It ain't just a booty call

[Moira Skaldi]

Moira looked, you might have guessed it by now, impassive. For some reason her writer constantly saw the need to point this out although this was her expression nine times out of ten. Perhaps her writer thought this would increase the length of their posts by a few words.

Anyhow, at long last the heist was beginning and Moira found herself agreeing that the library would be a good place to seek out forbidden knowledge. For a moment she wondered whether the owner had gone down the route that was time and tested in various holomovies and put his treasures in a 'secret room' that could be accessed through a bookshelf, access to be granted by a console that was not hidden particularly well. However, she dismissed the thought because it sounded too much like one of those cliched holomovies Kerrigan liked so much.

Speaking of Kerrigan, if all went as planned she would no longer be of this world soon.

So she quickly stepped out into the night as the landing ramp lowered. There was no storm, so one cliche was avoided, but before them stood the looming walls of Castle Wolfenstein...no, wait, Castle Verd. Unlike a certain super-empowered battering ram who liked to showoff a lot Moira could not fly. Instead a grappling hook was equipped inside her gauntlet.

Four guards had the misfortune of patrolling on this cold and dreary night when they would undoubtedly wish to do more thrilling things. Such as watch one of those shows about Ropos. Jared Ovmar, Lord of the Fringe, obliged their desire to be put to sleep and sent into the realm of Morpheus. A grappling hook shot out of Moira's gauntlet as they fell and she began pulling herself up to the walls in a fluid motion. One guard coming from the other side of the wall seemed to have seen the bodies slump to the floor but before he could radio his superiors in a blur Moira had grasped her shatter gun and squeezed the trigger. A silenced round with great kinetic force behind it pierced the visor of his helmet to hit him between the eyes and so he obliged everyone except himself and his comrades by dying a silent and, all things considered, rather painless death.

 

[Layla]

So that was that.

Needless to say, the first thing they had to deal with is the security. Getting the blueprints of the area would also be best.

It also appeared that the initial plan was to start scaling the walls. Fantastic. She really didn’t have the boots to do this.

There came a narrowing of her eyes. Well, one didn’t need to scale walls to sneak into the bloody place. Just had to broaden ones horizons.

Like a long lost lover wrapping his arms around Layla’s lithe form, a cloak of shadows would wound round the woman to ensure her complete and utter disappearance in not only the Force, but in sight and sense as well.

It was as if she simply wasn’t there.

While others may enjoy scaling the walls, Layla would merely walk through the proverbial front door.

Or in this instance, make her way towards a side entrance that she would be able to use to enter the keep itself. It would take a bit longer, but she would be able to search for a data console to glean the information she so desired to continue with this heist.

 

[Caulder Dune]

With the retinue of guards knocked unconscious by Ovmar's sheer force of will, Tyrin was free to mosey on up to the foot of the wall. Whatever this place had been constructed out of, likely durasteel and other usual construction materials, it made a great target for Tyrin's grapple gun. The Umbaran aimed upward, firing the cord which subsequently embedded itself into the battlements. Before long he had been repelled to the top.

By the time he got there, a fifth guard had rounded the corner. Before he could do much, an HRD he had seen once before while time traveling shot the man in the face with a silenced round. How frightfully uncivilized. Tyrin trusted Ovmar had good reason for bringing such a crude device along with him. Maybe he just wanted the extra firepower. He supposed it was good to have such a thing on hand. Now atop the wall, Tyrin took a moment to get his bearings. He reached out to the Force, kindly requesting that it give him an indication of where the thing was that he was looking for.

It obliged, and soon enough Tyrin was waltzing down one direction of the wall or the other. He was, at best, apathetic to the possibility of more patrolling guards. What could they possibly manage to do to him, anyway?

 

[Arage Bao]

I wasn’t much of a climber, kinda like the g-- woah where the hell did she go? For a moment she was there, and then it was like freaking magic or something. I shrugged and went the same direction she had been going a couple of moments before she pulled her vanishing act. Didn’t even try to call out to her or whatever, wasn’t really necessary. I closed my eyes and pinged to my surrounding, Tyrin seemed to be walking a floor above us into the general direction of… really?

