The Long Road (RP-related shorts)

Write stories with friends. Open them up for anyone to participate, or for a set group of people. Either way everyone can enjoy the journey.

NOTE: All entries and replies are to be In Character. There is usually a comment thread in the Stories/Journal Comments forum for OOC comments and questions.
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dalolorn
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The Long Road (RP-related shorts)

Post by dalolorn »

Over the next several days, I'll be crossposting (and slightly rewriting) stories from the Basilisk incarnation of my characters in this thread. Once that's done, I'll put out a new story or two to set the scene for launch day.

Stories are sorted by intended reading order, and broken into more-or-less meaningful 'chapters' to make the list look a little nicer (not sure if it'll work out). I may at some point add a chronologically sorted list to this post as well.

Comments should be posted in this thread. Posting in this thread is allowed, but not encouraged.
IntroductionSPOILER_SHOW
The ScatteringSPOILER_SHOW
The RebuildingSPOILER_SHOW
  • Yet Another Timeskip
  • Unnecessary Risks
  • Hunters
  • Did I Mention 'Timeskip'?
  • Untimely Raid
  • Lock and Key
Path to the Stars (UNDERWAY)SPOILER_SHOW
  • Timeskips Are Boring
  • Liberator's Fall
  • The Final Timeskip... Hopefully
  • Nope, More Timeskip
  • Settling Down
  • One Does Simply Timeskip Into Agathon
  • Off to Agathon
  • Futile Efforts
  • There But for the Force
  • A Shadow Over Agathon
    • Part 1
    • Part 2
    • Part 3
The Sarcos Endeavour (concurrent with Path to the Stars)SPOILER_SHOW
These stories have a much looser structure than standard TLR fare does/will have, with the difference between timeskips and regular stories being drastically blurred. (The intervals between related entries are much shorter, though, and they don't follow people's lives as much as they record interesting events, so...)
  • Finalizing Plans
  • Cutting Losses
  • Sarcos Mission Briefing - Nalth Kaaru, Mission 47 (Storm Commandos in Agathon)
  • Communication Records - Transmissions Aurebesh 420-421 (The Force in Agathon)
  • Senator's Gambit
    • Part 1
    • Part 2
    • Part 3
Miscellaneous StoriesSPOILER_SHOW
  • A Secret is Unveiled
Last edited by dalolorn on Tue Dec 11, 2018 11:37 am, edited 24 times in total.
European RPer, occasionally dabbling in crafting and stuff.

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Re: The Long Road (RP-related shorts)

Post by dalolorn »

First post! :P
Example StorySPOILER_SHOW
Context/Synopsis

This is the example story. Therefore, it must explain the story format.
Blah blah blah, insert story box here (if any is ever developed).

The context section will typically include a brief summary of the events that prompted the story, if those events haven't already been explained in a more detailed 'Timeskip' post. It may or may not also contain a vague description of what's going to happen next.

NOTES/COMMENTS

Monologuing is fun. Yes, my dear spellchecker, that is a real word.
Example TimeskipSPOILER_SHOW
Time passed, things happened over the following months, etc.

NOTES/COMMENTS

Timeskips don't quite follow the rules for a story. They assume you've read the last story preceding them (in the case of the first 'Backstory' post, this assumption is meaningless :P) and that you will read the next story afterwards. They're basically just a way for me to quickly summarize long periods of ingame RP (because I've never covered those directly), or things that I wanted to write up - and included into the story - but never finished for various reasons.
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Re: The Long Road (RP-related shorts)

Post by dalolorn »

Ridiculously long? Naaah. :oops:
The Long, *Long* BackstorySPOILER_SHOW
A long time ago, in a galaxy not so far away...

Approximately 3665 years before the Battle of Yavin, the Great Galactic War was in full swing. For more than fifteen years, the Sith Empire has been locked in a devastating battle against the Galactic Republic. While the Empire's vast army struggled to push forward, it was the duty of Imperial Intelligence to find or create an opportunity to secure a decisive victory.

One project they initiated would create a new, if ultimately short-lived, ally from the scattered clans of Mandalore. A more long-term venture was the Sleeper project - an attempt at mimicking or even improving upon the Children of the Emperor through more predictable, scientific methods. By implanting a miniaturized artificial intelligence, subtle enough to avoid detection or damage to the host, but powerful and complex enough to be capable of interfacing with and controlling the host's brain, into a newborn child - preferably a Force sensitive - they believed they could create the perfect sleeper agent.

It would take months of hard work and an abundance of advanced alien technology to develop a working prototype. It would take the aid of a minor Sith Lord and incredible luck to find a suitable host, a human baby on the bustling moon of Nar Shaddaa. Born into a fairly unremarkable family in a place like that, the infant would likely go unnoticed by both sides of the conflict until Intelligence deemed her ready for field use. 'Sleeper X' would have ample time to adjust to his host, and to determine whether he was capable of performing his function as predicted.

The child, Maennia Belkar, was occasionally subtly guided away from more overt sources of danger, but mostly grew up without Sleeper's interference, fully unaware of the second mind she was sharing her head with. Whenever Sleeper forced her to make a decision, she believed it to be her own - for instance, when she chose to join Imperial Intelligence after witnessing a skirmish between an Intelligence operative and a few thugs on Nal Hutta in 3646 BBY. Naturally, this skirmish had been staged precisely to trigger such a response from the duo, and Maennia was unknowingly fast-tracked through training.

By 3644 BBY, she had participated in a string of what seemed to be catastrophic failures, setting the stage for Sleeper's primary mission; Sleeper himself had used the botched missions as a cover to conduct more important operations wherever they were sent, and was in fact responsible for her consistent lack of performance.

