un: what a load of pollocks

[sergeant_slick]

Has anybody mapped this place out? We've got a thing in the lake, crazy buggers in the woods and stars know what or where else out there. Getting a proper feel for the area would go a long way to effectively dealing with this stuff.

And do we have a roster? Any sense of how many people are here, how often we're getting more? We need to know how much supplies we need, and how many people can get signed up for guard duty.

The answer's no to any of that, I'm doing it myself, and you're going to thank me for it.

Comments

[beitangmoran]

Of course. You can even make a copy if we find enough clean paper. It has been in rather short supply, though.

[sergeant_slick]

Good enough. I don't need to copy down the whole thing, I just want to memorize the basics.

My name's Slick, by the way. Where can I find you?

[beitangmoran]

Beitang Moran. I am usually in the study.

I am still there right now.

[sergeant_slick]

Good to meet you. If now's a decent time for it, I'll be along in a minute.

[beitangmoran]

I don't sleep much, so any time is a decent time as long as I am awake, Master Slick.

[sergeant_slick]

[Heh.] Please, don't call me 'Master', that makes it sound like I'm a Jedi. Slick's fine, 'sergeant' if you really want a title.

[He arrives wearing his white trooper armor, because it's more familiar and warmer than the local clothes he stole.] Hey. Thanks for sharing this. We need all the information we can get, if we're gonna get out of this in one piece.

[Another guy with long hair. He was starting to get jealous, though maintenance on that much hair was probably a pain.]

[beitangmoran]

[It is a pain unless you have people to do it for you. /ahem]

Good evening. What, pray tell, is a Jedi, exactly?

[sergeant_slick]

You don't know? I wish I was that lucky. [Seriously, where the hells were all these people coming from?]

Jedi keep slaves in line for the Galactic Republic. Not something anyone should want to associate with. [Yeah, yeah, propaganda said they created a thousand years of peace and justice, whatever. They were the ones that controlled clone life and death.]

[beitangmoran]

That doesn't sound very pleasant.

[A platitude, yes, but there will be time to hear more about other political systems later. For now, Moran take sout the map and unrolls it.]

Here.



((OOC: click on thumbnail to enlarge))

[sergeant_slick]

You've got that right. [He wasn't going to go on about it. Just having people that didn't question the truth was good enough for him.]

Thanks. [He leans in to study the map, eyes flicking back and forth over it.]

Is this for this whole hemisphere, or just what's visible this season? ...If this planet has seasons. [He was severely tempted to just walk into the city and start asking locals about this crazy place.]

[beitangmoran]

Unfortunately, I did not master the local language sufficiently to ask back when I bought it, and now that I understand the basics, going back to town is inadvisable.

I would assume this is from this hemisphere, and the pace does have a warmer season. However, Sa-Hareth is a port city with goods coming from all over... including other worlds, it seems.

[Moran gazes at the map again. He's spent many nights poring over it, so he knows it by heart now.]

Anything you recognize?

[sergeant_slick]

[He shakes his head at the question.] Nah, didn't expect to either. Every system's got a different perspective on the galaxy, so the constellations are almost always different. I was hoping this thing would show where the companion galaxies are, but that'll have to wait until it's safe to go out at night. [Those you could always count on, at least.]

The port's one thing that's been confusing me though--I didn't see one in the city. And there's no ships coming in through this airspace. How's stuff getting here?

[beitangmoran]

I... beg your pardon?

[... Sir, how did you miss the harbor, it's as big as half the city?]

'Stuff' arrives by sea. On ships. Who dock at the port. Did you somehow manage to avoid that part of the city entirely? It's quite hard not to see.

[sergeant_slick]

What? [Is this a translator issue again?]

No, like a spaceport. We got here somehow, right? But there's nowhere for ships to land there.

[beitangmoran]

A... space port?

[Excuse you, sir, but now Morna is starting to suddenly doubt your sanity.]

... Are you somehow entertaining the fancy that ships can fly? They are sea vessels, my good man. They land at the pier like all ships do and throw anchor there.

[sergeant_slick]

[...Okay, this was obviously more than just a translation issue.]

Yeah? Like starships? Wait--are you from this planet? [Because that could maybe explain the confusion.]

[beitangmoran]

... No, I am very much not from this planet or this world. But I did not arrive here via... starship, whatever that is.

[What on Earth, no pun intended, are you talking about, good sir?]

[sergeant_slick]

...How else would you get here, then?

[The feeling's mutual, this is probably the most surreal conversation he's had in his entire life.]

[beitangmoran]

The sorcery of this world is unlike any I have ever witnessed. I assume someone, somewhere, seems to have the power to bend the time-space continuum, because we are all too different to even come from the same Universe. Some os us have lived with certain things all our lives that others have never heard from.

... Like 'Jedi'. Or 'starships'.

And I don't suppose you know of Huangdao, or what a Star Master is.

[sergeant_slick]

I wouldn't go that far. The Force can do some pretty crazy stuff. [And he had no idea where the limits were on that, so every weird, weird thing he's seen here has been chalked up to "The Force did it".]

[So entirely different universes was a more plausible idea than a starship dumping you on an isolated rock?] No idea what those are. But if it's something unique to your planet, I wouldn't know.

[beitangmoran]

And I have never heard of a ship travelling through the stars. I honestly cannot fathom how this could even work.

[Like, the idea itself is fascinating, but what is technology, haha.]

[sergeant_slick]

I don't know how it works either. I'm a soldier, not an engineer. All I know is that it definitely does work, and they're... well, they're normal. It's how galactic society works. And unless there's a really good

[beitangmoran]

I am quite sure that if you ask anyone here, you have very little chance of finding anyone familiar with even the concept as anything more than fantasy.

[Because it's impossible, at least by the standards Moran is used to, which this world isn't very far from.]