Playing in the Sand (Mandalorian Dominion of Aargonar)

[Catherine Romanov]

Location: Shuttle heading to the surface of Aargonar

And with that, the shuttle was cleared for takeoff, its engine began firing up, blasting furiously as it took off into the deep black, the cabin vibrated slightly as the ship rocketed towards the atmosphere of Aargonar.

In the shuttle, Catherine giggled at the shyness and uncertainty of the girl. The girl known as Hidia then dropped a bomb on them by revealing that she was formerly from the One Sith. Fortunately, it really didn't mind to Cath, what you were before. She got up from her seat, and went to sit beside Hidia. She placed a hand on her shoulder, squeezing as she said "I don't care what you were before Ner vod, as long as you've changed. Now that you're part of the Mando'ade, you're my Vod, my sister and comrade in arms. "

[member="James Rorke"] | [member="Hidia"]

 

[Hidia]

Location: Shuttle heading to the surface of Aargonar

Hidia tensed reflexively as the woman suddenly walked over and grabbed her shoulder. She had never really gotten used to when others touched her. Not something she generally liked or even tolerated, but she'd let it pass this time. More surprising was her words. She'd expected some sort of reaction from her when she said that, of course, but certainly not like that. She had been more then a little concerned that most Mandalorians would reject her when she revealed that. Of course, this was only one person, and may well not be representative of the majority of the Mandalorians, but she was happy for the acceptance nonetheless.

"I....thank you. That means a lot to me."

[member="Catherine Maxwell"]
[member=James Rorke]

 

[Not Ordo]

[member="Isabet Skirata"]

Jendri looked at the woman. Her delicate features hid a firce warrior and he knew of all their people she was his best.

"There isn't much more we can do from the outside, Skirata." he looked around at their older equipment and ships, "and when we're inside we can update our gear, and redistribute some funds to our cause."

He turned to look at his own gear being loaded on his ship.

"Skirata is dead, Ar'klim is crippled, Monroe is Monroe, Garon may help us, and Rekali does his own thing. That leaves Gilamar's boy, The She-man and Mantis. If now ain't right nothing will be."

 

[Rena Kryze]

Location: Ash'amur, Hangar Bay
Objective: Oh shebs I missed the shuttle.

Needless to say when Rena finally found her way to the hangar only to see the tail of one of the last shuttles full of her vode take off, she was unimpressed. She had missed the nest flight down to the surface of Aargonar and now she was probably going to be stuck up here until either another one came up or they could rally enough troops to send another mission down to the surface. That meant, most likely, Rena was going to miss the fight.

And Rena Kryze did not miss fights.

Whoever was left in the hangar bay would probably hear a woman cursing up a storm enough to make most fully-grown and very drunk Mando'ade blush because they just heard her talk about how she would do things with intestines and the male urethra. Okay, maybe not blush, but something would probably shrivel back in given that the mental image of things being pushed in, in ways they were not meant to, was not a comfortable thing. Fortunately, her voice was muffled slightly behind her black and red helmet, but she'd probably draw a lot of attention.

Unfortunately for her, this was entirely her own fault for being too inept to navigate the bulkheads of her very first major warship. Not that she cared. Irrational Rena is irrational.

 

[Drake Itera]

[member="Rena Kryze"]

Turning his helm towards the irregular Rena he'd heard the list of curses she'd sent into the air muffled slightly behind her helmet, in a way it didn't surprise him considering how much many of these mandalorians desired combat. Moving towards her at a slow pace she had definitely got the initiates attention as he strode towards her. Thinking about her insults he didn't know whether to be disgusted and disturbed or impressed by the graphic details of her imagination.

Either way it didn't really matter as he shouted out towards her well aware they had both missed the same shuttle. It likely meant the next shuttle ride down he'd be sharing with her and he'd rather get on the good side of any other mandalorian.

"Hey how about you save that energy for when we're planetside?"

 

[Rena Kryze]

Location: Ash'amur, Hangar Bay
Objective: Oh shebs I missed the shuttle. And someone else did too.
[member="Drake Itera"]

The sound of another voice in her direction was enough to break her from her reverie. Of course, Rena needed a moment to calm her farm, but at least it was a distraction from the crap that was missing a shuttle... to which she brought her fire to bear on her poor fellow Initiate.

"Hey, how about you eat... oh, whatever."

It wasn't worth the effort.

Instead, she looked over at Drake and considered for a moment; a fellow warrior was probably not someone you wanted to irritate within your first combat engagement. Nope, Rena was a little smarter than that. She'd need his guns if she was going to survive her first real mission.