Finally, Maennia was sent on a suicide mission to assassinate the Jedi Master Matthew Auvinen Erelem. While Maennia only complied with it because she hoped the Jedi Master would give her a faster and less painful death than Intelligence seemed to have in mind for her, Sleeper and his supervisor were in fact counting on him to spare her life. It was a gamble, but it worked - Maennia stowed away aboard a ship bound for Tython and attacked the Jedi while he was meditating in the wilderness. Disarmed mid-charge by a simple Force push, the agent prepared to die - only to find herself confiding in the Jedi about the chain of events that she believed brought her there, and discovering her Force sensitivity when Sleeper caused her to 'accidentally' tip over a small rock and 'reflexively' stop it mid-fall. From there, the decision to become a Jedi came with very little encouragement from the AI.

Over the following months, Maennia was assigned to be the Padawan of Jedi Knight Ber-til Katarn*. All seemed well, and the young Padawan finally felt like she belonged somewhere. The two of them had even found a set of lightsaber crystals, to use when the time came for her to assemble her lightsaber. It would not last; she began having visions of a childhood friend being taken to be executed by Imperials, only to be rescued by a Jedi at the last second. She also had visions of herself in the same position, with nobody there to help her. Taking it as a sign that her friend had taken her place and needed her help, Maennia called in a favor from the Imperial agent Zorren Baltor**, who confirmed her fears. He warned of an attack on the Republic transport Esseles, telling her that her friend was currently held aboard the Emperor's Glory.

Unknown to either side of the conversation, this was a trap orchestrated to capture Maennia and anyone who assisted her, allowing Sleeper to be debriefed prior to being rescued from Imperial captivity. Regardless, Katarn was successfully persuaded not to warn the Esseles crew, and instead joined his Padawan in its defense, lending her a lightsaber that used to belong to one of his friends/his master***. The operation was mostly successful - however, as Imperial forces rushed into the hangar, Maennia urged Katarn not to wait for her, rightly believing that the delay would result in his capture.

For anyone else, this chain of events would have led to a painful death following Maennia's similarly painful interrogation on Dromund Kaas. Instead, after the interrogation was complete, she was taken to a remote outpost on the planet Voss****, and Zorren was once again fed information about the situation. An unfortunate encounter between Katarn, Zorren and a Sith Lord on Nar Shaddaa delayed - and nearly prevented - the rescue attempt. This would potentially have cost Maennia her life, had the native Gormak not chosen that exact moment to launch their own attack on the outpost. Although she was severely wounded in the battle, she did manage to escape, randomly downloading whatever data she could from the outpost's computers before she left.

Recovered by Baltor and Katarn, Maennia recovered quite quickly during the return trip to Nar Shaddaa. Unfortunately, her data dump inadvertently exposed her true nature. Luckily, her data dump inadvertently exposed her true nature. She had recovered a partial recording of what was ostensibly her debriefing (in reality, it was Sleeper's debriefing, a distinction that was both irrelevant and unknown at the time) by her Intelligence supervisor. Despite her persistent belief to the contrary, this recording was not a forgery - more importantly, it implied that the Empire had managed to infiltrate the Jedi Order, deceive them so thoroughly and so effectively that such an agent could not be stopped from ascending to a position from where the Order - and the Republic it protected - could be completely destroyed. In her own mind, Maennia was a threat - not necessarily because the recording was genuine, but because no matter how much she believed it, the Jedi couldn't be absolutely certain it wasn't. She couldn't delete the recording without arousing suspicion, but she couldn't stay and let them kill her for something she didn't do.

After Zorren disembarked on Nar Shaddaa, the Padawan confronted her master, displaying the incriminating recording, all the while looking for a way out if Katarn attacked her. Instead, Ber-til chose to trust her, an act which prompted Maennia to come with him to Tython in the hopes that the Jedi Council would agree with his judgment. They did not - but they did not kill her, either. Instead, they decided to freeze her in carbonite until her innocence could be conclusively proven. Knowing that such a thing could never happen, Sleeper covertly sent a distress signal in the hopes that he could be safely retrieved.

Were it not for Zorren's discovery of the Sleeper project, and his subsequent desertion, he might have been right. A couple of years after Maennia was frozen, Zorren came out of hiding to visit Ber-til - by now a Jedi Master - and explained the situation to him. Maennia could never be released so long as there was even the slightest trace of the Empire or its ruler; the best they could do now was ensure that the young Padawan would be able to make a new life for herself when that time came. To that end, he contributed a sturdy durasteel cylinder with the inscription "From your master and friend, [BLANK]", locked with the passcode "Ber-til Katarn" and containing an expensive, very modifiable blaster pistol, a small sum of money and a farewell message explaining what had happened. Before he attached the cylinder to her carbonite block, Katarn chose to add Maennia's lightsaber crystals, and a holocron of himself to act as a teacher and companion if no one else was there for her.

In the end, Ber-til's efforts to protect Maennia would prove unsuccessful; by 3638 BBY, he had attempted to hide her on the planet Ilum, only to be attacked by the Sith Lord Arrom***** Lorn, who - having forcibly enlisted Zorren's aid by threatening the family he had started since his desertion - stole the carbonite after a brief engagement with the Jedi Master. Zorren made one last, desperate attempt to prevent Arrom's success by telling Katarn to follow them to Tatooine. In the heated battle that ensued, Arrom defeated Katarn and escaped, leaving Zorren behind on the planet surface. In the end, he could not bring himself to deliver Maennia to a death that she did nothing to deserve, instead choosing to fake his death and take an escape pod back to Tatooine with the carbonite.

For over thirty-six hundred years, it would remain there in secret, buried in a cavern in the middle of nowhere and protected by wild beasts, known only to Arrom's descendants - for they had misunderstood his warnings, and instead of thawing her out once the Sith Empire was gone, they merely passed the story along from generation to generation.

