Fwurg

[Fecta Trigiel]

When they were in the last room, Trigiel asked his hostage: "It looks like somebody before me used a lightsaber here. Please be so kind to tell me everything you know and what you have done here. I like to know the details like where the crystals were, how you moved them, and what else you did here. And while you at it, I suppose you have no idea what the crystals were for do you? Were there any other parties here as well before or at the same time as you?"

It wouldn't surprise Trigiel that there were some hidden rooms in the tomb, but these room were probably difficult to find, hence they are hidden rooms. At the other hand, not all jedi were often too clever, so lets see if he could find something. While the guy was doing his talking, Trigiel walked back to the statues, Trigiel chose a statue, the one with the hideous humanoid woman holding the sword, for a more closer inspection. Maybe there was some hidden mechanism in or around it. Trigiel also tried to push the statue in the hope there was a ladder or something beneath. Wait who was he kidding, he had the force. Trigiel used the force to move the statue.

Seriously, why are humanoid women always so ugly?

((Check: 13 = 7 Force Level + 5 Vision + 1 Force Vision -- infra red, ultra violet, night sight, zoom function, searching for a hidden passage or room))
((Check: 11 = 7 Force Level + 3 Energy + 1 Telekinesis -- for moving the statue))

[Storyteller (Brend)]

"The only thing I've done here is put the crystals in the chests and boxes. I swear. They were already on the floor! I have no idea what they are for. When we got here the place was already like this." -- he stops to take a breath -- "Only thing I know for sure is I was going to get a fat pay day to go here with my men, load them crystals into unmarked crates carefully without touching them, she said she would know if we touched 'em, and bring 'em to the Cantina were they are going to be picked up!" The man does not seem to slow down at all, and is talking so fast even Trigiel with his Jedi senses is having a little trouble keeping up with the guy and inspecting the statue at the same time. "When we got here, we found the place deser...", he realizes the bad pun he was going to make and quickly recovers, "We found the place empty like this, all tools still on the ground. So, we got to work loading the crystals in the boxes, and man are they heavy. Took us three hours to load them all up, and get them outside." -- a pause, for another gulp of air -- "I've heard rumours about this place y'know. Rumours that said that Leba the Destroyer wanted whatever was in here real bad. Rumours like he didn't want anyone else speaking a word of it neither, so he had everyone that worked here killed. But you don't go poking around the business of someone like Leba, that makes you al sorts of dead. Those Star Destroyers are his you know!" -- he takes the shortest of breathing pauses -- "So, then this human comes up to me with two bounty hunters wearing the Destroyer's colours as body guards. She doesn't look like a dancer, you know, the type Hutt like so much. She looks like she costs serious credits even to talk to, y'know one of those women the real bosses walk around with." -- another gulp of air -- "Says she can pay me good money if I do something for her. She tells me she works for the Destroyer, and he wants this tomb blown to pieces. Says she'll double my pay if we get out these crystals first without others knowing 'bout it and then we blow up the tomb. That's all I know! I swear!"

He takes a deep breath.

"Really, that's all. I don't know anything else. Can I please just give you the password and go? I promise you'll never see me again, I'll be on the other side of the galaxy!"

Trigiel, meanwhile has finished his inspection of the statue. He did not find any hidden levers, buttons or compartments. Using the Force, he lifts the statue... "Nooo! Spare me!", the goon dropped to his knees on the floor and started begging, "I'll do whatever you say, please, please!"

Trigiel does not see any hidden passages, or other interesting things. It seems that what he has found is everything this tomb has to offer.

[Fecta Trigiel]

Trigiel started to enjoy the little guy. 'Is it evil to enjoy a panicked guy' Trigiel thought to himself. Then he realised why he enjoyed it: 'he is afraid of me, that makes me feel powerful and I enjoy that feeling, hmm goo to know'. Once Trigiel was done with his inspection and the guy done with his explanation he turned to the guy again: "Well then, this is your lucky day, you see, you have been most helpful and I have no intentions of letting you be obliterated by the star destroyer or anyone else. I am also not afraid of the star destroyer and in fact, if that peace of heap is going to be in my way I will personally make it go boom.