"Sorry about that. Oya, vod. I'm Rena of aliit Kryze. You?"

 

[Drake Itera]

[member="Rena Kryze"]

Keeping his helmet on as he came to a stop Drake's voice was similarly muffled by the EVA lock of his helmet, still he could hear her clearly due to the sound amplifiers within his helmet. Having hear her begin the insult he was surprised when she stopped as he looked at her through his visor, he was assuming a human was behind the helmet but mandalorians where so diverse he could never know. Regardless of race they where still brothers and sisters in a unified cause though.

Clearing his throat as she asked him his name Drake paused if for a mere second, he'd only recently became part of the Itera clan and avoiding his former name was something he cautiously did.

"My name is Drake of allit Itera. This will be my first off world clan mission, I hope to prove deserving of the acceptance they have given me."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Kalizka"]

The Neti's weight settled into the speeder's passenger seat, partially counterbalancing the mass of Ember and his armor. "Did your friend of a friend have a name? The Draethos live a long time; mighta had a connection in common."

He squinted at [member="Ginnie Ordo"] and got the speeder moving; in a matter of seconds, he'd pulled up alongside the dancing kid. "Want a lift, half-pint?"

 

[Kaveh Garshasp]

She visibly flinched at the mention of "Gilamar's Boy". Azrael was a competent leader and a superb fighter, but she agreed. The Mandalorians were too...Soft now to get anything done, even with a man such as him leading them. Casting her gaze at Jendri's left foot she frowned. She knew she was doing the right thing. If the others couldn't understand that...Then they didn't deserve her breath.

Looking back up with passion in her cold, blue eyes she nodded in agreement.

"I'll be damned if I leave our people to that savage wolf..." she muttered. With her confidence in their mission restored she slipped her helmet back on and rocketed away to meet with others.

Today they would rise from the ashes.
[member="Kyr Jendri"]

 

[Primordus]

Miles suddenly woke up, the engines of the drop ships roaring had woken him up with their loudness. He had a short violent coughing fit, but it wasn't to bad. He then slapped his cheeks and put his helmet to the side of his dashboard and hoped out of his ship to check the fuel. The ship was ready and he was able to leave, he looked around and noticed that his son's ship had already taken off. Miles the hopped in his ship and took off, flying out of the Ash'amur. He leaned back into his seat and stared at the celestial body, growing and shut his eyes when he was nearing the surface. The ship landed safely on Aargonar in one of the rockier areas and he hoped out of his ship. He grabbed his helmet and put it on, then began heading towards the forward base.

 

[Ginnie Dib]

"I'm gonna be a singer! I'm gonna learn to sing and my Buir are gonna be prooooouuuuudd of me." The girl hopped up and dusted off, twirling in a circle and stomping her foot down in the sand at this monumental occasion. Music was such an important part of any child's life, and it hadn't been many weeks since Ginnie was able to hear the joyful tones for herself. Alas, there in the distance a speeder veered toward the petite Mando'ad. Ginnie cocked her head to the side and watched as the vehicle came forth and there was a . . . a tree? A tree and Field Marshal [member="Ember Rekali"].

Nodding her buy'ce, the pink and purple clad Knight saluted the Field Marshal and hop, hop, hopped over to the speeder. Her voice held the marred cadence of the deaf "Yes, please Sir! I'm finished playing around it's time to get to work, right? I can help! I'm good at helping. Initiate Ginnie Ordo at your service, Field Marshal."

Standing as proud as her diminutive height would allow, Ginnie clamoured aboard the speeder and found a spot behind the tree. "Hi, I don't know you, but I'm Ginnie. Pleased to meetcha. What're you up to? Do you need help? I can shoot with accuracy and I can infiltrate all quiet. . well when I'm not learning what singing sounds like. I'll shut up now!"

She sat straight and held on to the side rail, remembering her manners and keeping herself from becoming a nuisance.

 

[Rena Kryze]

Location: Ash'amur, Hangar Bay
Objective: Still not actually on a shuttle...
[member="Drake Itera"]

Two Mando'ade of two lesser-known Clans - well, okay, in both their cases their Clans had once been highly famous and then sunk back into obscurity. Not that that was a bad thing, particularly - only that it occasionally made things difficult and painful because everyone was so busy jerking it to Ordo and Skirata. Whatever. Not being recognised meant slipping into places more easily... and blowing more things up.

Is someone bitter? Maybe a little.

