Log:Jedha: Overdue Fees Are Killer
Brother Bliptettjupp and his mercenaries trek into the icy mountains to seek out the source of disturbances.
OOC Date: December 9, 2022 (Optional)
Location: Jedha
Participants: Sumi Kora, Bizz Bliptettjupp, Nerys Greystorm, Ruur, Valeska Kora and Hadrix Kora as GM
The cold was enough, even in daylight, to frost metal armor and stiffen cloth. Breath was lumps of icy mist carried on the breezes or hurled by winds that carry loose snow that churns in ghostly waves in the air and rattles across the ground and plates with a clattering like tiny pebbles down shale.
No pilgrims came this way. Not even with the escort. The path was avoided by them. Something of how the air seemed dusky even at mid-day. How the cold bit deeper. How it even felt, in environmentally controlled suits, that the chill was like daggers in skin and vice grips on bones. The path is virgin snow with hesitant tracks in the footsteps and Hadrix crouched down, running a hand over some of those marks and looking out into the white.
<"Probably from the group we met at the landing... they took off running quick."> the big man looks up from his tracking, expression concealed by the helmet, <"No other tracks though. Just theirs.">
Another wave of cold, the embodiment of oppression washes over the path and for those sensitive to the tides of energies unseen - the wind that it blows in on is traveling against that which turns the lighter, dry, snow swirling. A sensation of something breathing, rapidly, only felt by those sensitive to the currents of The Force that the rest are oblivious too.
<"Should any of our number possess thermal optics,"> Sumi says, glancing down to where Hadrix knelt, then back out around them, <"..now is the time. The snow can play tricks on the eyes."> Sumi draws a close quarters weapon, an old fashioned Morellian made Enforcer that loudly clicks when she locks the single-action hammer back. The weapons cylinder rotated, locking a .48 caliber round in place. Sumi held the weapon with both hands, angling it up so the barrel was oriented toward the sky as she stalked forward. There was nothing silent about the Mandalorian's walk, each step a symphony of jingling-jangling spent brass that sounded more like spurs, and of course her cape was left to snap and flap behind her thanks to the winds.
It's the kind of cold that ignores the armour and the fiberweave and the clothes worn beneath. Valeska had dressed as warmly as she could manage without bulking up too much that the plates wouldn't fit and even then it isn't enough. The wind blows as if going straight through her. Ignorning beskar, metal, and cloth. Ignoring flesh, muscle, and bone. The chill whips like a lash against her, standing her half-cape and kata both blusteering and flapping behind her as she trudges forward.
Self training on the frigid plants had helped her be better prepared for this than the first time she was on Jedha, but even so she is trembling with cold. Joints are trying to freeze up, lock up, protest and demand she stop now and just collapse. The tracker held in both hands may as well be welded there by frost. The only saving grace is that her helmet protects her from the wind but it still feels as though her skull is in a freezer. She doesn't say anything. She can't. Nor does she want to embarrass herself by the teeth-chattering it is sure to be filled with.
Brother Bizz is riding his wooly spamel. He has no climate-controlled suit, only a large rabbitfur Ushanka hat on his head and a Mastmot fur coat to ward off the polar winds. His spamel bleats as if not wishing to go further. "No tracks? Good!" The ugnaught hops off his mount, fishing a crude map on some sort of cloth from inside that oversized greatcoat. "Yes, this must be the way! I do wonder if the temple remains unspoilt."
THe group carried on. Injuries tended to. Jakobeast guts removed from ones fur and clothing. At least as best as could be done in such a situation with minimal amenities consisting of only what you carried with you. All that rested on the belt of the Shistavenen hidden beneath a heavy set of hooded voluminous dyed in a dark brown. He had that hood up, covering his pointy ears. His snout stuck out, black nose shining as it sniffed. Hot steaming breath escaped at an even pace as he moved with the group.