Finally, mere months after the historic Battle of Yavin, the secret was lost altogether when the father of the smuggler Bleras Lorn, a simple moisture farmer, was killed by a gang of Rodian pirates after Bleras couldn't repay a loan to their leader, Rattza. His ship, the YT-1300 freighter 'Dragonet', had been impounded by the Empire, leaving the young smuggler with no source of income and very few means of appeasing Rattza until the situation escalated and his father's estate was raided. However, Arrom had made a map of where he buried Maennia; both Rattza and Bleras managed to gain access to it, and raced to decipher the millennia-old document and discover what treasures Bleras' ancestor had stashed away. (In truth, Bleras couldn't have cared less - but he'd found a recording on his datapad, sent by his father during Rattza's attack, stressing the importance of getting there before the pirates did.)

Ultimately, Bleras got there first - if only by a matter of minutes. Instead of treasure, he found the block of carbonite, still holding the young woman captive after all these years. Fearing what Rattza might do to her if he found her, but incapable of dragging the carbonite out by himself, Bleras thawed her out, only to find that she had been so weakened by the experience that she could barely move. Regardless, this would not have been a problem were it not for the Rodians' untimely arrival. Despite Bleras' efforts to negotiate, a firefight ensued, and the pirates were only killed when Sleeper - using his neural interface to command the Force through Maennia - telekinetically accelerated the decay of a weakness in the ceiling above them, causing a 'convenient' cave-in that killed the pirates and trapped Bleras and Maennia.

Bleras eventually managed to find a way out of the cavern before their limited supplies ran out, and took Maennia to a nearby safehouse he had, where the ex-Jedi recovered enough to tell him her story. It took the better part of a week for Maennia to fully recover from her time in carbonite - but her connection to the Force never came back. She speculated that this was a side-effect of the time she had spent in carbonite, some form of brain damage that prevented her from drawing on her power. The real cause, however, was Sleeper - fearing that she may discover his presence, and knowing that she may attempt to damage him afterwards, he had started more actively interacting with his host's brain - for instance, deafening her to the Force. Regardless of the cause, this meant that Maennia's Force sensitivity painted a target on her back without giving her the power to defend herself. It was around this time that Bleras vowed to keep her safe from the Empire; he felt sorry for her, and he had a feeling that he was meant to protect her in the first place.

Unfortunately, the Empire - and one officer in particular, a Lieutenant Dyr Feonn - had found out about Maennia's existence, and a bounty was posted on her and her accomplice. It did not take long for the first attack to come, in the form of the Force-blank Lethan assassin Aleysia Nur. Aleysia caught Bleras during a routine supply run to Mos Eisley, using him as bait to draw out and capture Maennia outside the city. She didn't care about Bleras, and left the unconscious smuggler behind as she took her Jedi prey to her base on the planet Lok, where she questioned Maennia and tried to provoke her into using the Force - a venture which, despite Sleeper's best efforts, nearly proved fatal for her.

In the meantime, Bleras had stolen the Dragonet from the impound dock and rushed to Lok, unknowingly followed by the Bothan bounty hunter Ousog Rhunn, who was in turn being followed by the Wookiee hunter Felbaar. After the Bothan captured him on Lok, Bleras convinced him to help him rescue Maennia - if only for the sake of getting the whole bounty. Unfortunately, Aleysia outmaneuvered Ousog and Bleras outside her base, but the Wookiee's unexpected arrival forced her to withdraw into the building, allowing him to take them all to safety before he went on with his business.

Sleeper's presence, however, was no longer unknown to Maennia - and it would not remain hidden from Bleras, either...
Given the circumstances, I'm going to put the notes section into a separate spoiler box:
Notes/CommentsSPOILER_SHOW

* - I don't remember if I immediately recognized Ber-til's surname, but I do remember commenting on it at one time...

** - It's funny how the name "Baltor" keeps popping up. One of the main characters in my own, non-Star Wars universe is a Baltor... and that name was selected before any of this even started! :o

*** - I don't remember if it was a friend or a master, but he seemed to have had a prominent role in Ber-til's past from what I remember. He also seemed to have been dead for a while by the time of the RP.

**** - Voss is a bit of an odd choice, but it was selected due to OOC boundaries. It was not the only such instance, but it's certainly one of the more egregious examples.

***** - I remember finding out that 'Arrom' actually meant something in Stargate, and being a little amused by the translation. I'm 99% sure I didn't make that reference on purpose, unlike another Stargate reference that pops up later...
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Re: The Long Road (RP-related shorts)

Post by dalolorn »

Here we go. Maennia, please don't hurt poor Zorren. :(
Living a LieSPOILER_SHOW
Context/Synopsis

After Maennia's narrow escape from Lok, Sleeper can no longer delay a confrontation with his host...

*** YT-1300 freighter 'Dragonet', Lok - moments after Maennia boarded the ship ***


With Bleras' speeder still intact, reaching the starport wasn't much of a problem. Maennia's bullet wound was no longer bleeding - in fact, to their surprise, she barely even felt it anymore - and even if Nur was following them, she could hardly get there before them.

Maennia sat down in the main hold, more concerned with what happened after she'd been shot in the stomach and gassed* than the fact that she had, in fact, been shot in the stomach and gassed.

"Here, let me take a look at that," Bleras offered. "I'm not exactly a field medic, but--"

"I'm fine," Maennia assured him, not entirely convinced of it herself. "Just... get us out of here."

As the smuggler ran to the cockpit, Maennia rolled up her shirt to take a look at the wound herself. Strangely enough, there didn't seem to be anything left of it - just a hole and its corresponding bloody stain on the shirt, but underneath the blood there was nothing. Not even a scar.

