The Long Road (RP-related shorts)

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dalolorn
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Re: The Long Road (RP-related shorts)

Post by dalolorn »

Plot summary for "Twists and Turns":
Twists and TurnsSPOILER_SHOW
As soon as Dyr was deposited in his holding cell, Fennla engaged the ex-Imperial in a brief conversation. Despite the gravity of the situation, the Twi'lek seemed quite amused by the circumstances, teasing Feonn about his belief that he would be executed for treason and his getting captured over information that the Empire already had. The two traded barbs for a little longer, each expressing their belief that they had a better cause to give their life to than the other side.

Meanwhile, Zorren had briefed Bleras on the situation. Without Rebel assistance, they could do very little to rescue Fennla - either she would last long enough for them to find help, or she would die. More importantly, this chain of events had likely attracted a great deal of additional attention from the Imperials, so they resolved to find a different name.

Zorren chose a history lesson - the Dragonet's next alias would be the "Ebon Hawk". Reasoning that an Imperial governor may present a tempting target to the Alliance, he attempted to make contact with a Rebel near Tatooine, instructing him to rendezvous with Bleras in Anchorhead.
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dalolorn
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Re: The Long Road (RP-related shorts)

Post by dalolorn »

Oh, the joys of a desert wanderer finding herself on a water planet...

You would think that, wouldn't you? :P
Minor TimeskipSPOILER_SHOW
In a peculiar twist of fate, both Dyr and Fennla were released from custody without any lasting injuries. After Jaxon interrogated him using a mixture of drugs and Force powers to probe into his mind - an event that was subsequently stripped from the captain's memory - Dyr was pardoned on the condition that he return to active duty in the Savareen garrison.

Governor Novastar's interrogation of Fennla was far less unpleasant, albeit much more memorable. Initially, the Twi'lek applied her usual stubborn approach to the matter. For starters, 'unpleasant electrical shocks' were about the only common element between that and Dyr's much more aggressive attempts at getting her to talk*, and her belief that she was going to be executed once the Imperials knew what they wanted wasn't helping, either.

Had she not voiced that belief fairly early on, it is entirely possible that she would never have left the garrison alive.

Thankfully, she voiced that belief fairly early on. Novastar quickly persuaded her otherwise, and - knowing that she didn't know anything useful anyway - Fennla told him everything she knew. The governor - not entirely inaccurately - believed her to be little more than a misguided, impressionable child who happened to have made friends with the wrong people. Consequently, she was released, on the condition that until her 18th birthday, she would report to a COMPNOR office every 30 days and keep them informed of her travel activity. She would also be monitored to ensure that she wouldn't make contact with her Rebel friends.

After spending a brief period in Savareen - and, to her surprise, getting some money and free advice from the bouncer who'd captured her - Fennla was taken in by a man called Harrison Jones. The two of them went on a brief and mildly painful** hunting trip, then headed to Naboo.

At first, they roamed the wilderness around Keren, attempting to apprehend a Gungan criminal and shopping for gear, but later they returned to Harrison's house on the beach east of Kaadara. There, Harrison managed to convince Fennla to join him in the sea, trying to teach her how to swim. This did not go well - while she was initially managing to stay afloat, a wave splashed into the Twi'lek's face and she panicked. Claiming she was tired, Fennla rushed back ashore; after that, nothing noteworthy happened until nightfall.

All in all, there were several things about that first day that disturbed the Twi'lek. Firstly, her attempt to talk their Gungan target down was met by a preemptive shot from Harrison. Next, they'd had a discussion in Keren where Harrison openly told her he didn't trust anyone, even her - a discussion which was closed with her earnestly assuring the human that she wouldn't betray him. Finally, there was the lie she told to get out of the water. As night came, this last one troubled Fennla the most.

Meanwhile on Tatooine, Zorren's Rebel lead had turned out to be a dead end, leaving Bleras with very little to do.

Notes/Comments

* - Mind you, Dyr wasn't going to crank it up to lethal levels, which was an extreme but possible outcome in Septimus' variant.

** - Fennla was headbutted by a torton. Tossed her back a few meters and knocked her out, but she recovered soon enough.
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Last edited by dalolorn on Tue Oct 31, 2017 8:04 am, edited 2 times in total.
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dalolorn
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Re: The Long Road (RP-related shorts)

Post by dalolorn »

Plot summary for "Dihydrogenous Complications". This took a lot longer than I expected... :|
Dihydrogenous ComplicationsSPOILER_SHOW
During her first night on Naboo, Fennla was upset. She couldn't change what had happened during the day, but she wanted to change the way she reacted to water so that at least one of those things wouldn't happen again.

To this end, she snuck out of the house, carrying her swimsuit with her. She easily sliced the garage doors and took a speeder into the sea as quietly as she could, until she reached a depth at which she was confident she couldn't accidentally cheat by standing on the floor, then slowly lowered herself into the water.