Ruur Cedid was made for this climate with his lupine coat of fur, yet still the cold chill and damp hair from the previous encounter started to bite a chill into his bones. Red eyes glanced to Hadrix and the tracks he found. Head turned slightly under the hood to listen to Sumi. He let out a low growl in agreement but produced no equipment. Instead relying on the force to do this for him and while he could shift his visual frequency some, he did not see anything out of the ordinary just yet.
Except that haunting tainted nature that the Jakobeasts inflicted. That dark energy that drained. It was there still, nagging at his senses.
Nerys, content in her oblivion (never one to envy anyone sensitive to the force, even in those times when she understood they knew something she did not), kept her blaster ready, for now, a weather eye on the surround as she sought for some trace of, well, whatever it was that they were out her searching for. Some trace of this supposed temple? Some remnant of the source of the attack they had fended off only a short while ago? The woman lifted a hand, shading her eyes, despite the fact that the helm she wore made that unnecessary, her field of vision shifting between two spectrums, searching for some trace of the direction in which they should be going. As if in answer to Sumi's comment, a gloved hand lifted to indicate the approaching mountain, in particular the portion which appeared to be mottled formation on the rockface. "I am seeing unusual thermal activity there. It's lighter than the thermals from the sun, and it's radiating heat into the air."
A scent on the wind of something tainted by ice assaults the nostrils of Brother Bizz, growing stronger with their progress in drifts and valleys of snow that raise to hip deep even on the behemoth form of Hadrix then suddenly barely enough to cover boot toes of the seekers. The wind picks up a keening that summons notes that sound like a mourning song bellowed by the wastes and mountains. Fresh snow is blown across the path, the tracks of the pilgrims becoming snow-softened disturbances. Dark spots and splotches. Blood in the snow and similarly dusted drag marks leading on their way.
The brutal hate in the air, the madness and the undeniable taint of corruption grows. Jagged fingernails made of glass to drag down the spine of the sensitive present and a following sensation explicable only as the Force being pulled away like a blanket dragging slowly off of the sleeper.
The path comes at last to legible carvings. Shapes of tomes cut into the rock, and then a bend around the stone face to put columns of ancient and exquisite decoration to be viewed. Standing in the lee of the mountain, the snow having little to no grip for the short stairs ascending. To the door that stands meters tall, tall enough that even the feared Gorax of Sanctuary Moon could stride through and not duck to clear it.
<"That what we're after, Brother Bizz?"> Hadrix's long rifle is out, head tilted back to look at the edifice in stone and the frozen blood on the steps.
Sumi glances back when Ruur growls in agreement, then steps by the large sentient to look toward the others. Sumi motions for Nerys. <"Mrs. Greystorm, best you take point since you have the optics. We'll be right behind you."> Sumi says, her tone made dull thanks to the helmet's technology. Still, the armored Greystorm receives an appreciative nod all the same, and Sumi intended to fall in behind her. Quiet for the rest of the time, though, Sumi turns her gaze out toward their surroundings, moving off far to one side to space them out, and turning around to walk backwards every ten steps. This was a standard patrol practice taught by even rudimentary military units.
At points, the snow reaches up Val's thighs and into that place that really ought not have snow. <"Sumi."> Yup. There's a quake in her voice as the shaking of her body is attempting to generate kinetic heat. <"Those bathhouses you had mentioned before. That was Umbara, yeah? Might have to go soak in one for a few days just so I can f-f-feel my rekking bones again.">
The sight ahead of them is meant to impress, but all Valeska can ponder is how much frost can form on her visor before she will not be able to see out of it. There should be visor wipers or something. That wouldn't look dorky at all.
Bizz stuffs his cloth map back into that Mastmot fur coat. Another piece of folded paper is pulled out, and on it are various glyphs. To Hadrix he says, "Perhaps this is it! The markings look... similar..." A sniff of the air through his puggish nose. The spamel he is leading makes grunting sounds, refusing to go further. "You lazy even-toed ungulate! You ate too much, that's the problem!" His paper goes fluttering out of his hand into the cutting arctic wind. "Son of Xer!" Bizz gives the spamel's reins a firm yank, plodding through the snow which is higher than hip-deep for an ugnaught.
