9-7 for some fuel. Maybe we can blast some pirates along the way or something," Laishe says, putting the last part in a bit quieter than the rest. He purposefully leaves his stealth systems off, intending to be as visible as possible for pirates attempting to search for him.

[Eshkigal]

Knowing the weapon would likely not be combat ready for a while, Scrap decides to see if he can't make a helper. It sets the fetal robot down before going to swarm form, designating a portion of itself to tear and alter, exposing power cores and wiring. It makes the torn up portion into an impromptu generator, linking it to the stillborn, and tries running a current, draining the refurbished, sacrificed drones of power entirely.

[roll0]-using inventor to try and jumpstart the fetal bot with the equivalent of a plasma cannon core. Now live! LIVE, MY CHILD! LIIIIVE! *insert mad laughter here*

[Queen Sapes]

The Silence makes its way to Zoldin-9-7 without any incident, oddly enough. Although, given their close proximity to the planet, it was far more likely for them to make the trip safely than not. The Silence is practically drawn towards the planet's lone settlement capable of bearing spaceships, as Laishe cuts the Silence's engines and forces the Silence into descending to the planet on its own power. The pilot wisely straps himself into his seat in case anything goes south, and the rest of the passengers do the same, save for Scrap. It was fairly common practice to enter a planet's atmosphere through free fall, something most pilots outside of the military were actually trained to do. For a moment the Silence hangs above the upper atmosphere, adrift on what remains of its own force, before Zoldin-9-7's gravity takes hold. Then the ship begins pulling towards the planet, gaining speed within minutes, and plummeting through the upper atmosphere a few minutes more.

Thin fire appears at the Silence's windows as the massive ship falls to earth, the Silence becoming a massive meteor in less experienced hands. Thankfully, Laishe is one to know the ship well. A few minutes of burning through the upper atmosphere and Laishe engages the Silence's lower thrusters, the jets kicking on right as the Silence passes into the lower atmosphere. The Silence comes to a slow and lurching halt, the strongest thrusters disengaging as the Silence balances itself, stopping roughly ten miles above the surface of Zoldin-9-7. It's finally safe to unbuckle the seatbelts.

Outside the windows, Zoldin-9-7 stretches on as far as one could possibly see. It's the most jungle-like of the Garden Worlds, and everywhere surrounding the Silence is covered in thick jungle canopy, with rivers of impossibly blue water running between spots of trees. A few critters run through the jungles below, multi-winged birds in glowing green, blue, yellow, and red emerge in massive flocks from the jungle floor, and a herd of creatures that look like twice as large elephants emerge from the brush to sip from the streams with their trunks. A nature-lover's paradise. The outpost isn't far from where the Silence came to a stop in the air, and Laishe quickly sets his ship towards the outpost. It's a settlement run largely by the Lor, although the Lor in charge are unassociated with the Republic and don't claim complete ownership. But it is Lor engineering, meaning everything is smooth metal in varying shades of white, grey, and black, with little gaps in-between panels for easy access. The settlement covers maybe five square miles of jungle that grasp at every edge of it, and only has a handful of ships in port. The Silence finds a port to settle into fairly easy enough, the ship coming down to settle in the grav-locks already in place. Unfortunately a settlement like this isn't likely to be very automated so just ordering the ship to be fueled from inside isn't likely to be enough, and that's assuming it's even possible. That meant they would likely have to get out at least once. Oh well, more time to see the sights!

Inside the Silence, as the ship is pulling up to port, Scrap is attempting to breath life back into the bean in the jar. He hooks the strange object up to a few of his wires, and sends a jolt into it's shell. The white bean jump in the jar, almost causing it to tip over and spill out over Laishe's ship, but quickly settles as the power stabilizes and lowers considerably. The jar rattles down to the ground, the bean practically undisturbed inside. A bubble emerges from the case and bursts at the surface of the liquid, but it otherwise appears unaffected by Scrap's efforts.

