[SWSE] Dawn of Defiance: Legacy (IC)

[Greymane]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPZWF-IlgjM

It has been nearly a year since the end of the terrible Clone Wars. Much of the galaxy is still reeling in turmoil from the conflict, but the New Order has risen from the corpse of the Republic under Emperor Sheev Palpatine, and promises to bring order and stability to the ailing galaxy- no matter the cost.



http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/5/5f/YV-929_light_freighter.png/revision/latest?cb=20150213010651

The red, lit display of the sensor array stared back at Coal, for a solid ten seconds, the only noise in the cockpit was the scratchy sound of Janik rubbing his bearded chin as he stood next to Coal. Then it happened. The sensor display dimmed, flickered, and then brightened back up again in the span of a second. In another ten seconds, the process repeats. "Yep. Somethin's not right." At that, the dome-shaped head of the RX-series pilot droid turned to the left with an electronic whir to look at the pair. "Master Janik, droids are incapable of prevarication. In the future, if you would simply take my reports at face value and act immediately, perhaps we wouldn't have intermittent system failures." The older captain just scoffed and rolled his eyes. "Quiet, Crash, I don't want to hear it." Crash then turned his attention to the stars outside the cockpit, his vocabulator making a long, descending electronic whir in mimicry of a sigh. "Then in the future I'll keep silent, we'll have a systems failure, you will die from asphyxiation, and I will no longer have anyone to humiliate in dejarik while I wait for this dead ship to be pulled into the nearest star."

It's been roughly a month since you redeemed your mark with Janik, and while you've been with him he's put you to work on his ship, a Corellian Engineering YV-929 light freighter called the Banshee, as a sorely needed mechanic during this time. You were told he would take you as far as Brentaal IV, as it was getting harder by the day for those in Janik's illustrious profession to conduct business closer to the Core. Alongside Janik, the only other company on your trip has been his copilot. An RX-series droid named Crash that handles piloting during resting hours, and has gone long enough without a memory wipe as to develop a rather caustic personality.

Janik turned to look at Coal."What do you think, kid? Power coupling problem? Or mynocks? We're going to be docking on Brentaal's station soon, and I don't want to stick around longer than I need to drop you off." A wry smile slowly formed on his face. "No offense, but I doubt I'd pass a customs check."



http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/0/07/Jedi_shuttlebus.png/revision/latest?cb=20130212041613

The sound of a wailing child filled the public area with its shrill cries, accented with the occasional gurgling hiccup-like noise. It must've been an aquatic race. The chatter of the various people inside the large passenger cabin kept going regardless, or maybe because of, the noise. The cabin was filled to capacity of fifty and then some, and the stench of many disparate people in a small space had become very apparent after only a few minutes into the flight. A very large, scarred, and constantly scowling Weequay dressed in the garb of an engineer bellows from the seat to the left of you. "Shut that brat up!" The crying continued, while the deveronian to your right seems to be futilely attempting to sleep by placing his elbow on an armrest, with the side of his cheek lazily resting in his palm. A tour-guide droid, seemingly programmed for the job of stewardess, walked down an aisle, offering beverages of suspect origin to passengers, a smiling face still plastered on his view-screen visage.

This is just one of many transports you have taken to constantly stay on the move and hidden. While your choice of transports has always been the ones that were nearly filled to capacity, maybe to hide within all of that life, you have noticed some interesting developments while you've been traveling. There have been more and more aliens on these transports. Displaced by Imperial edict, or looking for work outside the Core, and often both.

"Fierfek, can you believe this?" Says the weequay, motioning his hands in Ylva's direction. "If they're going to pack us like this into these tin cans, the least they could do is not charge us an arm and a leg for the privilege of listening and smelling this poodu for an entire trip."

The sound of the pilot droid's voice sparked out of the intercom riddled with static. "Good morning passengers of Airbus 4X-395, this is your pilot speaking, and I'm pleased to inform you that we will be arriving over Brentaal IV on Sel-Zonn station within the hour."

The exhausted deveronian mutters under his breath. "Finally."

[Dent-2020]

Coal peered out the faulty viewscreen, and watched the sensor array play through its routine of dimming and pulsing bright again for another few loops. That's what it reminded him of, he realized; it looked like a looped holovid, the way that Alban and his followers used to trick surveillance probes and droids to conceal their movements through areas that were out of bounds. He tried to shake off the nagging certainty at the back of his skull that this was something similar - that the sensor array had somehow been tampered with, so they wouldn't see something that needed seeing. But that was absurd, he told himself. It was foolish to keep thinking about his problems the way he would have back home. Useless. Worse than useless.