Ruur's mind shrieks at him as he attempts to shift his sense. His nostrils singe with the scent of raw meat. While that might have made him the slightest bit hungry on a normal day, the rotten putrid part of it dispelled any notion of it being snack time for this lupine. He groaned in a slight growl, his clawed fingers raising to pinch the bridge of his snout. He closed his red eyes.
"Well it's certainly something." Ruur quips as he arrives in front of the Carvings and Tomes in the rock. The columns not unlike those of the outpost at Tempes or some other ancient structures he's seen. "Very Interesting."
"Of course, Alor Kora." Nerys Greystorm was no mandalorian, but there had been a time in her life where she had fought with them, had aided the Koras in their battles to claim the territories they now held, and she fell into the familiar formation as a matter of course, setting herself into the point position, her movements practiced and careful, so as not to leave them open to sudden attacks if she could avoid it. Or, at the very least, to keep far enough ahead that if an attack came, it would be to her, allowing the team behind to attack in return while she played shield. As they moved closer to the formation, Nerys' keen eyes studied the carvings worked into the stone, the part of her brain that was not working at identifying threats shifting to rifling through the library of knowledge she had acquired through the many years she had lived, none of which showed on her face. "I can't read all of it without a lot more time than we have, but, a rough date? I'd estimate the oldest of the carvings at three thousand years old, the newest at a thousand. The protobesh is...very proto." While she did not look away from where she was walking, her voice drifted back to the Ughnaught. "Brother Bliptettjupp, I can read some of it. Extolling the virtue of knowledge and learning, marking the names of the keepers. Do you recognize the name Gnost-Dural?"
Bizz removes his rabbitfur Ushanka hat and scratches his balding pate. "Nasty-Dural you say? He was an archivist of the Jedis! Very famous during the times of the Great Galactic War. Perhaps this is a shrine in his honor!" His shaggy long-legged camel grunts and complains.
<"Sullust's spa is better. Personal opinion. Baths, mud baths, thermal steam rooms."> Already wondering if his reservations are still good, it'd been some time since his last Hoth hunt. Had he even re-upped his retainer for the suite he preferred? The musings gone when Nerys speaks to Bizz and the little Ugnaught's response.
Turning towards the others like a statue come to life amongst the rock and stone with his rifle held low and ready. Curiosity, almost childlike levels of it, getting the better of him, the big man starts forward towards the doorway and within. For those who follow it is a passage that has only known dust for centuries until now. Kyber baetyls lighting the way, their dim glow enhanced and grown by the use of crystal mirrors and reflectors that make each person slipping down the passage cast translucent shadows in all direction.
It would be serene if not for the blood on the floor. The chewed bones and bodies denuded of not only flesh but means to identify them without dental or DNA chain-code records. Its a sadness that grows out from the recent death, cold and freezing on the stone passageway that opens up to the great domed room filled with its books and mosaics.
For the sensitives, the peace of this place beloved of knowledge and meditation is broken. Like cracks in a mirror that send shooting pains behind the eyes before the connection to The Force wavers yet again. A hollow jaw and deep gullet flashing in vision before the eyes. Fur that seems made by strands of flesh. Feelers. Features running like candlewax. Rage and hate dragging their claws over the would be peace and growing stronger the closer to the tunnel that is part of the glacier that is part of this structure.
The air is still but there is a sowing like wind over grain stalks and a sound like rubber and broken glass over smooth stone and wood.
Valeska's question earns a chuckle from Sumi, <"Any place warm would be better than this ice cube,"> She laments back. She wades on with the others, providing no insight into the nature or history of the structures revealed to them. When they make it inside though, Sumi becomes interested in the way the dead are organized. She crouches near one, a male by the looks..