"I know the feeling," Rena admitted to her newfound vod. "Ideally I'm going to get to the surface and do something useful and prove my own worth. I'm hoping not to mess this up."

She grinned, behind her helmet. Not that anyone would ever see that, because there was no way Rena Kryze would be taking her helmet off around other people any time soon. However, you could hear it in her voice. One thing was that Rena had learned to make her voice do so much of the talking that her facial expressions would have otherwise; her voice was rather animated.

"So, what's your story, Drake? Smuggler? Mercenary? Pro soldier? Or just someone with something to prove?"

 

[Eun]

"OLAROM VOD! HUNTING THE SARLACC, EH?!" Assumed some barbarian inbred.

The harshly accented tones ground against the ears of any within proximity as the green-armored scrub stomped through the dunes toward [member="Ember Rekali"], [member="Ginnie Ordo"] and the plant-thing. The armor bore many nicks and dents, though one might hesitate to call the wearer a veteran of war. Stupidity can often pass for experience at first glance.

"Name's Tyr. Mind if I tag along?"

Why Tyr found the need for volume in this nigh deserted space was anyone's guess, just as much as it was a mystery to all those present why he was even here. Luckily, the helmet obscured the toxic breath of the feckless man, which was about as soggy with alcohol as a barkeep's rag.

"Got a bike of my own just behind that dune."

The force sensitives likely felt his presence coming, thought it was a dubious affair considering the astonishingly small dung heap taking up the interior of his skull, which some dared to label as 'brain cells.'

He was, in short, a paragon of the Mandalorian stereotype. And he wanted to tag along.

 

[Soeht]

A voice came from just outside the mouth of the sarlaac that [member="Halik Falkosi"] ventured within.

“For one to just be sitting dead here,” Bestala said, “I wonder if it died of something nasty.”

Standing in front of the sarlaac, Bestala gazed within its massive maw. She had no weapon drawn, yet she was armed. She could just barely see Halik within it. She could not see much of the details that Halik found as he traversed the insides of the sarlaac’s mouth.

“Kind of surprised someone beat me here first, though,” she claimed.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Kalizka"] [member="Ginnie Ordo"] [member="Tyr Skirata"]

The kid's chatter washed over Ember, a man who'd raised six teenagers at one point or another, three of them girls. With a tolerant nod, he recalibrated his repulsors. He leaned out over the door to face the drunk in battered green.

"No sarlacc involved, not for this bit. Better fight than that, at a guess. Grab your bike, tag along."

He hit the accelerator before the dude could puke on his speeder or something.

***​

​

The cargo speeder ground to a halt beside a massive pit in the sand, a place where an adult sarlacc had been twisted by the combined alchemies of two Sith Masters. The beast was no longer here; it had been used in the One Sith sieges of the Core Worlds, and was still being used. Ember exited the speeder, scanning the place. The Force was very dark here, oppressive, and Sithspawn stirred under the sand.

"Once I start cleaning, they'll wake up. Brace yourselves."

He raised an E-11 in each hand, and Force Light exploded from his eyes, hammering at the near-tangible darkness of what had once been a sarlacc pit.

 

[Not Ordo]

[member="Tyr Skirata"] [member="Ember Rekali"] [member="Ginnie Ordo"]

Kalizka watched all and took it as he nearly always did, in stride. His old grey eyes held a twinkle now, but being around the vibrant youths almost always made him happy, so it was no surprise. He leaned on his staff as he stood beside the speeder, and pressed down on his feeling of sorrow that the Darkside caused. Such things were an affront to nature and that had never set well with him.

The sand began to stir as he watched the man began to project the force light. Odan-urr, his friend of a friend, had written about the technique and Kalizka understood yhe principle very well but seeing it used was something he would be cataloging for some time after this. He looked to the young child and shrugged off his cloak and put it and his precious rucksack in the speeder.

"Be careful, this may take a while." he said as his plain wooden staff began to give off a faint glow. "Sith spawn are coming."

 

[Not Ordo]

[member="Isabet Skirata"]

Kyr turned to his ship and made final preparations before he began transferring data from their base computer to his ship. The process would take time so in the meantime he opened a channel to [member="Strider Garon"].

"Field Marshal Garon, this is Initiate Jendri of clan Jendri. Permission to join the fleet, Ner Vod."

 

[Drake Itera]

[member="Rena Kryze"]

Nodding Drake could feel the smile behind her helmet simply through the tone of her voice as he gave a long sigh. Throughout his life he'd done many odd jobs but usually it always centred around a target of sometype, mercenary, bounty hunter, assassin. He'd done them all and he was guessing in the mandalorians it wouldn't feel much different.