Before doing this I had made sure of studying the map of the place, given to me by Manu’s mother. If I am remembering this right, Tyrin thought Isley would have hid everything in the freaking library? That’s ridiculous, that’s corny and so… Sithy. Man, these guys really gotta learn some new tricks, because that’s just stupid.

So that’s what we did, follow the path until we reached the library, where we met up with Tyrin and Moira.

“Can’t believe he tried to hide it all behind a frekking bookcase.”

I just made it seem really easy, but let's be honest here. To get from where we came to the study, we had to crawl through dozens of guards. Ionize the hell out of all those damn droids, and hack through a multitude of scanners and password protected doors. Eventually we got there though, took us ages... but we got there.

[member="Darth Janus"] @Layla @Moira Skaldi

 

[Caulder Dune]

[member="Jared Ovmar"] | [member="Layla"] | [member="Moira Skaldi"]

"Shush." Tyrin said to Ovmar, holding up a hand for emphasis. "I require absolute silence if I am to adequately discern the location of his vault."

Tyrin took a few cautious steps forward, gazing around the library. It was a large room, to say the least. Given Verd's heritage as a Mandalorian, Tyrin suspected that a grand majority of these books were blank. Show pieces, if you will. Who had any need for this many books? Who the hell still used books? This was the modern, galactic era. Tyrin could have this entire repository of knowledge confined to a single datapad if he really wanted to. Then again, most information worth having (outside of ancient Sith knowledge) was definitely not recorded in a book.

Perhaps that was the true reason for the library. Mandalorians were a bit behind in the times, culturally at the very least.

The Umbaran hovered between bookshelves, examining all the volumes therein. He didn't bother looking anywhere that wasn't at Verd's eye level. No one was going to put a secret lever where they needed a ladder to reach it. Totally inconvenient. If Tyrin's genre-savvy hunch was correct, whatever book served as the lever would be of great significance to Verd. Given that Isley was a prolific alchemist and a Mandalorian, Tyrin was able to narrow it down to the few of real consequence that he saw as he meandered about the room.

On the Fundamentals of Sith Alchemy
A Complete History of the Mando'a
The Dark Side and Its Uses
Forging Beskar: The Way of the Mandalorian

These were all likely candidates for a secret lever, but one of them stuck out even further.

How I Met All Seven of Your Mothers: An Introduction to Polygamy

Typical Verd.

Without further thought, Tyrin telekinetically tugged at the book. It resisted, only to eventually fall slightly forward with a reassuring click. The sound of gears turning (because Mandalorians and their castles were bound to be this primitive) filled the room, and eventually a large book shelf on the opposite side of the room began to sink into the floor. A large, dimly lit passageway was revealed.

 

[Layla]

It wouldn't be long before Layla would also join Jared, Moira, and Tyrin -- she wouldn’t come empty handed either. Her investigations on the electronic security system allowed for a more thorough review. One that would give evidence of a vault.

Perhaps where all the more interesting tidbits were at.

“I see you found the library,” would come Layla’s coo as she appeared from the shadows. Her own eyes would swep across the current stacks of books and scrolls, all which would seemingly pique her interest.

“I’ve a present.” she’d say, disclosing her find.” There is a vault nearby…. as well as a small zoo and armory. I assume it is filled with all kinds of interesting Confederate items....”

Her eyebrow would quirk, “With some sort of… dragon in it. “ she was talking about the young Leviathan.

She’d come to a stop near a small dataconsole. It would appear to have scattered datacrons throughout the surface. Investigations would reveal those of the Fallanasi, Chu'unthor, and the Disciples of Twilight.

She popped open her back pack a slid them in, much like a kid in the candy store plucking at her favorite candy.
“Find anything interesting?” she’d say over her shoulder.