[Quellian-dyrae]

Daniel and Heather were...still rather unused to the whole "free fall descent" bit. They had their seatbelts on, shields up, and were gripping each other's hands with whitened knuckles for the entire fall. (They were getting better though! They no longer cast telepathic sendings to their family in fear that it would be their last chance to say goodbye to them! So, you know, progress!)

But let's be clear: once "falling" had once again crossed that ineffable line that separated it from "flying", they sprang out of their seats and rushed to the windows to look out over the planet while Laishe flew in and landed the ship (going to windows on opposite sides to broaden the amount they collectively got to see). Both of them had their phones out and were snapping pictures at, just, anything that caught their attention. Which was basically anything that crossed their field of vision.

They kept at it the whole way down. Once the ship had landed, they wasted little time before asking, "How long will refueling take?"

"And more importantly, who wants to go exploring?"

[Arcran]

"Depends how competent these idiots are," Laishe states, unstrapping himself from his chair and standing up, cracking his back audibly as he stretches out. "I'll handle that though. You guys go do whatever. I'll radio if I need anything," Laishe states, grabbing his machine pistol before striding out of the ship, leaning against the hull and leering at anybody who gets to close to his baby until the rest of the crew exits for their respective destinations.

[The_Snark]

"May as well," Caprice says to the twins, stretching as she joins the others in the common area of the ship. "I don't believe I've ever been here before, though, so we'll have to find someone else to play tour guide if we want one. Are you planning to stick to the settlement, or did you want to head out into the jungle?"

[Quellian-dyrae]

"Definitely want to check out the settlement some, but...I mean, it does just seem like kind of a waste not to explore the jungle at least a little, doesn't it? I wonder if they have like...tourist trails or something."

"Or! We could go flying!

[Eshkigal]

As the ship docks, Scrap regards the process. Then an idea spawned on it a bit as it carefully disconnects the fetus. The Ne'Tal are living machines, and what does a living thing need to grow? A system of nourishment, and a specialized environment. A womb. However, Scrap has no idea what the most effective form of womb would be for such an entity, but perhaps there's something on planet that could be observed.
Besides, when else would it get the chance to enjoy such an area? It heads to the doorway, and looks to the others.
"Personally, I could use a chance to look at some of the life here, it might give me a better drone design for trying to get what Laishe wanted, and a problem I'm working on in my own time. But the settlement could speed up conversion of my rifle into something that should knock out a casino. However, I say jungles. Because why not see what there is to discover, right?"

[The_Snark]

"Tour guide first," Caprice says, amused at Heather's enthusiasm. "I've no objection to a little sightseeing in the jungle - from above or within - but I want to know what the local megafauna is like before I walk into that. And megaflora, for that matter. 'Eaten by carnivorous tree' is high on my list of ways I'd rather not die."

[Eshkigal]

"Then let's get started. Not like Laishe's liable to wait too long after refuel for us to finish things up when he has credits dangling in front of him, right?"
Scrap heads down the path a bit, waiting for the others to head out while it checks the shotgun, ensuring it had enough premade solid and spread shells to make life simpler.

[Quellian-dyrae]

Daniel and Heather followed along. Both of them had their phones out, snapping pictures of the trees, the buildings, the people, anything that caught their eyes, really. They'd sometimes get in the pictures themselves by telekinetically manipulating their phones, or ask their friends to go stand beside something to get a shot of them. They'd try and sneak a picture of Laishe disembarking from the Silence, since that would look all captainy and stuff (they didn't expect actually asking Laishe to pose for a picture would accomplish anything).

[Queen Sapes]

Laishe:
Standing outside the ship, waiting for someone to address him with whatever question about what he wanted, Laishe stands around observing the area, at least partially bored about it all. The spaceport is definitely bustling with activity, at least as much as could be expected from a small spaceport. Which is to say perhaps two dozen people were walking around, on their way to one activity or another. Elsewhere on the spaceport, a smaller ship shaped like a pyramid on its side lifts up into the sky, coming into Laishe's vision as it ascends upwards towards space. Laishe watches the little ship for a moment, before he becomes aware of someone approaching him. His eyes dart down to meet two men, both wearing dark green outfits to match the environment.