Now with the you letting go part, I'm not sure how you have the transaction planned, but if you give me the wrong password-and-of-course-you-would-never-do-that than or the meeting go wrong some other way than I have to go through a lot more trouble than I'm interested in. So lets go."

Trigiel walked back outside towards the speeders. "If we hurry, we might make it before the sandstorm, I would like that. And no, don't worry that Vitress or one of the bounty hunters will kill you, as I will be there to make sure they will do you no harm."

Trigiel stepped in the hover tank and ordered the guy to also take a seat: "Up to your ship."

[Storyteller (Brend)]

The guy becomes nervous at the mention of the wrong password or a failed meet. Though he recovers quickly the moment Trigiel says he'd like to make it before the sand storm. He climbs into the tank quickly, and sits down.

"What? This is a hovertank! You can't expect me to fly with this?! It can't go up...", he turns white as he speaks, nearly convinced that this was the end for him.

[Fecta Trigiel]

Trigiel was surprised at the remark of his prison: "You loaded the crystals in the crates attached to this hovertank. So either the hovertank can fly, or it can hover to your ship. If you had a better way in your mind to get to the cantina, you better tell it now"

Scary prisoners were funny, dumb prisoners annoying...

[Storyteller (Brend)]

((OOC: For the record, the Dutch "Op naar je schip" is not translated as "Up to your ship". "Up" is a direction. "On to your ship." or "Onwards to your ship" is an understandable translation... Of course "Up to your ship" is a valid English sentence, but it means something different: "Tot aan je schip."

And just because I noticed it: "Scary prisoner" isn't the same as "Scared prisoner" :P))

The guy looks at Trigiel for a moment, his expression one of confusion. Then he understands. After he flicks a few levers, the hovertank's engine starts humming and the whole thing begins hovering. He checks a few readouts and looks at a screen displaying a rough map of the area with a few large red warning signs.

"Ehm...", the guy points at one of the warning signs, "We're going to eat some of the storm at the end of the ride. Look we are here", he points out an unmarked valley. He continues with "We need to be there." as he points out an icon labelled "Ord Isil Spaceport". The distance between the two points is roughly 120 kilometres according to the scale on the map. "Loaded like this, this tank won't go any faster than 44 per hour, so we're gonna get hit pretty hard. The last part of the drive isn't going to be funny, so strap in."

And with that remark, he pulled the acceleration lever to full throttle. With a jerk the tank starts speeding up, until it's moving along nicely and the guy expertly steers out towards the valley's exit. On the map, Trigiel can see the rough route: out of this valley into a larger one, out of that one into the open desert, across the desert to another mesa region where the spaceport was located. It was going to be a long, hot drive.

[Fecta Trigiel]

((OOC: Noted :), Appearently Trigiel's galactic basic is not yet as good as he likes it to be :P))

"Hold on, 44 km per hour?" Trigiel's headlight turned dangerously red again "I am very certain that you said to your men that you would be able to reach the cantina in an hour, so why the sudden change? I don't like a hot three hour trip if we can make it in ten minutes..."

[Storyteller (Brend)]

"Well, eh, you see, that was before the speeders lost their drivers... We kinda had this system where the speeders are attached to the hovertank with cables to help pull the bloody heavy crates.", the guy spoke. "Now, we're going to be happy if we even make it through the storm."

[Fecta Trigiel]

Trigiel's expression relaxed again. He made a quick mental calculation: 3 large heavy crates and 1 extra soldier. Would his ship be able to carry that?

"You know, let's take my ship. It's up here on this cliff. It will safe us a long and unpleasant boring trip."

Then suddenly, Trigiel remembered something: "I am so dumb! I haven't seen or checked any of your explosives. Gosh, why am I still alive? Now please tell me about the explosives you planted. All of it."