 

[Moira Skaldi]

[member="Darth Janus"], [member="Jared Ovmar"], [member="Layla"]


And so after a short commercial break we are back with our merry band of intrepid adventurers and Sith Lords on their quest to heist Castle Wolfenstein. Assuredly one day someone should make a movie about it. It would undoubtedly gain lots of viewers, though some naysayers would complain about obvious plot elements. Because no one would hide their secret treasures in their library in a secret section hidden behind a bookshelf? Moreover, they would certainly not make finding the lever so obvious that you only had to perform a cursory examination of a book shelf. These naysayers could not comprehend that sometimes reality was fairly banal.


No matter, undoubtedly our 'heroes' had experienced a riveting adventure. Cameras and security systems had to be hacked, guards taken out, zombies slain. Why zombies, the gentle reader may ask? Because everything is better with zombies. If a dominion was ever lagging behind, the best way to speed things along was to introduce zombies. If run-of-the-mill Night of the Walking Dead ones did not suffice, then use zombie Wookiees, zombie rancors and zombie Ewoks. Obviously the last ones would be the most dangerous!


Moira tilted her head to the side slightly as Layla appeared, bringing with her word of a secret vault, along with an armoury and a small zoo. The armoury piqued her interest, she could always use rare weapons and unlike the datacrons on Force techniques those would have personal utility for her. The zoo, unsurprisingly, had something as bestial as a 'dragon' in it because monkeys just would not do. It made Moira wonder whether somewhere in the Castle there might be a big pool populated by mutated Sithspawn piranhas.



"Interesting," she commented. "And stereotypical." The second line being about the zoo. "I shall check out the armoury." Layla was apparently wasting no time and getting her hands on datacrons and Moira did likewise, having brought her own backpack. After all, all the beautiful knowledge on these discs had to be spread. Scholarly learning and education was important. Yes, that was it! Or they had to be kept from falling into the wrong hands. Aside from Fallannassi and Disciples of Twilight stuff, there were also datacrons on the Nightsisters.



She heard the typical sound of gears turning as Tyrin/Janus proved his genre-savvyness and got the totally well hidden mechanism that kept the depths of the archives hidden working and a bookshelf sunk into the floor, revealing a hidden, dimly lit passageway. "Very stereotypical. Apparently we have found the 'secret chamber'."

 

[Dissero]

Donning the silken lengths of the Subtle Cloak, Dissero had made his own quiet departure of the transport and, with a pinch of Layla-esque finesse and a dash of Moira-Skaldi determination, began ascending the walls of the castle. He was not, however, seeking to break in through an upper entrance, nor had he the library in mind. Dissero was, himself, a collector of fine Force Artifacts and Antiquities. While he was ever so fond of his own personal library and he did, indeed, stash many things away there as well, it was not where he hid his more prized possessions.

So where did one keep such things?

Why, under their pillow of course.

Derring-Di the Holy Holocron-Fairy was here to whisk them away.

A succession of level 9000 Assassin's Creed style maneuvers and skill brought him finally to a ledge outside a window. Pausing for a moment Dissero reached into his pocket, shuffled around the PDA he'd slipped in there and produced a small holopad. Tapping at the screen with his thumb, he brought up the map provided by Ovmar and scaled through the various building levels. By his calculations and general intuition, he was exactly where he needed to be: right outside Verd's private chambers.

Pocketing the device, the man leaned over from his hold on the ledge and peered in through the glasteel panes. Drats. Curtains.

But...there was a light on.

He paused, considered the consequences, and then nonchalantly knocked on the window.

A few moments later there came a shuffling noise, a clicking noise, the large bay windows then flew open - outwards. Eyes bugging, he lost his foothold and dropped, fingers catching on the bottom ledge.

A maid peered out blearily into the dark night.

"Hello!" he greeted her cheerfully, Subtle Cloak enjoying a nice breeze.

"AAH!" replied the maid.

"May I come in? It's really very drafty out here ...and my fingers are getting tired."