"Greetin's!" says the first man, who is obviously a Lor with brown hair, an athletic build, and a thin pistol-like device by his side. His face is relatively handsome, but with some obvious scarring on the right side of his neck. The scars appear to be claw wounds, which cover up and distract from the scales than run on that part of his neck. The man apparently isn't entirely Lor, it would seem. "Welcome to Zoldin! Name's Stevis, this here's Craxis," he says, gesturing to the man behind him. Man is a loose way of putting it, as the figure behind him appears closer to a massive humanoid ant with a blue shell dotted with green and red accents. On his back is a large device which looks similar to a thermos, and is only slightly longer than the average one. "And we're the welcomin' committee 'round here! Now, first things firsts, there's a toll around here, and I'm 'fraid that big vessel," he says, pointing at the Silence, "Is gonna cost you a little to park here." Craxis grunts in agreement, his six arms all stuck inside an individual pocket on his shirt.

Everyone Else:
Walking around the spaceport for a short time, the group very quickly realizes just how small of a place they've stopped at. Almost everyone around is either just making a quick stop, or works as a researcher for the supposed research base the spaceport is supposed to be. A group of these men prod at one of the massive vines attempting to grab at the spaceport, while elsewhere another group of passing Daran do the same for fun. A few more minutes of searching, and the group is able to find a tour guide, inexplicably. A small gazebo rests on an open stretch of the spaceport's floor, right before the stairs and overlooking the massive sprawling jungle before it, with a sign stating 'Tour Guide' above it. Nobody sits inside the gazebo, but rather an odd robot appears to be placed in the center.

The robot's body is simple, just the shape of an oval with two completely flat sides, like a disk or skipping stone, with two arms and two legs attached underneath. His body is painted a faded red which was once bright and eye-catching, and one of his sides is not a case, but a screen. As the group approaches the robot, his screen activates, the blackness replaced by a happy cartoon face. "Hello-o-o, -o, -ooo..." the robot says in a cartoon voice fitting of the screen image, the voice winding down and fading into emptiness. The screen goes black again, a single word flashing up on the screen a second later.


Rebooting

A moment later the screen pops back into life, the robot coming to life once again. "Hello! Welcome to Z-Zoldin-9-7! My name is R-R-R-Roby, would you like to take a tour of the facility?"

[Eshkigal]

Scrap stares at surprise at the automaton near them, before walking up near and close to it, peering at Roby.

"Greetings, Roby. I would, though would you like a tune up first?"

[Quellian-dyrae]

The twins took a couple steps back. They'd had enough technology glitch out on them that they figured Roby the Robot would find it...preferable for them to keep a little extra distance.

"You think we can keep him?" Heather whispered.

"Probably not," Daniel replied in an equally amused voice.

[Arcran]

"You don't say," Laishe says, keeping his right arm as close to his holster as possible as he reaches his other hand into his pockets for the ship's remote control. "If you don't mind, I'd like to see some papers. Something to prove you're not just a couple of dock rats looking for an easy buck off us naive offworlders. You understand, right?" Laishe states, giving his best patronizing grin.

[The_Snark]

Caprice folds her arms as she leans against one of the gazebo's pillars, looking distinctly unimpressed by the tour guide. That thing might be able to toddle around the facilities here - might - but it doesn't look like it'd last five in the jungle. Oh well, maybe it can point them towards someone who'd be willing to show them around outside, or at least tell them what to avoid...

"D'you give tours of the jungle around here, or just the spaceport?"