<"Odd that the flesh was taken,"> She comments. <"Seems like a trophy hunter, or worse."> Sumi is slow to rise back up from her knee, grunting from age and turning in place. <"Plenty of little hidey holes in here, too. Heads on a swivel, people. We're being hunted."> Ice tips clung to the ends of her cape, dragging against the stone as Sumi moved further in, heavy bootfalls distinctly loud and heralding her approach.
Bizz leaves his spamel outside and waddles between the massive doors. The smell of bones and blood fills his nostrils. "Oh, something has defiled this place." He casts an eye toward Ruur, monitoring whether the young Jedi is doing well or not, then moves further inside. "So much work to do. So much restoration!" But on hearing the sounds of something on stone, he takes one of his Naboobian booma balls off his belt.
Valeska is not sensitive to all that hoo-doo unless 'emotionally sensitive' counts. To that affect, she is quite sensitive, indeed. All that Force stuff is corrosive and family-wrecking. Humbug to it all and especially humbug to this planet. Nyeh! But a job is a job and that's what has her following the others inside while pondering steam baths and salt soaks. <"Wish I had known. Would've went to Sullust after Concord Dawn instead of Hapes."> A pause. <"Or Sullust /after/ Hapes.">
The trail of gore is not lost on Valeska even though the casual banter had come with her from the outside. She still can't feel her fingers or even her tongue, really. It's like the worst trip to the dentist. Valeska pulls away from the group enough to follow the trail more closely. She sees the prints, the drags, the space between them. <"Somethin' big, yeah? A knuckle-dragger. Looks like it has it's reign of this place -- the tracks go all over. Huh... what's this?">
Having spotted something, the crimson-painted Mandalorian ends up standing in front of a tunnel of icing. Barrel up and at the ready, she peers into it and... huh. <"Two points of light down the tunnel here, yeah? Wait. I think they're moving."> One second. Two. <"It's definitely moving and getting closer!">
"I have come to understand that the Jedi and force users of old seemed to have a bit of pretense about them. Whether it was their own doing or those who witnessed their deeds." Ruur says before they make their way up into the Kyber lit passage ways of the old stone temple. His red eyes glare upon the bodies as he pulls back his hood. That headache starting in the back of his head getting worse. He reaches into a pouch on his belt and pulls out a couple pills, popping them into his sharp toothed maw. Then he grabs the stunsaber from his belt. The metal cylinder small in his large clawed hands. He remains silent, nothing needed to be added much to what was already said. Except one thing. "The beast that is living here. It is... like the Jakobeasts.
When the points of light are pointed out, that's when he activates the stunsaber, already slightly on edge from the harsh tingling senses of whatever dark beast used this place as a layer.
Nerys, who moved into the room, paid only some small attention to the remains. Unless they chose to rise up and fight from beyond the grave, they were just meat. Well, bones, but you understand the inference. It was what caused the damage that took her interest, as she kept her eyes moving from place to place, attention shifting as Valeska called out, and she moved to intercept the red-armored mandalorian, "It's approaching at speed, get clear, if you can. Up and away." If there was enough room in the old library to do so. The slight hum her own rocket boots emitted broke the relative silence around her, but for now the Greystorm remained on the ground. "Can we block the tunnel, leave it trapped in there or having to dig its way out?" It hurt the tomb raider's heart to say it, but when needs must.
Movement so quick it feels as if there was a vacuum being left in the wake of whatever is so fleet on its surge up the tunnel towards Valeska. At the last moment a sound comes, a marriage of a wet warbling and an infuriated roar when It emerges. Three clawed forelimbs first out and then the head. The terrible head.
Shriveled looking, bulbous around the eyes and almost mutated with an elongated snout that suggests an alien skeleton but its mouth lost in a writhing forest of long tentacles that reach out for Valeska, chased by the horrid cry. As large as a bantha at the shoulders that narrowly fit the tunnel dug into the glacial ice. Stone is chipped and flies when it lands, long, bony, tendrils that wave sickeningly down its spine tapering to a narrow waist and smaller hind legs and giving way to a long tail that forks at the mid-point, each extension reaching for a different target before it lets loose a sound that stabs the mind of Force Sensitives as much as the ears of all who listen unprotected.
