A Very Vongy Venture With Variable Versimilitude (crew of the Starcrosser; allies, enemies and chanc

[Jace Stardasher]

It was never completely dark on Coruscant; at least not so long as one remained above the ground. Though the endless skyscrapers blocked out the sun for most inhabitants of the lower levels, the numerous flashing lights, be they advertisements or locale signs, illuminated even this dim place. The surface of the up-until-recently-Capital of the Republic was a world of constant twilight, where shadows and neon lights were intertwined in a dance that never ceased.

It was here that Captain Jace Stardasher was to meet his contact, a man known to him only as "lord Imura," who, so Jace was told, had a vested interest in acquiring a set of difficult to obtain items, for which, it was said, he was prepared to pay a handsome fee. And if there was a thing that piqued Jace's interest, it was things that were said to be difficult and offered a sizeable reward.
He had been to Coruscant before, and while the government may have changed in the meantime, the netherworld of Coruscant was still the same. Endless advertising, diverse species offering even more diverse services, and plenty of customers interested in each of them... only Nar Shaddaa had a similar vibe, and that moon was infamous for being the seat of everything illegal. This omnipresent feeling of desperation, coupled with ambition and opportunity, was only present in areas where the poor believed they could strike rich with a single turn of luck. And for a select few, this was true, as Jace himself knew well enough from personal experience; but an incomparably larger share would wager all they had and lose it all, with debt or slavery being the usual ways out.

It was in this place, a back alley behind a certain Onderonian restaurant that was renowned for serving a mean spiced cannock (which could have actual Spice in it, if you specifically asked for it and paid extra), that Jace had stopped and waited for his contact. Luckily, he did not have to wait too long...

[member="Nickolas Imura"]

 

[Garza]

I had called for the meeting that would set everything I need in motion. I had a shopping list of items to do. However, I had more than just this to do. Recently I had been a busy man. Coming forth, I was dressed in a leather jacket, simple jeans, and nice looking combat boots. Like any other shady transaction, I brought my lightsaber with me. I felt a little sick. But I was fine none the less. Likely from the constant corruption of the sword I carried, any kind of time away from it made me feel sick and sometimes light headed. Progressively it had been getting worse. Either way, this needed to be done.

Coming into the alley, I set forward to see a Smuggler. Walking forward in a blank stare. I stopped before him. Tilting my head sideways. I smirked as I looked the man up and down.

"I asked for a smuggler. And this is all I get?"

nerf herder move number one. Determine if he could work with people he didn't like. As well, I wanted to see his reaction to my words. If there was anything I wanted more than a good smuggler, it was a smuggler that could keep his cool. I wanted someone who would be able to carry out any task I asked. WIthin reason though. Nonetheless, I reached into my pocket and produced a small tablet with information on the items I wanted.

"Gather me these items. Since you might not survive, I'll pay you a third of my price now, and the rest when you get back."

Handing it to him, I was glad I could throw my name around and get someone to gather my groceries. I needed someone other than Sith and Primeval personnel to grab it for me because it was hidden, and kept under the books for now. I didn't want anybody following my plans with this. And then take or steal my hard earned research. Smuggling was a good thing. For me that was.

"Questions..."

[member="Jace Stardasher"]

 

[Jace Stardasher]

Jace only smirked at the veiled insult directed at him. He had been offended by professionals and it was evident this guy wasn't even trying very hard.
"If I looked like a smuggler on first glance, I wouldn't be a very good one, now were I?" he replied, smiling arrogantly. "Rest assured buddy, I'll get your stuff safe and sound, or my last name isn't Stardasher."
He deduced that a little bravado from either side could do no harm to their arrangement; it anything, some poking here and there was a good sign that it was an honest deal. The ones that kept their identities hidden and only kept you on a need-to-know basis, those were the ones more likely to double-cross you in the end. Not that it would have stopped Jace, but he preferred to get his due.
After being handed over the datapad with the information, he quickly skimmed it. Some staffs were not an issue, he assumed, but what was an "embrace of pain"? Only cultists and Sith had a thing for items with such fancy and absolutely useless names. And what was this about a virus?