[Queen Sapes]

Scrap, the Twins, Strife, Caprice, and Colosar:
"S- sorry! But tampering with or removing Ce- Cecel- Zoldin-9-7 property from their designated sites is considered an unlawful act and you w- will be prosecuted t - t- to the full extent of C- Z- Zoldin-9-7 law. But as for the other q- question, I can function efficiently on, around, or in the cas- jungle grounds as well as I can in the local fa- facilities! The local wildlife has no indigenous hostilities to my model!" Roby explains, his cartoon face changing to a different cheerful image every other word and lighting up with each word.

Behind the group, as Roby talks, a man approaches, having recognized the group from their briefs travels together prior to his departure of the Silence. A man with a mech.

Laishe:
"Ah, course," Stevis says, reaching into his pocket. He pulls out a small black rectangle and presses a button on its surface, causing two holographic pieces of paper to appear, filled with identification information for both Stevis and Craxis. With a flick of the wrist, the papers are flung over to Laishe, hovering in front of him to manipulate as he needs to read them. "Also, as a little tidbit of information, we don't use papers 'round here. Too expensive. 'Sides, this way is cooler, am I right mate?" Stevis asks, nudging Craxis for an answer. The insect-man remains stoically silent. "Ah well, so that's a rather big brute of a ship, what'cha thinkin' Craxis? 'Bout 75? 100?" The man remains just as still and quiet. Honestly, with how impossible his eyes are to read, Laishe can't even tell if the alien is paying attention.

[The_Admiral]

"Has the Silence come to roost here?" he asks, almost offhandedly as he approaches the group.

[Quellian-dyrae]

"Ray?" Heather said and as the twins turned to the voice, both wearing bright grins as they beheld the mech pilot. Assuming he wasn't currently in the mech, Heather would step forward to give him a hug, followed up by Daniel offering him a handshake.

"I'll be honest, never thought 'it's a small world' would apply to the entire universe. How've you been, man? What have you been up to?"

I dunno, I'm feeling like Daniel and Heather would go Last Name Basis with Colosar :smallamused:.

[The_Admiral]

"The only," he replied, chuckling at the hug and returning the handshake.

"The usual, hiding out, fighting piracy, doing science on the side, the second mostly helps me with the first and last, so Laishe get you guys into any trouble?" he smiled back at the twins.

[Eshkigal]

Scrap turns at the initial words, letting those more comfortable with words talk first, touch first. He owed Colosar for a great many things in this existence, including his function and form. He was the closest thing to family Scrap knew, not that he would know from how the machine had trouble sharing. As his elders hugged, he quietly approached, and spoke at the question about antics.
"Soon enough. We are en rout to a big one, actually, so care to join us, Colosar? We could use the help."
He extends a hand, shaking his savior's own.

[The_Admiral]

"Scrap! How are the repairs, I am not a master of nanotics, give me a mind machine interface any day. My contracts up, I'll need a lift out of system anyway, so if Lashie'll take me on again, sure." he replied cheerily, shaking his hand.

[Arcran]

"Well, that seems to be in order," Laishe says, having little to no idea on whether or not the holographic papers are correct.

"And don't you call this beauty a brute," Laishe says, a tint of anger creeping into his voice. "This 'brute' just killed more than her fair share of pirates up above. We went out of our way to try to clear up your spaceways and you're still charging us for docking? That's just something you don't do. Have a little gratitude," Laishe says, the lies flowing naturally.

About how much is 75 in terms of real world money?

Also, roll: [roll0]

[Eshkigal]

"Interface was completely successful, and so far the upgrade for space travel has been holding. As for Laishe, one moment then."
Scrap gives Laishe a call on the comm bead he left for the man, buzzing somewhere...

[Queen Sapes]

Laishe:
"Pirates 's a way of life, mate," Stevis responds to Laishe's attempt at receiving praise. "Blowin' 'em out of the sky is like askin' for congratulations 'cause you can breath, eat, sleep, and do your business! Sure, some people need the praise, but since you're pilotin' a ship like that I'm expectin' you had no trouble. S'prised the pirates even wanted to take you on, with a vessel like that, right Craxis?" The bug man remains just as stock still as ever as Stevis glances over his shoulder looking for a response. "Eh, no matter. Let's split the difference. 85, since I'm feelin' generous today," Stevis says, clasping his hands together with a smile that makes his scales even more apparent.

