Star Wars Roleplay: Chaos

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Private Goliath of Golatha

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Mountains. Giants in their own right. They towered over the surface of the planet amid forests with trees that stabbed the sky. Size meant little and less, much and more, for it was relative. The sun of one system, lording luminary and largest body, was a pinprick in comparison to other stars. There were starships like Star Destroyers that were dwarfed by Star Dreadnoughts.

Maybe such comparisons amounted to nonsense in the end, except in an attempt to scale those mountains that loomed over this Pantoran woman, veiled beneath a welkin swelled with white, like ice fell upward upon the sky to blanket this planet from existence. Maybe thoughts were meaningless as they drifted within her mind like driftwood on the ocean, only this was no sea that carried her feet, but snow that crunched beneath.

Onward, she marched, dressed in garments fit for these frigid conditions. This planet in the Outer Rim, Galatha is its name, sported verdant forests and mountains in black rock bound, but as with many worlds it was all but frozen over in certain sections. This is where the Pantoran was, and Vayla Mirana was her name, while Jedi Knight was her rank. Though, only those who needed to knew that she was also a Jedi Shadow.

Shadows were not in her midst, neither rays of sunlight despite it being daytime. Daylight did shine; meager slivers slipping beneath the pale blue sheet calling itself a sky. It wasn’t much but it was enough light to see, provided guidance for her feet. However, Vayla did not traverse the snow alone.

Between the stones that peppered the landscape, unfettered by a wind that howled one moment and whispered the next, she walked together with another person. Above her, some kind of owl hooted, perched in a tree. Green leaves and brown bark were few and far between the stones and the snow, but it was one rock in particular that had drawn Vayla Mirana’s attention, her reason for being here.

On Golatha, rumors of ruins ran rife. So, the adventurer within her came to this place, for the rock called her name, and the blue-grey boulder was named Goliath. Shaped like an egg, they said, and whether it was easy to glimpse from orbit it was hard to find purchase right beside it. So her ship had landed at a distance, and there she was, marching toward it.

Goliath. She spied with her naked eye, gaze searching through a blurry as snow billowed; droplets dotted like stars of a galaxy; on a valley of black-white the sunlight did glitter. Forward, Vayla Mirana walked, with another, her companion, Asani Windsong. Together, they would explore this Goliath, as the wind would sing a song not so easily forgotten.

Asani Windsong Asani Windsong
 
It was certainly a good lesson of that relativity, for even though Valya's traveling companion was much smaller than herself, this icy landscape's mountains towered over them equally. In the grand universe, everyone is small, playing their part in it, with some leaving a bigger mark than others, but none should feel their aspirations are unimportant.

Asani didn't need much convincing to come with Vayla on this journey of discovery. As a Kushiban bitten by the bug of wanderlust, this is what she lives for. From the moment she first gazed up at the stars from her home world, she aspired to see what lies beyond the current boundaries of her existence. It was only the cold that gave her any pause from coming, as she thus far has avoided wearing much clothing entirely, and if it is required of her, she would prefer to wear loose and fairly minimal clothing that allows for ease of movement. However, she prefers not freezing to death and her natural fur coat is not nearly enough for this climate, so she is dressed in her own small winter garment with a hood to keep her head and ears warm. It does make it difficult for her to stand upright, but it's more natural for her to walk quadrupedal anyway.

Even though she's been around the galaxy a bit, this is Asani's first time seeing snow, much less traveling through it. While she can easily see its potential dangers, as the snow drifts threaten to swallow her just for walking in the wrong place, she can't deny the stark beauty of the landscape. The giant egg shape they are moving toward is also a nice centerpiece for the picturesque scene. She also looked up at the owl as it gave a hoot at the light of day, bringing her a smile. It had been a while since she'd been to a more natural area and seen birds, it reminded her of home, of simpler times.

As the reason for their trek through the snow comes into clearer view, Asani gazed up at it with wonder. "I'm glad it's a big rock and not a real egg... I'm not sure I want to see what could hatch out of an egg that large, not to mention the creature that could lay such an egg."

