First Reply Tomb Raider — The Bone Garden

[Valery Noble]

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Outfit: Jungle Outfit | Wedding Ring

The fog was thicker than it should have been.

It clung to her skin like breath, curling around her shoulders as Valery stepped deeper into the jungle — and it didn't part. It swallowed sound, swallowed light. Even her footsteps felt muffled against the ground. No birdsong. No insects. Just the hush of leaves brushing against each other like whispers behind closed doors. She had been walking for over an hour. The coordinates were ancient, decrypted from a crumbling fragment of a cartographer's journal — one who'd spoken of a garden made of silence, where the dead did not rest.

She hadn't believed it. Not really.

Not until the ground had started to crunch.

Bones.

Small ones, first. Animals and birds. Then larger ones appeared, weathered by time but untouched by scavengers, spread like offerings beneath the vines and roots that had made their home in the skulls. Valery crouched, her fingers brushing across the hollowed eye socket of a strange-looking skull. No signs of trauma. No blaster burns. Just stillness. The kind that didn't feel natural.

The Force didn't scream here — it whispered. Faint and thin, but wrong. She rose slowly, her other hand resting on the hilt at her hip, eyes sweeping the shrouded tree line. Something was watching her.

Waiting.

"You're not just buried here, are you?" she murmured to the fog.

First Reply
(Preference for folks I don't often write with already)​

 

[Charlana]

Tag: Valery Noble
Gear: Patchwork armorweave/fiber armor, Fuel Gun, Vibrosaber, Knife, Talisman (Force Artifact)

It was not her cup of tea, or shot of whiskey. Tomb raiding, exploring, it required a keen interest and book learning. Neither of which Charlana had in much supply. Except, of course, the interest in big payoffs. This was not only a job with a huge payout, it was one the half-Sephi only considered out of rank despair for money. Her (former) reputation must still have carried some weight in the underworld, when she was the Pirate Witch in command of her custom corvette. It landed her this job, one she had to use some sweet talk and a touch of the 'energy that surrounds and is in all things" to acquire.

Where they got the map the corsair didn't know. And didn't care. She was told insistently that it was accurate...enough. So, she set out to find this...thing that was reported to lay in the Bone Garden. That had a nice ring to it. Until she had to actually find it.

The jungle was wretched, the air so thick humid her dreadlocks became heavy with moisture and tugged at her head. Thick, tangled underbrush, it was a good place to keep something hidden. Then, the fog crept in. Slow, steady, with tendrils that reached out before it like a living thing, a consuming, living thing. Her handheld sensor/compass wavered, causing her to question her course. Constant swearing under her breath didnt' help, as it sounded like a loud voice in the deathly silence.

Then she kicked something. She had kicked a lot of things, mostly roots, sometimes stumbling, tripping a time or two over them. This one moved. Curious, she reached for it. A bone, clean, unmarred, whole. She tossed it aside as insignificant, but her feet encountered more and more. She halted. The unease of the place Charlana had ignored successfully now overwhelmed her. The unnerved half-breed swore she saw movement ahead.

She did, again, shadow moved, a figure, walking. Careful, setting her boots gently to keep from crunching the carpet of bones, she moved closer. Her hand slid the fuel gun slung over her shoulder into her hands.

"You're not just buried here, are you?"

A voice broke the silence. A curious one, female, and hardly nefarious. "No, and I hope not to be..." The cheeky spacer replied, assuming the stranger was speaking to her.

 

[Valery Noble]

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Outfit: Jungle Outfit | Wedding Ring

Valery straightened at the voice, her body turning with the readiness of someone who'd seen too many battlefields to be caught off-guard — but her hand didn't move to her weapon. Not yet. She hadn't been speaking to anyone, and certainly not to someone living.

The fog parted just enough to reveal the outline of a woman through the dense gray — tall, dreadlocked, armed. Not a Sith. Not a wraith. Not... dead. That alone was a welcome surprise.

"Force," Valery muttered under her breath. She exhaled, slow and controlled, the tension bleeding off her shoulders as she blinked the fog from her lashes and took a step forward, more visible now in the low light — a figure in a dark, travel-worn cloak, with a lightsaber clipped openly at her belt.