Ye're out in the real world now, act like it, he told himself.

So, mynocks, or a problem with the power coupling. And Janik didn't want to end up grounded with a bad array.

"Ye want I should step out and ha'e a look?" He considered dubiously whether Janik kept his enviro suits in any better repair than he kept his sensors and droids. "Might be as we can fix her 'fore ever setting down on Brenny-whatsit."

If he was honest with himself, he didn't really love the idea of tinkering about on the outside of the ship with naught but a thin layer of cloth and plast to keep him alive - something about staring into the great void out there always made him feel a bit dizzy, and he was troubled by the alarming sensation that he was going to be sucked out. But, the thought of Janik or his ship being placed in jeopardy on his behalf was simply unacceptable, so he tried to settle the slightly queasy feeling in his stomach through pure force of will. Sometimes things just needed doing.

[Redshaw]

Breathing in and then out. In, in, out, out.

The air was rotten, the din was cacophonous, the seat may as well have been made of unprocessed carbon, it felt like half the population of Coruscant was packed in here. No amount of circular breathing was going to bring Ylva closer to being one with her center under these conditions. Meditation was already tricky for her, even under the best of conditions.

Ylva turned her head slightly when the weequay addressed her and he'd find that she had little in the way of either words or even expression to contribute to the conversation. A pair of emotionless amber eyes open under the shade of a cotton hood, the rest of her face covered by a similarly cotton mask, the same washed out brown as her hood and cloak.

Although she didn't speak, she shared in both the irritation and the relief expressed by her more vocal neighbor, just as glad to be off this floating trash compactor. Brentall IV was hardly a sanctuary for her - nowhere would be - but it was far enough from both the core and Almas that she might be able to lower her guard slightly. If only for a few days at least.

She'd been suspicious of her own shadow for months now, waiting for Him to show up. Her eyes closed as she visibly winced. Even the passing thought of him was enough to send a chill down her spine and forcibly recall the worst moments of her life in painful detail; the screams of a suffering Master For'deschel, the red glow of a lightsaber in an otherwise pitch black hole in the ground, His gravelly, forceful tone of voice...

An electrified flash of pain ran from her still-healing facial wounds to her brain.

Ylva shook her head free of the thoughts and swallowed the pain, to return to her circular breathing. She might not be able to concentrate enough to enter a true meditation regiment here in the flying deathtrap, but at least she had something else to focus on with the breathing routines. Enough to pass another hour, at least. In, in, out, out...

[Greymane]

Janik furrowed his bushy brow at the young man's query. "Ya know, that'd be a good idea. We're not in Hyperspace right now, and assuming the problem isn't somethin' fierce, we should have it fixed before the next jump." The man leans back and rests a hand on the back of the captain's chair, tapping his fingers while a pensive look glazes his face. He lightly snorts with a grin. "Probably for the best, we don't want to run into an asteroid while we're out here." Crash pipes up at the comment. "Unlikely. The odds of a collision with an asteroid are sixty three thousand to one. If we factor in my capability to detect gravitational shifts, the integer becomes one in eight hun-" Janik bellows a retort quckly at Crash. "We get it, you're a droid, we know you can calculate that while powered down. Just make sure the coordinates for the next jump are in the Nav." Janik turns towards Coal and continues, while Crash mutters things under his breath in what sounds like Huttese. "If you're up for taking a Walk, kid, the suits are in the closet next to the airlock, or the parlor under the table. " He pauses for a moment, then snaps his fingers and his face lights up. "Heck, you could use some more Zero Grav experience, you've been grounded most of your life. It'd be good for you to have it under your belt if you're going to find work out there." Janik eyes Coal expectantly.

The weequay doesn't seem to miss a beat at Ylva's silence, and continues speaking nonetheless. "At least when I was on Coruscant-" He stops and clears his throat, adding an indignant tone to his next sentence. "Excuse me, Imperial Center. At least there I had a good job at the plant, a nice hole in the wall that was all mine, and I was even going to ask Teela out sometime." He stares out the nearest window with farsighted gaze on his face, then grumbles under his breath. "But hey, those bucket head clones aren't only good for fighting wars, they're just great at stomping eviction pads into your face." His next exhalation comes out in forced frustration, then he mutters quietly under his breath. "Maybe those CIS folks were onto something..."