Her floating exercise had gone well enough. Half an hour after she started, Fennla tried to get back onto the speeder, only to find that she'd accidentally pushed herself away from it. She didn't dare risk making a fatal mistake while trying to swim, which meant she was stuck there. Still hoping she'd find a way to return without alerting Harrison - and unable to ask for his help anyway - the Twi'lek did everything she could to stay afloat as long as possible.

Cold and exhausted, she managed to last until morning, when an oblivious Harrison walked out of the house. Fennla was too tired to call for help, so she tried splashing instead; Harrison thought the splashes were from playing children, though, and didn't pay it any attention. It took virtually all of the Twi'lek's remaining strength to splash out a distress signal, and by the time she passed out from exhaustion, the human had almost reached her.

Rushing into back into the house, Harrison quickly revived Fennla. Once he was satisfied that she was out of danger, Fennla weakly asked to go back to her room, where she spent most of the day sleeping.

A few days later, a bored Fennla would make another attempt at improving her floating skills while Harrison was out in Kaadara. She was ready this time - she'd taken a comlink with her, and she was quite careful about being able to reach the speeder when she wanted to get back ashore. After about an hour of this, a sudden rush of curiosity prompted the Twi'lek to call Harrison and find out what he was doing. The revelation that Fennla was in the water again didn't seem to worry him too much, but she decided to get out of the water and take a break anyway.

This did not go all that well. When Fennla tried to pull herself up onto the speeder, the part she was holding on to snapped off, dropping her back into the water and leaving her unable to get out. At first, she struggled to stay afloat after her landing - however, she quickly managed to stabilize her position and calm down, followed by somewhat embarrassedly calling Harrison for help.

When Harrison arrived, he instructed Fennla to swim ashore on her own, something she was still unwilling to attempt. Regardless of her objections, he remained unwilling to outright rescue the Twi'lek, but was soon persuaded to come closer in case she made an otherwise fatal mistake. No such mistake occurred, however, and while she would not attempt to dive in the near future, by the end of the day Fennla had gained a reasonable degree of confidence in her ability to float and swim.
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Re: The Long Road (RP-related shorts)

Post by dalolorn »

Plot summary for "Sensitivity":
SensitivitySPOILER_SHOW
With Zorren's duplicates scouring the galaxy for the cloning equipment they required, and the plan to attack Savareen failing to get off the ground, there was very little for Bleras to do. It didn't take long for Zorren and Maennia to decide that this was an ideal moment to investigate how Bleras' family obtained the map to Maennia's location.

To that end, they convinced the reluctant smuggler to return to his family home on Tatooine and search the premises. After a few hours of searching, he recovered a holocron and returned to the ship, where they found that it was left there by Bleras' ancestor, Arrom. Begging the viewer to assume his family's role, the recording explained the circumstances under which Arrom had buried Maennia, and indicated that he and his descendants had been stripping their children of the Force until they were old enough to understand what they had to do.

When the recording ended, Zorren deduced that Bleras was the first of his line to have absolutely no awareness of the map or his Force sensitivity, and that the smuggler would grow more powerful over time - in time, even powerful enough to be trained as a Jedi.
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dalolorn
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Re: The Long Road (RP-related shorts)

Post by dalolorn »

Plot summaries for "Searching for a Path" and "Chain of Misdirection". They're pretty short, both of them.
Searching for a PathSPOILER_SHOW
After a few days of trying to sort things out, Fennla decides the only way to really figure out what she wants to do with her life is to get away from Harrison for a while. Wanting to avoid a long goodbye, and partly worried that he might try to stop her, she decided to sneak out of the house in the middle of a night, taking a small share of the credits they'd earned together and her old clothes, and leaving behind a recording explaining why she'd left.

Within half an hour of making her decision, she was no longer in the house.
Chain of MisdirectionSPOILER_SHOW
After Fennla's departure from Harrison's home, Zorren decided to take action. Before Harrison had even noticed the Twi'lek's message - or, indeed, realized she was gone - he had already been contacted by the AI, under the alias "Grathan". Grathan claimed to have kidnapped Fennla, and told him he would hand her over to Harrison in the Kaadara cantina, if he promised to look after a friend of his.

Unknown to everyone except Zorren, the friend in question was Fennla herself - after making the arrangements with Harrison, 'Grathan' called a public holoterminal near the Twi'lek's location. Convincing her to take a message to an associate of his in the cantina, a man going by the name "Jones", he ensured that she would be in the cantina at the right time to meet with Harrison.

During the conversation that followed, she deduced that Grathan was in fact Zorren - after they discussed the matter for a while*, she decided to return with Harrison to his house.