<"Shavit..."> put succinctly by Hadrix who brings his rifle up, tucking the butt of the stock against the pauldron of his right shoulder.
Sure enough, they found it. Well, Valeska found it, and bless her heart, she was always finding things that wanted to kill her! When allies were away from this monstrosity of a beast, Sumi began to open fire after saying, <"Lay waste to this ugly rekk."> Two LOUD discharges follow, the heavy slug rounds finding no purchase upon the carapace of this creature, but when Sumi switched to the vambrace on her other arm, a blaster bolt sank into the creature's body. Sumi practiced the ancient Mandalorian tradition by using the tactic, 'GET EM'.
It's comin' right for us!
What had looked like tiny, twin dots of blue was on her faster than she thought. Only the twitch reflexes of someone often getting shot at saves Valeska from finding herself wrapped up in horrible tentacles. Throwing all her weight to the side, the rolls out of the way; narrowly missing the stomping feet of this hunchbacked behemoth. By the Maker, everything hurts, the rush of blood from a rapidly pumping heart making everything burn like pins and needles.
<"The rekk is that thing?!"> Valeska comes out of her roll braced on a knee and her ears ringing so badly they might be bleeding. The shriek does wonders to break what little concentration she has, forcing both shots to whiz pass this massive beast and make dents in the far wall.
Brother Bizz splutters. "What is THAT doing here? This is highly irregular, by the FORCE!" He raises one of his booma balls high and tosses it! But the ball of core matter misses, exploding on glacial snow and sizzling as it consumes snow and roc
Ruur Cedid did not speak much. He did not give much about himself away. He was wrapped in unsuspecting garb that seemingly respected the traditions of the Jedi. He wielded a weapon of the Jedi. He also seemed to have a sense about him alluding to his ability to detect some hidden things. Yet the knowledge of what this beast before him was escaped him.
The lupine was still new to the Order. Still pouring through their limited archives that they were still searching to restore. He knew they would never be complete. Ruur did not know what this beast was. He was still learning. Yet he was sure, very sure, that this creature was connected to the force because every time he reached out he felt the unease. Visions. A sense of draining. "It is some type of wraith." He finally growled in his deep tone. The instinct was there: if he does not kill it, it would suck the life from him and him first. Drain all the Force from him. He truck out ina desperate manner, hoping to reel the beast back. The white whispering blade striking the walls instead. Eventually the beam found the beasts flesh. Not a deep cut, but a noticeable one. He drew on the fore to assist him... yet still that draw was weak with the distractions of the beast.
Nerys, who had not been in the path of the oncoming storm, stepped over to the side, to allow herself a better angle of attack as the beast came barreling into the library. But it was a scramble, to find the right place, to get just the right angle, and the three shots she fired towards the creature, coming in only a moment after the plasma grenade exploded did little more than serve as a warning shots across the creature's bow. Well, that was what she had a blaster with near infinite ammunition for.
Gloppy drops of Naboo planet core material rain down, sizzling and smoking in the wake of the creature, blaster bolt singeing its rubbery flesh and then the realization that the slugs struck home.
They had flattened and dropped to the ground with the sinuous movements, tentacles about its mouth splaying and exposing a maw of jagged, misshapen teeth before a viridian wreathed bolt slams into its flank, burning flesh that falls and sizzles, spreading in a foul pool. Hadrix is shoved back by the recoil, beskar shod boots scraping through dust and stone before the second shot from the massive cannon strikes and pushes the creature back from Ruur and Valeska.
<"Circle! Make every side a flank! Watch for the Shistavanian so you don't crossfire into him!"> the bark is controlled but carrying, even without the helmet speakers, shaking dust from the walls.