"I wasn't expecting company," she said, voice low and even, though curiosity etched into her features. Her eyes flicked to the weapon in the other woman's hands, then back to her face. "But you're alive, which is... better than what I've been finding out here." The jungle breathed around them — not quite silent, but not alive either.

Valery tilted her head. "And unless you've taken to haunting tombs for the ambiance," she added, "I'm going to guess you're not here by accident."

A beat.

"What brings you here?"

Charlana ​

 

[Charlana]

Tag: Valery Noble
Gear: Outfit, Fuel Gun, Vibrosaber, Knife, Talisman (Force Artifact)

The shadowy image was distorted by the fog and frail ambient light that strained to penetrate it. Its movement stopped at the sound of Charlana's voice. The half-Sephi felt a twisted sensation of tantalizing fear and and dangerous curiosity that elicted a thrill up her spine. bright eyes tried to penetrate the fog, eager to discover the nature of the stranger. Was if it was some decieving ghoul, a dead thing haunting the tomb, waiting to do horrible things to intruders? Or some mythical jungle entity who protects unwitting travellers from their doom? An excitement exploited her heightend fear into a form of deviant pleasure. The anticiaption was delicious.

The figure moved closer, the fog reluctantly allowing it to part. Charlana halted. The homemade fuel gun held tighter. Charlana suddenly wished she had drawn her blade. Something with which she could test the solidity of the ghost-like figure. Also, it was more satisfactory to feel the resistance of flesh and bone against a cleaving blade.

Tendrils of the misty seemed to finally relent and slip away to reveal the stranger. While the fog lingered, it could not hide what the corsair saw. It was worse than a ghoul.

It was a Jedi.

The disgruntled explorer's delicate brows furrowed as pale gray eyes took in the stranger "Huh." She harumphed in disappointment. The woman was not a disappointment in appearance, at elast. Tall and fit, beauty marred by a scar that made her seem all the more impressive and eyes that made Charlana want to both move into them and recoil defensively at the same time. But it was casual but imposing posture coupled with the drab robe and the tell-tale saber hilt at her side tha betrayed her nature. . Of all things in that wretched place. A Jedi. Jedi were trouble.

"I wasn't expecting company,"

"Huh, me neither. Who the feth would ever come out here." The waifish pirate quipped, then coughed an unamused laugh. "...except us, of course." Charlana sensed nothing threatening about the stranger, aside from being a Jedi. She lowered the fuel gun and slung it back over her shoulder.

Charlana shifted her weight, her hands resting on her hips. In truth, she kind of liked the darkly morbid spot. It tickled her darkness. But the jungle was a wretched place in general. She scratched her head, where a cruel insect had left an itching bite, then swiped her forehead with the back of her hand. It only managed to smear the grime into the sweat on her brow.

"Gah..." she muttered, then looked again at the fiery eyed Jedi. The bruneete was there for the thing too, why else would she be there? Certainly the jedi had the same thought about Charlana.

"Me? Oh, this place has its own charm..." she emphasized her cheeky comment by lightly kicking the skull of someone, or something, with the toe of her boot. "Not a resident, I have a purpose for dragging my ass out here." Charlana answered. "Otherwise, I would be be caught dead..." She paused, noting the irony of her comment. Charlana let out a short, impish giggle . "...well, you know." She smirked.

Then the Jedi wanted to know why. That was typical, always wanting to get into your business, finding some righteous deed to perform or wrong to right. It was none of the jedi's business why she was there. Charlana was about to tell the woman just that. Then she looked again at her surroundings. The spacer was out of her element, and who knew what danger laid ahead. If she was going to have a chance to secure the prize and get the payoff, there would be a better chance of doing so with a jedi at her side, or in front of her. If she could just stomach being so close to a Lightsider.

The truth suddenly seemed about as good as a lie in the situation, and would pose a devious dilemma for the Jedi, who certainly was there for the same thing, except she did it for some 'good' reason. "I have been hired to retreive something from the tomb." Charlana replied, mischievously waiting to see how the Jedi would respond.

 

[Valery Noble]

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Outfit: Jungle Outfit | Wedding Ring

Valery stood with the stillness of someone used to danger — not braced for it, but comfortable in its presence. The thick fog clung to her cloak and hair like sweat, its weight mingling with the scent of death and damp stone, but she didn't seem to mind. Her fiery eyes flicked over the corsair with calm scrutiny, noting every little detail — the quick drop of her weapon, the impish smirk, the irony-laced humor masking tension.