The din of noise near the back of the air bus grows a little louder, the crying getting more insistent, and some deep-voiced person yelling. The weequay lightly nudges Ylva's shoulder. "So where you from? Hiding like that, I'm gonna guess Umbara. I went there with the GAR, y'know, dark and creepy place that one. I was there to help regul-" The lithe deveronian man on the other side of you holds up his right hand in a gesture of protest and interrupts the weequay, his bloodshot eyes narrowing. "Qurs, please, you talked my ear off earlier, give this one a break. I don't think they want to hear your life story." the red-skinned horned man offers Ylva a sympathetic smile. "Right?"

[Redshaw]

Ylva adjusted her arms, refolding her hands across her lap and furrowing her brow as the weequay's endless ramblings tests her concentration. She glanced at him blankly as he mentioned Courscant.

How different would her life have been if she'd been like the other thousands of jedi apprentices, and trained in the traditional temple at the center of the galaxy. Most likely dead, in point of fact, but then again... would that be so bad? To have died on some nameless planet and become one with the Force with the rest of her kin sounded like a lovely alternative to the past year of constant anxiety and uncertainty. Closing her eyes, she banished the thought. Besides it being a pointless line of reasoning, thoughts like that were gateways to the dark side.

She'd learned to suppress It, the creature in the bracelet. Mostly. But it was a leech and it fed on the moments when her mind turned toward darker thoughts. Her only weapons against that were constant vigilance and self-awareness. Exhaling through the nose, she closed her eyes once more in a renewed attempt to find her center and seal out the distractions... only for Qurs the weequay to spoil the attempt before it even began. She found momentary relief at the Devaronian's admonishment of her verbal assailant, though that evaporated all too quickly. At least the weequay didn't seem to care that she didn't respond; this one was more direct.

She nodded her head, curtly, in the Devaronian's direction, giving neither approval nor disapproval. Merely an acknowledgment of his existence.

Then it occured to her that there might be something worthwhile hidden in the barrage of complaints. She'd not been to Coruscant in all her time since Order 66 and what little she had heard of it came from government-controlled news outlets. She spoke quietly, voice muffled through the cloth mask. "I've been on the rim for awhile. What news from Coruscant then?"

[Dent-2020]

Coal took a slow breath through his teeth to calm the sudden queasy feeling in his stomach and forced an impish grin across his narrow face. "Under the parlor table? What, d'ye like tae keep them close at hand should ye want to take an evening constitutional?" He teased the older spacer, then muscled his way past Janik's bulk in the cramped cockpit and headed down the narrow corridor to the main body of the ship.

He checked the closet next to the airlock first and was unsurprised to find it empty save for a few lonely-looking items; a pair of heavy boots with what appeared to be acid burns eating through the soles, a heavy coat lined with the fur of some beast that didn't appear to be particularly soft, but was certainly hardy, and a large med-pack which, upon inspection, was missing half of its supplies. Coal felt some of his unease bleed over into irritation and tried to remind himself that Janik was a man wo had successfully played both ends against the middle for nearly a decade - that he'd not only survived the war, but thrived. In the scheme of things, there were probably few places in the galaxy that were safer than by his side.

The parlor was more fruitful. There was an envirosuit crumpled dejectedly into a ball and wedged against the bulkhead on the molded bench seat of the table, almost as though someone had returned from a spacewalk and proceeded to use it as a pillow while they napped. Coal unwadded the fabric and eyed the seals at collar and cuffs dubiously, then gave a thorough inspection to the fabric body, searching for any obvious tears or sources of weakness. Then, he shimmied into the suit. Like everything else of Janik's, it hung from Coal's smaller frame like a coat on a hanger. The lower portion was too long in the crotch, and tended to trip him any time he tried to take a long step. The boots, once sealed to the legs, felt like he was walking around with large buckets attached to his feet. He ended up having to wad an extra pair of socks into the toes of each just to keep his feet in place. That done, though, they seemed to work alright. He wrapped his utility belt around his hips to carry his tools and help keep the lower portion of the suit up, which helped the fit a bit. He sealed the helmet in place and connected his gloves last. With the suit completely sealed, his breath began to fog the transparisteel of the helmet visor. Coal activated the life support systems of the suit, feeling the cool jet of air on his face with some relief as the suit pressurized around him. He watched the sensor readout for any pressure leak, and checked that the gas mixture being bled in from the oxygen and nitrogen canisters on his belt was healthy for his species.