"Ahhh!" replied the maid, who ducked back into the room with eyes as wide as saucers.

"Thank you! Very kind of you. I'd say I'll wipe my feet but," with a heave he flipped in through the billowing curtains and landed on his booted feet with a dull thud, "how dirty can your walls really be?"

"Ahhh-ch," replied the maid who was nearing the inner chamber door but failed to reach it for the death grip he suddenly had on her throat.

"I'll make this quick. Where did your Master keep the things you weren't allowed to see?" the broad grin on his face revealed that darker nature he kept so well hidden, as well as a fang or two.

 

[Layla]

Layla would give a small smirk as she would continue on in the library, picking up objects here and there and tucking them into her bag. They were not done at a random, but pointed calculated choices. History, Philosophy, and notable datacrons on various subjects.

Of King Adas, Force Drain and the Droch Connection, Galactic Lore, the exploration of the Jel Shay. This was not the only things she began to pluck. The entire series of datacrons of the Great HoloCron Series, Tactus Otium… even malacia. If her companions would investigate the vault and find a way to breach it, they would be sure to find the scrolls, perhaps some artifacts and trinkets.

Maybe even those holocrons.

“There is also a small hanger nearby,” she’d relay her findings, masked visage turning over her shoulder to glance at her companions.

“With some rather interesting starfighters if I am correct from that brief review of the security footage.” another smirk would dance over those crimson lips.

“We’ve still to find the vault… or vaults sweetlings,” she’d remind them. “Not to mention go to the armory.” her attention would draw to a rather particularly interesting crystal ball of sorts. Brows would arch. She would shrug.

That nightsister crystal ball that had sat upon a decorative wood stand also went into the bag.

That is when she heard [member="Moira Skaldi"]’s comment about the secret passage way. She gave a beaming smile.

“Perfect.” securing her satchel, she slung it upon her back. “Let’s see what else we have to find, no?” enter a wink as the lass took a small chemstick, snapped it in half, shook it to spread the illumination, and began the descent.

 

[Arage Bao]

[member="Layla"] [member="Lord Dissero"] [member="Moira Skaldi"] [member="Darth Janus"]

Everything was going pretty swell today, which only made me slightly confused. Because what self-respecting Sith Lord only has his hole protected by a couple of stupid guards, droids and some passworded doors? Seemed pretty inefficient… then again, Isley would hardly have been expecting to be hit by a crew like mine and ‘sides… we were pretty good at we did. Which made me slightly more at ease, I listened to Layla, girl had her head in the right place. I would probably need to hire ‘er more often, good people are hard to come by these days.

But then every damn story trope got fulfilled when I was going to take a step downstairs, all the alarm bells in my head started ringing at the same time and I quickly stepped back.

‘Got a problem here, guys. Seems this ain’t gonna be that much of a cakewalk.’

 

[Caulder Dune]

[member="Jared Ovmar"] | [member="Layla"] | [member="Moira Skaldi"]

Tyrin snorted at the droid's words. "A rather poorly kept secret, if you ask me."

Ovmar took a step towards the entrance, but suddenly backed up. Apparently something had spooked him. Tyrin managed to refrain from rolling his eyes. Just barely. What could possibly be down there? Probably something stupid. Like a flock of zombie Toydarians.

"It's never been a cakewalk, Ovmar. I see no reason to be concerned of such a thing now." Tyrin said to Ovmar, watching some woman he had never seen before go around snatching up datacrons as if they were going out of style. Everything she took went into that bag of hers. Hopefully the terms of this cooperative heist would be observed by the end of it. Otherwise that little minx was going to make a killing, and Tyrin would have expended the effort of coming out here for nothing.

Ignoring Ovmar, the woman descended into the tunnel. Seeing as he was a Sith Lord with the power of the Dark Side at his very fingertips, Tyrin had absolutely no qualms with venturing down after.

"You should probably let me carry that for you." Tyrin started, referring to the bag. "Seems heavy."

