Only Better Than Yesterday

[Seydon of Arda]

Title Theme

Wild Space & A Piece of the Unknown
Crossing a Nebula Shell
To Tenupe's Only, Floating Orbit

Realside Timestamp://: - 12:58:26 – ABY 84X


To [***Redacted***], Correspondence
Carried by Blaustein A&R Telecast Options, INC. -Via Sub-Relay Net Zeta 39Z~s)12 to FTL Beam-Packet
Route Detail:
Origin: [***Redacted***]
Received: I-8 = Tenupe, Tenupe System, Utegetu Sub 788453 – Reception Date: 5.299.84X.MXXX
Transcript Received/Logged As

Young Wolf,
Pardon my gall at being so distant. Our work does not allow for comforts like able friends. But I trust that our fellowship hasn't decayed, not yet. I have some need of your help. Another conspiracy entangles me, I'm afraid to say. Nothing like the Sennex Affair, I can assure, but disturbing regardless. I made a voyage to Tatooine to follow up on several tales a handful of corroborators swore were true. The story in itself is rather damn good, if I may say, but I will have to spare you the details for now. Of importance is who I encountered. A Dunaan, calling himself 'John of Pylos', partnered with another hunter, Myrddin, a woman of our caste. Both bore the armament and insignia denoting their allegiance: the School of the Griffin.

We all sought the same arcana and yet... They drove me away. We came to blows. It is not unheard of for witchers to be at odds with one another, but this was beyond mere territorial or alpha-predation hierarchy and ego. I am unaccustomed to such malice in our craft, young wolf. So I ask: can you make your way to the outer reaches, to the Utegetu Nebula? There lies an old place called Tenupe. Distantly, when our kind accepted diaspora from Ys, the School of the Krayt made landfall and settled their numbers there. The Dunaan bearing the dragons medallion have always possessed great speciality in the sorcerer arts besides their swordplay. However, they do not know you and may welcome a visit from the School of the Dark Wolf.

Be extremely cautious. I sense a dark element has made home in the heart of the Krayt school. Should you do me this kindness and find their stronghold, make contact with their Lodge. They will know if corruption or something else has seeped in. Be on guard, young wolf.

-Ajax of Lahsbane


Aboard the scale-backed Echoy Galaar, distant sunlight peered as unnumbered celestial pixels, a hundred and million more stars that watched Seydon of Arda as he looked out through the void past an armoured porthole.

The Echoy Galaar, Wayward Hawk translating loosely from Concordian Mando'a, was a privately owned transport. It had been a stately YBX-1200c Heavy Freighter derived from the now-legendary YJX Corellian variant, all owing their genealogy to CEC's successes with the vintage YT-1300. After market modifications, innumerable repairs, overhaul runs, and drydock shakedowns had clipped the Galaar into a scarab-locust, armour plating shingled across its hulling, the forward control decks wedged to the prow and gaping with an underslung mouth tusked with antenna masts. Heat wafted from an exposed heat-sink, appearing like rowed fang grills, warped an almost permanent carmine discolouration. Ventral nacelle-wings were bolted close, packed with additional modular add-ons running power feeds, coolant lines, additional hydraulics, and diagnostic network cabling. The vessel superstructure had a disarming habit of groaning with stress tones each time their impulse speed rose or dropped.

There was the captain's quarters converted out of an enlarged storage larder, and battery-charge racks that suspended the mostly automatic droid support crew. The guest rooms were occupied by a combined installation of a Silkworm hypertransit package interlocked with the bulk of a defensive decoy launcher and a tractor baffler shroud. Upstairs, counting as the first deck, were the only optional living spaces. Part of the kitchen plumbing rerouted to a plasteel shower stall, the outside galley seats broadened to double as make-shift sleeping couches.

Echoy Galaar's singular guest traveller sat up against a dented plastic fold-chair and kept his body framed towards the entry ladder extending through the floor. A pair of heavy, stuffed, and strap-anchored duffel bags leaned beside him on the bulkhead; the extent of his necessary possessions. Blades hard bound in hazed scabbards, scenting of inert unguents and metallic oils, waited anxiously, propped up on his lap. Age lined his bright cat's eyes, stealing glances from his battered holopad to the swirling nebula gas banks outside the frost rimmed starboard window. Beyond, Tenupe appeared as a grossly swollen and dun-coloured ball, wreathed in clutching fingers of running, ash clouds.

Seydon looked back to the holopad, scrolling his thumb up through Ajax of Lahsbane's brief missive. The man took his chosen responsibilities and trade calling with puritanical devotion, dedicating years between profitable contract hunts to scouring and recovering any trace relics dealing with their adopted culture. Seydon remembered him as voluntarily poor, humble, impossibly earnest, so monkish it made the younger Dunaan blush in want of a better character. Ajax spent his dreams wandering through age-fogged ruins he'd never visited. Describing crumbling fortress islands suspended aloft by unknown but sophisticated and eldritch powers. Ys.