1d20+5

Okay, GitP doesn't like that I added in the die roll on an edit, I think. I got the roll to work on the OoC forum. Came out 20 after the mod.

[Greymane]

Janik does his best to mirror Coal's grin. "You get boarded, sometimes you can't get to the main airlock. Pays to be prepared, kid." The rotating head of Crash wirrs around from peering at the stars, and he speaks with a tone dripping with sarcasm. "Do be careful, master Sere. I understand this is completely routine, and the task is simple, but there is still a 1.666666% chance you could die tragically from a suit or ship malfunction in the void of space."

Upon checking for any malfunctions or glaring problems with the suit, Coal finds that it's in particularly excellent shape. It's not pretty, and it's certainly too large, but the suit itself is not compromised, and the life support is functioning properly. The battery life indicates it is not fully charged, but it could safely withstand the vacuum of space for at least four hours.

The devaronian continues smiling, and offers a nod in return, but at her inquiry to the talkative weequay, he scrunches his face as though he'd been stung. The weequay let's out a boisterous chuckle and looks at the deveronian. "Y'see Raran? She's a good sort who just wants a chat!" The man now known as Raran shakes his head and waves his hand dismissively at Qurs. "Don't mind me, just trying to keep your voice from narrating our thoughts for the rest of the week." The talkative weequay waves his hand in a mocking manner back to him, but quickly turns his attention back to Ylva. "It's just all wrong these days, cheeka-" He stops for a brief moment, "Oh, my name is Qurs, by the way, that's Raran." He pauses for only a brief second before continuing. "Like I said, lots of kicking us out. If you're on the upper levels, welcome to Taris 2.0, because it's off-world or to the slums with ya, unless you got friends in the right places. Like that umbaran cheeka that's always with the chancellor-" He clears his throat, adding a mocking tone to it, "Excuse me, Emperor." The last word dripping with disdain.

"It's no longer a home for all of us." Qurs grimly eyes the rabble of people crammed into the airbus. "Seems to be turning that way on most planets in the core. Back in the d-" The weequay is cut off, the sounds of yelling and baby wails intensify from the back of the airbus, and a plasteel drinking mug slams into the back of his head. He looks more surprised than hurt, as he goes to rub his head, then he gets an angered look on his face, and he stands up to turn to the cup's origin. "Hey! Watch what you're doing, stupas!"

At the back of the airbus, a hulking figure is waving his massive forearms menacingly at a much smaller, terrifed nautolan man with blue skin, who is standing between the giant and a female nautolan holding a crying baby. The hairless bone-ridged skull, sunken beady eyes, and large physique mark the larger man as a houk. "I said shut that brat up! I haven't slept at all since the trip started!" The tour-guide droid moves towards the two, and attempts to intervene, but has a huge meaty fist shoved into its view-screen face and promptly falls over. "I am apologies, but no good ma'an, no happy child! Min fadlik 'iifhim!" the nautolan explains in a panicked tone over broken Basic and his native tongue. He his rewarded with a large fist grabbing his throat.

Raran puts his hands on his head and bends down in the direction of his lap. "...Not my problem, not my problem..." He mutters to himself.

[Redshaw]

Ylva keeps a neutral expression through the Weequay's narration. So things were as grim as she'd feared. There would be no home for her there. No home for her anywhere. A silent sigh escapes her masked lips as she tried not to think of her poorly outlook. She could feel the dark thoughts gnawing on the back of her mind. No point in looking for the jedi. No point in looking for a peaceful, quiet life. Better to just turn herself over. Better to take the easy path. Maybe they'd be kinder on her than if they caught her. Maybe she wouldn't suffer like last time...

Her thoughts are interrupted with the commotion arising in the back of the air bus. Her brown eyes flicker across the scene, absorbing the individuals involved and the complicated net of changing emotions. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up, but it didn't take a connection to the Force to know that something bad was going to happen. She sees Raran's response to the scene and feels a mixture of disgust and envy. It would be better for her to follow suit. Keep her business to herself, she had enough problems without dealing with others'.

