[Private] Draven's Dudes

[Eugen Aker]

Ranger Base "Jaburo", Kashyyyk

A few days had passed since the informal inquiry into the events of Jakku. Ex-slaves were now being resettled and/or tended to on the Silver Rest, and information gathered at the site was now being reviewed by analysts to create actionable intelligence. It wasn't all they wanted, but it was enough to proceed with plans.

Jyoti was itching to get away from her desk and get back into the field to personally act on the intel, but there were a few things she had to handle first. She planned on working closely with Draven, in the near term at least, so she wanted to learn more about him and the unit he had mustered.

But first, she just wanted a word with the man himself. It was safe to say they weren't on good terms, and she wanted to fix that before they did anything together.

She called for him to meet her at the headquarters section of the main Ranger base adjacent to the Silver Rest. The bulk of the Antarian Rangers stationed on Kashyyyk lived and operated out of the mountain base, and it's where she spent most of her time when she was planetside.

[member="Draven Dursden"]

 

[Draven Dursden]

​Draven let out a deep breath, white clouds puffing up around him as he looked out over the mountain's beautiful scenic view. He stood knee deep in snow, heavy jacket in place, and his electric blue eyes looked out over the beautiful scene laid out before him, with a certain quiet solemnness. Checking down at his watch, Draven saw it was time for their meeting and began making his way down the mountain, snow crumbling underneath foot, the cold bite stinging his cheeks as he made his way along. The short Jedi stumped his way across the stark white peak, a black ant on a never ending world of white.....​

​

Draven stepped out of the hot shower, his usually cropped, and short blonde hair had grown out significantly, and his mane had become quite unwieldy, so the Jedi decided to slick it back, and put on a backwards ranger's cap which he had found laying about. It did look...fairly casual, but he simply shrugged at himself in the mirror, and proceeded to dress. Draven dressed in cargo shorts, with a pair of uniform black hiking boots, along with a tight fitting shirt. The Jedi then made his way down the hall and towards the main headquarters of the ranger base.​

​

Draven felt naked without his men at his side, sadly he had been forced to part with them, and their quarters were on separate sides of the base, he would be flying solo. He didn't want to say anything, but Draven had noticed rumblings in their undying loyalty. For the first time, since they were formed, his dudes were beginning to question his orders. The hearing had affected their assurance in his leadership, quite a bit, and this had bled over into a hint of indecisiveness, which was not there before. Such things worried the short knight deeply, they where his last line of defense, and his first. His champions, if they did not believe in him, he would have quite a few issues.​

​

[member="Jyoti Nooran"]​

 

[Eugen Aker]

Jyoti hung outside her office near the appointed time, on the lookout for the young knight. He was easy to pick out from the crowd once he did appear, wearing neither Jedi robes nor a Ranger's uniform. Meanwhile, Jyoti wore her usual silvery white robes.

He looked different from the last time they had crossed paths, where he had come into the inquiry as a ball of anger and disdain. Now he seemed calmer, if conflicted.

"Knight Dursden, hello," she said with a smile. "I hope you didn't have too much trouble getting up here. Now please, join me."

She waved him inside her office as she slipped inside. The office was mostly a spartan affair, sparsely decorated with a few pieces of blocky metallic furniture. It wasn't at all as cozy as her main office within the Silver Rest, but there were a few plants on her desk to liven up the place with a spot of greenery.

She smoothed out back of her robes, then took her seat behind the desk, motioning for Draven to join her in one of the spare chairs across from her.

"Now, as I had told you earlier, I wanted you and your unit to start working under my direct supervision for a time. However, it's not just to monitor you, but our priorities seem to align. In our wars against the Sith and Imperials, some other issues have been neglected. Namely, the trafficking crisis within the Outer Rim. The area has become rife with pirates and criminal organizations exploiting the flood of refugees being shuffled around. In general, the more cesspits of lawlessness are appearing, making the job of the traffickers all too easy."