His message felt like a prayer. A gesture outreaching to a one time, now distant pupil to lend strength, aid, and good countenance in this moment of doubt and anxiety. Dunaan were insulate, independent, secretive, and didn't accept with any grace interferences to their work. But it made for rare schisms or conflict within 'the craft'. As it stood, Seydon wouldn't know full details until his boots made landfall and he could consult with the Griffin School in person. ...But a tremor played up his hands. An itch, wet against his his palms. There was a taste of blood on his teeth and draughts of wooden ember-dust in his nostrils. Phantom sensoria. But they came each occasion on the cusp of a hunt. Seydon took hold of each sword, Razorlight and Winterfang, withdrawing them partly from their waiting scabbards to watch bulkhead lights play on their indestructible steel.

The Dunaan sheathed them away, looking to the entry ladder. Plodding, armoured foot falls stamping on the rungs. The Captain was making his hourly rounds.

[member="Samael Rekali"]

 

[Arage Bao]

[SIZE=10.6667px]It was a beautiful thing, his ship. Scruffed, rusted at places, cramped, mostly held together by the sheer virtue of his will and a decent pack of duct tape, but it was [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]his[/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px] ship. Ya can’t understand that kind of love unless you have experienced it yourself, truly can’t, and Samael had called the Echoy Galaar his for over a decade now - didn’t win it in a card game either, no sir. The castoff had left Mando Space in a hurry and only after a few dozens jobs had he been able to afford buying his own space vehicle.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]Most contemplated purchase of the century… but he wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. As he roamed the ship, his footsteps echoing through the hallways, his gaze brushing past all the aesthetics; seeing the troubles - the things that would need repair.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]“Captain on the bridge!” he’d shout out, as a warning to his guest. It was a jest wrapped around in common courtesy.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]He knew very well that his ship wasn’t the most… spacious arrangement of ‘em all. Meant that privacy was a commodity not easily gained here: whatever the Witcher was currently up to, it was only fair to give him a decent heads-up, to know that he wouldn’t be alone for very much longer.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]The Young Wolf was a strange one. Eyes that reminded him of the nickname, intonation in the tongue that spoke of patience and perhaps just a little bit weariness, but for some reason Sam also caught something else.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]Inherent kindness. Whichever way Seydon’s alignment swayed these days, his heart was inherently in the right place, according to the Captain. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]And he had been around, seen things that would have made any reasonable, mature man weep and cry in agony, no, he knew exactly what humankind was capable of. Being able to see what a person represents in one or two eye sweeps was a [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]thang[/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px] that Sam prided himself in.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]“How ya holding up, friend Wolf? Can I get ya something to drink, smoke? Gonna be a while before we are at landing distance.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]Planets are huge. Even if it looked like they were only a jump away, Samael knew that it was an illusion, there was still plenty of time left.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px][member="Seydon of Arda"][/SIZE]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Samael Rekali, like his Wayward Hawk, struck an appropriately gregarious and combine impression.

There was a fading tan to his pallor and the lines about his mouth, nose, and eyes were beginning to show depth, from either too many grins or just as numerous scowls. He wore middling age well, tall and robust, racked with a set of broad shoulders that evenly settled a muscular bulk trailing to the meat and skin of his ankles. Seydon hadn't caught him in attire beyond a sweat-stained tank shirt sporting patterned oil spots and belted, pocket braced pants weighted with prybars, multitools, stamped hydrospanners, a hand-held fusion welder with its bronze spout-nose cooked to jade, and one multiphase wrench that could have rivalled the Echoy Galaar in age.

And he came with a readily identifiable scent: brisk aftershave, a brutally hard liquour taste, dusty cologne. When speaking, the sound rumbled up from under his belly and ejected through his cavernous mouth. An infectious habit of broad, easygoing smiles rarely failed teasing Seydon's dour expression into its own cracked smirk. The Dunaan rose, buckling on his scabbard harnesses, rolling tension out of his shoulders.

“Anything cold, Rekali,” He said, walking with Samael to the kitchen. Piled dishes, crusted with left over scabs, smelling like the bottom of Gamorrean boot, were raised tall round the wash sink. A cloud of ant-flies buzzed away at their approach. Seydon picked up a glass that looked clean enough and rummaged through a pathway littered by discarded, empty foodstuff trays. “Chat's are better lubricated. ...Unless the flies drank the last of the cordial you scared up last night.”

On cue, a bloated fly hiccuped its way across the counter space, and tripped into the sink. Seydon rose, tinkling a pair of brown-glassed bottle necks that sloshed with unopened ale. When Samael reached to offer an extended lho cigar, the Dunaan softly declined.

“The taste is always off,” He explained. “...Has our approach been challenged yet? Any comm hails, broadcasts of that sort?”