Then its moving again, whip like split ends of its tail striking stone and driving cracks near the target of its ire, hunger, hatred. A hatred that blossoms in the force and seems to rip deep into the psyche of Ruur to draw on those secret fears. Those night terrors, wrapping around the beast and turning it into his nightmares made manifest. Surging again with one forelimb in a backhanded swipe aimed for her center of mass.
Sumi watched Valeska sustain a hit, the visor trailing after the unlucky Mando'ade like 'there she goes again!' Turning toward the beast with a bit more fury, Sumi targeted where Hadrix's weapon had disrupted much of its natural protection. This time, the slugs found a home deep inside the creature's body, likely bouncing around inside in some gruesome fashion. Two loud discharges herald a third, lighter sounding discharge from a vambrace on her other arm. <"It's hit hard, finish this thing off!"> Yelled Sumi, eager to see the creature put down so she could prop a boot up on it like some adventurous sea-captain.
All she can recall is some glowing blue eyes, a wide maw of teeth, and then an incredibly, devastatingly powerful blow hitting her like a speeder. WHAM! Valeska is swatted away like the teeniest of pests, taken off her feet and sent airborne several yards away. Her body hits the wall hard enough to destroy any intricrate, frozen relief before she clatters to the hard floor.
A blow that would have most definitely taken her out of the fight is instead concentrated to severely dent the beskar breastplate she wears. The legendary alloy is enough to save her life but does not spare her the concussive force. Valeska staggers to her feet wheezing; tasting iron in the back of her throat, her nose. She drags the weight of her track up and fires.
Staggers.
The shot is wide.
Resting her shoulder on the wall, she growls and fires again more steadily. Finally making purchase in the hideous creature's flank. Hadrix had mentioned something about a flank, right?
Bizz takes another of his booma balls from his coat and throws it underhand granny-style so it arcs through the air. Then SPLAT, the core matter impacts right on the Force Eater's spiky back. "Make sure it is dead! First a maal'gas and now this!"
Those fears. Those doubts. The dreams. Any one sensitive in the force could fall to them. Drown in their negative draining essence. Yet Ruur had been here before. He'd felt this before. Ah-h-h-ha. Yes. Palpatine. His invading essence wrecking the brain of the Captured Enclave General. The Jedi Code echoed in his head and it brought him to reality. He focused, breathed. He could face this. He was strong enough.
The beast became weaker as the Mandalorian's shot it to hell and brother bizz boomered it. Somehow, the Shistavenen avoided becoming collateral by timing his strikes between the ranged ones the others in the party made. He lunged forward, both large hands wrapped firmly around the hilt of his saber. He swung up in a wide arc, slashing through the tentacle maw beast. Then he leaped and forced the blade through the top of its cranium. Somehow, for a blade designed to be less deadly than a lightsaber, that meant just as deadly as a vibroblade or blaster.
He rode the beast until it collapsed before pulling the blade from the felled creature. Then, he looked towards the tunnel still standing tall atop their prize like a proud feral hunter. A true sentient lupine. His robes swayed just a bit as that cavernous breeze whistled by. He was silent ecept for the natural rumble of his elevtaed breathing.
Nerys, who had been ready to re-engage the creature, was left with nothing to do but do what Nerys always wanted to do, which was to go down the plugholes at the ends of the galaxy. In this case, she stepped around the fallen creature, moving into the tunnel from which it came. Her vision adjusted, moving into the infrared, before it adjusted to allow her to see in the lowered light, "The tunnel ends in its nest. There are more bodies...excuse me, parts of bodies...there. Perhaps their might be artifacts, but I am certain Brother Bliptettjupp would like the privilege of conducting the search."
Molten, seemingly electrified gel creating ravines in its flesh, the creature's body seemed to deflate once it was on the ground. Thick, black, blood pouring from the numerous wounds in the titanic body that had been laid low by concentrated fire before it could cause more harm to the explorers of this lost library.