Before she could investigate it further, everything around her abruptly faded into darkness, and she seemed to be standing in the middle of nowhere. Just as she was about to ask where she was, a familiar voice came from the void: "Your mind."

Why does it look--

"Like an infinite, empty room? It is easier to simulate. Besides, it is not meant to represent your mind - I am merely stating that we are inside your mind."

Another question started to form, and the voice immediately continued: "Because I know what you are thinking, sometimes even before you do. Because I am connected to your brain; even if I weren't, I can predict your actions with considerable accuracy. Because I have a precise recollection of everything you have ever done."

The entity gave off a resigned sigh at the continuing flurry of questions. "Because I have been in your head almost since the day you were born. Because it is more efficient this way. Oh, very well."

"Who - or what - are you?" Maennia asked, finally managing to put her thoughts together.

"That is a rather vague question," the voice complained. "I can give you an exact technical specification, a summary of my purpose or capabilities, attempt to define my personality... No, I cannot shut up in the middle of answering a question, it would prevent me from answering it. I told you this was more efficient," it remarked before continuing: "First of all, contrary to your belief that I am a hallucination of questionable intellect and manners, I am in fact a highly compact artificial intelligence designed for 'sleeper' infiltration in an unaware organic host - that would be you. Secondly, extreme age aside, I am the only reason you are still alive after that disaster of an escape attempt, and--"

As before, the AI didn't bother to let Maennia say what she was thinking. "Well it was a bad plan," the AI told her. "I was more than capable of neutralizing the Twi'lek's toxin without the antidote, as your continued survival will prove. No, I suppose you couldn't have known about that yet, but why would you believe she wouldn't have some way of stopping you? In any case, to continue, I am capable of the following things: manipulating your nervous system at will; various forms of short-range communication, which allows me to remotely interact with comlinks and any computer system connected to a communications system of any kind; and finally, self-destructing should you somehow make good on the threat you wanted to make, taking a considerable portion of your brain with me," he finished pointedly.

Maennia's patience was definitely running out by this point. "These abilities allow me to perform a variety of functions, partially dependent on my host's potential: reflex enhancement, superior control of the Force stemming from better concentration and understanding of what I am doing, altering your perception - like I am doing right now, actually - and various other things."

"Well, this explains a lot of things," she muttered angrily. "Like the fact that my life has been a big string of failures and disasters."

"It was not that bad, and a good deal of the 'disasters' you refer to were not caused by deliberate action on my part, but rather an unavoidable interaction between your actions and mine. I could have stopped you, but - as was the case in the assassin's facility - it would have jeopardized my cover if I overruled you in that manner."

Maennia tried to calm down and think about something less frustrating. "Whose voice is that?" she finally asked. "I'm sure I've heard it before."

"Agent Baltor. I believed he would be the most appropriate here - being an Imperial operative, he is an accurate representation of my own nature. Being your friend, I concluded that his voice would be somewhat less disturbing than that of a stranger. Not by much, but you've proven that I needed every asset I could get."

"You used Zorren's voice to look 'friendly'... of course..."

The mindscape started to fade and be replaced by the Dragonet again. I have guided you through life, the AI explained, seeking to fulfill my primary directive. That is no longer possible, and I must find or create a new purpose - but in the meantime, I hope that you will eventually come to understand one thing: While you may not have made all the decisions that made you who you are today, this fact does not change who you are now.

As the ship took off, Maennia was left to contemplate what she had just heard.

NOTES/COMMENTS

* - The way I remember it, things went more or less like this (bear in mind that it's been a few years, so my memory is unreliable):
My memory wrote:As mentioned in the backstory, Bleras got caught by Aleysia, who traded him for Maennia and rushed to Lok. Bleras stole his ship back from the Empire (my exact wording on the SWGEmu bounty board was 'blasted his way to his ship, escaping to Lok'), got caught by Ousog on Lok, convinced him that a full bounty is better than half a bounty, and tracked Aley down.

In the meantime, Maennia had been questioned (Aley had an unusual fascination with the Force at the time) about her powers. When Maennia insisted that she couldn't use them anymore, Aleysia wanted to prove otherwise and shot her in the stomach with a slugthrower, followed by injecting her with a lethal compound. She then offered to let the 'Jedi' go, spend her last # hours free. Maennia, knowing that there was an antidote in the base, chose to stay instead - when the Twi'lek left, she intended to do some lockpicking and steal the antidote. This didn't work out as planned - she triggered some kind of alarm, Aley remotely released a toxic gas into the room, Sleeper (he would later be labeled 'Zorren', for obvious reasons) leapt into action with Breath Control (I don't remember what the official in-universe name is for that technique), and then the 'Force blank' card got played.

Without the Force, Sleeper resorted to more primitive delaying tactics like 'stop breathing', but if Bleras and Ousog hadn't arrived outside the base by then, they would have been too late. Holding her at gunpoint, they instructed Aleysia to let Maennia go. She dumped her outside the building, then took advantage of the opportunity to fire tranquilizer darts. We paused the story because I had to go to sleep, and by the time we continued, I had come up with the idea of bringing Felbaar in - after doing a little cantina RP with Ousog, set shortly before he went to Lok - to save the day.