[member="Samael Rekali"]

 

[Arage Bao]

[SIZE=10.6667px]“Hmmmn, none as of yet.” but the Captain did not seem to be all that concerned about it. He rummaged quietly around, ducking here and there where the pans were head-high, while dishing them up a suitable drink from the mysterious liquid canisters that were hanging around the parts - he seemed to know what he was doing though, because there was no hesitation in his movements, only clarity, as if every single element in this chaos was exactly where it should be in his eyes.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]“But I wouldn’t worry too much about it.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]A thick, shortish cigar was lit, the taste heavy and overreaching, but that too was something he had grown used to over the time. Samael accepted the ale, pouring his guest a glass and then himself, before putting it all back in a seemingly [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]different[/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px], yet random order all the same, before gesturing for Seydon to follow him.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]They would saunter over, crossing space, before arriving at the comfortable cockpit. Settling himself in the worn, leathery seat, he took another look at the surface of the world - the transparisteel viewport giving them both a fairly good vision of it.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]“Ain’t exactly civilized out there. Doubt we will find a lot of colonies, no satellites that I can detect right now.” Didn’t mean they weren’t out there, but if they were… and if [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]they[/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px] were detected, nobody seemed to be interested in taking ‘em out right now.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]Which meant that there wasn’t anything to worry about it for now.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]“Means we are either in the clear or dem folk are content with letting us be for now.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]He scratched his chin, before taking out the cigar for a sip of the ale. A frown etched itself into his brow, now that was some bitter liquid - tasted alright to him, but looking at his kitchen Sam might not be the best representation of culinary wonder.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]“So, what are we looking for here anyway?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px][member="Seydon of Arda"][/SIZE]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Tenupe floated ahead. Purportedly and according to aged facts he'd withdrawn from a shabby and primordial planetary register, some listings that had survived the Gulag purges in the bottom of a forgotten basement case, Tenupe featured broad swathes of grown jungle lushness that quite belied its remote and almost arid orbit. It looked much more like a mothballed orb of bracken spit, stuck to the starry backdrop, forgotten and slumbering in the cockpit's viewscreen. Samael looked, spoke, and acted unimpressed with its visage. His smoky exhales now clung against the canopy instrumentation.

I don't know, Seydon wanted to say. He squeezed behind Samael's ratty chair and stood hovering over the co-pilot station. It took a fast minute deciphering unmarked switchboards, and the controls that did see a sort of labelling system were multi-lingual. His wrist cuffed over a dormant touch pad and woke up the console's deep-scan topographic holo-display. A thin screen of yellowed, grid displaced light transposed itself in the air.

“We're looking for an isolated structure,” He said, studying the map contours and highlights of various geological features. Tenupe was scarred from juvenile continental shifts, its planetary face a messy run of conflicting sutures where half-sealed wounds in the mantle still ground and shifted on occasion. Seydon reached, tracking the display window along, perusing hundreds of kilometres in a moment's blink. “Something... Something very much like a monastery or a keep in design. A stronghold out in the wilds but probably hidden with the landscape. Can probably chart some details if your sensors can penetrate into sub-cutaneous levels in the stone, make out any echoes resulting from hollow chambers. ...Down there is a very, very old fortification.

“...I want to find it and see if it's still occupied.”

[member="Samael Rekali"]

 

[Arage Bao]

[SIZE=10.6667px]“Wouldn’t count on it, chief.” Sam watched as Seydon manipulated the controls to browse around the planet’s surface, but he knew they wouldn’t get [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]that[/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px] far with that. His scanners were calibrated towards moving objects at high velocities - basically incoming projectiles, spaceships or other things that could somehow influence his work in space, but it wasn’t all that sensitive for the more minute changes in scenery on a planetary surface.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]“Scanners are calibrated for pattern changes in space. Incoming enemy fire, ships and the sort, it would take hours to make ‘em work properly on what you are asking.” he scratched his beard, pondering a little bit.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]“We can get zero down on a rough location, but we will have to go on foot from there.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]Which is basically what Samael was hired for anyway. He was as much a scout as he was a pilot - there were some advantages to being brought up as a Mandalorian in Clan Rekali, you got used to multiple proficiencies and stretching your capabilities in as many fields as possible. In war… you didn’t have the luxury to have many specialists in a lot of fields, sadly.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]“Wanna tell me why we are gonna be combing out a respectable swath of jungle for a monastery-like stronghold?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]Seydon didn’t need to tell him, but sometimes… proper motivation could do wonders when having to deal with fist-sized mosquitos while prancing through the woods.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px][member="Seydon of Arda"][/SIZE]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Despite Samael's conversational bait, Seydon didn't pause to bite. Not yet; the topographic slates and hololithic readings anchored his attentions. Scan returns were fraught with artefact noise, turbid and opaque where the imaging software could not resolve Tenupe's surface details. It was enough to discern there were less than a handful of broad continents that kept several oceans landlocked, between higher elevation ranges hinting at striated peaks and mountains, dented with below-sea-level valley cauldrons that were probably seething with prehistoric lifeforms. But none of it hinted at or resembled anything more concise than a general sensorial impression: Tenupe was broad with some high ranges, ocean-lakes, and a crammed with vegetation.

Seydon turned aside and called up Ajax's message brief on his dataslate. This was his umpteenth re-read and still, he couldn't decipher a fiendish hint or language clue. If there were any to be found, Seydon felt as his mood tumbled slightly. He risked glancing at his hired pilot: the Rekali Clansman was paid for this venture but the Dunaan was loathe to waste the next three week's plying Tenupe's rank summer season, looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. He hung his dataslate aside and returned to the sensor reading screens, face lined and furrowed up in hardening concentration. Ultimately, the Griffin fortress could only be settled in a handful of prime locales. Seydon picked one, forcing Samael's simplistic imaging processors to clean up and enhance one square of territory he'd touched on.