Vayla Mirana Vayla Mirana
 
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Fortunately for both persons, their frigid environment wasn’t in the sense of its elements absolutely freezing either of them to death outright or overnight, at least depending on species. Granted, the Pantoran didn’t know much about her counterpart, but traversing the depths of the mountains ahead of them simply meant wearing the right garments. Species of all kinds did this all the time in the galaxy. Yet it did beckon the lesson of learning more of her companion as everybody was different.

“Rock. Egg.” Vayla shrugged off the difference as much as the symbolism. “It could be one or the other based on the rumors.” The problem with myths, legends or whatever the interpretation was, is that they differed in explanation and were generally filled with fallacy as much as fantasy.

“Yet, if something does emerge from this structure,” she turned to her companion while walking along. “Hopefully it isn’t hungry.” With a wink and a grin and leaving Asani to make of that what she wished amid humor, the pair of them eventually arrived at the base of the rock-egg-something.

“I don’t see a door,” the Jedi explored with her eyes, her hands, her Force. “Do you?” It wasn’t so expectant of a question but also rhetorical. Maybe her companion saw something she didn’t? “Has to be a way inside, right?” Then again, what was the problem with myths and legends?

Asani Windsong Asani Windsong
 
"An egg incubated by a stream of lava and hatched by a ground quake. Maybe it's some kind of winged reptile the size of a cruiser!" Asani mused at the notion that it could still be an actual egg that a creature would hatch from and chuckled at Valya's comment about hoping it wasn't hungry, as she thought about how even the two of them together would hardly be a snack to such a large creature.

At the question of seeing a door, Asani shook her head but ran her claws along the surface of the rock egg for a few moments. If there was a door, in this part of the structure, it was perfectly flush with the rest of it. She then pulled down her hood and with one ear raised, pressed her head against the surface of the structure, carefully listening for any sound from inside. After a moment, she knocked against it with her hand, listening for any hollow opening inside.

Vayla Mirana Vayla Mirana
 
Between the two of them they had their senses working in unison. What big ears her companion had, well, the Pantoran’s were smaller than the Kushiban’s, itself a smaller creature than her, but size didn’t matter at the moment. Asani listened with her ears. Vayla listened with a different kind of power.

“Quite a determined structure.” Odd way to word it, perhaps, but it made sense in her head. “I can’t seem to penetrate it even with my Jedi senses.” Her partner had the right of it by knocking against it to listen for an echo. Vayla heard nothing though. “Keep trying. Please.”

It was a pretty big egg-rock-thing to begin with. Nestled atop a mountain like an egg in a nest, with rocks at the base to cradle it. The pair of adventurers had discovered a path that led to a wall of glass blue as marble. Beautiful, but unfortunately nothing yet suggested a way in.

“It will take forever to search for an entrance like this.” She twisted her lips, tempted to whip out her lightsaber and just cut her way inside. However, she didn’t know what would happen if she tried it.

“Wait a minute.”
She looked back. “I wonder if that path was as naturally made as paved by hand.” The mountainous base…could it lead to a cave? “Maybe the entrance is beneath this blue sheet. Tunneled into the rock itself.” Just a theory, maybe it wasn’t worth testing, really. “What do you think?”

Asani Windsong Asani Windsong
 
Asani nodded in agreement with Valya's statement about the structure. "It sounds pretty solid from this spot, assuming there is an inside, the outer wall is too thick to echo from my little knocks. Maybe if we hit it with a big hammer or something we might still hear an echo." She commented as she gave up on the knocking and walked back to her Pantoran companion. She nodded at the comment that this could take forever going at it like this.

"Worth a try! It would kind of make sense to hide an entrance on the bottom for something like this I guess if it's not going to be around this outer edge…" She commented and tapped her feet against the ground they were now walking on. "Got any ideas on how to dig down into the rock? I don't think I could dig through it even if it was still dirt here. The cold made it nearly as hard as the rock."

Vayla Mirana Vayla Mirana
 
Now it was her turn to chuckle at her companion’s comment. Hammer was actually a good idea, however, as much as a lightsaber. Then again, perhaps a bad idea, given either could result in a fracture that might send the rock-egg-something-or-other collapsing on their heads.