((Check: 14 = 7 Force Level + 4 Reason + 3 Mechanical Engineer -- Making a quick calculation to determine if his ship can could carry the 3 crates and the soldier))

[Storyteller (Brend)]

Trigiel quickly determines that his ship, being a space ship and all, is easily capable of carrying a few extra boxes and an extra guy. It is probably fine carrying ten boxes and just as many soldiers, if necessary.

The guy starts to stop. While they are slowing down, he answered: "Well, those battery packes make a large crater when you discharge them wrong. So one of my guys, he rigged them up to dust the place, and safe us a pretty credit on actual explosives..."

The tank was now stopped next to the, from down here, imposingly high cliff. The guy looks at the cliffs, then back at Trigiel.

"This thing isn't going up there..."

[Fecta Trigiel]

"...I hate this place...

Give me a sec to determine the most comfortable course of action."

Trigiel quickly went through his current situation and objectives:

• situation
  • several speeder bikes
  • Hover tank
  • Multiple heavy crates with potential important crystals
  • A tomb
  • high steep cliffs
  • 1 ship 3 hours ride away
  • 1 ship 10 minutes climb away
  • eminent sandstorm
• Objectives
  • Get in contact with/close to Leba
  • Bring crystals to messenger
  • Use crystals as leverage
  • Ask/follow/threaten messenger to go to Leba
  • Capture Leba
  • Get to know the origin and everything else of the tomb
  • Ask why Leba is called 'the destroyer'

If you looked at it this way, it was actually quite simple. Trigiel ordered to get the tank as close to where the jedi ship is parked to spare an unnecessary walk: "You wait here, I go to get my ship. Don't try anything funny as I have a sniper and a space ship and a bad temper."

And so Trigiel left the hovertank to climb the cliff to get his ship. If everything goes well, he should be down here in a few minutes. The climb down was 5 minutes, and climbing up is often faster.

((Check: 16 = 7 Force Level + 5 Fitness + 2 Acrobatics + 2 Force Jump -- For getting up the cliff.))

[Storyteller (Brend)]

((OOC: Acrobatics is for backflips, wallruns and such. Athletics covers climbing, swimming and jumping and other athletic activities. Regardless, even with a 14: check approved.))

Trigiel manages to climb up the cliffs very fast.

Once on top of the thing, he could see that the imminent sandstorm was no joke. On the horizon he could already see reddish sand clouds. Basaed on the distance, he would guess that he had another twenty minutes. Maybe less.

Starting up his ship and flying it back down was easy. The tougher part was loading all the crates into the ship. They were too heavy for Trigiel to pick up, so he had to grab one of the cranes the goons used earlier. Even with the cranes, the work wasn't fast. He estimates that he would fly out of here just before the sandstorm hits.

If he makes it into the air, he would then need to determine where to go. Based on the map he saw earlier, he could make the cantina in under half an hour, leaving him with an hour or two before the sandstorm hits there as well.

[Fecta Trigiel]

The way Trigiel saw it, he had kind of two main options. The first is to fly towards the cantina, and follow the trail of crystals towards the waystation and to where-ever the crystals leads there. The second option was to fly towards the Hutt-ships and use the crystals as leverage to get on board without being blown into pieces.

Advantages of follow the trail:

• It's safer
• It's a clear trail
• ...

Advantages of flying self

• It's quicker
• I don't know if the crystals actually lead towards Leba
• ...

Wait, where the actually is Leba? He can be on board of one of the space ships or in the waystation. Hmmm...

Trigiel became to realize that he is actually quite going nowhere at this moment. He had some crystals he could probably use as an petty excuse, and he learned some names and he had a minion for the moment, but his current trajectories both didn't give a clear pathway towards Leba and the knowledge of whoever was actually in this tomb.

"Ah screw this shit. Let's get your payment directly." Trigiel said. And up he goes.