Bombarding her with his bowcaster, he forced her back inside (though she may have fired on Maennia again, or kicked her or something), then put the rest of our unconscious characters on speeders, towing those speeders back to the nearest shuttleport - Ousog woke up early and detached his speeder from the makeshift caravan.
That was a long trip down memory lane, wasn't it...
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Re: The Long Road (RP-related shorts)

Post by dalolorn »

A delayed summary of the Red Dragon incident. Except the parts I covered in writing.
TimeskipSPOILER_SHOW
In the weeks after their escape from Lok, Bleras and Maennia mostly hid in the former's safehouse on Tatooine. Maennia had introduced Sleeper to Bleras, and was slowly coming to terms with the AI's existence. Over time, Sleeper's appropriation of Zorren's identity began to occasionally confuse Maennia into addressing him as "Zorren", until it reached a point where she stopped trying to avoid the mistake. From that point onward, very few people would ever knowingly* use any other name for him.

What would prove far more important in their lives, however, were the other decisions they made during those weeks.

Initially, Zorren was reluctant to allow Maennia access to the Force, out of concern that she may find a way to damage him. Eventually, they reached a compromise: Maennia would attempt to use the Force, but Zorren would intercept the attempt and do it himself - with the added benefits of his concentration and precision. In some cases, the efficiency of this method would allow the ex-Padawan to achieve feats that would normally be out of reach for most Force users**, and compensate for her lack of training.

The other decision that would have a profound effect on their lives, was the method by which they would attempt to join the Rebel Alliance. Instead of searching for a way to contact the Alliance, Maennia decided - despite Bleras' objections - to use Zorren's abilities to hack into an Imperial outpost's computers and obtain a large quantity of useful data. Zorren lured Ousog to a location outside Mos Eisley, where Bleras and Maennia made a deal with him: He would stun them, then turn them over - unharmed - to the Empire. That way, the Bothan would get the full bounty for both of them, rather than the half he would receive by killing them, and Maennia would be where she needed to be.

In many ways, things went according to plan. In many other ways, things went completely off the rails. Dyr Feonn, the lieutenant who had initially found out about Maennia's revival, had recently been reassigned to a black ops division known as the 'Black Sabers'. From there, he asked his commanding officer, a man known as 'Spades', for permission to bring the captives to their base on Dantooine, in the small town of Red Dragon. Escaping the base was no more difficult than Zorren had anticipated - quite the contrary - but this incident showed Dyr what the young Jedi was capable of. It showed him an immense threat to the Empire, an asset that the Rebellion could never be allowed to obtain. His hunt for Maennia would not end until either of them were dead.

At first, Maennia and Bleras hid out in the wilderness near Red Dragon. However, after an encounter with a few of the Rebel-aligned locals, they were taken to hide inside the town. As fate would have it, this made them a very approachable target for Aleysia, the Twi'lek that had nearly killed them earlier. After a skirmish inside their hideout resulted in a stalemate - both sides were capable of mutually assured destruction*** - they were instead escorted to Lok by Spades, who had defected in the days following Maennia's escape. They would remain there until they were summoned by the Red Dragon mayor, a Trandoshan by the name of Bixso Trosco. Tensions were rising, and he asked for their help in pushing the Empire out of the town. Bleras could take no more of it, however. Deeming Maennia's actions suicidal, he remarked that he couldn't protect her from her own actions and stormed out, taking the Dragonet with him.

In the meantime, Ousog had briefly gotten into hot water for his involvement in Maennia's plan, but was soon released. Felbaar had gotten into a fight with Aleysia on Rori, in the town of Savareen, but nothing significant came of this. Dyr, however, had been concentrating almost single-mindedly on the task of neutralizing Maennia in the upcoming battle, coordinating closely with the Sabers' commander, General Jarenn Darkstorm. At one point, he stumbled upon Bleras in Savareen - fortunately, Dyr was undercover at the time, conducting an investigation into Aleysia's alleged death in that town in an effort to enlist the Twi'lek's aid against the Jedi. Nevertheless, the encounter made it clear that Bleras had no intention of ever seeing Maennia again, a fact the Imperial would later remember.

Between a signal jammer to keep Zorren's hacking under control, and Aleysia to keep the Force out of the battle, it seemed as if things were starting to look up for the Empire. Unfortunately, the situation was not as straightforward as that - the Sabers were dissolved shortly before the Imperials could launch an attack. General Darkstorm, still in Red Dragon, recommended orbital bombardment to eliminate the Rebel cell, but the transmission was intercepted by Zorren. Within the two days it took for an Imperial ship to arrive, the inhabitants had evacuated the city - either through legally allowed methods or by fleeing into the wilderness towards the nearest non-Imperial shuttleport. The town was destroyed, but the people within were merely inconvenienced.

The final piece of the puzzle would be an encounter between Ousog and Bleras in the Corellian city of Tyrena. Informed of Aleysia's death, Bleras was relieved at first - until he realized that it couldn't have been true. This rumor would only serve to reinforce the smuggler's sense of guilt over abandoning Maennia, and put one last spanner in the works...

NOTES/COMMENTS

* - He did, however, have a tendency to pick some... interesting aliases when concealing his identity.

** - Mostly in instances where finesse was an acceptable but unavailable substitute to throwing more Force at the problem. Doing more with what potential she did have rather than amplifying that potential directly.

There was one point where I wanted the duo to attempt an attack on Palpatine, only to fail miserably due to "UNLIMITED POWER". Zorren was going to sacrifice himself (or at least the implant) to barely save Maennia, getting shorted out when he didn't power down to shield himself. (Even then I was trying to bring them down to a more sane power level... :()

*** I think Zorren and Maennia had come out on top, technically speaking (even with the fact that they couldn't use the Force), but Aleysia had something of a dead man's switch tied to a thermal detonator or some such. Killing her would have blown all of them to pieces.
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Re: The Long Road (RP-related shorts)

Post by dalolorn »

Plot summaries for the Red Dragon arc:
All Good ThingsSPOILER_SHOW
In the wake of the Sabers' dissolution, Dyr is unexpectedly promoted to Captain and tasked with creating the Sabers' successor. It seems General Darkstorm was able to cause enough of a stir at Command when the organization was dissolved. Furthermore, the General has provided him with a chemical of some kind, with a note saying that it would come in handy against 'undesirable Jedi'. (How he created this chemical, and what it does, is unknown to Dyr. The former is unknown even to me.)