It was a depressed bowl that looked ground into a long tract of overgrown jungle plains. Probably an ancient crater formation blasted into the mantle, deep and jagged enough so even the accumulation of earth silts and stone failed in burying it completely. It was also the lowest point on the planetary face.

“Just take us here,” He told Samael. A beat passed; the Dunaan sighed through his nose and turned to the Mandalorian witchman. “And because I was asked to. A favour for an old friend, that I can't refuse him. ...Call it trouble in the guild, if you want.”

[member="Samael Rekali"]

 

[Arage Bao]

[SIZE=10.6667px]While he waited the Captain would lean back in his chair, the old leather cracked softly against the pressure and sudden weight shifts - it made him smile just a little bit… that and the fact that Seydon was more experienced than most kids he was trucking around the ‘verse these days. After transporting tourists back and forth across the Kathol Outback, moving cargo in the Protectorate and even serving a minor stint as a pirate in Fringe-controlled space… well, suffice to say you experience most if not everything that life out here had to offer.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]Finally then. Seydon brought up a specific spot on the map, that was something Samael could work with, it was still a pretty huge radius, but… well… a job was a job. Some people whined and moaned about it, but at the end of the day he had decided to take the job.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]No one had twisted his arm to get him there, so being a little shutta about it wouldn’t help anyone.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]“Can do, boss.” the old Cap’ said with a nod, before gesturing towards the seat. “Strap yourself in, we are gonna go in for a [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]ride[/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px].”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]That was the other thing about the [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]Galaar[/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]. It was a mess, held together by duct tape and his own will, but it was also one of the fastest ships out there - probably could do a racing track against a TIE fighter and still come out on top.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]…maybe, probably would cut it close though.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]“You expecting any… [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]trouble?[/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]” the intonation made it clear. Samael needed to know if they were going into a fight or not. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]Would probably change his entire approach too.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px][member="Seydon of Arda"][/SIZE]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

“It - “

Seydon had clicked in the second seat-harness belt, when a yowling pitch rattling from the port nacelle-engine warned that Samael was stoking the power exchange lines. Impulse speed crunched a knot of inertial g-force into the meat of his stomach, slapping him back into the co-pilot chair. The whole seat was generally frill-less, soldered from a discarded bike stool to the stem of an old interceptor bench, and was even less comfortable than it looked. Seydon locked in the last buckle as the Echoy Galaar banked, bringing Tenupe's gruel and pea-coloured obese profile into full view.

“It might not be a warm welcome,” He finished.

Surprisingly, the ancient and numerously overhauled freighter behaved under Samael's steering. He nimbly cocked her through a series of correcting rotations and settled her bulk into a medium orbit, carrying the vessel low along Tenupe's 'south' pole. Magnetic harmonics hissed their scanning monitors blank with vacant white noise snow and grating static, until they began rising northward on a line for the planetary equatorial belt. Atmospheric temperature readings hinted at landscapes boggled under the weight of intensely muggy heat and frequent, deadly rainstorms. Like an old fighting belle proud of her scars and bruising, the ship began coasting into the thickening thermosphere.

They passed walls of lividly chromatic aurora australis, entry shields buffeted by wafts of solar wind. Willow-thin cloud trails broke up under and across their cockpit nose, misting the viewscreens wet. The Galaar was patiently transitioning through each atmos layer, Samael balancing her weight against a faulty geo-stabilizer unit. Much of her pilot was switched to manual inference and Seydon watched him deftly snap his touch back and forth along rows of palm-worn knob levers. Amber warning lights and emergency runes flickered on and off ominously. Something in the upstairs galley finally broke and sent a clatter of smashing peals down into the piloting deck. And outside, the port and starboard nacelles were grinding weak electro-spark halos that popped whenever rain splashed onto exposed wiring.

Occupational hazards. Seydon could hear the Galaar's power plant reactors wheezing under the vessel's increasing energy consumption. Running coolant pipes sounded close to rattling dry. It felt like every gesture made at the forward controls was compensation for any number of vessel processes about to go wrong. Wedges of angled hull plating and armour were crackling as they warmed and warped after long exposure to the frigid outer-space void. There was a drip where poor insulation caused hoarfrost to build in rimes behind their seating in the canopy ceiling, now melting. Seydon blew out a sound through his nose and sat back into his rigid seating, running through mental inventories, taking stock of what kit he'd have to assemble to act with and counter Tenupe's sweltering jungle climes.

[member="Samael Rekali"]

 

[Arage Bao]

[SIZE=10.6667px]It was a rhythm. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]He didn’t even think about it anymore, just acted in unison with what the ship needed: almost as if he was in a daze, a trance synchronized with the [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]Galaar[/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]. Whenever someone claimed that ships weren’t alive Samael only needed to think back to moments like these to realize just how wrong they were, a ship had needs, fears, hopes and dreams; it was in every rattle, every vibration and whine made, every little shudder told you something integral. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]You just needed to listen for it[/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]. It was true that a more expensive ship could have made this entire ordeal a whole lot easier. Something slick, futuristic and in the seven figures worth, but the Rekali scion had never looked for transportation like that.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]In his opinion they missed [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]soul[/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]. A ship like this had character, something you couldn’t find in Haven Shipyards’ latest iteration of the ‘Elite Heavy X394 Stealth Predator Fighter’.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]Or whatever the hell their PR department would come up with for the advertisements.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]The journey was tough, hard, tiring even. Sweat was starting to roll from his forehead, obscuring his vision, but he didn’t allow himself to wipe it off - even a single skip in the beat could mean a burning wreckage on the surface.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]“Trust me,” he shouted over the turbulence and his shoulder to the Witcher. “If we survive this, there ain’t nothing we can’t handle down there.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]Probably.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=10.6667px][member="Seydon of Arda"][/SIZE]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

They shuddered through one more floor of lightning flared cumulonimbus racks and then all went still.