"I'd like to know what exactly this "embrace of pain" is," Jace began. "And I want to know everything about this virus of yours," he requested further. "I don't make a habit out of dealing with bio-weapons. Where can it be harvested and what sort of precautions should I take? Will I require a special container, or would a general vacuum canister suffice? If I am to fetch this one for you, you obviously have more use for me and my crew not getting infected with it before you get your hands on it."
He intended to inquire about these things by himself on the holonet afterwards any way, but his client's cooperation would be invaluable in reducing browsing time, as well as making it easier to judge whether the second part of the payment was actually coming or just a hoax. And then there was the off chance that these things weren't sufficiently documented and his contractor was potentially the only source of information he had.
"Oh, and one more thing," the smuggler added, flipping the cigar in his fingers and puffing a cloud of smoke at the customer. "I want 50% up front."
A 1/3 up-front ratio was a good deal most anywhere you found it, but if someone offered it from the start, you were an idiot not to ask for a better one.

[member="Nickolas Imura"]

 

[Garza]

Gambler, smoothtalker, and clearly has the knowhow to run a true transaction between the likes of us. Good. I might be able to find a good use for him later on as well as now. Looks like I had made a good choice. I smirked as he wanted more for his first payment. Considering how I was asking for things he knew very little knowledge on, he wanted more up front because he would have to look these things up. I nodded my head once as I then spoke from my end.

"Embrace of pain is a biological machine. Made out of Vong tech, it's a table, or a hanging platform that has restraints, and other such on it. It's a torture device. It was made to fit a full sized vong, and in some cases, even a Null. Shouldn't be too hard to find. However, be careful. Touching the barbs on the device will cause extreme pain. Anything metal should be able to protect you well enough. Possibly Spacer leather, but I doubt you want to find that out the hard way."

Taking the datapad from the man's hand, I slung my fingers around on the face, and bringing up a page of information, and even documented holos of what the vongspawn virus does to people. It also showed special vials that they were held in alot of the time.

"They can be used in just about anything. Aerosols, Food, drink, hell even put on a blade to scratch you. Once it gets in your system, you will slowly weaken, become darker, easy to anger, and begin to grow horns and spikes over your body. They cause pain in an unimaginable scale if a high enough dose is taken. A respirator, and simply being aware of the area around you to prevent traps and other such from getting you is safer than nothing."

I then reached within my pocket. Producing a little pouch, I handed it to him. Inside was 500,000 credits worth. I then reached behind me to produce another pouch. I then pulled out credits and counted them rather fast as I then held them out to him. In total it was about 750,000 credits.

"The pouch alone was a third. Now you have half. You have a long and dangerous road ahead of you. Might as well pay you half now. If you are not back within a week, I can very easily find where you are and be forced to retrieve all of it, and the money myself."

I then put the rest of the credits back into my jacket and turned around, walking away as though I was done, and stopped to look over my shoulder,

"Should you be alive, and not have them after a week, you will be my first subject."

Walking away in a slow gait while looking forwards, and about to leave the man to his work,

"That is not a threat."

[member="Jace Stardasher"]

 

[Jace Stardasher]

[member="Nickolas Imura"]

Of course it's a torture machine, Jace thought when he learned of the purpose of this "embrace of pain" and rolled his eyes. But all he commented on the matter, was: "Hazmat gloves it is," which he corrected to "All right, full hazmat body suit then," after he was told about the virus.

