The Grande Carnivale’s interior was a sight to behold. She was built to pass herself off as some rich fop’s luxury liner, and Jon had made all the modifications and overhauls to ensure that was not just a disguise. The main room alone was vast to an impractical degree, as though it were designed to host a dance party; there was an honest-to-mortis bar taking up one wall, with half a dozen seats, and shelves fully stocked.
That was before mentioning the personal touches Jon had added, like the dark oak panneling that made up the floor and most of the walls, or the soft blue lanterns that hung from the ceiling, flickering like flames and casting the whole room in a soft blue glow. Plush fur rugs were placed strategically so as to be present without being gaudy; a wampa’s snarling hide was laid out in front of the central holo-terminal, itself decorated by a stone circle, making it look like some kind of rustic fireplace.
‘Welcome, ladies and gentleman, to my pride and joy,’ Jon said as he swept into the opulent cabin; it was obvious to anyone watching he’d been waiting for an opportunity to show off the Carnivale for some time. ‘She’s got everything a spacer could want and a few things he never knew he wanted, all fit for a long clandestine voyage. Can I get you some refreshments?’
Miho looked around the cabin, one eyebrow arched curiously as she surveyed their surroundings. She wasn’t exactly one who could talk about too much luxury. Entire swaths of the Storm was filled with trophies and luxuries unheard of in their home sector.
A slight smile as she eyes the spacer. “If you’re ever in the market for wall coverings, let me know. I think I have a few Kyataran pieces that would really tie the room together.”
The High Councillor walked over to one of the long bench seats and took up residence. “I always appreciate someone who takes care of themselves.”
Violet eyes drifted to the bar almost longingly. The odds of him having any of the Kasiyan liquor she had tasted on her trips with Musashi was unlikely. Maybe she could get him a few cases after they got back. With a shrug, Miho turned back to Jon with a smile.
“How much did you have to steal to afford her?”
Evara crept in slowly. Her head tilted. The blue lanternlight shimmered across her sets of pupiless red eyes as they flicked rapidly from surface to surface. A pause as she began to observe the vessel and the craftsmanship within.
“…this very nice.”
A faint click of an accent punctuated her voice. She drifted forward in a soft arc, immediately drawn to the paneling. Two hands pressed to the dark oak, then a third—yes, definitely a third— to inspect the woodwork. Her claws traced the grain with careful precision. A pleased, quiet clicking followed.
She wandered again, now drawn to the bar—not for a drink right away, but for the glass. She leaned in close, watching the fractured reflections scatter like tiny webs catching dew. One claw tapped a bottle. Her head snapped slightly to the side as she followed the ripple.
“…shiny. Very shiny,” she decided.
She might have stayed there indefinitely—but the wampa hide called louder. Lowering herself, she pounced and laid there, multiple limbs settling at once.
“…this one has teeth,” she nodded approvingly. “Well preserved teeth.”
She relaxed comfortably, having decided that this was to be her new spot.
“…much better than tents.”
Her claws idly brushed the fur again as she settled into the warmth.
“This…” she gestured vaguely with one limb toward the room as a whole, “…this very luxurious.”
Only then did she look back to Jon. A slow, deliberate nod.
“You wove this well,” she said approvingly. “What a lovely nest.”
At the offer of refreshments, one limb lifted slightly, gesturing toward the bar without her moving from her chosen spot.
“Something bitter,” she said. “Or something that has bite to it, please.”
Her eyes flicked once more to the lanterns above, watching in fascination.
“…and shiny cup.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have any Cortyg Brandy on board?” Rajhin bellowed as he carefully ducked down to avoid hitting the top of the door into the main room.
The Togorian normally eschewed the trappings of luxury, especially going into a potential combat situation. Over his years in the Brotherhood, however, he had learned to accept it as a fact of life that some people wanted or needed. He looked around at the admittedly tastefully decorated space and wondered if it couldn’t have been better used as a training space or a sparring ring.
‘Ha!’ Jon guffawed. ‘Do we!’