Vapour tails were trailing off the outside cockpit riveting, their viewports spackling with rain and wind born mud. Atmospheric readings noted that interior thermosphere air pressure had increased but had steadied, acting like an insulate bond agent that compacted the Echoy Galaar's bulk together. There were still cautionary vibrations rubbing up through the decking, but behind them, nestled in forelimb ducting and energy transfer conduits, the vessel reactors had calmed. Seydon glanced at Samael's well-oiled grin and chuffed a low snicker.

Below them were irregular moorlands and the rolls and rock folds of higher hinterland territories. Mountain shelves, regularly blasted clean by passing typhoon systems, rose out of the deciduous canopies, reminding Seydon of rowed, broken molars capped with snowy enamel. Some peaks sported almost permanent thunderheads, where lightning crowned the black stone and glassed any exposed granite. Both of them were gently awed as their coasting approach scared out veils of four-winged cranes shimmering pearlescent in Tenupe's amber-lit morning, and the odd, imperiously dark six-meter span eagle swirling on thermal updrafts.

Here, Dunaan of the Griffin School nested in forts crumbling in the sunny twilight's. Seydon considered every passive mention Ajax ever gave of their reputations: intensely secretive and some would say even moody, fiercely dedicated to perfecting the old Ysian methods of dark alchemy, mastering their souls so they could blast their prey with the same powers that initially spawned them. And obsessive. Jealous. Their memories recalled details most of their guild considered lost, and assumed guardianship over what little remained of their exiled heritage. To their fellow Dunaan's chagrin.

Sorcerers and spellswords, Seydon thought. He checked they were still homing in on his stapled topographic map mark and rose out of his seat.

“Gotta dress, is all,” He told Samael when he remarked on where he was strolling off to. “Gotta say: your girl is something special alright,” And his palm slapped the cockpit door jamb, easing out. “Just put us down. Or the next best crash landing.”

[member="Samael Rekali"]

 

[Arage Bao]

[SIZE=10.6667px]And Samael could almost hear a soft purring in the deep texture of the metal.[/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px] He liked to think she was secretly pleased with Seydon’s comment. This was how most spacers survived long bouts alone, out there and without much contact with the rest of civilization - they started attribute things to their ships, at least that’s what most people would claim. Sam knew better. She had her moods, her ups and downs, and a good word every once in awhile meant every difference.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]“Try the color green, fits with your eyes.” he quipped over his shoulder without looking back. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]Even though they were out of the [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]danger zone[/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px] it still was imperative to keep both eyes on the prize, it wouldn’t be the first time a pilot lost sight of the viewport and crashed the thing a few meters from the home stretch. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]That wouldn’t be him.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]Samael ticked a few button while circling around the place. The holographic map gave a fairly good representation of where they were now - without the interference of the atmosphere fething everything up, and it made it only more clear that there wasn’t [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]a lot[/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px] of possibilities when it came to landing, at least not if they wanted to be at least a little bit subtle. Most of the immediate area was heavily forested, with thick veiny rivers rushing through them, the nearest open spot would land them about two clicks away from their searching zone.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]It was a pretty big searching zone already.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]Sighing, he plotted out the course to the LZ. All in a days’ work. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]Seydon would be about done with changing attire just as Sam landed the ship deftly and without much of a hitch.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px][member="Seydon of Arda"][/SIZE]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

It was a hunter's jacket and pants, quilted thickly in the old style of medieval armouring, pauldrons, biceps, belly and lower spinal lumbar sheathed in treated leather with a skin of chainmail knitted atop. There was further harnessing, pouches and weighted purses strung on the waist belt, his faithful swords now idling in scabbards hooked and buckled across his back. His hair was collected back behind his skull in a tie, and his hands dressed in knuckle-spiked gloving. In one especially armoured carrying case he'd stowed additional potions, a decoction or two, spare oils for whatever he could anticipate in the environ, and -

“Silvertine bombs,” Seydon mused. He hefted it up in his hand: no larger than average human's palm and wickedly light, in a deceptively sturdy casing rung with soaked ragging and fuse wires. Within were buried nuts of silver flects washed in hallucinogenic compounds further enhanced with specialized alchemical processes. They were used primarily against spawnbeasts with high, Force-intensive abilities, disrupting their concentration with bewildering and debilitating drug exposure as the silver smote into their flesh, burning them. Pain was a hell of a deterrent. While less effective with sapient mortals and xeno-races, Silvertine could still be potentially helpful.

He met Samael in the vessel hold, at the debarkation ramp. It was already lolling open as a heavy, boxed tongue of durasteel, planting down with a wet thud in the loam and soil. Wetly hot air gusted up into their faces.