Finally, Dyr can put his plans into action and eliminate Maennia. To this end, he contacts Aleysia again, clandestinely summoning her to Dantooine.

Meanwhile, Maennia is slowly walking to the nearest shuttleport to get out of there.
A Fateful DreamSPOILER_SHOW
While smuggling something to Nar Shaddaa, Bleras has a nightmare about Maennia's future. His conscience finally forces him to Dantooine.
Calm Before The StormSPOILER_SHOW
Hurrying to Dantooine, Bleras is in the middle of modifying the Dragonet's weapons when he arrives - and immediately receives a distress signal from Zorren.

A few hours earlier, Maennia and Zorren are contacted by Dyr, who claims to have Bleras in his custody. While this is obviously a trap, the duo opts to spring the trap anyway, for Bleras' sake - knowing that with Aleysia dead, the Imperials can do very little to keep them from escaping afterwards.

By the time they begin to suspect something is off, it is already too late to flee...
AfflictionSPOILER_SHOW
Just before the beginning of the story, Maennia has been shot repeatedly by Aleysia's slugthrowers, and hit with a dart containing Dyr's unknown chemical. Thanks to Zorren, she is able to steal one of their speeders and flee just long enough for Bleras to come in guns blazing, the Dragonet's Zorren-controlled turrets keeping Dyr and Aleysia at bay long enough for the smuggler to bring her aboard and the ship to lift off.

Unfortunately, now they need to get out of the Twi'lek's range before Maennia's condition deteriorates too far. Bleras reluctantly complies with Zorren's order to rewire the hyperdrive and its gravitic sensors to bypass a failsafe mechanism preventing ships from entering hyperspace too close to a gravity well* - after making a microjump away from the planet, Zorren temporarily stabilizes Maennia.

With the poison inhibiting Maennia's connection to the light side of the Force, Zorren is unwilling to do any more than the absolute minimum to keep the Jedi alive, and even this may not be enough without medical equipment - something the Dragonet is sorely lacking. They needed a doctor, and still had no way of contacting the Rebels. Bleras came up with the idea of going to Rori, and contemplated his dream while Zorren took the ship into hyperspace...
Affliction, Part IISPOILER_SHOW
Before the story begins, Bleras has had encounters with Aleysia and Ousog during a brief stay in Savareen - he had even been shot a couple of times - then found a smuggler, Rodu Drayen, who was willing to help heal Maennia in the town of Darkside Realms. They nearly encountered Aleysia again, but managed to escape Darkside Realms safely.

All seems well when Maennia awakens. Then it takes a turn for the worse. Interrupting the beginnings of an argument between Bleras and Zorren, she quickly starts one of her own over Zorren's failure to detect Aleysia until it was too late. Bleras heads into the cockpit to give them some space, and by the time he gets back, he finds that Maennia has killed Zorren (not even she knows how exactly she achieved that).

Bleras is understandably worried by this turn of events, and the ensuing argument is abruptly terminated when Maennia telekinetically throws him into a bulkhead, breaking his neck - just as he was telling her she was out of control. This detail is not lost on the young Jedi; shocked by her actions, she decides to go back to Darkside Realms, seek out Aleysia, and end her life before she killed anyone else.

Instead of Aleysia, however, she finds Rodu. She tries to warn the smuggler about her condition, but he ignores the warning and tries to talk her out of this attempt at assisted suicide. During the conversation, she realizes Drayen knows too much about her - the realization prompts her to confront Zorren, who eventually gives up the charade and admits that the whole thing was happening in her mind, an attempt to elicit the sort of emotional response that would neutralize the Sith poison without having to hurt any real people. To his great relief, it worked perfectly.

Maennia now wakes up aboard the real Dragonet, shortly after their departure from Rori. Bleras had fallen asleep in a chair next to her, waiting for Zorren to do his work - Maennia decided to follow his example, while Zorren continued to watch over them and the ship, keeping it safe.

At last, everything on the Dragonet is as it should be...
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Re: The Long Road (RP-related shorts)

Post by dalolorn »

Plot summaries for Fennla's arc:
UpgradesSPOILER_SHOW
With the Sith poison neutralized, Maennia finally decided to access Ber-til's holocron. (Presumably she's also read the original Zorren's message by now.) Bleras had previously used the holocron to help Zorren identify the poison and find a solution for it. Under Katarn's guidance, Maennia built a lightsaber using the parts and crystals he left her.

At some point, the trio had deduced that Bleras has some degree of Force sensitivity, and by the time the story begins, less than a day after Maennia made her lightsaber, the smuggler can't stop talking about it. This causes a mild accident while Maennia is busy pulling her blaster apart to replace its internal components with more modern ones. Nonetheless, Zorren is able to undo the problem, and easily does so after the others fail. (The blaster's firing chamber broke, with half of it getting stuck inside.)

Meanwhile, in the Tatooinian city Bestine, Felbaar had a bit of a problem. He'd just come into the city after a successful hunt, but nobody seemed to understand Shyriiwook - at least, nobody who actually cared about what the Wookiee was trying to say.

He'd just about given up when he was approached by a young Rutian Twi'lek called Fennla Lan. The seventeen-year-old* girl had noticed Felbaar's distress - though she had no idea what was causing it - and, driven by a blend of curiosity and kindness, asked him what was wrong. Unfortunately, he couldn't speak any of the languages she understood - but he could write in Basic. After verifying that fact, Fennla snuck over and stole an old datapad from a nearby junk dealer, handing it to the Wookiee as a translation device.