When Charlana finally admitted her purpose, Valery exhaled softly through her nose and tilted her head.

"Hired, huh?" Her voice was quiet, even — but with a sharpness at the edge of it, like the whisper of a blade unsheathing. One brow arched just slightly as she looked the other woman over again. "Do you even know what you're looking to retrieve? Or were you just told it was shiny and buried in a place full of bones?"

She turned, not with suspicion, but with intent, her gaze slipping past Charlana and into the shadowed maze of the tomb beyond. "Because judging by the corpses out here, whatever it is… it's not the kind of thing people walk away with." Valery didn't move to stop her. Didn't ignite her saber. Instead, she turned back to face her and offered a small shrug.

"You can tag along if you want," she said, voice lighter now, but no less firm. "Just know this — if the artifact turns out to be dangerous, if it has any potential to hurt people, corrupt them, or do worse... I will contain it." A pause, her eyes narrowing just slightly. "Or destroy it."

She let that settle for a beat, then softened her stance a touch — not enough to invite closeness, but enough to acknowledge they didn't have to be at odds. Not yet.

"Otherwise," Valery continued, "I don't care how many shiny trinkets you stuff into your bag."

The smirk that followed was faint but genuine.

"And be careful not to trip over any skulls."

Charlana ​

 

[Charlana]

Tag: Valery Noble
Gear: Outfit, Fuel Gun, Vibrosaber, Knife, Talisman (Force Artifact)

Charlana dragged her judging gaze up the tall, fit stranger. The jedi woman stood among the bones before the dark tomb, the air humid and stinking, as if she stood on the deck of a pristine starship. Charlana may have appeared cavalier and clueless, but she was no fool. Her pale gray eyes studied the statuesque woman. The jedi didn't seem unconcerned about her surroundings, more like she was simply confident that she could handle what danger lurked in that damned jungle. The spacer discerned that the brunette could deliver on whatever prowess she appeared to possess.

And, of course, the ember-eyed woman felt no qualms about calling out the grudgy stranger. So typically jedi. A frown painted the half-Sephi's face at the exposure, and at the frank statement about the likelihood of walking away with the treasure. Sure, it was her own fault that she was there. She made a decidedly bad judgement call, not only taking the job, but doing so with such sketchy information. It was as if those who hired her wished her to fail.

Dammit...they probably did. Some remembered Dispora the Pirate Witch, and many of the them had ought against her. Feth, her greed got the best of her. And now it seemed paranoia was as well. Charlana squeezed her eyes shut to silence the bag of sand cats in her head. She sighed, more like huffed. "Alright, alright, yeah, dumb idea, I get it." The pirate blurted out, waving her hands dramatically. "We all get them..." Charlana looked at the heroic-looking jedi, "..well, maybe not you." She quipped. But Charlana knew she was there now, and stumbling (literally) across the jedi may prove more of a boon than the curse she first thought.

"You can tag along if you want... just know this — if the artifact turns out to be dangerous, if it has any potential to hurt people, corrupt them, or do worse... I will contain it....or destroy it."

Well, how generous...tag along, like a puppy, to watch the noble jedi rid the world of another exestensial threat. Charlana scoffed, her pride dented, though she tried to conceal her indignancy. There was a chance the jedi could sense the taste of the Dark on the roguish stranger. That would not bode well for Charlana, she had to play it cool. But maybe the jedi already had, and still found her no threat. The audacity!

Charlana's brows unfurled as the slender pirate thought further. The jedi was willing to let her accompany her, not as an equal, of course. Perhaps Charlana could still come away with something valuable, and she had the beautiful and no doubt highly-capable jedi to protect her. Not a bad arrangement at that.

Charlana straightened a little, wiping the angst from her features. "Alright, jedi, I'll accompany you." Charlana answered, as if the jedi had requested her company, not begrudgingly offered it. She hitched her harnesses, strightened her spine and bobbed her dreadlock draped head. "Lead the way."