[Quellian-dyrae]

"We were just going to do a bit of exploring here while the ship gets refueled and stuff," Daniel said, then looking back over to Roby. "Any suggestions? We're basically aiming for the best balance of 'interesting' and 'reasonably fast', right guys?"

[Arcran]

"Bunch of damn crooks," Laishe mutters, scrounging about in his pocket for his credit-stick and handing it over, already trying to figure out how to scam the wizards out of enough to make up for his loss. What he really needed was a teleporter in the ship. Sure, it'd be more expensive than a thousand docking fees but at least the money would be well spent.

[Queen Sapes]

Laishe:
Stevis takes the credit-stick from Laishe swiping it against the box from which his papers also emerged. Both flash a blue glow to approve the transaction before Stevis tosses it back to Laishe, giving him a nod. "Looks like you're all in the clear!," he says, looking back up to the ship. "So what're you an' this br- um, beauty," he says, putting emphasis on the word beauty, "stopping in Zoldin for? Couldn't imagine where you are comin' from and headed to that would stop you in Zoldin, since you don't strike me as military."

Scrap, Caprice, Colosar, Strife, and the Twins:
"The best sight to see would have to be the Seven St- St- jungle floor! There is an elev- elevator down to below the canopy not far from this position! Local Ce- Zoldin-9-7 wildlife is benign and unlikely to attack unless provoked, which is discouraged by [Function Unknown]," Roby says in the cheerfully programmed voice he possesses. The odd robot waddles forward through the group to gesture towards some sort of lift which undoubtedly heads down to the jungle floor. "I can act as a guide to the c- c- jungle if requested! Approximately 95% of Zoldin-9-7's jungle is unexplored and potentially full of wonders!"

[Quellian-dyrae]

"Cool. Thanks, Roby," Daniel said, the twins heading for the lift. They'd leave it to the others to decide if they wanted Roby along as a guide.

[Arcran]

Laishe almost instantly becomes guarded as the questions turn a bit more personal, wary about what the man knew. There were technically bounties out for him but how well known were those in corners of the galaxy like this?

"Fuel, mostly," he says, leaning casually against the hull of the ship, hand still inside his pocket for the remote control of the Silence. "Had some passengers that wanted to see a real garden world so we made a small detour. You know how tourists are," Laishe says, tossing in a light chuckle at the end. Hopefully they'd think him a tour guide with a military grade battleship? If he could make something up about why his ship was so nice he should be safe, right?

Guile: [roll0]

[The_Snark]

Caprice runs her eyes over the newcomer, sizing him up. Lor, not exactly a battle-hardened mercenary going by his physique, but not some hapless scholar or paper-pusher either. Honestly pleased to see Scrap and the twins, going by his aura, which makes him inclined to think he's all right - those three aren't the sort to keep cutthroat company. (Though their judgment isn't all that, as their continued association with Laishe and herself shows...)

"Sure, why not," she says to the robot, pushing off the gazebo to follow the twins. "You can show us the gift shop on the way out."

She pauses, turns back to glance at the newcomer. Part of her - two parts, actually, one vain and one purely pragmatic - wants to see his reaction to her, which means she has to get his attention. "You tagging along?"

[The_Admiral]

"Sure!" Ray replies almost instinctively until her spots her face. His eyes narrow and smile vanishes as his hand twitches towards his jacket, his stance becomes a defensive one as he shifts a foot backwards.