Felbaar asked her what he needed to know, and then the Twi'lek disappeared into the crowd just as quickly as she had emerged from it, going on with her life.

* - For the sake of giving me more time until her eighteenth birthday (seeing as that later becomes a key plot point in several ways), I'm going to work under the assumption that she turned seventeen a few weeks ago.
The ChaseSPOILER_SHOW
Maennia had finally found a possible Rebel contact in the form of Errati Quinn. However, her attempted meeting with the man in Anchorhead was interrupted when Zorren realized the Imperials were on to them. The bulk of Quinn's associates hadn't even arrived yet, so Bleras and Maennia rushed out of town as quickly as possible to conceal their presence there.

Surrounded, they chose to split up: Bleras would try to get back to the Dragonet, while Maennia would run off to try to distract the Imperials, hide until the coast was clear, then get picked up by Bleras.

Unfortunately, Dyr hadn't been resting on his laurels since his last appearance. Discovering the Force-inhibiting properties of ysalamiri, he had equipped his troops with the creatures at significant personal expense. Thanks to Zorren, this was not enough to save the first patrol Maennia encountered, but it would make things substantially more complicated. Stealing one of the Imperials' speeders, the Jedi rushed to Bestine in an effort to hide herself in the city.

This didn't go according to plan - another patrol spotted her in Bestine, and in escaping them she lost her lightsaber. Fortunately, she also saved Fennla from a stray shot; the Twi'lek decided to return the favor, hiding the Jedi in a waste disposal unit before drawing the Imperials' attention away.

Naturally, if Maennia couldn't escape under those circumstances, neither could Fennla - when the Jedi finally emerged from hiding, she learned that Fennla had been taken into an Imperial outpost in the desert...
A Debt RepaidSPOILER_SHOW
While Maennia was explaining her plan to rescue Fennla, Dyr was interrogating the feisty Twi'lek. Neither side was particularly enjoying it, and Fennla's stubbornness made it quite a long interrogation.

Fighting her way into the base, Maennia arrived just in time to see the Imperial captain, holding Fennla hostage above what was supposed to be her method of execution: a vast body of water in a repurposed hangar. (Fennla couldn't swim, after all.) Tossing her into the water to buy himself time, Dyr safely escaped the facility while Maennia was distracted.

Fennla's already problematic situation was made even worse when she passed out moments before running out of air. Maennia's swift effort to rescue the Twi'lek nearly proved fatal for both of them as they were nearly electrocuted in the water, but Bleras had finally returned and destroyed the outpost's generators.

When the Twi'lek regained consciousness aboard the Dragonet, Maennia welcomed her to the crew - despite objections from Bleras and Zorren, who claimed their resources were already being stretched thin enough.
A Dangerous VentureSPOILER_SHOW
Not long after her rescue from Dyr, Fennla bumped into Aleysia on a supply run to Mos Eisley, and was attacked after the Lethan overheard her communication with Maennia. Aleysia - and a couple of Inquisitors who were nearby when the assassin requested their backup - were fought off by Maennia and the Dragonet, but now Fennla wanted to ask Nur why she seemed to hate the Jedi so much.

Despite their objections, Maennia and Bleras were ultimately left with no choice but to let her try it - a venture that would ultimately prove as pointless as it was risky.

Meanwhile, Dyr reviewed his informants' reports on the incident, and saw an opportunity in the Inquisitors...
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Re: The Long Road (RP-related shorts)

Post by dalolorn »

Ironic, isn't it... the same day I remark on not having a lot of time to write this is the day when I'm locked into standby mode and can neither do any meaningful work nor play any of the stuff I want to play...

Anyway, here we go:
Timeskip, Take TwoSPOILER_SHOW
For a while, things were all right. Fennla had returned from her search for Aleysia Nur with not so much as a scratch - or, to her disappointment, a single answer. The Dragonet crew were having very little luck contacting the Rebellion or doing anything aside from wandering from planet to planet, but for once, they were in no immediate danger.

It would not last.

In the two weeks since Fennla's encounters with Nur, Dyr had made a point of seeking out the Lethan's Inquisitor associates to enlist their aid - and that of the assassin herself - in catching Maennia and her companions and dealing with them once and for all. With the assistance of Inquisitors Jaxon Pavan and Alhai Opra, Dyr formulated a plan:

The Inquisitors had recently captured a Force adept by the name of Surik Nindo. Nindo was fairly unthreatening compared to Maennia, and could easily be released. They would trick him into making contact with the Jedi, requesting her help. Between the Jedi tendency to help others in need, and Maennia's need for allies, it was a very tempting lure. More importantly, it was one that actually worked.

Shortly after Maennia departed to rendezvous with Surik near the squill cave on Tatooine, Bleras was hired for a smuggling job from Lok to Tatooine. Taking the Dragonet with Fennla in tow, he flew straight into Dyr's trap - there would be nobody to save the Jedi now.

Accompanied by a pair of his ysalamiri-carrying stormtroopers, Aleysia, and two of the Inquisitors, Dyr waited patiently to spring the trap. Finally, the Jedi came, unaware of the ambush until it was too late. After a skirmish that was resolved by a third Inquisitor in a Lambda-class shuttle, Surik and Maennia were captured, the latter being subdued by a neural disruptor that forced Zorren to stand down to avoid damaging his host's brain.