 

[Moira Skaldi]

[member="Jared Ovmar"], [member="Layla"], [member="Darth Janus"]


"One blast door, one Knight and two Padawans were all the Jedi could afford for the restricted archives. Hence why they got raided so frequently," Moira commented sarcastically. The general lack of logic in the universe made it even more necessary to process all organics before their combined irrationality threw the universe out of balance in an onslaught of meta.



Layla - well, Moira probably did not know her name, but her writer does - was not the only one scouring the room for datacrons and the like. With the methodic precision of a machine Moira liberated a number from their resting places and so they vanished in her backpack. A datacron on the abortive 'emperor' Trioculus, information on shards, the Iron Knights and lightsabre combat. Well, there were plenty of things that could be plundered, some of them were of practical worth, others would be the sort of thing a bookish librarian might find fascinating but no one else.



Like a treatise on Levitation in the Pre-Tythonian Period. Well, perhaps somewhere in the Galaxy there was someone who would spend hours pouring over it!



Anyhow, the 'secret passageway' had been opened and as it turned out they had tripped an alarm. Now this was tremendously fascinating and might actually mean they would have to fight a 'guardian'. Perhaps Wookiee zombies created through Sith magic rituals performed in the depths of the castle. Obviously only during a full moon because that was the best time. But Moira was not spooked by things like that and so she ventured down, a ridiculous amount of firepower at the ready in case some fiend decided to pounce her.

 

[Layla]

[member="Moira Skaldi"] [member="Darth Janus"] [member="Jared Ovmar"]

A look of seemingly utter disgust at Ovmar would grace Layla's visage at the sudden outbreak of an alarm. "Amateurs," she'd mutter out, the loud shriek of the alarms letting them know that they were on limited time now.

"So much for browsing round at our leisure." she would state, securing that bag upon her back. At the Lord she would simply wink and pat his cheek.

"I can handle the extra weight, sweetling." she'd say rather coyly, but with a notable sense of urgency now. "It's get in and get out now lovelies."

"And hope that there are no traps." She'd grab a small disc from her belt, clipping it to a table. A small red indicator would appear on top of it. "Flash bang... just in case. We will get over run soon. I'm sure."

There was no sense in taking out the alarm. Everyone would be gunning for them now.

A light would lead the way as she would keep her eyes peeled as she would continue the decent. "Grab what you can." she relayed, finding to her right a small button. Well, pressing it wasn't going to snag another alarm. They were already found out.

So she pressed it. It was the switch to the overhead lights. Fantastic.

Deeper into the area would reveal a large chamber of sorts. With various small bookshelves and pedestals holding items behind energy fields.

Oh that armory? Yeah, there was a small one to the right. Along with a couple of armor sets that Layla wasn't too particularly keen about. Except that one odd looking blue leathery one.

Yeah, maybe she'll take that.

However, focus! Yes... there before them would be the two holocrons. All the rest of the scrolls. As well as some rather interesting artifacts.

"Jackpot." came the roll of the word from Layla's lips.

 

[Arage Bao]

I wasn’t really sure why I got the disgusted look, it wasn’t as if I was the one who had opened the door. The guy who did got a wink and a pat on his cheek though, seemed like the Lady in Black was into older Lionic dudes, which was perfectly fine. Ain’t no judgement around these parts, eventually we found ourselves in the chamber with all dem loot and booty we could ever want, which was exactly the right moment to introduce some goddang needed opposition in the form of a… well… you guessed it already.

A cyborg-zombie Wookie, but no, not only one. But four, cladded in beskar and wielding beskar blades. Oh. And they have jetpacks, have fun. Tyrin might have good memories regarding such affairs.

In response to one of the Wookie’s roar, I just blinked.

‘Well. Hmm. I had a line for this.’

Hey, man. You can judge me the moment you are faced by four half-robotic beasts with beskar jetpacks. I unclipped my unused lightsabre and ignited it, this was gonna be… well… I wasn’t sure what it was going to be, but it seemed funny.