 

[Valery Noble]

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Outfit: Jungle Outfit | Wedding Ring

Valery didn't miss the subtle way Charlana's posture shifted — the defiance melting just enough to accept the terms, even if it came with a heavy helping of pride. The corner of her mouth twitched again, but this time the smirk was less teasing and more approving. She didn't mind the bravado.

Confidence was useful. As long as it didn't get them killed.

"Glad to have your... cooperation," Valery said dryly, turning on her heel with a smooth pivot and starting forward into the thick mist. Her boots sank into the damp ground as she moved, each step purposeful but quiet. She didn't bother igniting her lightsaber yet — not when every shift in the fog was a potential trap waiting to see who'd flinch first.

The jungle here didn't breathe like normal jungles. It watched.

"Keep your senses open," she said over her shoulder, her tone calm but clipped. "Not just your eyes. If this place is what I think it is, the danger won't always come with footsteps."

As they pressed deeper into the haze, the atmosphere thickened — the air like old silk against their skin, heavy and clinging. The ruins around them began to change: less jungle-claimed rubble, more deliberate stonework. Sharp angles, half-buried pillars, and broken statues that looked too worn to be recent, but too wrong to be ancient. One was missing its head. Another its face.

Then the fog seemed to part — not vanish, but recede like a curtain drawn aside.

Before them stood what remained of a tomb.

Massive, obsidian stone etched with winding runes that pulsed ever so faintly beneath the grime. A great doorway stood slightly ajar, cracked just enough to reveal the yawning darkness beyond. Something had forced it open, long ago — and it hadn't been closed since.

Valery came to a stop just before the threshold, and for a brief moment, she was still. Her hand drifted toward the saber at her hip, fingers brushing the hilt but not yet igniting it. Her eyes narrowed, scanning the entry and the silence beyond.

"This is it," she murmured.

The Force stirred like a whisper against her spine.

"I don't know what's waiting in there." She turned to glance back at Charlana. "But if you start hearing voices that aren't mine, maybe don't answer them." A beat. "Unless they offer better pay."

Then, with a flicker of a smirk, she turned and stepped through the doorway — into the dark.

Charlana ​

 

[Charlana]

Tag: Valery Noble
Gear: Outfit, Fuel Gun, Vibrosaber, Knife, Talisman (Force Artifact)

Hmmm. The jedi's attitude still smacked of superiority, but the half-Sephi had to admit, circumstances seemed to prove the woman wasnt' wrong. Charlana was ill-prepared for and ill-informed about the location. Hell, she would have laughed at and mocked anyone else who did the same . No, this woman seem more down to earth, for a jedi.

With a quiet sigh, rogue spacer followed the jedi. Everything the woman said about the place bode ill, and she took the fiery-ambered eyed brunette at her word. Her boots followed as close as she could in the jedi's footsteps, equally quiet. She did as she was told, reaching out with her metaphysical senses. What she discerned was vaguely uneasing. Nothing distinct, just...nefarious, like the soupy fog that clung to their skin and clothing.

As they stalked forward, she saw the hilt of the jedi's saber still dangling from her hip. The jedi was more confident that the spacer, it seemed. Charlana felt compelled to slide her vibroblade from its sheath. The movement was nearly silent as the weapon slid from its felt-lined scabbard. The weapn remained silent, inactivated, as if the hum of its action might disturb some unseen danger.

But the sense of unease only increased as the jungle vines and trees gave way to dark stone blocks. Fallen, dislodged, stained. Broken statuary, their nature non-descript in the fog, haunted the periphary. Finally, the persistent misma gave way. A most unwelcoming entrance revealed.

They were not the first to breach the tomb, it seemed. Charlana wondered if those infiltrators every left. Gray eyes shifted from the waiting gateway to the statuesque jedi. She offered another warning, one that made her feel as if the blade in her hand was useless. But she knew that. Such places were haunts for things more spirit than physical. No one knew that more than a shaman, even one who and evolved past her more primitive roots.

The jedi quipped a comment, snarky and cavalier. Charlana chuckled softly. Oh, she liked that, the hero had sass. Picking up on the sardonic jibe, Charlana smirked back. "I go where the money is, baby. Besides, I don't think there is room in my head for anymore voices."