“Still nothing on the sensor returns?” Seydon dared ask. Negative. Just copious lifeform signatures and an exceedingly muggy temperature, with a storm front moving in against their landing position up the southern moors. “Damn. Damn. ...You would send me off half-blind, Ajax. ...Come along with you want, but I'm not waiting for the rain.”

[member="Samael Rekali"]

 

[Arage Bao]

[SIZE=10.6667px]His spacer attire was replaced by something… [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]else[/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]. [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]Back in the day when Moridin’s War was raging in full the Rekali brothers had fought together against the Sith Empire, back in those days… Sam had gone under a different name. [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]The Blackthorn. [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]But that was a story for a different day, the only thing relevant was the armor that man had carried into battle, [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]this same armor.[/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px] Samael had left the Mandalorians after Moridin’s War, vowing never to wear it again, but you know what they say about men and unattainable vows… it was only postponing the inevitable. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]Returning to Ember, the Clan? it meant that things were changing, [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]had[/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px] changed.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]“Better if we split up immediately, Seydon.” the Mandalorian spoke, the internal speakers broadcasting his voice and giving it a metallic clank.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]“Means we will be able to cover more territory. Radio contact at all times, of course. If something’s up… just yell real hard.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]A joke, of course. They would want to be as stealthy as possible. Last thing they wanted was to give away their presence - if it wasn’t given away already, wasn’t like his freighter was the stealthiest out there.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]“Got anything to share, before we go?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px][member="Seydon of Arda"] [/SIZE]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

...Seydon looked to pause a long moment, half-watching Samael rack and chamber his weaponry, his ears prickling at the slight and very sub-harmonic whine frp, heads-up-displays activating inside the skin and armour of his enclosed helmet. He looked dressed down by comparison: quaint and archaic, silver and steel bound up in old hide scabbards, reliance based on pure physical disciplines, eschewing the modern availability of modern weaponry systems. A micro-bead ear piece was wired up into one ear from a thin battery and transmitter pack on his hip belting. Seydon drew an old, beaten tomahawk from its catching on his harness and spun its haft and metal axe-head deftly.

“...Don't take your helm off for anything,” He said finally. “Mandalorian alloys have a habit of providing decent psionic insulation. Just keep an eye on your motion tracker: if there's anyone coming after you, you won't hear them. ...And if you find anyone, do your best not to shoot them. ...But don't let them go anywhere either. I'll want to see them. Best judgement in any case. We're looking for old structures, anything that looks pre-Tho Yorese.”

The Dunaan chose an easterly course that climbed into a dogged maze of interlocked, wildly attenuated wood growths. Here were animal runs that pawed and ran up over the moss, circulating where some of the jungle flooring levelled, forming broad shelf plateaus and sharper scarps. Octagonal and dodecahedral basalt pillar-caps pitched up with as much frequency of the tree copses. There was enough patchy stone beds and long falls of blanketed pebbles for him to surmise an old river or ample creek once ran to the belly of the valley.

He trained his ears against the tumult of sound: rodent scampers in earth-chewed tunnels half a kilometre away, heavier carnivores sleuthing by from their cover in the brush close by, snuffling flared noses across the ground for their burrowed prey, long boughs sighing up along the crater valley lip, great root balls that murmured under his boots, so very deep into the mantle, the scattering’s where his passage or simple gravity tugged dewdrops onto the stone and thin bracken and gorse lichen. An unnaturally enhanced sense of hyper-sight scoured over environmental details. A scuffed tree bole or foot-long mud smears on the basalt and leaf debris, Seydon even hoped for a hank of misplaced fabric caught up by spined bark areoles or one, solid gland scent.

The tangible lack of any evidence at a humanoid's passing didn't relieve his alert caution. The ground was stoically blank, and he could only smell the ripe pungency of decaying plant and root matter alongside wet, abrasive animal musk. And those were at best week and month old samples that had survived being washed out in the twilight mists. He paused and went to a knee, taking off a glove to press his open hand to what looked like a tell-tale boot mark on a scarf of linen-coloured daffodils. ...Just aching cold, no residual heat trace. But as he considered, if the crater valley was only home to various ecological hierarchies and astounding varieties of fern and thorny birches... Why did the hairs across his neck keep jumping on end each time the bird song quieted by an octave?

He turned and looked back, staring against and through the ancient and dark woodland. Shade turned, flashing with a sudden wind. The thunderheads and storm rolls they'd worried about catching up before the Galaar made landing was brooding on the valley edge high above. Seydon was looking to turn round when he finally caught it - ! ...A short, fanged deer scampering for cover, driving along its little family of doe and fawn. Damn, he thought. The Dunaan made an umpteenth adjustment to his battle rigging and went hiking up deeper into the valley side. A jagged arrangement of stones reminded him greatly of a chiseled stairwell cut into the mantle. Seydon reached, about to key open his and Samael's shared comm channel -

A sudden, thick snort of breath, down a haggard oesophagus ground raw and chafed.

He spun, hand fastened around Razorlight's hilt, cat's eyes narrow and scanning. ...Waiting for a hundred ninety seconds of almost quashing silence, Seydon then keyed his micro-bead.

“...Check in. Think I've uncovered an old stairway notched up a bluff. You track anything down?”