"I've been working to change that, beginning with some investigations in the Mid Rim. One such investigation led to us stumbling upon the crime convention on Jakku."

She leaned forward clasping her hands together on the desk. "While I wasn't happy with the breakdown of communication, you do seem quite motivated, and your unit is undeniably effective. More importantly, I see that you do care about the plight of the victims. I think that if you learned to utilize your skills, then you could be a real force for change in Hutt Space, and the rest of the Outer Rim."

"So, before Jakku, what have you been up to? I'm afraid to say that I don't know much about you, except that you were the apprentice of Yuroic. His master used to be the Grandmaster of the Silver Order, and my friend."

It always felt weird referring to herself in the third person, even worse as she reminded herself that Arisa was, officially, dead and gone.

"I assume you were Knighted under him?"

[member="Draven Dursden"]

 

[Draven Dursden]

​Draven sat down with a sigh, and listened to her, his expression distant and uninterested. His eyes snapped into focus when she addressed him directly, and he began to explain his past history. ​"I have been on a number of nondescript missions. The most recent of which was before jakku, and involved slavers, which I just barely escaped with my life. I have spent a great amount of time training in saber combat with masters at the temple, and developing my skills, as well as attending one or two major battles alongside Yuroic." ​He paused a moment, looking at her hard when she mentioned his knighthood, and the jedi let out a hallow chuckle after a moment of silence, ​"I suppose you could say that. He didn't show up to the ceremony, and didn't say a word to me after. But yes, I was knighted while I was his Padawan. As far as the break down of communication, I think that is one of the biggest issue with the silver jedi. They talk too much. Action is what is required to teach these....animals a lesson. They will respond vividly to a row of corpses laid out, of their friends and family, dead, and learn we are not to be trifled with. The slavers are savages, and sometimes," ​Draven leaned back, and spread his hands, ​"It takes a savage to communicate with savages with savages." ​The smile on his face didn't reach his eyes.​

​

After a moment, he moved on, ​"Lets not create some sham of a relationship, you are here to muzzle me, because the silver jedi think I'm a rabid dog. Best to start of honestly, there is one thing you will never be able to accuse me of, and that is dishonesty." ​From the beginning of their conversation, his expression had steadily hardened, the shell slowly came over him, and defenses put themselves up. He did not know who this silver haired woman was, and she certainly did not know him. What Draven was not saying, was that he would kill any slaver he came across, no matter what the consequences. It was almost an involuntary knee jerk reaction, it would be against the short jedi's very moral fiber to allow them to roam free. Saying so would just be daring more punishment though, so instead he just watched her, his pale cold eyes dead.​

​

[member="Jyoti Nooran"]​

 

[Eugen Aker]

Listening to Draven recount his knighting experience, it sounded like Yuroic had become quite cold. Ever since he had stepped away from the Silver Order for a while as a Padawan, he had never been the same. It disheartened her to think that her goofy friend was gone, too.

She just sighed as he launched into another tirade. "Draven, if I wanted to 'muzzle' you, then you would either be sitting in a brig or relieved from duty."

"You continue to speak ill about your peers, yet it was their intelligence that brought the criminal convention to your attention in the first place. It was your "talkative" peers, not you, who were the ones to plan and initiate the operation. You would have had your chance at your raid if you had only allowed the rest of your team the opportunity to complete their insertions and let them do their part of the job. If you had let them do their job, then you wouldn't have been nearly overrun at one point."

"Do you not see you how undermine your own mission? I mean, you could run around all day exterminating low-level slavers like vermin, but the system remains intact. These are twisted men and women who do much worse to their own people. If you really want to hurt them, then you need to get to the ringleaders pulling all the string, but that's not something you can just do with a gun or blade. If you could show just a little more patience, then you could achieve all that you wanted and more. Otherwise, what's the point of being part of the Silver Order if you're not going to trust us to help?"