"I've been lots of things. Enforcer, Bodyguard, Mercenary, Bounty hunter, Assassin... I could continue but it's a long and repetitive list. As for my family history my parents left the mandalorians when I was young, spoke of them all the time and taught me their ways but that was it. Admittedly I don't remember much of the language guess it's hard when the only two people who speak it where your parents."

Looking for even the slightest sign of a shuttle Drake wasn't one for waiting about doing nothing, he preferred to feel like he was doing something.

"What about you? I know clan Kryze isn't as big as it used to be."

 

[Naimes Ahn-Dross]

Location: Aargonar; Desert
Allies: Mandalorians; [member="Arla Balor"]
Objective: Discover a Gouka Dragon hole.....or draw one to them....

​

...underneath his helmet Naimes had smiled, thinly, when Arla made mention that she needed to figure out who was pairing him with her and what exactly the purpose of the pairing was to which the Soldier only answered..."Perhaps all three."...though he made no mention of Azrael because the truth was he had only limited interactions with the Mandalore. Most of the people Naimes had interact with were the Field Marshals or Rally Masters he answered to though they did tend to give him a bit of a wide berth when allowing him to undertake his missions. Anyways it was of little matter to him. They had an area to patrol and, maybe, a dragon to hunt...

...the desert world of Aargonar was much like other planets that Naimes had performed operations on in the past, the desert stretched on endlessly and sometimes transformed into rocky crags that differentiated across the landscape, as he moved ahead he left clear footsteps in the shifting sand that would likely be swallowed up as the wind blew across the region. Nodding his head as he went Naimes would have replied..."Yes, everything must have a lair."...everything, even the Mandalorians though we claimed whole worlds not just holes in the ground, though the answer did cause him to sink into a brief contemplation...

...as he looked ahead Naimes would use the different visual options his helm accommodated, scanning the area a second time while he and Arla proceeded through it, then his left arm would extend and he would indicate a ridge in the far off distance that looked like it dipped down over the dunes. "There."...Naimes said while pointing Arla towards what he saw..."The dune might fall into a loose, rocky, crag perfect for digging a hole in. There's not a lot of terrain here so the Dragons need to burrow underground."...then he was pushing forward again slowly, pressing through the unstable ground at his feet...

...Sarlacc Pits were another concern here on Aargonar though they may have been a bit easier to spot. Naimes was careful having no intention for either he or Arla to be swallowed up this day. Proceeding up over a small dune that they would come upon on the way to their destination he'd have said..."If you bring back the bones of a dragon you'll be lauded as a great warrior, Arla."...he had decided to use her name upon her insistence..."It is no easy task to kill one of the beasts."...Naimes himself wouldn't say if her had ever done it though it cane be assumed in his life, his career, that he had been on the hunt for many different things...​

 

[Strider Garon]

Location: Bridge of Command Ship
Objective: Drink caffa and launch the prefab

OOC: Sorry for my delay in posting and leaving myself in catch up mode. If i ignored you in this post I do apologize.

[member="Kyr Jendri"] voice came over the bridge come and Strider nodded to his traffic controller to allow the fellow mandalorian to join up with the fleet "Give the lad permission" he reinforced his demand.

Strider would lift his cup of spiced caffa to his lips, quickly realizing that the cup was finished. Such a small dissapointment for the old man was enjoying the luxury. The old warrior would raise himself from his chair, his eyes focusing upon the caffa machine. See, he could of just asked any initiate aboard the ship to refill his cup but he was not that kind of a leader. The men below him were not his slaves to be degraded with such a insignificant task. Instead, he walked his high ranked arse over to the machine himself, filling his cup to replenish the delicacy he enjoyed so much.

He would then march back over to his command chair a note the progress below. No reports of any real threats below. It was time to launch the prefab base and get this mission on a proper go. Strider would look down into the lower deck of the bridge where his crew worked hard at their specific tasks. "Launch the Prefab" The old man would order, his words were short, decisive and commanding.

Minutes later a large pod would jettison from the Dreadnaught aimed at the planet. The pod would break through the atmosphere and land as gently as it could, close to the remnants of the imperial base which will be used as a possible ground works for the future of this mando outpost. Once the pod hit the ground the pod would open up in a magnificent spectacle, the large leafs of the pod breaking away exposing the prefab base to the surroundings.

Now it was time for the engineers to get to work.