First Reply Bloodied Dunes

[John Jewl]

Tatooine.

John never liked the planet. A miserable desolate place in the fringes of nowhere. Barren, empty, forgotten; much like the people that lived there. Scouring the edges of the galaxy didn't make for good loot, but it was easy. Too far-flung for anyone to care and only for those who are forgotten or want to be forgotten

The twin suns had begun to slink beneath the planet, the creeping brittle night of the desert soon encroaching, along with the darkness. It was almost silent, save for the occasional grunts and snarls of the beasts they rode, and the constant hum of the evaporators like a swarm of insects buzzing in anticipation.


John and his gang were stationed on top of a sand hill, staring down at a small hamlet formed of sun-baked bleached stone and a smattering of moisture evaporators around it. Most of John's gang rode on Orbak mounts and other beasts, they wore tattered clothes and scavenged armor that looked like a mismatch of metal. Weapons that were rusted and caked in the dried blood of their enemies. Most gruesome of all were the dried soured scraps that looked more like raisins in the desert heat, worn like satchels around their chests.

The plan was simple, as it usually was. Ride in, kill as many as you can, and cause mayhem. Then their ship would come in, blasting any resistance that remained and taking the survivors back on to be sold, killed, or whatever the gang desired.

John sat on his mount, his hands hardening around the reigns of his mount. His cold eyes scoured the settlement. There was always that cold anger that burned within him, a constant contempt for anything that couldn't or wouldn't defend itself. But the passion for violence had been lost somewhere. There was a cold repetitiveness to it. Like a maintenance droid that had continued an order long after its master had died.

He briefly considered not raiding them. Turning back, turning back from all of this. But it comes to a point, a threshold crossed, that redemption becomes meaningless. So he did the only that he could, he ordered his gang to ride.

Mounts came galloping, and screaming, blasters, slugthrowers, vibroblades, and whatever makeshift monstrosity cobbled together was raised, and came down on the villagers.

 

[Nathan Bloodscrawl]

Wearing: Interceptor Gear

Armed With: Nathan's Saberstaff , Heavy Repeating Blaster


The raiders had been terrorizing villagers across Tattooine, butchering, murdering, and sold of to slavery with relentless abandon.

It had gotten so bad that this village, fearing they would be hit next, had asked a Jedi to help them.

Nathan despised raiders, they set off all sort of bad memories of the Gulag Era. He'd dealt with this kind all throughout his original tenure as a Jedi.

So Nathan had decided to give them a Taste of their own medicine.

He had brought weapons, simple blaster rifles and Slugthrowers, and had quietly teleported people via line of sight to the entrance of a rocky canyon a few hundred meters beyond. And he had his own reserves in wait.

He had mined the place as well. Set up booby traps.

But it was the heavy repeater he had brought which would provide the bite to the Bark.

Only the most able bodied villagers in fighting condition were allowed to stay. Everyone else was hidden in the canyon beyond.

He waited, hidden in one of the huts, other villagers strategically hidden elsewhere.

He had a good angle from here when the raiders rode in. And he showed zero mercy when he did.

He set off the explosives, and six raiders were blasted apart , causing a pile up that caused others riding on beasts to slow down.

Nathan began firing the repeater relentlessly as the other remaining villagers, ten in all, popped up from various hiding spots and began shooting also, having set up a crossfire that killed more raiders.

It was an ambush on the gang of John Jewl

 

[John Jewl]

A hurl of fire sent several raiders high into the air. Limbs of men and beasts rending apart in bursts of explosive gore. Screams of pain and rage rocked the gang, as their charge was thwarted. A crisscross of blaster and slugthrower tore about a dozen raiders in an instant.

But they weren't stopped. John rallied his men with a roaring cry, feeling the burning coarse adrenaline rip through his veins. "C'mon, we ain't karking done here!" He screamed through his teeth, thick with anger. How had some lickspittle fringe settlers on a dead world managed to ambush them? He began screaming into his comlink. "Bring the ship! Level this hovel to the ground!" He ordered. Since they had made it harder for his gang, he wasn't taking survivors. He was determined to see everyone here dead.

While the initial mines and blaster fire had staggered their charge, it didn't end it. Pockets of raiders broke off rerouted and recharged. Others kept going, screaming at the hail storm of fire. They dropped down from their horses directly onto the valiant defenders, tearing them limb from limb, while others died before they got that far.

John rallied about 10 raiders to him, and through the chaos, he could see where most of the firepower was coming from. A small hut was spitting out laser bolt after laser bolt. Where did these moisture farmers get a repeater from?

Before he could finish his thought, his mount was caught in a stray shot, collapsing with a terrible pained cry. Forced onto the ground, he quickly yelled "DISMOUNT!" He commanded, his group doing as they were told. Using the dunes and the dead bodies of their mounts as cover.

"That hut, one with the repeater, bring it down!" He called to crew of the ship, the Marauder-class corvette coming in to level the village, its thunderous engine roaring through the air.

Nathan Bloodscrawl

 

[Nathan Bloodscrawl]

Defiance.

Good.


Nathan set off the secondary batches of explosives, after feeling a few of the villagers get torn apart. The raiders who had managed to get kills didn't have long to celebrate, as everywhere a villager fell a plasma grenade would go off and blast apart a few raiders.

The dunes they hid behind had the mines go off, buried in the dunes, instantly melting sand to molten glass on them. But that was when the Marauder started thundering in.

"So there's your asset...looks out of date..." he said to himself, hitting a transmitter that began to unveil a remote controlled Ion Cannon, crudely assembled and easily destroyed at close range, that had been hastily assembled inside one of the huts itself, which began firing large, powerful bolts at the Marauder, explosive traps in the village blasting outward as the raiders had begun to close in on surviving defenders, who activated the crude shotgun traps as they retreated, swiveling turrets gunning down savages.

That was when Nathan himself teleported out of the hut and above a crowd of raiders, the blue blades of his Saberstaff flashing as he began to carve through them with vicious, merciless spins, teleporting thrown grenades back at their throwers as he began to cut his way to John Jewl

He hit a button on a nearby transmitter, and four pilots he had asked to aid him from the Trade League could be heard whirring in on old TIE/Advanced Fighters on an intercept course for the Marauder, firing rocket salvos, Two blasting away at the weapons to harass and distract it and two solely concentrating on engines. The pilots set off targeting jammers. But he had no intention of remaining stationary. He was too busy killing the raiders for every villager, leaving them in dismembered piles.