A small curse runs across her lips as she stands up, hopping the barrier of chairs between her and the rampaging alien. As she approaches, she makes a gesture with her hands, trying to capture the attacker's attention and make eye contact. "Let him go! Calm down!" she commands, voice slightly muffled through the tight-hugging cloth. As she speaks, she reaches out toward his mind with the Force, seeking to encapsulate and cool down his thoughts.

Attempting to Suggest the opponent with a mindtrick. Expending a force point to improve the target's attitude by one step. The attitude also goes up one step for every 5 points by which my Use the Force check exceeds the target's Will Defense.

Use the Force: [roll0]

[Dent-2020]

The muffled whumpf of air leaving the airlock was digitally enhanced around him by the helmet's external sensors, and Coal had to fight the impulse to reflexively pop his ears, though of course there had been no pressure change within the suit.

No pressure change, and yet he stood surrounded by vaccuum. What a thought.

If his suit suddenly decompressed, he wondered if he would freeze, or explode, first. Or was it that his blood would boil in his veins and evaporate out his eyeballs? He thought he might have heard that somewhere too.

He took a tentative step, and did not freeze. Or explode.

"Alright. I'm heeded out. Dinna go anawhere wi'out me, an' ye please."

He grabbed a handhold at the side of the airlock and flipped himself out, boots and knees slipping along the icy metal until the suit's magnetic soles found some traction.

Slowly and deliberately, he pointed himself in the direction of the sensor array, and began to work his way forward across the cold metal carapace of the ship.

[Greymane]

Don't forget: That aspect of Mind Trick requires using a Force Point.

The packed airbus is awash in emotion. Disquiet, fear, uncertainty, and resentment. Ylva was reaching for the hottest element of the room, however; anger. Reaching out with the Force, she felt the houk's anger, his apprehension, and his uncertainty while trying to impress a new emotional state on him.

The houk looked at the smaller human girl approaching him, making demands of him, he clenched his other meaty fist until it was shaking in rage. The nautolan man edged out a choking noise, while his feet dangled helplessly, as the houk had raised him off the ground. His beady gaze was transfixed on Ylva, and his expression was twisted into a almost feral snarl. For a brief moment, it felt like the entire airbus was still, and on the verge of a precipice, daring to go over the edge into a tempest.

The behemoth houk un-clenched his fist and dropped the nautolan man to the ground, who proceeded to gasp for breath and scramble away to his mate. The giant glowered at Ylva. "Then you do something about it! Too many of us in here, and none of us can sleep while that baatu baatu cries!" He points at the wailing child, where the mother tries to desperately soothe it by speaking softly to it in her native tongue.

"Wouldn't dream of it, kid." Janik's voice rang out. "Who else would fix this ol' girl?" There was a grin in his tone.

Silence. Silence was what met Coal in the dark void. He couldn't even hear the sound from the magnetized boots clomping down onto the surface of the ship. The only thing to remind him that sounds was still a sense, was his breathing, and when he would crane his neck to look around, and his skin rubbed along the fabric of the suit. The light from a nearby red dwarf star allowed him to move without the need to use lights, illuminating the port side and the top of the ship in a soft crimson glow.

After the minor oddity of walking up a ship's hull and onto the top of it, it doesn't take long to locate the sensor array. The polyhedral shape of a Kuat Drive Yards Sensor dome sat nicely on the top of the ship. You recognize the model, though you've never seen one small enough to fit on anything but a capital ship. The wires and lines beneath it appear to crossed about in a natty mess, some some sort of webbing or debri caught up inside and around it.

[Redshaw]

Ylva felt a wash of relief course through her as the large creature releases its anger, for the moment, at least. But that did not mean she was out of the woods yet. The thug had quickly eroded through her patience and she returned its complaints with her own, "Perhaps the young, scared baatu baatu will stop wailing when the older, larger baatu baatu stops terrorizing its neighbors and threatening its mother!" She jabs a finger directly at the alien's chest, taking a strict tone of admonishment that her master used to discipline younglings like no other. "We're all tired. We're all crowded. But you're the only one incapable of a little decency."