An obtuse eagerness slipped over Charlana, the inpenetrable blackness hinted behind the dislodged doorway had promise. Dark, she could feel it. It was the feeling she had when the Jarvashquiine, when she, peformed the blood rituals that fueled their magic. It was a morbid allure that licked at her. Charlana had turned from it before, wise enough to see what lie down that inky rabbit hole that was the Dark Side.

Warily, she followed again, into the black maw of the tomb opening. The moisture of the unnatural fog clung to Charlana's skin, sunk into her clothes, made the thick dreadlocks of her mane hang heavy. But as she crossed the threshold, that moisture brought a chill to her flesh.

 

[Valery Noble]

​

Outfit: Jungle Outfit | Wedding Ring

The air inside the tomb was colder. Not just in temperature — though that hit the skin like wet stone — but in presence. The kind of cold that wrapped around your bones and whispered to your instincts that this place remembered death. Valery moved ahead, slow and precise, her eyes adjusting quickly to the gloom. Only faint light bled in through the doorway behind them, and it didn't chase away the shadows clinging to the walls.

The silence here wasn't empty. It pulsed.

She could feel Charlana behind her — the shift in her gait, the quiet hum of the vibroblade still unlit in her hand. She wasn't Force-sensitive in the Jedi way, but she could feel it, too. The pressure. The wrongness. Valery reached out through the Force like brushing her fingers across the surface of a pond — ripples responded.

And then—

Crack.

It was faint, but unmistakable. Not stone. Not the groan of settling walls. Bone. Valery froze, hand snapping to her lightsaber. Her other hand came up slightly in a silent gesture for Charlana to stop.

Crack—crunch. Tap. Tap. Tap.

It was the sound of something walking. Something light. Something fragile. Like feet made of old wood and splintered ivory pressing down on worn stone. From the edge of the corridor ahead, one figure emerged. Then another. And another.

Valery's saber ignited with a violent hiss of violet plasma, as various shapes now moved toward them. Skeletons — humanoid, their bones bound by ancient leather and tattered robes, socketless skulls still bearing faint traces of gold paint or black runes. Their weapons were crude — rusted swords, chipped axes, even a broken pike bound with thorns. Some had no weapons at all — just bone fingers curled into fists.

"I've seen a lot of dark rituals," Valery muttered, her saber raising slowly into guard. "But this feels old."

One of the skeletons let out a dry, rattling groan, and with that, they surged forward.

Charlana ​

 

[Charlana]

Tag: Valery Noble
Gear: Outfit, Fuel Gun, Vibrosaber, Knife, Talisman

A profound sensation that they shouldn't be there sent a shiver up Charlana's spine. It wasn't because it was dark or cold or creepy. The reason was more chilling. She felt it was because they were alive. Death resonated from the cold stone walls, it filled the musty air. It was not a place for the living. There was a palpable, metaphysical Darkness that unnerved her in the Spirit. It was the intensity of the jedi's presence in the Force that helped Charlana focus. She grudgingly admitted she was glad they stumbled across one another.

The Sephi stalked at the side, and slightly behind, the jedi, moving on the balls of her feet, as if to avoid breaking the silence with even the scuff of a boot. She clung to the hilt of the vibroblade, though she wondered if they would confront something against which the metal blade was useless. Well, she had a remedy for that.

Charlana also heard the sound. She halted in her steps, even as the jedi signaled to stop. More sounds, the sounds of something moving. Of somethings moving in the gloomy, inpenetrable blackness ahead.

Suddenly, a violet light lit up the chamber, the glowing blade of the jedi's saber revealing the macabre attackers. Pathetic at first glance, mere skeletons in tatters, weilding corroded weapons, it was the unnerving mockery of life they possessed, twisted, an anathema of the spirit that made them threatening.

Charlana engaged the vibroblade, the hum of its action joining the hiss of the lightsaber against the dry, crackling noises the living dead emitted. Drawing upon the Spirits, what the jedi call the Force, she compelled it to imbue her weapon. The humming blade shimmered with a faint glow.

The jedi's remarks only made their foes more sinister. Charlana was familiar with dark rituals, blood rituals of the Jarvashquiine, but nothing that would created the things of bones that surged against them.

The elfin woman took a step forward to meet the tarnished haft of a battle ax, her blade cleaving through it, leaving the skeleton with a stick. lifting the axe head in the Spirits, drove it throught the skeleton's chest with a crack of bone, and into those behind it.