Little is known of Surik's fate afterwards - he either escaped or was released again, and was killed some time later in Savareen. Maennia, on the other hand, was taken to Aleysia's base on Lok - despite Dyr's vehement objections and requests to kill her while they still had a chance - for questioning and further study. Once there, a brief dialogue with Zorren was followed by an attempt to surgically remove him from the Jedi's brain. Given his complexity, this effort would itself have been enough to cause irreparable and possibly fatal neural damage, but what the Imperials had refused to consider was his self-destruct mechanism, intended to prevent unauthorized personnel from extracting him from his host and using his technology against his creators. A micro-explosive quickly ruined Zorren's circuitry and Maennia's brain beyond any hope of repair. Less than half a year after her release from carbonite, Maennia Belkar was dead, and all her friends held in Imperial custody, where they could expect only a painful interrogation and subsequent execution.

All was not lost, however.

A slip-up during the prisoner transfer allowed a desperate Zorren to remotely access the Dragonet's computers, uploading a copy of himself into the ship's systems and skillfully outmaneuvering the Imperials holding the ship's crew. By the time Maennia died, the Dragonet was restored to its rightful owners - upon learning that there was no longer anything they could do, they quickly jumped to hyperspace, leaving Lok for good...
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Re: The Long Road (RP-related shorts)

Post by dalolorn »

Plot summary for Metamorphosis:
MetamorphosisSPOILER_SHOW
Shortly (half an hour at most) after the Dragonet's escape from Lok, Bleras and Fennla were still trying to wrap their minds around what happened - and figure out what to do next. Zorren assured them that there was nothing they could have done. As Bleras remarked on the AI's ability to keep himself alive, Zorren dropped out of hyperspace and altered course towards the Obroa-skai system. After admonishing the smuggler for his lack of restraint, Zorren explained that he had an exact map of Maennia's brain from before she was knocked unconscious by the neural disruptor, and that he could restore her consciousness from that recording.

Although Bleras remained skeptical, citing the fact that he was basically just emulating Maennia's consciousness, Fennla eagerly told him to go ahead.

A little while later, Dyr was heading back to Tatooine, reflecting annoyedly on the fact that Bleras and Fennla had managed to break out of captivity. Suddenly, he realized that the duo couldn't have made it out on their own. It was clear that the AI had helped them - from there, it became clear that the implant's programming was no longer constrained by its wrecked hardware, and that it could now scatter duplicates of itself across the HoloNet at will.

For Dyr, this was the last straw. None of it would have happened if the Inquisitors hadn't interfered, if they'd let him eliminate Belkar when he had the chance. He wouldn't let the incompetence of his superiors hold him back again - if the Empire could not be protected from within the chain of command, it would be protected by independent operation. Failure was no longer an option.

Meanwhile, Zorren had finished programming Maennia's neural pattern into the Dragonet's computers. Initially, Maennia was quick to voice her distress at the circumstances, but Zorren quietly convinced her to try to put her doubts aside, if only for the sake of her companions. He then proceeded to explain the rest of his plan...
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Re: The Long Road (RP-related shorts)

Post by dalolorn »

And now we move into 'chapter 2'.
Timeskip... With FeelingSPOILER_SHOW
In order to bring Maennia back to life, the Dragonet crew needed three things.

First, they needed cloning equipment - preferably something fast like a Spaarti cylinder - to create a new body for her. This body would essentially be a blank slate into which the Jedi's consciousness could be transplanted from the Dragonet's computers.

Next, they needed a DNA sample from Maennia's old body. With any luck, the blood stains from some of her old clothes would probably be sufficient; if they weren't, they would have to find a way of getting the samples they needed from the Empire.

Finally, they needed to rebuild Zorren. Only by implanting a new Sleeper implant into the clone's head could they be capable of executing an operation as precise and widespread as completely overwriting a person's brain. This would be difficult - although Zorren had fairly detailed schematics for himself, and technology had advanced somewhat in the 36 centuries since his creation, it would still take time and resources to replicate the technical achievement his creators had made.

Over the next couple of weeks, Bleras and Fennla made several attempts to locate allies - particularly members of the Rebel Alliance - to help them obtain the resources they required. Time and time again, they would follow a lead only to find a dead end. Eventually, the search led Fennla to Rori. Savareen had established itself as a prominent location on the Nabooian moon, and Zorren hoped she would be able to find something there.

This proved to be a dangerous mistake. Dyr was also in the small town, undercover and looking to recruit assets of his own. Noticing Fennla's arrival, he hired a local mercenary called Bukla* to find out why she was on Rori. Shortly afterwards, he decided that she needed to be detained and interrogated, and anonymously told the bouncer** of the local cantina, the Inferno, that the Twi'lek had a bounty on her head.

It was only minutes before the bouncer acted that Dyr remembered Fennla's stubbornness, and the low likelihood that she would willingly reveal anything to the Imperials. In a last-ditch attempt to rerail his plans, the ex-Imperial 'accidentally' took a stun blast*** for the Twi'lek - but it was too late. With the untimely arrival of Jaxon on the scene, both Dyr and Fennla were taken into Imperial custody. One gone AWOL at best or a deserter at worst, and the other a wanted fugitive, they were both in plenty of trouble.

Fennla was briefly questioned by the local Imperial governor, Moff Septimus Novastar, who revealed that her conversation with Bukla had been recorded. After that, Jaxon pinned most of the failures of the Lok operation on Dyr; both of the newfound prisoners had every reason to believe they would not leave the Imperial garrison alive...

NOTES/COMMENTS

* - Human, don't remember his surname. I believe he was killed before he got the chance to report his findings to Dyr - or help Fennla, whichever he intended to do, but I have no idea what happened there.

** - Waylander, also human, also don't remember his surname (though at least I remember who played him). He and Jaxon certainly dropped Dyr in it...

*** - Not sure about this part. I know Dyr somehow got himself captured with Fennla, and I know Jaxon was present at Septimus' office in the aftermath, but why Jaxon was there and how Fennla's capturing unfolded are more or less blanks.
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