The stillness in the wake of its death is pregnant, even after Nerys speaks. But the intensity of the pain that this place causes Ruur is dulling. Glowing eyes dark now and its form as still as the stones it lays on, that its ichor is staining for eternity. The cold hatred and rage that surrounded it fading. The sensation of the Force being drawn away dissipating.
Dust is flaking down like musty snow around the domed chamber, leaving the lot assembled the time to take in their surroundings, including a broken Kel Dor mask resting at the base of a small plinth that had been its resting place but now was merely the thing it leaned against while time ravaged it.
With the creature down, Sumi spun her revolver a single time before seating it firmly within the confines of her holster. Walking over toward the downed creature, she kicked it to ensure it was dead, then propped a boot up on it. Her helm came off a second later, and the pat-pat of a smoke being ushered out from a pack she fished from a pouch followed. With a smoke between her lips, she lit its end with a lighter and sighed a heated plume of smoke from her mouth and nose. "Mmmm, I love a good hunt." Her helmet is held under one arm, her other hand is used to pull the smoke free as she pushes away from the beast to walk around. "What's so special about this place? Just a bunch of rocks with drawings on them and drek." She makes a snorting noise, like she's clearing her sinuses. No reverence from Sumi in a place like this, but this was done out of ignorance. She's just a dumb grunt.
Ding dong, the thing is dead.
Valeska pulls off her helmet with a hiss of depressurized air, taking in a deep if jagged breath of frigid cold before spitting out some blood onto the ground. The helmet is clipped to her belt and a medpack pulled from one of the many utility pouches build into her setup.
As much as she loathed it before, she's gotten used to the idea of a stab now to make the preceedings easier, so a small bacta needle is shoved into her neck with a quick jab and then discarded. A sigh of expectant relief and she rests her head briefly against the wall behind her, letting it work it's pain-numbing magic. "Rekk me." Hazel eyes look over to the others. "Is it worth it yet?"
Brother Bizz is loathed to step near the dead creature of the anti-Force, but he does peer at the tunnel into the glacier from whence it came. Then he is perusing the murals, peeking at some of the books but not daring to touch such delicate things. "Oh, it will take the archivists many moons to extricate these books! And I bet there are information crystals as well!" To Sumi he says, "Gnosty-Durian was said to be a keen scholar. Some of the data crystals surely contain the records of your peoples, when the Siths tricked the Mandolorians into doing their biddings against the Republic." He squats to rummage around the ground, examining the broken Kel Dor breathing mask. "Perhaps this was his! A relic of the Force!" He picks up the mask, some mosaic shards, and an old-looking stick, wrapping them in cloth for the journey back to the city. "Restoration will take some time. I will have to get a team out here."
The tinge of the draining deep darkness was still there, but fading. Thankfully. Ruur pressed the activator button on his saber. The quite whisper of the blade dissipating as the beam slid back into the emitter shroud. He stepped off the corpse of the beast and began to walk towards Bizz and the mask. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, an attempt at walking meditation to restore his energy and body. It was a failed attempt as there was too much to distract him. Both the people around him and the thoughts and dreams the beast had dug up in him. Still lingering at the back of his mind. The trip back to Tempes was long and there would be plenty of time for quiet meditation then.
"More knowledge upturned..." He says as he studies the mask, looking over to Val and the others. "Worth it. Oh yes, I think so." His deep voice laced with a borrowed core accent. He returned the saber hilt to his belt and let the robes absorbed the sight of his belt once again.
Despite Nerys' words, she did walk further down the tunnel, to see if there was anything worth snatching while no one was looking. Explorers did not make their paycheck on the strength of their morals, before she turned back to return to the library room, scanning the walls, perhaps for a sample of kyber to take with her. Or, or...here me out. That mask would do well in her chest of treasures. "I imagine it depends entirely on what you were hoping for," was her amused answer to Valeska. She did not lower her weapon. Nerys was often rash, but never stupid. Alas, but the acolyte took the mask. Ah well, there was sure to be something else that might end up in Nerys' backpack of holding.
