Inquisitor of the Lost
Troubles on Level 3126
(OOC: Thread with Braze but others are welcome to join in on the fun as it gets started just coordinate with me via PM/Discord since I'm going to be like DMing it).
There are so many! I could never have imagined this many people crammed into one area, all interconnected, not to mention the entire planet. Coruscant…of course I learned about it in the holos…but to feel it in the Force is another thing entirely!
Tella had not gotten far from the alleyway entrance of the warehouse where her mother had suddenly flung her off to begin her new life before she simply had to stop to take it all in. She leaned up against one of the worn, cracked duracrete walls that extended through the rest of the path leading to what she could feel was the main thoroughfare of Level 3126 before closing her eyes and centering herself. She let out a long, deep breath, simply acclimating to her new, strange environment on the galactic capital. Her black gloved hands shook slightly as she did so, a reaction to the well of excitement, fear, and shock at the rudeness of her transition.
This is just like her to throw me into the thick of things to teach me something, except on a much larger scale! On my 23rd Birthday no less!
She offered an exasperated sigh, putting her right hand on her forehead and rubbing it.
Still, it is nothing I have not been through before, she has done these kinds of things to teach me a lesson, it’s just that this time it is on a far larger scale. She would not have done so if she did not genuinely think I would be up for the challenge. So, let me recap, what do I have again?
She glanced down at her white and black robes with gold trim and her two Songsteel lightsabers, her only possessions in the world now.
Well, at least she let me keep the clothes on my back and my weapons before kicking me out of the nest and sending me to fly. That’s a decent start as far as her training usually goes!
Feeling a bit better, or, at least, centered enough to keep her hands from shaking, Tella moved from the wall back into the alleyway, and then from there into the main pedestrian thoroughfare of the level. She decided to take a left and simply stroll around the area, getting a feel for where she had been dropped off.
It did not take long for her to become disappointed.
Level 3126 was far from what the Holonet tapes and advertisements depicted it. Instead of glittering and pristine, signs of wear and tear could be seen everywhere. Most of the residences and shops along the the street could not even seem to be bothered to plaster their bare, moldering duracrete walls, and those that did had them cracked and chipped. It was hard to see between dimly lit areas that might have seen a light changed two decades ago and ones so smothered in flashy advertisements she was pretty sure it was a flagrant violation of any planet health code. The air had a distinctly metallic, slightly acidic taste to it, and she dreaded to think what contaminants she had already inhaled.
The people themselves were in a state just as bad or not worse than their surroundings in terms of character if not dress, something she was made keenly aware of as she deftly evaded being vomited on by a wayward Devronian spacer clearly out of his mind on some kind of substance. Rough-looking youths leered at her from within various alcoves, various colored flasks and pipes in their hands. Tired, old scarred men could be seen huddled together in groups near cobbled together heaters and tents, veterans of wars long forgotten by those in the gleaming upper levels, their old female counterparts bickering and haggling over credits at the various street vendors of dubious reputations for the essentials of life.
This is what mother meant by starting at the bottom to get the real picture of the situation…how could a place like this exist right in the middle of the Galactic Capital? Under the noses of the Alliance who constantly preached their ideas of liberty and equality? Who control so much of the Galaxy?
Speaking of them, while she saw the occasional CSF officer or two, they were in just as much of a sorry state as the citizens they protected. Busted up landspeeders, scuffed and blaster-scorched armor that might have been good a century ago, and weapons that looked as if they were more likely to cause their user damage than any target. Reaching out with the Force to try to sense how they felt, she was taken aback at the sheer apathy and indifference that flowed back to her.
Short of a riot that could bring attention to them or an unprovoked attempted daylight murder of a slumming member of the upper tiers, they seemed content to simply sit back and collect their paychecks. After all, their fathers and their fathers before them had done the same, why change now?
Tella found herself deeply disturbed by the state of affairs she encountered, and it was only a loud, angry voice followed by the sound of cracking glass that shook her out of her reverie.
“So you have the money to buy your father that expensive medicine, but not the money to pay me my vig Trazen?” A burly tan human man, flanked by two of his rough-looking subordinates, shouted at a scared white-furred Bothan youth who had been thrown into, and then dragged back out of, a shop window.
“M-my father…” Trazen gasped painfully, wincing from the pain of some of the glass shards that had penetrated his thin jacket “he was not going to make it…I had no choice.”
“You had no choice the three other times this happened? Do you know what you’re saying about me?”
“No, Vigo, I-”
“You’re telling everyone around the level that I am NOTHING compared to the people who used to run things. You did not miss a single payment to Drask!” Vigo shouted as he socked the Bothan painfully in the stomach with his fist, causing the youth to writhe in pain. “You think I’m a bad guy? That I want to do this?”
Tella looked to a passing by CSF speeder. The two officers glanced at what was happening, before shrugging and taking off. The rest of the pedestrians seemed indifferent to Trazen’s plight as well. This is something that happened frequently, it seemed.
I need to do something, she firmly resolved, but mother always told me I needed to be more cautious. I have to understand what is really going down here…
Braze Chaos_Cat
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