Trigiel steered his ship towards space. He determined that the fastest way to get things done is by getting higher up in the Hutt hierarchy as fast as possible. So that is what he is going to do. On their way into space, he asked his minion: "Why is Leba called 'the Destroyer'. Last I have heard of him, he was simply 'the Hutt'."

After the minion is done talking and they are back in space, Trigiel switched on his radio emitter. If he knew the right channel to hail the Hutt he chose that one, otherwise he simply made an all-out broadcast.

"This is personal transport the Trial to the Hutt tomb handling guys. I have retrieved a crate of your precious crystals. Untouched as you like them. I propose a trade with Leba or Vitress." That should get their attention.

[Storyteller (Brend)]

The goon doesn't look at all happy when Trigiel declared to go directly into space.

"Err, I don't know for sure. When his ships jumped here his arrival was broadcasted throughout the system on all frequencies. People say that he has destroyed two stations just because they were behind on their payments to the Hutt. And that he slaughtered the peoples of Arkilon just because their elders wouldn't tell him something. But people talk a lot."

"All I know for sure is that he has bounty hunters and star destroyers. He can have any name he wants for all I care, boss.", the goon said the word "boss" as if trying on a new suit for fit.


While en-route from the planet to the waystation, Trigiel hails the Hutt ships on an open frequency. After a short wait, he receives a reply:

"Wankee wata, achuta tulwan teesaw. Coona tee-tocky malia? Bargon u noa-a-uyat. Be cotma!

Na yoka inkabunga! Lorda Leba nobata ateema... Theechu hagwa baatu baatu Vitress. La pim nallya so bata de wompa."

[Fecta Trigiel]

"Ah, old Leba is getting cocky is he?" Trigiel then continued more talking into nothing: "Maybe I need to start a collection of Star Destroyers so I can add these two to them. To bad I haven't got the manpower yet to fly them. But I'm sure that is a fixable problem."

Note to self, add 'stealing two star destroyers' as a bonus objective of this mission.

Trigiel patiently listened to the Wankee wata answer he got of which he understand nothing. He checked if the ship could translate it for him, but he didn't had high hopes for it.

If the ship was not included with the all encompassing Huttese translate device, he turned to his prisoner: "You, you don't speak Huttese by any chance do you? I didn't take into account those Hutt's were too self-centred to give a decent answer over the line."

If the guy was able to translate, Trigiel let him translate the message. Else he send back a message: "Sorry, I forgot to learn Huttese on my way to here, can you please repeat that in basic galactic?"

[Storyteller (Brend)]

The goon looked happy to perform a somewhat relevant role, all of a sudden.

"Everybody speaks Huttese around here boss. They said this:"

"Message here, hello smuggler ship. What took you so long? You will be rewarded. Come in!

Incredibly good joke! Lord Leba has no time... Afraid to disturb Vitress. I will get back to you on that one."

[Fecta Trigiel]

"I knew I could use you," Trigiel said to his minion, "congratulations, you have just been promoted to my personal translator. What's your name?"

Then Trigiel answered over the Radio: "Yes, I am a funny guy like that.

Listen, it seems you are not fully aware of your position, so let me spell it out for you before you're about to make any mistakes. Either you can let me in, or let me fly away. If you let me dock with Leba's ship, and I've no crystals, you simple arrest me or kill me. Your guards have done a good job getting rid of a funny guy and you are hanging here in space anyway so it's not like that your dock guards have anything better to do. If you let me go and I do have the crystals, your boss will kill you for letting these precious crates with blue goldmines go. I'm sure some of Leba's rivals are willing to give a fat pay-day for these lovelinesses.

And no, activating those turbo laser canons would be a foolish move as well, as you destroy both the crystals and the chance to see me. After which I would have to destroy your Star Destroyer in a flair of revenge and entertainment."

[Storyteller (Brend)]

"Gar Haruss, boss."

After Trigiel's speech, the reply was impressively short.