He looked down to the BT1 unit at his side, and whispered: ‘Do we?’
The droid beeped something in affirmation, and Jon turned back, smiling: ‘Of course we do! You think my bar would be complete without it?’
He walked over to where the strange arachnoid alien was watching his lanterns in apparent fascination and took a seat, before grabbing a set of glasses and laying them out along the counter top.
‘Help yourselves, there’s plenty for everyone! None for me I’m afraid, I need this mind sober in order to pilot us where we’re going. Speaking of, Miho? Where are we goin?’
Evara’s sets of red eyes flicked to the Togorian curiously. Alcohol was a luxury rarely afforded, unless part of one of her various rituals. This ship was a far cry from the remote world huts and various vendor stalls that Evara was used to occupying, to sell her various wares of handcrafted weaponry and potions of Ichor.
She scuttled closer to the bar, her six arms moving quickly to pour herself, and the Togorian another round of drinks.
“And now, for the final touch,” She began to say. Evara added a small pinch of Ichor powder into each drink, a fog of green smoke and a faint glow now emitting from each of them. She picked up her glass with two hands, quickly downing the contents.
<@185939710005215232> <@230809550297497600>
Miho walked over to a table and set down a small metallic circle and tapped the center of it. A starmap expanded from the disc as the High Councillor set her hands on her surface and looked up at the map.
“We are heading to a place called Nancora,” she began softly. “Apparently, it was the location of a very large conflict with the Collective.”
She shrugged slightly, a gesture that meant everything and nothing. “It was before I returned to this part of the universe so all I have are a few reports from around that time to go off of. Regardless, the Herald wants salvage. I want to get paid. A win-win.”
Miho pointed a slender finger at the planet in question. “It’s a barren rock filled with treasures and treasure hunters. So, let’s see what we can make it away with, yes?”
Jon smirked. ‘Treasure and treasure hunters? Say less. Just give me the coordinates and I’ll chart us a course.’
Rajhin accepted the drink Evara had prepared for him with a gracious head bow, “thank you.” He eyed the now faintly glowing beverage critically before taking a drink. “A fine addition!” He exclaimed as he raised his glass in a salutatory manner.
The Togorian turned to Miho after she finished her explanation of the mission, “Nancora also holds salvage of strategic value that must be kept out of the hands of our enemies.” A moment of silence passed as memories of the war on Nancora surfaced. Rajhin gave a ever-so-slight shake of his head as he snapped out of his momentary reverie. He raised his glance and took on a more upbeat tone, “To treasure! And stifling our enemies!”
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Miho laughed softly. She’d heard a couple of stories about the Togorian and was quite happy to find they weren’t exaggerated. The trip was at least going to be a lively one.
She turned back towards Jon and tossed him a datapad. “I was told these are the spatial coordinates. Think you can get us there beflre any other team being sent out?”
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She turned back towards the spider and the tiger. “Just make sure the two of you are still sober enough to fight if we need it.” Miho paused for a minute. “Though, if either of you are drunken masters in disguise, that could also be entertaining.”
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Evara had been only half listening at first. At least, that was how it appeared. One of her many hands cradled the drink Rajhin had just praised, another idly traced the rim of the glass. But at the mention of salvage, something in her shifted. All six of her glowing red eyes sharpened at once with something of both anticipation and joy.
“Salvage…” she echoed softly. Her posture shifted in pure curiosity. Evara found herself looking forward to the idea of what relics, rarities, and forgotten things waited to be claimed and kept. .
And then, almost as an afterthought, she took another drink. And another. And then, yet again, another. Until the spider let out a soft hiccup.
It didn’t take long before that eerie stillness she usually carried began to… loosen. There was a slight sway to the Harch’s ordinarily balanced movements. Her body tilted unexpectedly to one side, but in a sudden flurry of motion, all six arms shot out. She caught herself against nearby surfaces, nearly tipping over a chair in the process before steadying herself.
“Fight?” she perked up suddenly, her lightly accented voice a touch louder now. definitely less measured. “Did someone say fight?”