 

[Caulder Dune]

[member="Jared Ovmar"] | [member="Layla"] | [member="Moira Skaldi"]

As Layla turned to walk into the room, Tyrin touched the cheek of his mask that she had previously patted. If only there had been glitter. Then he could prove that he had been touched by an angel. References aside, Tyrin had a couple of things he was looking for. He entered the chamber brazenly after Layla, moving past her even as she stopped to survey. He could already see what he was looking for. Upon an adjacent bookshelf were a few datacrons, two of which he had an immediate interest in securing.

He did not trust Layla, nor did he trust Valik. There was only one way to ensure that this information, unmitigated, wound up in his hands.

"You sprung the alarm." Tyrin said to Ovmar as he approached the bookshelf, ignoring the Wookies confronting his fellow Sith Lord. "I am sure since it is in your capabilities to spring traps, you also have the ability to deal with the repercussions."

He plucked one, then two, of the datacrons off the shelf. One pertained to the Sith King Adas, the other an introductory course to the White Current. These were important. He would see to their proliferation among the group himself, and he would do so without tampering with them. In the latter stages of this heist, Tyrin had developed a nagging paranoia about the people to be replicating these devices. Could they really be trusted? They could vanish off the grid without further notice. They held ties to no one.

Tyrin pocketed both datacrons, turning to Ovmar. "I'm going to wait outside. I'll keep any other approaching security measures away from you."

With this, the Umbaran vanished from sight, a Force Cloak concealing him from both vision and sense.

 

[Arage Bao]

Janus wouldn’t hear any reply to his preposterous accusations, mostly because at this point in time Ovmar was too damn busy with keeping those wookies with beskad blades out of his hair. That ain’t as easy as it sounds, definitely not when they have jetpacks strapped to their backs, honestly. Who the hell comes up with this poodooo? While Ovmar & Co fought against the four zombies, Janus would find himself in a different kind of situation. As he moved back up the stairs, a patrol of a single vong shaped trooper would come across him.

Which really made sense, because Isley Verd was the leader of the Dreadguard for a very long time. It wouldn’t make sense that all of ‘em would have forsaken him, so that was the reason of this guy showing up at the opportune moment. The problem with Janus’ cloak was pretty straightforward, the illusion was acquired through basically ‘mindtricking’ everyone to think that there wasn’t anything of interest in the location that the Sith Lord presided in. A basic: “You don’t see me, You don’t see me!”-mental nudge, if you will. Which was perfectly fine when you were up against people who were susceptible against said mental influence, but here was the thing… Vongshaped guys didn’t have that problem, didn’t have it at all.

So the moment Janus’ showed up from the stairs the patrol, who had been alarmed by the alarm that the beautifully groomed Sith Lord had set off before, immediately detected him and pointed his Czerka-grade Sonic Riflehttp://starwarsrp.net/topic/27387-cz-839-sonic-carbine/ and started shooting. Karma… is a schutta, have fun Ardik.

***​

In the meanwhile the alarm had also put other things in motion. Isley’s compound had an alarm this is true, but said alarm was only linked to the off-site Obsidian Knight slash Templar Knight’s outpost. This made sense, because as a Sith Lord, the last thing he would have wanted was Planetary Law Enforcement or their equivalent of that to show up and start rummaging through his stuff. At that point in time though, the Templars were still firmly under Isley’s boot, so there was that. The alarm had prompted the mobilization of three squads of Knights on speeders, to travel towards the Castle slash Hideout slash Compound slash ex-Sith Temple.

Luckily, Ovmar’s second Seikairo Stealth Transporter had figured out that an alarm had been set off, which… wasn’t as hard to do as you might think. They weren’t in a position to do anything, their mission parameter was pretty darn clear, but what they could do was sent off a quick message to the Bane; telling them support was necessary.