[Eshkigal]

Scrap wonders what is going on for a moment, before remembering that Caprice's family tends to have some stigma around it.
"Hold it Ray, there's a story there. You know how Nagini lost her ship, couple months after she brought me to you? Caprice hired her to smuggle her out of the area, and her family wrecked the ship in the pursuit. She's broken ties. Just..."
He slowly steps between the two, looking to Ray directly, hoping to avoid having a giant walker trash half the planet in a fight with Caprice.
"No need to activate or call the EM-Adapt. We're good here. Check Caprice's bounty log if you don't believe me, almost certain it was filed by her family due to the sheer size of it."

[Quellian-dyrae]

Scrap speaking caused the twins to halt and turn around. Oh. Right. Ray didn't know Caprice but did know one of the Arcturan royals. They had almost forgot about that.

"Yeah, it's okay, Caprice is cool. She's one of us."

"It's just the people she spent her childhood around that suck," Heather added, a strong note of bitterness replacing the typical cheer in her voice.

Yeah, that was basically how the twins referred to them. "The people Caprice spent her childhood around" or "the Arcturan royals". They didn't know all the details on the subject, but they knew enough that they refused to call that group of people Caprice's family. That word did not mean what they apparently think it means.

[The_Snark]

That's not the usual reaction. Does she know this guy? Face isn't familiar, though that doesn't necessarily mean anything... dammit, have the others picked up a friend who works as a bounty hunter on the side? But the fellow's aura is tinged with wariness and anger, not avarice.

Caprice relaxes slightly as the others come to her defense, their explanations illuminating. Former Arcturan subject with a grudge? Bad experience in the Serpent Reaches? Well, she can't blame him for that. Wouldn't be the first time one of her family's enemies decided to take a shot at her, she just hadn't expected it on a tiny nowhere planet like Zoldin...

But she keeps one hand resting casually on her hip, not far from her sidearm. No sense letting her guard up just yet.

[The_Admiral]

"....well if they trust you, I'm willing to try" Ray says with much reserve, pulling his hand away from his weapon.

[Queen Sapes]

Laishe:
"No, you want to show off a garden world to some tourist types, you take 'em to one of the big ones! Pras or Cecelinus, you don't stop at the Zoldin's. Too wild, untamed, potentially hazardous depending on who you believe..." Stevis trails off and glances off in the direction the group wandered. "Say, they don't have much interest in wandering the jungle floor, right?" he asks, genuine concern in his voice.

Scrap, Caprice, Strife, Colosar, and the Twins:
The groups finds the elevator down to the jungle floor after resolving Ray's small problem with Caprice. It's surprisingly intact and untouched, even when compared to the rest of the settlement, with only small clumps of dirt and squished bugs plastering its floor. The elevator control is a single simple switch that goes between 'up' and 'down'. The switch is currently turned to 'up'. Nobody is guarding the elevator, not that they would ever need to if they even had the numbers necessary, and the entire team can easily just hop on-board and ride the elevator down to the jungle floor.

[Arcran]

"They just said they were going to look around as far as I knew," Laishe says, not sounding particularly interested. "I'll radio them though, just to be sure," the pilot states, opening up the Silence and locking it behind him, not particularly interested in strangers on his ship.

As he arrives in the cockpit Laishe turns on his radio, trying to lock in on the frequency of somebody on the team.

"Hello? Hello? Laishe here. Anybody here?"

[Quellian-dyrae]

Daniel took out his phone as Laishe's communication came through. "We're here," he said as Heather pulled the lever down to lower the elevator to the jungle floor!

We all know someone had to do it, may as well be me :smalltongue:.

[Arcran]

"You guys wouldn't be happening to be going to the floor of the jungle, are you?" Laishe drawls, not particularly interested in the answer.

[Quellian-dyrae]

"Yeah. You want us to wait for you?"

[Arcran]

"No. Don't do that. Bad idea, probably," Laishe says, somewhat less bored now. "Hold on for a second."

Still not particularly worried, Laishe strolls towards the entrance to the ship, quickly opening the door just enough to talk out of.

"So why shouldn't they go to the jungle floor?"