It wasn't a tone designed to incite more violence or aggression, but rather to surprise and put on the defensive. Then again, Ylva was never very talented with words. With the houk appropriately scolded, the young woman turns to face the mother and crying child. To be fair, the nautolan's shrieks pierced the moisture-deprived air in a way no human babe could. Without asking permission, Ylva's plucks a glove off her hand, revealing dusky, callused skin, and places the palm across the babe's forehead. Humming quietly, a tune her caretaker droid serenaded younglings with years ago, the kiffar reached out with the Force to attune with the babe's thoughtless emotions, attempting to create an empathic link. The feel the child's innocent terror at the alien sights, sounds. Even the atmosphere itself was uncomfortable. She sought to soothe these with thoughts of warm baths and flowery smells.

Without spending a force point this time.

[roll0]

[Dent-2020]

"Think I've found the source of our troubles, Janik," Coal relayed over the comms, peering dimly at the tangle of cables and debris, trying to wrap his mind around the mess in front of him. "An' I had to name it, I'd say we've a hitchhiker so to speak. There's somethin' gathrin wee bits and weaving them about under the sensor array. Has Crash noticed aught wrong with any other systems?"

He projected a white light from his helmet to afford a better view of the array and squinted into the net of webbing, trying to identify whether any of the pieces of detritus suspended within looked familiar. Janik's ship being the only object in the vicinity, Coal could only reason that the bits and pieces before him had to have been stripped from the ship itself. Which rather begged the question, he realized, what sort of creature had the manual strength to harvest material from the hull of a ship? Was this its... nest? He scanned the area around him abruptly, half expecting to discover some multi-appendaged fanged behemoth creeping up behind him.

He wracked his brain - he'd heard of mynocks, of course, and certainly seen the damage they could do to a power coupling, but had he ever heard of anything that left behind a mushy secretion like this?

(Checking to see if I can recognize whether the collected debris is derived from other areas of Janik's ship, or is foreign material)

[roll0]

(Checking to see if I notice an animal anywhere on the hull near me)

[roll1]

(Checking if I've heard of any common ship pests that build webs of stuff, pack-rat style)

[roll2]

[Greymane]

The houk instinctually throws his arms up in an unknowing shrug as soon as Ylva forces the accusing finger into his barrel-like chest, now speaking in a defensive tone. "There's only so much any person can take!" He shakes his head and grumbles as she walks away from him and towards the nautolan family. "Maybe it's because you humans don't hear so good." He folds his arms. "You sure are good at telling us what to do."

The nautolan mother, while initially flinching at your approach, does not pull her child away, but does look at you in what you can surmise is an expression of both curiosity and thankfulness.

I wouldn't require a roll for this normally. Better safe than sorry, though, with the setup of posts.

You can immediately feel the emotion tumult that is the baby's emotional state. There is a lack of understanding at its current situation, and all the new stimuli, and it is quite frightened. Your ability with the force easily allows you to understand this, and make impressions of your own. The child lessens its screeching almost instantly. It briefly coos, and then goes to a soft whimper. The mother and father look at you with wonder in their large, dark eyes. The houk tilts his head and his beady eyes go wide.

"Well why didn't you do that sooner!?" He exclaims incredulously, while throwing his arms up once again. He marches back to his seat, grumbling more under his breath. "...pid human... good with kids... let... suffer..."

There is a hefting of something heavy, as Qurs, now out of his seat, lifts the sucker-punched droid off the ground and onto its feat. It happily asks him if he would like to know more about Brentaal IV. He keeps a guarded look and stance towards the houk.

Your first instinct being to investigate the natted mess under the sensor array, you examine it closely. There is a mix of some blue-ish organic material that seems to be holding the rest of the debris together. As for the contents of the rest of the debris, you can tell that it's a mixture of small pieces of the ship, and space detritus; red rock, dust, and ice.

Janik's voice crackles back into the suit's speaker. "We've had power drain, but we've missed our last few maintenance checks, so it was in line with that. Nothing too overt. Crash says it's been handling in atmo like a drunk savrip, though." And on queue, you notice pieces of engine flaps in the mess under the array. "Didn't notice anything out of the ordinary until the array started actin' up."

While the burning thought of maybe a living creature having done this was fast at the front of Coal's mind, he couldn't think of anything that could be responsible for it. While keeping a keen eye out for the would-be hitchhiker, Coal notices that part of the debris isn't debris at all. Crouched against the 'nest' is a small winged creature, roughly the size of a mynock, it has sickly purple-hued skin that blends in with its surroundings, an agape, fanged mouth, and two clawed appendages. It looks ready to pounce.

Roll initiative.