Which elicited a quick response in the form of three additional Sekairo Stealth Transporters flying out to meet the Templars mid-travel. Guys who can warp the fabric of space and time with your damn mind? Meet sixty, armed-to-the-teeth battle hardened veterans in a fekking Stealth Ship. Things went boom, more details incoming.

***​

Ovmar wasn’t entirely sure how he got himself in this situation, but what he was entirely sure of was the fact that the last thing he wanted to do was getting jumped by these smelly furballs and get his head chopped off. That wasn’t entirely the plan, which was putting things lightly, as Janus left the building to meet his own impending doom the Sith Lord readied his lightsaber to start a smackdown of epic proportions.

Until he noticed a ring just sitting there on the table, projecting an aura of subtle darkness around itself. Nemene had told him about her father, the ancient and powerful Darth Moridin and had also, in detail, described certain artifacts created by him. One of them was this fething ring. Ovmar wasn’t sure how Isley had gotten his hands on it, but at this point it mattered little. With the swipe of his hand, the ring flew into his hand and with a grin he put it on, aiming the thing towards the first wookie.

Instead of saying some kind of one-liner, he fired off a single laser-beam of Doom, setting the fur of the first wookie on Fire. Man… Ovmar really had a problem, this was the third time he caused a Wookie to spontaneously combust, that poodoo ain’t kosher.

Who was next?

 

[Caulder Dune]

[member="Jared Ovmar"]

It was all well and good that the writer of Jared Ovmar should spawn an enemy for Darth Janus to fight. It was really so kind and so thoughtful of him that it quite nearly brought the writer behind the illustrious and storied character of Darth Janus to tears. Instead of being so emotionally moved to the point of heavy sobbing, however, the writer of Darth Janus would instead shed a single tear. A tear not borne of appreciation or frustration, but that of disappointment.

Because, as in all things, the writer of Jared Ovmar had little to no idea what he was on about.

Unlike Jared Ovmar, Darth Janus was not a blithering, neanderthaloid scrub with the towering intellect of a potato. A potato, to further elaborate, that had been partially submerged in water for just under three standard hours. What this essentially means is that in utilizing a Force Cloak, Darth Janus did not simply mind trick people into thinking he was not there. Darth Janus employed his Force Cloaks the hard way: by bending light and sound through use of the Force. It was a difficult, potent technique that really only manifested in those that had a natural talent for it. Darth Janus was naturally predisposed to it, as he had always been since having appeared on this website.

But Ovmar wouldn't know that. This was because Ovmar is, as previously stated, a scrub. When the sonic-rifle toting Vong rounded the corner, it saw nothing. This was because a Force Cloak in the way Tyrin utilized it did not function in such a way that a Vong would be able to see through it. Force Cloak in this circumstance did not affect the Vong, only light and sound. It was the same principle in that an object thrown with the Force could still injure a Vong if it collided with them, but I digress. Further explanation should not be necessary, as anyone with the cognitive IQ of lederhosen and was not a total scrub would understand this.

So, for a moment, the Vong saw nothing. Once that moment was up, it saw the flash of a crimson blade that bisected its weapon before cleanly decapitating it. Its headless corpse and rended weapon tumbled down the hallway. Darth Janus had dispatched this single patrolman because he had promised to do so. It would have been dreadfully easy to allow it to continue down the stairwell so it could take potshots at Ovmar and potentially kill him in conjunction with the robo-Wookies, but Janus neglected to do so.

Because, unlike Ovmar, Janus was not a scrub.

The properly cloaked Darth Janus continued his exit from the facility completely unabated.

 

[Layla]

[member="Darth Janus"] [member="Jared Ovmar"]

Things were certainly getting more interesting by the second. At the very least, Lord Ovmar was keeping droid wookiees busy while she took the time to slice into the highly encrypted console. This was where she would take a shine, but overriding security protocols this sensitive and heavily encrypted would require her full focus.

Yay at having other shields for distraction.


"Keep them busy!" she'd say, fingers tapping away along her datapad that she had connected to the console. A slicing program would start out after sending a computer spike in. Streams of data would bloom over her display.