[member="Samael Rekali"]

 

[Arage Bao]

"You uh… could say that, yeah." the Mandalorian relayed quietly while watching. See, contrary to popular belief instinctive astrogation was not all about plotting out hyperlanes, making your ship jump faster and control it in a more controlled way, there was more to it than that. It was all about rhythm, about dance, about figuring out a cadence within the chaos and… Samael had found just that while walking through the forest.

Hiding within the forest clearing Sam was currently studying a peculiar scene.

"Say… Seydon. Why would these people be chanting next to a strange looking pillar in broad daylight?"

His internal systems were already making a recording of the scene, he couldn’t actually get the feed to Seydon, but if and when they met up, they could probably figure it out together. Trying to stand up his knee suddenly started itching like crazy -- ah, feth.

Samael turned around just to face a blur of movement heading his way.

"Position compromised." at that point instinct took over. Old, battle-hardened reflexes telling him to fall to the ground, roll to the left… and feth again. Rekali had forgotten he was on a hill, meaning that rolling to the left meant rolling down, down, down.

This just wasn’t his day.

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

The chant was a seething polychronia, dipping in harsh tonal modes that made the sound of combined voices hiss like serpent breath, a gust of escaping, volcanic wrath. Samael's comm-burst managed to communicate that his situation had worsened before it broke up, sounding his breathless grunts sliding down a hill of scree and boulder debris. Seydon cast one more look up the ancient stairwell rising up into the mist out of the jungle heights, and drew out Razorlight. The ritual was quick: a rakish oil concocted out of rapeseed and certain minerals dipped onto a clean handkerchief, swept over the blade flat and it's keen, winter-bright edge. He stopped up the bottle and stowed it, leaving his sword unfurled in his hand. Seydon exhaled, timed his breathing to his strides, and ran.

Seventeen heartbeats. Three exhibited respiratory illnesses brought on by accumulated drug abuses. Most blood pressure pulses were jacked into an ever quickening pace, egged on by anticipatory adrenaline. Endocrine systems were possibly modified with surgical augmentation to 'gland' them whenever neurological processes activated a 'fight of flight' syndrome. A few were snapping weapon stocks into place, arming blaster cells, others drawing HF machetes and a battle-kukri's. Someone was jamming slug rounds into a shotgun priming chamber and racking the barrel slide. Their voices were a melodic, fiercely shrilling ululation. One heartbeat, though, was running dead still and unhurried.

Seydon saw that one first: walking along as bodies struck past him, diving and rolling down the hillsides after Samael's retreating and ungainly roll. Their clothing was a mixture of modified body sleeves altered for the jungle clime with both primitive and more modern armour and armament. Ceramic pauldrons, ratty tabard's. Duraplast casement wrapped around forearms and shin-greaves, holed chainmail, feet bound up in rope tabi, and weaving battle flags stuck into vertebrae holsters behind their shoulders. Armament was similarly anachronistic: old war swords, axes, machetes, beside maintained machine-pistols and sparse SMG's. Blaster and slug fire tore up into the fern brush and gorse bushing, showering Samael in las-cooked pebbling, burning plant matter, and smoke.

Their commander, the bored heartbeat Seydon locked on to, was a specimen all their own. It was no taller than any of the cult rabble, measuring out its strides with care to the landscape, keeping bodies between itself and the Rekali Mando-fighter. What it did well was exude practised ease and an attitude of chilly familiarity with butchery. By smell or demeanour, the Dunaan couldn't grasp their gender. The figure was just there, a force of battle occupying the space, so focused on the business of brush warfare it was going through the motions. The best difference between it and the others was its choice in weaponry: a thin but long vibro-sword required two-hands to properly wield, a bandoleer of explosive rounds, and the heavy LMG they fit into.

A rabble-fighter, a skinny and dirty thing with vegetable dyes streaking their face and hair, ran up on Samael. In either hand was a primed fragmentation grenade. She was bright eyed, screaming something incomprehensible, smiling. She was halfway to his position, when a physical force struck into her side and sent her flying off her feet. She never let go of either grenade. She went wheeling into a fir copse and exploded. The copse expanded out from the earth, dressed up in flames as a concussive fireball swept up to the sky. Fibrous wood debris snapped past them, buzzing in their ears like hornets. Unfazed, Seydon strode up the hillside as splinters cascaded off his shoulders and brow.

Razorlight flashed, blade oil burning at every contact. It cut a fighter down, opening their facial bone to the brain and their throat to the upper spine. Seydon and cut at his left, working his shoulders, arms, his hip muscle and bone for power and torque, just a turning blur. He nicked open one fighter's carotid artery, then severed hanks of brachial muscle and thigh in paired follow up cuts. The Dunaan spun to address a cone of blaster fire, managing to cock up Razorlight's strong blade-flat through defensive parries and return orbits, turning back each bolt. Another figure dressed in necklaces of finger bones and spinal discs came rushing with a kukri and long hatchet in each hand, glanded to such an aggressive state his eyes were blank portals wreathed in palpitating blood vessels.