So, they both agreed with the notion that maybe the ‘entrance’ wasn’t within the walls of the giant ‘egg’ but rather at its mountainous base, maybe. At least they were trying and that’s ultimately what mattered, especially because their attempts were made together.

Vayla was ever an adventurer who liked to go at it alone as much as with others. That wasn’t much of a contradiction. She was just someone who liked reading quietly in a library as much as dancing vibrantly in a club. As with most people in this galaxy, it usually depended on the environment, the moment and her mood.

Right now, cracking this egg evidently depended on finding the entrance. “Well, I’m hoping we won’t have to dig at all.” Vayla pinched her chin as they walked, ever musing on theory. “I have a lightsaber but, unfortunately, it’s as powerful as it isn’t when it comes to certain structures and objects.”

However, her weapon slash instrument might not even be needed. Onward, they trekked. “Let’s assume this ‘egg’ does have an entrance, wasn’t just plopped for naught. Would you lock said entrance? Hide it? Sure. Would you require someone to dig through dirt just to access it? Not sure there would be logic—”

Just as she mentioned it she spotted it. An entrance. The path that had taken them to the egg to begin with, that which they turned back and descended, branched off into the cavernous section of the mountains, underneath the mysterious structure. Only the door was solid rock. Except it had runes on it.

“Ah, there it is!” Vayla nodded, not that Asani wouldn’t see the same obvious image. “That isn’t Basic but an ancient language, yet I have seen it, or something similar.” Fortunately she was an explorer as much as a researcher. “Speak ‘friend’ and enter.”

Asani Windsong Asani Windsong
 
The love of adventure is something they both shared. Although Asani had gone alone for some time now, Vayla had seen where that got her. She was much happier having someone to adventure along with her, and the fact that they had a ship of their own was certainly a plus. However, she does also enjoy having time to herself still, and could perhaps grow fond of reading if introduced to the right books.

"Hopefully." Asani agreed to the prospect of not needing to dig at all, and followed down the path along with Vayla, coming to a branch in the path she hadn't noticed before. Gazing up at the door they eventually came to, Asani was glad to hear Vayla could apparently read the runic language upon it, as it may as well have been jibberish to her. She looked back toward Vayla as she translated the message, then turned back to the door and tried speaking to it. "We are friends, please allow us in." She said as she moved closer and despite it being a bit awkward with the heavy clothes, she rose on her hind legs and placed both her hand-like front paws against the door, and pushed.

Vayla Mirana Vayla Mirana
 
The message read ‘speak friend and enter’ as far as Vayla had interpreted it. The next moment, her companion mentioned friends, led her paws forward toward the door and pushed, but nothing happened. “Okay. So. I admit.” Vayla cleared her throat. “I don’t know for sure what language this is. It looks familiar but I guess that’s the problem with a galaxy that has so many planets and languages.” A fair assessment, she figured, considering the sheer number of approximated variation. “Sometimes two things can just be too similar while being entirely different.”

However, Vayla Mirana had not come this far just to give up, and surely neither did Asani Windsong. Windsong. As she watched the door as if it might open on its own accord, the Pantoran also watched the Kushiban. She had a last name that echoed in a land like this, like fantasy, though the reality of their relationship was that Asani had been a slave in a cage—until Mirana came along.

“Friend… Friends…” Vayla mumbled, finding purchase on the surface of a rock as she sat down in thought. “Is it a riddle? Is it asking us for the word for ‘friend’ in its language? Or just telling us that friends should speak in order to gain entry?” She tilted her head, lost. “Runes. Glyphs. Symbols. Sigils.” Just thinking out loud now. “I wonder if…are those trees wrapped around the pillars?”

Did it matter? She bit her lip. This was as fascinating as frustrating, trying to solve this puzzle. “The symbols kind of remind me of hintaro dice. That one's Tukar, anyway” She smiled. Speak, friend, and enter. Hintaro was a game for two. It took two players to play. Two dice. Two hands, in a way. What are we missing with this gate?

Asani Windsong Asani Windsong
 
Asani shook her head a bit. "I guess it was a little silly to think that saying we're friends and asking nicely to enter would do it, or that it would work in just standard basic... I'm not any good with riddles." She admitted as her ears drooped in a sad expression. Still, she looked at the runes as well while Valya spoke about them and what they might mean.