Now just to get this right... almost there.

 

[Moira Skaldi]

[member="Darth Janus"], [member="Jared Ovmar"], [member="Darth Janus"]


Finally, an end boss! Well, several end bosses! Well, maybe they were more like mid-tier end bosses. Like in any good video game the closer you got to the prize the more dangerous the opponents became. This gradual scale-up allowed the player to adjust to facing more dangerous opponents, thereby also preventing them from wasting all their medpacs and special items at the start. Of course it would be a lot more useful to attack en masse at the start, but then that would make the game difficult.


The current confrontation was actually a bit of an improvement since at least the cyborg wookiee zombies were charging at once and not politely waiting in the background while only one of them took on our band of heroes. Oh, wait, Darth Janus had left and Layla was hacking the computer while Jared was fighting.


What had Moira been doing? Perhaps wasted time with calculations about quantum tunneling, something that always interested her a lot. Well, she had followed Darth Janus' good example and pocketed shiny things lying around in the 'secret sanctum'. In this case a Sigil of Hope, which was thoroughly useless to her but should be very profitable, the Great Holocron Series Lightsaber Forms and Combat Datacron and the Great Holocron Series Advanced Lightsaber Construction Series Datacron.


At this point Moira decided to be actually useful to our group. However, she was in no mood to death charge cyborg zombie wookiees so she decided to be what she considered genre-savvy. This she accomplished by tossing a couple of EMP grenades at them, since she happened to be a walking armoury. After all, they had robot parts and such. Presumably she would have been at a safe distance so that she would not get fried by the detonation. After all, the wookiees were busy with Jared!

 

[Dissero]

Meanwhile...

It had taken some doing and a bit of forceful persuasion, but the Maid spilled her guts. Figuratively...literally. The scene was a bit of a botched horror film only the blood was real and the remains had already begun to smell.

The safe had been secured behind a painted portrait of Verd on the wall, and within the safe had not been at least one of the holocrons that had been agreed upon between Cait and Andrew oocly. Perturbed but never put-off, we shall soldier on.

Dissero wiped his bloodied hands on the bedspread before taking a seat, idly pulling out a small leather satchel containing several lovely crystals and a datapad. Engaging the device the Archivist perused its contents, eyes briefly glancing over the mess at his feet - that stain will never come out, especially not without a Merc named Hannibal armed with a mop and bucket.

It was an inventory list of Verd's forge items and, boy, it was a good one. Pleased enough with this find, the man considered how he would remove the items without, you know, tripping an alarm.

Somewhere in the building, someone tripped the alarm.

"Well hell," Dissero was once again on his feet. Carefully stepping over the carcass of the woman on the floor, he moved to the chamber entrance, secured the datapad and crystals in his bag, pulled the hood of the Subtle Cloak and made his way out the door. He stuck to the shadows like every cliche Sith that's ever been written on this forum, which was to say that he stuck to the walls because for the man having abandoned the place however long ago, it certainly was well lit.

Who the feth was footing the electrical bill?

It didn't matter. Dissero ducked into an empty room as a contingent of guards turned a corner ahead of him. He took this time to assess the layout of the building and check his heading before peeking out for the all clear and making his way down through the levels.

When he arrived some time later at the entrance to the Forge, he found himself facing something of a conundrum. The blast doors had been sealed and the security locked down. He stood, motionless and unsmiling, across the hall staring at the barred entrance. He certainly wasn't a techy, so hacking into the security system was out. But... the man passed his blue gaze from one end of the hall to the other. Most of the guards had cleared out, searching for the disturbance up in the library where all the hullabaloo was happening, leaving this area emptied out.

Producing a lightsaber hilt from his side, the man ignited the brilliant white blade and set to work ... on the wall beside the door.

It stood to reason that, like most, people tended to put a lot of effort into fortifying doors while skimping on the surrounding structure. Because, honestly, who went through all the effort of making a door when there was a perfectly good one right there?

Dissero, that's who.