The axe hung up on Seydon's guard and was snatched out of his hand. A follow up stroke took his right hand off at the wrist and swept a deeper blow in through the flesh and pulp of his abdominal and torso cavity, raking the keen, killing edge through the liver, the stomach, though the length of a lung as the heart split in twain, cleaved rib bones jabbing out of his rent cuirass. Before the man even toppled to his knees, the Dunaan chopped into another gunner's throat with such easy force, their cranium went free in a spin of blood, and skewered a third with a lightning stab under the sternum bone and through connective nerves along the scapula and spinal column.

“Get up!” Seydon was shouting hoarse at Samael.

[member="Samael Rekali"]

 

[Arage Bao]

[SIZE=10.6667px]The woman was beautiful in her ferocity.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]It reminded the Blackthorn of past battles won, of blood spilled and people murdered. The whites of her eyes were a stark contrast to the coal rubbed around it. Crimson paint mixed with alchemical substances were inter-woven with that same coal, it adorned her entire body, accentuating strange ritualistic symbols. The yell at the back of her throat showed ruthless abandonment of the individualistic self; she no longer cared about [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]herself[/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px], and it was then that Samael knew that he was staring his death in the eyes.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]Could be worse, I guess. At least I will be hugging a voluptuous vixen at the same time.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]The next moment she was blasted off to the side. Sam didn’t have time to watch, because another frenzied warrior was running up to him - this one not nearly as pretty as the last one, his battle instincts kicked in right there and then.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]Time slowed. He saw the jagged broadsword angled towards neck coming, saw the white foam caressing his enemy’s lips, saw within his mind's eye exactly what he had to do. Samael jumped up, left knee bend, right leg kneeling and pressing down against the mud, the blade rushed in and the Rekali warrior was ready to react. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]His left hand lashed out from the side - slightly enhanced with artificial strength coming from the micronized mechanisms integrated in his suit, beskar-grade gauntlet applying pressure against the durasteel material. [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]It shattered[/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px], leaving the enemy befuddled, but Samael was already moving forward: pressing himself up against the ground, his arm locked behind the warrior’s neck and with a swift [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]snap[/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px] breaking it.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]But Sam’s eyes were only on the gory remains of the woman. [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]What a waste[/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px].[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]Seydon’s shout brought him back to reality. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]“Right!” he’d shout out, pushing the corpse away from him and snatching his gun. Sam started returning fire, while regrouping with the Witcher. From there they could find a way out of this fethed up situation.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px][member="Seydon of Arda"][/SIZE]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Enemy and friendly fire overlapped. Seydon trimmed a warrior's skull cap off with Razorlight's keening edge and rolled out of Samael's shooting line. There was a palpable stop as the occult menagerie paused: their fighting momentum was rapidly reversing on them. Mandalorian firepower stitched a body apart and smashed into the fighter behind, burning them out as skin, muscle, and bone were cooked. One shooter tried running back uphill to take refuge behind a granite spar, until Seydon watched a trio of shots punch out the bone and meat of their spine. Another rose, hammered fire down at the Clansman, had their facial bone smote when he replied with a trigger-pulse. Seydon drove up on their peripheral to scythe in their flank, and cut through another three bodies in as many seconds.

The commander stopped to drop to a knee, and began automatically feeding fragmentation rounds into their rifle's throaty breach. A blaster round whizzed past their ear, another chipped into a bone pauldron, one smacking off the skin of their forearm, gouging a brightly hissing wound composed of partially cooked radio-ulnar and muscle fat. Pain didn't engage them. They slapped the breach close, rising and priming a round, firing before it'd steadied the rifle stock. Regardless of any nearby 'allies,' they pelted the hillside, driving up plumes of roasted earth and heat-slagged vegetable mulch. They swept right -left, expending ammunition at both Seydon and Samael. The Dunaan seemed to disappear behind a cloud of ruptured stone. Detonations crawled meter by meter towards the Mandalorian.

[member="Samael Rekali"]

 

[Arage Bao]

[SIZE=10.6667px]The Rekali Warrior felt the moment shift, before it actually happened. The rhythm of the battle was about to be pushed into a different tone -- one which was not exactly positive to their prolonged health, a bullet grazed his plate, but he ignored it. Instead Sam lined up the shot that [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]could[/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px] put it back on track: the Commander who had just settled down on one knee with heavy weaponry within his hands. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]A single bullet was sent flying from his own rifle. It missed its mark by a long shot, instead brushing the apathetic commander’s shoulder. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]Samael had miscounted the amount of ammunition in the rifle. A second shot would have given him the mark, but he didn’t [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]have[/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px] a second shot. Instead all he had done was slightly shift the rhythm, barely giving them an edge to survive. The shoulder wound of the commander made his aim just off enough to blunt some of the damage that was coming in.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]The mini-explosions carried enough kinetic impact with them that Sam was sent flying towards the treelines - a lucky throw, as it were, perhaps influenced by his own move, but once there he disappeared from sight.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]Not out of mind though. He still had a high-impact blaster on his person, Seydon was out there -- and while he wasn’t a huge fan of risking his skin for others, the man had paid him to guide him… which meant that in this situation Sam had to risk his skin. It was his damned reputation on the line and [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]maybe, just maybe he had started to like the Witcher.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]Peeking from the clearing, his silhouette obscured by the trees, he tried to find a trace of Seydon.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px][member="Seydon of Arda"][/SIZE]