[Quellian-dyrae]

Daniel blinked, shrugged, and put the elevator on stop. "Aye aye, captain," he said.

"Why are we stopping?"

"Captain says going down there's a bad idea for some reason."

"But Roby said it was safe."

"Teeeechnically it said that it was 95% unexplored. And to be fair, Roby...may not have been the optimal choice of information sources to use to conduct a threat assessment of an unknown world."

"But if we can't trust the kinda glitchy cartoon robot, who can we trust?" Heather asked with amused gravity.

"Indeed," Daniel said with an admirably straight face.

[Eshkigal]

"So what's going on? Also, we should probably tell him we encountered Ray here, should we not?"

[Quellian-dyrae]

"Not sure, he said to hold on. I...assume someone told him we shouldn't explore the jungle, or something? And yeah, we can do that when he's back on." Daniel turned the speaker phone on so the others could talk too, once Laishe got back.

[The_Admiral]

"......I was never told not to go to the jungle floor, just never bothered....." Ray says, trailing off, as he began wondering as to what could just be so dangerous.


[roll0]

[Queen Sapes]

Laishe:
"Oh, just the usual type stuff. We're an isolated spot in this here galaxy, there's lots of rumors about what could be down there," Stevis explains to Laishe. "Scientists say there could be parasites we ain't seen before, or untrampled moss beds they want to trample on firsts. Even could be all kinds of critters underground ready to gobble you up! Then the explorers of Zoldin tell different stories. One guy said he encountered an ancient Grue colony out in the jungle, but couldn't find it when he went lookin' again! 'Nother said he was stalked by somethin' through the whole jungle, which just watched him from the bushes. Never got a good look at it. Me favorite though? That'd be the guy who swears up and down across his four hearts he was attacked by ghosts at his camp! Needless to say, jungle work is just a bit dangerous 'round here. They'd best be careful." Stevis winks to Laishe to carry his point.

[Arcran]

"That's it?" Laishe says, frowning more than a little before he goes back to his comm.

"Nevermind, just a whole lot of rumors. Carry on," Laishe says, leaving the ship and locking it down tight, an array of magnetic locks and other systems sliding into place.

"What's the quickest way to the floor, since that's where my group seems to have headed?" Laishe asks, his tone still bored.

[Quellian-dyrae]

"Cool," Daniel said, hitting the lever once more. "In other news, guess who's here," Daniel said.

He didn't continue speaking thereafter. Apparently, he actually intended for Laishe to guess.

[Arcran]

"Don't know, don't care," Laishe states, waiting on an answer to his first question.

[Quellian-dyrae]

Daniel kinda hesitated, a discouraged look on his face, not entirely certain how to respond to that.

"It...Ray. Ray's here. He's with us," Heather said.

[Eshkigal]

Scrap just shakes his head at that.
"Surprised he didn't ignore the question, personally."
He looks to Ray and Caprice, still eying each other warily.
"Well, we'll find out what rumors are real. Sounds a bit like the sort of rumors pirates would spread though, doesn't it."

[Arcran]

"Who?" Laishe asks, not really recalling anybody named Ray. Maybe a former passenger?

[Quellian-dyrae]

"Ray? The...inventor guy? Did Laishe meet Ray?"

"He has a giant robot," Daniel said.

This was going well.

[Eshkigal]

"The only other one of us with a functional ship, it turns into a giant mechanical combat unit. Though he's more friends with Nagini, anyway, so it makes some sense that you wouldn't know him."

[The_Snark]

So Laishe doesn't know this fellow either. Interesting. Caprice isn't sure whether this is a positive or a negative.

"I don't know about the fastest route," she says, leaning over to speak into Daniel's comm, "but there's a gazebo at the edge of the station - right in front of the stairs, you can't miss it - with an elevator inside. There might be a short wait at the moment, though, seeing as we're using it right now. Were you wanting to tag along?"