"Maybe the same culture that started the Hintaro game also made this egg, or at least the door? I wasn't really able to follow the game very well so I don't understand how it works, I couldn't see very well from inside the tiny cage that awful woman stuffed me into. But maybe the symbols have something to do with unlocking the door?" Not having any better ideas, Asani tried touching the runes, the few she could reach anyway, to see if it would change anything.

Vayla Mirana Vayla Mirana
 
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Silly? Absolutely not. At least that’s what Vayla thought. When it came to games like dice, as in hintaro, a lot of it was based on as much luck as chance, never mind the Force. To open this door? Sure, maybe it was a riddle or a passcode, though that meant little and less in the end. Ultimately these two individuals, Force-sensitives, women, Pantoran and Kushiban, would have to solve this puzzle together. That meant trial and error.

“She was indeed an awful woman, wasn’t she?” Vayla mused aloud, almost blowing through her lips, deciding against it. Even such a simple movement was one she could be conscious of, for better or worse. No, this wasn’t the time to sigh, definitely not give up, but to find a way inside.

“Hopefully whoever constructed this door isn’t as horrible. Did they do it before or after the egg-structure-something-or-other? For it?” She was asking musingly, knowing her companion had as many answers as her.

“Sure. Symbols to open the door? They might not have any relevance to hintaro but we don’t need a hintaron for this.” Also, her jokes could often be utterly terrible but on she goes. Asani touched a few runes. So did Vayla. Yet this was no gamble in a cantina. The door didn’t move.

“Speak friend and enter,” she reflected yet again. “Wait a minute…” It takes two players to play hintaro. She bit her lip. To open a gate? Maybe it’s no different. “Asani, on the count of three, I want us both to push forward toward either door.” We are friends, aren’t we?

“One…Two…
Three!”

So Vayla pushed forward. The next question was…did the doors open?

Asani Windsong Asani Windsong
 
Asani nodded to Vayla's question in agreement of how awful the slaver woman was. "She barely fed me and said I was hardly worth the cargo space on her ship and whipped me once when I apparently complained too much about being hungry and thirsty. She talked me up as a prize for that game, but clearly she was happy to have me out of her hands and someone else's 'problem.' People quite as awful as her are not quite rare enough in the galaxy if you ask me…" She says with a sigh before happily moving back to the subject of how they were going to get through this door.

"Unless this egg-shaped structure is somehow natural, I would think that the door was built as part of it, but I'm just guessing, I'm a weaver, not an architect or geologist." Asani showed no sign of amusement at Vayla's jokes as they went right over her head. However, her ears lifted and she looked hopeful at the other woman's idea of getting through the door. "Better than any other ideas I've got!" She says with a nod, and on the count of three, she pushes forward with Vayla, pressing her whole body against the door.

Vayla Mirana Vayla Mirana
 
It happened like that sometimes. Words said in jest, thoughts expressed, on to locks where accidents served as keys and turned them the next moment. Whether the gesture were related to their being friends in whatever sense, given they had only just met, relatively speaking, didn’t much matter. Vayla would concern herself with the science of this contraption later. What mattered was that the doors began to open.

Maybe it was their shared weight. Pushing at the same time. Touching the right symbols earlier as if punching in a code. Though, there she goes again, letting her theories get the better of her. She changed her mind, however; she would have plenty of time to theorize as they endeavor to explore this hidden world together.

“Darkness,” Vayla stated the obvious. What stretched ahead might have been a labyrinth filled with wonders; however, the lights were not on, if they were there to begin with; only darkness blanketed the depths. Vayla was a Jedi, she could see beyond her naked eye, but could the same be said for the other Force-sensitive in her presence?

“Light shines for the light is my guide.” It wasn’t another attempt at humor, neither some expression of wisdom; just words that Vayla repeated having once heard them. Then light shined from her flashlight, not her lightsaber, and illuminated a cave. “Rock. Looks naturally made. No carven stone in this cavern. Not yet, anyway.” Perhaps the environment would change as they made their way ahead, and the Jedi heard a faint echo, not sure if it was a critter or in her own mind to begin with.

Asani Windsong Asani Windsong
 

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