[member="Draven Dursden"]

 

[Draven Dursden]

Draven shrugged and replied, ​"My peers are weaker than me, and refuse to do what is required. Hence why I speak poorly of them." ​He then fell into a prolonged silence, letting the woman rant and continue, his blue eyes watching her calmly. The Knight had nothing more to say, and was simply waiting on her to get on with the meeting, his expression and demeanor made this quite evident. Through his crossed arms and closed off look, there was no mistaking what was going through the young knight's mind.​

​

[member="Jyoti Nooran"]​

 

[Eugen Aker]

She shook her head. He definitely not the first militant type she had met - long ago she had been the same - but he was certainly proving himself to be difficult. That was fine, the Echani liked challenges. With the exception of Charlie, every other Jedi she had taken under her wing had been a handful, from alcoholics to a former Sith Lord.

"So you gathered all that from one sortie? Most of our active Jedi and Rangers have been at this for a long time. You had a taste of it at Dagobah against the First Order and the Galactic Empire, but that's been the reality for most of us for the past decade if not more. I wasn't much older than you when the One Sith sacked Coruscant and destroyed my home."

She leaned forward, clasping her hands together. "In my time in this world, I've learned that it's pretty easy to run around attacking everything in sight, destroying what you don't like. What's always been the hardest for me is showing patience and restraint. Sometimes that means losing the battle, but that means winning the war in the process. That's one thing that separates us from the Sith."

"But anyway, you'll get your chance at all the action you can handle." She unclasped her hands and waved one over her desk, activating the inbuilt holoprojector. "The figure of a scraggly Toydarian appeared on screen."

"Meet Nago Roogme, a mid-level gang leader, and slaver based in Hutt Space. He was one of the slavers that got away during the raid, but from the data we were able to recover from seized computers, it looks like he's holed up somewhere on Nar Kaaga. We're just not sure where exactly. I'd like to pick him up and see if we can use him to get more leads on the big fish in the trafficking network we've been trying to bring down. That would take us deeper into Hutt Space, or even the Core, where we could truly do some damage against these slavers. So, are you interested in joining me on a field trip?"

[member="Draven Dursden"]

 

[Draven Dursden]

The arms crossed. He leaned back in his chair, watching the woman as she explained the potential mission, and lectured him about her history, and what infinite knowledge she had gained over him. The knight was tuning her out, he had better things to spend his mental power on than listening to her drivel. But his eyes snapped into focus when she began to explain a potential new mission. A chance for another show of power, a chance for proving himself farther as the best warrior in the universe. Draven usually would have jumped at the idea.​

Instead he replied, "So you want to go on a mission so you can look over my shoulder, question my every move, and humiliate me in front of my men? I do not think my help would be beneficial in this area." His expression would be hard with determination, and face set, he had made up his mind. He continued, "My dudes follow me because I inspire them. They don't enlist, they are not held at gunpoint, they choose to do what they do. If their moral falls past a certain point, they WILL desert. Having a woman second guessing their leader, and having him bow to those questionings? It would be absolutely crushing to them. They are hard men. Bad men. Fear is a primary tool I employ to keep them in line, and right now, they are not feeling a whole lot of it. Murmurs of mutiny have already spread amongst their ranks." He shook his head, "Go find another puppy to drag along behind you and show off to the Jedi. I know that you have a history with fixer upper projects, but I have no intention on being owned by you. Not like that fat little apprentice I always see tagging along, and mooning over you. I won't do it."​

What Draven was not saying, was that there was only one person in the entire silver Jedi which he sought approval from. The one person who gave it so rarely, that is almost seemed mythical, who refused to notice, or acknowledge him as a apprentice, where he had been everything to Draven. He had saved the boy from poverty and slavery, and then dumped him to be baby sit by other jedi while he was out on more important missions. And the few times the apprentice had accompanied his master, he had been treated like a outsider, a angsty nobody. The sting was still fresh for the furious knight.​

[member="Jyoti Nooran"]