[Arcran]

"Well at least he isn't mooching a ride then," Laishe mutters, leaving his ship and making his way towards the elevator, watching the two security guards as he walks away.

"May as well," Laishe states in response to Caprice's question. "Sooner we finish this job the sooner we live like kings."

[Queen Sapes]

Laishe:
"You want this beauty filled up while you're out?" Stevis asks Laishe as he begins walking away. "I can get some of our mates on it, maybe even polish some windows on top out of charity? Shouldn't take more than an hour to fully fuel and get'cha on your ways," Stevis offers, pulling out his little device to calculate the cost.

Everyone Else:
The team stands on the platform, the elevator partially lowered down to the jungle floor. Though the elevator had only been going a couple of seconds, its floor was already a good foot below the underside of the spaceport, and through the gap they could see the jungle below. It was relatively still, the darkness caused by the mass of metal overhead limiting plant growth and discouraging animals from exploring there. Only a few massive leaves ruffled in the light breeze, making everything appear peaceful enough. Even so, the darkness of the area made it a little eerie, and it wasn't helped as the spaceport creaked and groaned above a little.

[Arcran]

"Fuel, yes. Windows, thanks but no thanks," Laishe says, double checking that all the various security systems were currently in place.

"If you could point me towards the elevator to the floor I'll be out of your way," the pilot quickly adds, doing a third (and definitely not final) check on the security systems.

[Quellian-dyrae]

Daniel lowered the elevator the rest of the way, and once it had reached the floor, he and Heather stepped off. Their eyes glowed with a soft blue light that would strip away the shadows, as well as detecting the presence of magic, illusions, and supernatural creatures. They looked eagerly around the thick woods.

[Eshkigal]

As they land, Scrap drifts apart, beginning to look around for the tracks or signs of wildlife. May as well make this interesting, right?

[The_Snark]

Caprice's mind is on other things as they descend into the tenebrous depths of the jungle. Fantastic vistas brimming with alien life and the lure of the unknown, yes, yes, she's seen all that before. There's one on every world. No, what concerns her is this Ray fellow. So he's got a grudge against the Arcturans; all right, perfectly understandable, she can't hold that against him. Except... Scrap and the twins talked about her distance family as if he had a personal problem with them. That's less innocuous. That implies a history, and Caprice considers it good policy to stay at least two degrees of separation from her family at all times. Friends, enemies, business partners... much safer if she keeps her distance.

Unfortunately, the only person on this crew with any talent for subterfuge is also the one who doesn't know a Colosar Ray. Pity. After a bit of calculation, she reaches out to the twins. ~Sorry to interrupt the sightseeing, darlings, but is there anything I ought to know about your friend's history with my family? You made it sound like there was something personal there, I'd hate to put a foot wrong... ~

[Quellian-dyrae]

~I mean, we don't know the whole story.~

~I think he used to work, uh, for one of the other princes or princesses?~

~But eventually left their employ for reasons we're not entirely clear on.~

~Something something irreconcilable differences of opinion?~

~With a side of severe ethical conflicts, I believe.~

~But we're given to understand that's kinda, you know, normal for the other Arcturan royals.~

[The_Snark]

~Normally, people with inconvenient scruples avoid working for them in the first place, but I take your point. How touchy is he? Is he going to bite my head off if I ask questions?~

Out loud, Caprice wonders, "Should we send the elevator back up so Laishe can join us?"

[Quellian-dyrae]

~He never struck me as particularly touchy.~

~And he's a scientist and all, so like, how touchy can he be about questions, right? That'd be kinda hypocritical and stuff.~

~Yeah. It's us wizards who have the lock on learning all kinds of mysterious stuff and not revealing any of it unless we absolutely have to.~

~Darn right. Niche protection, and all that.~

The telepathic sendings came with a clear mental sensation of amusement.

Daniel nodded to the verbal suggestion, and if/when everyone was off, he'd telekinetically push the lever to send the lift back up.