In one smooth yet fast moving sequence, she began pulling items from her satchel, letting them spin in each of her many arms. An electric bola crackled to life in one hand, and a strip of explosive detonite tape dangled from another. And then, at last, her beloved Nightsister bow— forged from her own six hands.
Evara paused, beady red eyes staring at it for a moment. “Hm..” Her surroundings seemed to sharply focus for her in that moment, drunken haze parting just enough for something close to obsession with her craftsmanship and work to take hold. With a small, decisive noise, she produced her all tool kit, several hands immediately going to work—adjusting and refining tiny details along the weapon’s surface. Her hand movements, even now, were suddenly meticulous… though occasionally a tool slipped out of her grasp, or a movement overcorrected itself just slightly before being fixed again.
“Mm… no, no, no. This detail. Must be fixed…” she muttered, half to herself, half to whatever unseen spirits and wraiths from far beyond she believed guided her very craft. “The spirits of Dathomir prefer elegance, yes?” Evara said aloud to herself even as her sets of red eyes became distant.
She sighed to herself, carefully evaluating the work of her weapon. “…Better. Much better indeed,” Evara finally concluded. Only then did she seem to remember the others were still there.
Evara straightened— or at least, she attempted to. One of her legs stumbled awkwardly, forcing two arms of her six limbs to stabilize herself, now moving in a spider like crawl across the ground.
“Let us travel, friends, to the lands unknown!” Evara finally declared, gesturing far too enthusiastically with at least three different arms. “We shall lay claim to the shiny objects. Yes indeed, I require more for my collection…” She finally said with a nod, referring to her small hut of a home that was already far too overcrowded and hoarded with various items.
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Rajhin let out a hearty laugh at Miho’s passing remark, “It takes more than this to inhibit my battle senses. Fear not, I my focus will be crystalline when we arrive at Nancora.” The Togorian considered giving a impromptu lecture on the pre-battle traditions on Kashyyk and Mandalore both of which involved healthy, but appropriate, amounts of drink. He decided against it and made a mental note to drink water after this current glass.
Grand Carnivale Nancora
The wasteland was a blasted, desolate sort of place. All around them, the storms swirled and flashed in ways that made the hair stand up on the back of your neck. What in the world had possessed them to take this job?
Well, the potential favors from the Herald might be nice, but for right now, Miho just wanted to run her through a little bit. “Alright, we probably shouldn’t stay here too long. Those storms look like they’re heading to us.”
She turned and looked at her companions with a grin. “Spread out and see what we can find, but stay within shouting range of at least one other person.”
The High Councillor started off, muttering under her breath about the disaster of search and rescue in an environment like this.
Rajhin set out toward a particularly promising looking ruin approximately 25 meters away from the landing zone. The outer walls of the rectangular building had clearly received heavy bombing during the war years ago but the inner structure seemed sound. The Togorian remembered from his earlier days in the Royal Guard that apparent warehouses like this one often hid Collective technology caches or laboratories.
The Togorian gingerly made his way through the rubble of the warehouse floor and toward the “office space” in the back. The war on Nancora was chaotic, this particular building had likely been marked as destroyed as the Brotherhood lines advanced. It wasn’t out of the ordinary for places like this to have not been searched, at least not thoroughly. And who knows what else had taken refuge here in the years since.
Dust and duracrete fragments covered every piece of furniture in the back office area. Rajhin moved with caution, reaching out with the Force and his mundane senses to detect threats. He moved room to room, checking for a hatch or false door that would lead to any sort of underground area. Finally he came to the manager’s office which looked promising.
Rajhin pushed the executive desk and bits of debris out of the way to reveal a hatch that had been hastily covered. The Togorian gave a toothy smile as he circled around the durasteel hatch looking for a way to open it.
A loud beeping sound came from below followed by the hatch slowly opening to reveal a set of stairs down just large enough for a humanoid. It would be a tight fit but he was confident he could squeeze through into the lower levels.