His face was visibly sceptical when the contractor produced a couple of pouches as his payments. Who keeps credits in pouches? Better yet, wouldn't a single credit chip suffice? After all, it wasn't as if their credit values weren't flexible; the only worlds still using hard currency were ones that were infamous for being outside the bounds and laws of the Republic, and those never got on with the interplanetary credit currency anyway. But it wasn't completely nonsensical; the man could have used several chips so as to make the payment more difficult to trace, or, more probably, looted them off of his enemies or other corpses, and paying for a service in the grey or black area of economy was a good way to get rid of the excess chips with ease. After Jace made a quick scan with his hand-held terminal and confirmed the combined net value matched that of his employer's statement, his face showed visible signs of pleasure.
One-point-five million? Now there's a deal if I've ever seen one. Once I get this done, I can finally get that sweet cannon upgrade for my ship, the smuggler mused.
"Rest assured, I will definitely be back for the rest," he told the contractor with a wry smile. "You just keep that money sitting somewhere nice and safe until I come to collect it."
What his employer said after he had already begun to leave curdled Jace's blood. He wasn't often visited by fear, but he was also not in the slightest keen on torture, especially with himself on the receiving end. What the man meant by stating this was no threat, when it obviously seemed like one, eluded the smuggler, so he decided to play it safe and just get the items before the deadline. Worst case scenario, he would have to change identities again, despite having grown fond of this one.
He shrugged and gestured a farewell towards the Sith, not really bothering to care if the latter saw said gesture or not. The smuggler himself went the other way and around the corner, deciding to check the holonet while trying that spiced cannock the Onderonian restaurant they had met behind was so famous for.

 

[Beowoof]

Mia preferred the level just below the peaks of Coruscant's artificial surface, finding that the more prospective customers abide up top, but exactly wanting to draw the odds of a chance meeting with a Sith Lord. Anyone who claimed to be a magician or fortune-reader might attract undue attention from the likes of them, since magic was quite potentially associated with use of the Force. And besides, the entertainer was technically a pirate on the side.

Dressed in an exotic, flared, black robe, Mia Maslova stood inside a market booth, an easel that advertized her fortune-telling talents set up next to the chimes in the doorway. Mia herself sat near the arrangement and plucked at a guitar in delayed, syncopated rhythm to exude the mysterious air that attracted customers to the likes of her. She was many things, but she was not one to be obnoxiously straightforward. No, she intended to attract only the most invested of customers--the kinds that required no words to know what they were beholding, or what they should seek. The subtle visual and aural cues tended to catch the most observant and respectful of eyes and ears.

There was always someone whose interest would be ensnared. On Coruscant, the odds of catching a customer could only increase.

And later on tonight... That would be a piece of cake.

[member="Jace Stardasher"], [member="Nickolas Imura"]

 

[Jace Stardasher]

The cannock was an acquired taste, the waiter had told him. That you needed to truly savour every bite, he had told him. Even after having finished all of it, Jace was still not convinced. By his reckoning, the only "acquired taste" that slab of meat had was that you probably could only appreciate it if you had eaten it all your childhood, and the nostalgia of "spiced fried cannock, just like mama used to make" was the only 'acquired' thing about it. It felt sort of like meanings lost in translation when you're dealing with two languages: either you got it from the start, or you didn't - certain things just didn't translate well.

The smuggler left the restaurant with a bitter, or better put, soury-burnt after-taste. It was in this state, and with a good measure of pondering and planning his next endeavour, one that he had just been paid 50% upfront for, that he had unbeknownst to himself wandered off into the dark alleys of Coruscant's "less-coruscant" underbelly. Not long did he wander thusly when his gaze was attracted by a sign above a market booth, which claimed its seller could predict the future. Jace had seen many such charlatans on his travels before, but he had also seen some whom people claimed predicted accurately, though it often turned out to be just another lie, or a Jedi in disguise. And the smuggler had little patience for the former, and preferred to stay clear of the latter, as they inevitably caused problems, delays being the least of them, in his line of work. But then, this was a special job. He had just acquired 750k simply for accepting the job, with another batch of the same size promised at the end; so perhaps it was worth investing a small bit of that to get some insight into where to look and what luck might have in store for him, if only a chance? But then, Jace was rarely a prudent, and much less a careful person, so he decided he might as well. Fortunes could still be lost and won over the Pazaak table, regardless of whether this venture were to succeed or not.

"Hello there," he began in Galactic Basic, the most widely spoken tongue in the known universe and everyone's first choice of language when dealing with strangers. "So how does this thing work? I pay you, and you tell me where I will find adventure, treasure and booty, preferably both kinds?" He winked at the woman in the stall, adding:
"I have to admit, I'm not usually too keen on paying for words, unless they carry some weight, and even then usually after I benefit from the result, so I dare say I'm a little out of my comfort zone."

[member="Mia Maslova"]