"Choy? Niuta, be cotma! Boska bsha! Ting cooing koo soo ah."

"Err, boss. I think they already wanted you to dock after your first message. He's saying:"

"What?... Please, come in! Dock already! I've got the credits."

[Storyteller (Brend)]

((OOC: As an aside note: I am not a characters-always-win ST. I do not like to pull my punches. And I take heavy-calibre weaponry very serious :P

Therefore, I feel compelled to inform you that I hope that "activating those turbo laser canons would be a foolish move as well" was an IC boast an not based on an OOC conviction that your Jedi would happily survive. If the ship surrounding him is being vaporized into tiny bits he'll probably survive, but not without serious injuries -- most likely ending the mission.

This message is sponsored by the 'make sure your players understand the scale of damage' committee.))

[Elmer]

((OOC: I know, but Trigiel with his ego... self confidence believes he can dodge the super laser canons, or at least jump out his ship in time and enter the star destroyer in a grand one man boarding operation :). And he has to make a statement of how awesome he is.))

[Fecta Trigiel]

"Oh my sincere apologies, your 'incredibly good joke' part set me on the wrong track. I will dock immediately."

Trigiel moved his ship to dock, keeping a keen eye out for danger, especially the laser canons. No way that they are going to let him get away with this so easily, that's just not Hutt-like.

[Storyteller (Brend)]

Trigiel found that docking was really easy. The capital ships had opened a docking bay that would easily allow vessels thrice the size of his small ship to fly inside and land. Four other small vessels were already parked here. Crossing the force field that keeps the air in causes the hull of the ship to make a sizzling noise. Apparently they did let him get away with docking this easily...

As Trigiel was manoeuvring his ship to the last empty spot, it was clear that the hangar was meant for receiving guests. Several oversized laser turrets were mounted on a walkway around the hanger, each manned an angry-looking Gamorrean. A small welcoming party stands waiting a little little away from the edge of the parking space.

The group consists of a silver protocol droid, two well-armed rodians and a gran wearing bounty-hunter armour with the same colour as the capital ship. One of the rodians was carrying a smallish box with a clear 'Credits' symbol printed on it, most likely the payment for a job well done.

With a soft ploof, the small ship sets down.

[Fecta Trigiel]

"Well Gar, it seems that they have set up a nice welcoming party, ready to pay us or kill us. This is going to be interesting. If a fire fight breaks out, I recommend you take cover in the ship, or somewhere else as they might blow up the ship. You know, use your common sense."

Trigiel opened the door of his space craft, but took care not to stand in the opening, just in case. Slowly the door opened, some of the usual smoke left the entrance. After a short delay when they don't start shooting, Trigiel seemly casually appeared in the opening and walked downwards, casually looking around like he was admiring a garden. In fact he was on edge prepared for any surprise attack, but he was not going to show them. When the party still was not shooting, Trigiel ordered Gar to follow him. He then walked towards the welcoming party.

"Greetings."

[Storyteller (Brend)]

Just after Trigiel opens the door, the shooting failed to start. After casually looking around, the shooting still didn't start... When he walked outside there was, suprisingly, still no surprise attack.

"Achuta.", the gran replied as he lifts one eye-stalk in surprise as the droid seems to be the spokesperson. He doesn't remain surprised long though. "We have your payment right here. Our droids will start unloading immediately, I'll inspect the goods, and you'll have your promised stack of credits within minutes."

As he spoke a group of cargo transfer droids started to move towards the ship, clearly intent on unloading the goods.

[Fecta Trigiel]

Trigiel quickly went through his mind to think if there was anything of importance in his ship, but he carried very little, so it would probably no problem if they went into his ship. He just would have to check for explosives later on. And even if they would find something interesting, what would they do, attack him?

"Ah well, while you inspect your goods, I like to inspect mine. I assume the box is for me when you like your crystals? Maybe I can already check it while your droids are working?"

This isn't really going to be a smooth transaction is it?