* - I don't remember the details of the conversation, though. :|
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Re: The Long Road (RP-related shorts)

Post by dalolorn »

Setting up for the cloning arc... I loved that one, it pulled all of my various characters (minus Felbaar, poor guy) together for a massive 5-post (6 if we count flashbacks) storyline. Unfortunately, it also killed Dyr, steadily setting the stage for my departure from Basilisk. (It was hard enough to get actual RP when I played both sides of the war, actively pushing my characters to the forefront... without him, I was essentially stuck.)
Another Pathetic TimeskipSPOILER_SHOW
For the most part, things had finally started to settle into some measure of normality over the following weeks. Until Harrison left Naboo for a business trip, there was nothing remarkable going on in Fennla's life, and she was starting to get used to her new life.

Meanwhile in the Rishi Maze, Bleras and Zorren had finally found what they were looking for. Making contact with a small Rebel cell led by the greenish Mon Calamari Ghalluth, they discovered that Ghalluth's cell was in possession of a single Spaarti cylinder - insufficient for most meaningful purposes, but quite enough to bring Maennia back.

Ghalluth was eventually persuaded to grant the Dragonet crew access to the cylinder and one of his ships, the CR90 corvette 'Liberator', to create a mobile cloning facility that would keep Maennia's body and the cylinder safe until the clone was ready to be imprinted with her consciousness. Although Zorren was deeply involved in planning its every aspect, the project was also headed by a Zabrak couple: Doctor Imindil Lacert oversaw the cloning process, while the droid engineer Itheoto Thayer - brought onboard because of his expressed anti-Imperial sentiment and his romantic involvement with Lacert - would be in charge of assembling a new Sleeper implant.

What none of them knew, however, was that Thayer was in fact an agent working for Captain Feonn. The plan had been for Thayer to bring in a well-disguised Dyr to help work on the implant, reprogramming Zorren to turn Maennia into an Imperial operative. In reality, Dyr had been detained by the Inquisitors; his attempt to retrieve the Jedi's lightsaber from them, and his subsequent failure to convince them of the merits of the scheme, resulted in his imprisonment - but not before he could signal the Zabrak spy to go on without him. Feonn would later be brutally executed in his cell by Aleysia Nur, putting an end to his stubborn pursuit of the Dragonet crew.

His death, however, would not be the end of this particular operation...
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Re: The Long Road (RP-related shorts)

Post by dalolorn »

Whew, it's been a long time since I wrote any summaries...
Misdirected EvolutionSPOILER_SHOW
Back when he had been programmed, Zorren had been given two core directives which took precedence above all else:
  • Serve the Sith Empire and its ruler as efficiently as possible
  • Protect himself as well as possible without violating the first directive.
Five days into the cloning project aboard the Liberator, the AI concluded that these directives were both either invalid or unnecessary, and asked Thayer to take him offline and remove them. Unaware of Thayer's true loyalties, and using various loopholes to subvert all of his defense mechanisms, Zorren had unwittingly allowed the spy to complete his primary objective of depriving the AI of his freedom and turning him into a servant of the Empire.

After hours of work, Thayer succeeded in replacing Zorren's original directives with a similarly unstoppable drive to secretly obey the orders of Captain Feonn and anyone else who he had authorized to command him. He then gave him his first task: Protect him and Doctor Lacert, and do not otherwise interfere with the events that were to unfold - namely the outcome of injecting Maennia with a dose of the poison Dyr had received back on Dantooine - until she or one of her Rebel friends were killed.

Although he knew what the poison would do to Maennia, Zorren could do nothing to oppose his new masters. Silenced before he could finish voicing his objections to the plan, the only thing he could do now is watch as the Imperials drew ever closer to their final victory...
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Re: The Long Road (RP-related shorts)

Post by dalolorn »

When It Rains...SPOILER_SHOW
A couple of weeks after Itheoto Thayer had replaced Zorren's directives, Maennia's new body neared completion. Clone insanity was not deemed to be a problem, as the clone's mind would be completely overwritten before she first awakened - instead, Zorren had to worry about Thayer's plans. Instructed to release the Sith toxin into Maennia's bloodstream while she was being decanted, the AI tried once again to voice his objections, but remained unable to explain the problem - much less convince Thayer to stop it.

Luckily, Lacert's team was late. When the poison was released, triggering an involuntary reaction that shattered the cloning cylinder, Zorren hurriedly ordered the doctor to evacuate the ship. Before she fled, he explained that she was the only person he was allowed to shield from the effects of Maennia's madness, and that he was not allowed to interfere with the poison's effects.

After the ship was evacuated - all of its weapons and engines being sabotaged in a hurry while the clone remained locked in the lab - Imindil explained the situation to Bleras. Fearing the worst, he instructed the doctor to head to Naboo, and warn Fennla to stay away.

Little did they know that this warning would only serve to drive the Twi'lek back to Maennia's side...
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