“Time to see what the Collective rats hid down here,” Rajhin remarked as he made his descent.
Nancora, Jon found, was an ugly world. That had been his first impression of the planet from orbit. Setting foot on the surface had not improved his assessment overmuch.
His Carnivale had gotten the little crew from Kiast to Nancora in record time, if he did say so himself (and had Artemis compare with the previous astrogational records of similar distances and lanes to confirm, naturally). That bit of pride was to be the last positive feeling Jon would have for some time to come, sadly.
Whilst Rahjin descended down his own path, Jon took out his collegium scanner – a neat little trinket he’d picked up on the latest of his frequent trips to Turel’s academy – and starting collating all the data he could on the area.
Information pooled into the little screen, and little-to-none of it was good. Radiation was high, though not fatal so long as they didn’t linger; whatever life had once occupied this world, or at least this region of it, was scoured away. Not even microbes remained.
Evara emerged from the ship with a slow, deliberate crawl, her spider like limbs skittering softly against the barren ground. Each step was precise, almost delicate, as she reached out to sense the world beneath her array of arms.
She paused often, tapping at stones and fragments of debris, her head tilting with quiet curiosity as the arachnid scanned her surroundings. The lifelessness of the planet did not unsettle her. If anything, it… comforted her. A faint, knowing smile curled at her red lips.
“Ahh… such a bleak little world, yes… but it is in places like these… that the most delicious secrets are hidden…”
Her voice carried a smooth lilting tone soft, with that of drawn out vowels, each word touched with an almost theatrical elegance. She crouched lower, fingers trailing along the dust before producing a strip of detonite tape that she’d crafted herself. She handled it with care, placing it with measured precision against a weakened section of ground, as though she were weaving a web.
“Yess… we shall go down, I think… for the sweet, sweet, hidden treasures…” Before triggering it, Evara stilled. Her limbs froze mid motion. She cast a slow glance over her shoulder through her six eyes, ensuring her companions were nowhere near in the immediate radius. Satisfied, her limbs began tapping again, quicker now, almost playful.
“Boom.” Evara spoke softly—The charge detonated with a roar that tore deep into the land. Rock and ash erupted outward in a blast, the ground collapsing inward to form a jagged crater. Evara’s six limbs rose in instinct from where she stood at a distance away. Dust billowed into the air before slowly settling, revealing a dark, yawning passage… A series of caves stretching down into the unknown.
Evara stepped forward, brushing dust from her limbs with idle, careful grace. Her glowing red eyes gleamed as she peered into the depths below, her smile widening just slightly.
“Hmm… and what horrors sleep in the dark below, I wonder…? No, no… it is far wiser to send… someone else… mm… someone already dead…” She lowered herself to the ground, movements fluid and controlled, and began tracing intricate runes into the dirt. Each symbol was deliberate and practiced, in lines of Nightsister magick. As she worked, the markings began to glow with a sickly green light, pulsing with unnatural life.
The air grew colder— Heavier. Shadowy mist gathered at the center of the runes, coiling and twisting upward before taking shape. Slowly, the spectral form of a massive, muscular Hutt emerged, with ghostly tattoos that shimmered faintly in the green glow.
Evara tilted her head, gazing up at him through her beady crimson eyes, her smile stretching just enough to reveal rows of sharp fangs “Chursiggaa… my love… you come to me again… such loyalty, even beyond death…”
The wraith bowed his head. “Yes, M’lady, your will is my command,” the Hutt continued obediently.
Evara shifted, settling into a relaxed seated position, one leg crossing over the other. Her posture was casual, but the control she exerted over the wraith was absolute. She lifted a hand, gesturing slowly toward the cave below, her fingers curling with quiet intent.
“Yess… you vill go now… down into ze dark… see what waits for me, hmm? Do not linger… I vould hate to be kept waiting…” Without another word, the wraith obeyed. Its ghostly, Hutt form shifted in drifting mists as it turned, slipping silently into the depths of the cave, vanishing into the darkness below.