Log:The Tusken Tribal Contract
The Tusken Tribal Contract
OOC Date: December 30, 2019
Location: The Dune Sea
Participants: Mydas Gryph, Kairi Wray
Twelve men, one woman.
That's all Mydas Gryph could hire for this "great roust" of his. This was no great Mandalorian crusade, and some Mandalorians might not even consider it to be honorable.
With the risks involved, survival was unlikely. However, as Mydas saw it as he and his perched upon a high hill in the Dune Sea as high noon and spied down upon the small army of Tusken Raider's they'd pledged to annhilate, Mydas considered that for all the bad things this particular job was, it could be fun.
Kairi hadn't really heard of Tattoine before being invited on this particular job, and it didn't matter to her that it was a Mandalorian doing the hiring, it certainly mattered a hell of a lot less what other Mandalorians might think. All it was to the woman, was a paycheck, and a chance to test herself in another strenuous situation; elements and combat.
She'd learned enough on the way to know that the planet was a crap hole, and as she joined the T-visored figure stood on the hill she admitted rather brusquely. "Battles haven't really been my thing" To call it such might be insulting to the man, but. "Heh, guess you knew that when you hired a random Merc from Nar Shad. Tends to be small number things, y'know what I mean." She shrugged, looking down towards them, and their camp. "We got a plan beyond running in firing?"
Mydas, whom was standing on the edge of the high hill with a pair of binoculars and peering below, let out an audible grunt.
"<That's alright,>" he says in a low tone, emitted from his mask's vocalizer. "<Most of the squad ain't got much battle experience. But I know how to fight Tuskens pretty well. Got a few trophies and one big scar on my chest to prove it.>" He holds out his binoculars, and one of the other Gryphs takes it from him.
"The plan is to draw them out-" he draws his sniper rifle and crouches. "<Bring them to us, cut half their force in half, and then run down and deal with the rest. We'll cover you, but stick to the right flank or the rear.>"
Mydas Gryph begins assembling the bipod of his sniper rifle, taking position. Soon, the Modified Arms AFD-43 sniper rifle is mounted and ready for combat. Mydas places the scope of the sniper rifle against his right eye and focuses upon a single Tusken 200m away riding a gundark alongside two other scouts.
<"Gentlemen and ladies,"> Mydas begins. <"As demanded by the ways of our tribe, these beings must be offered as a sacrifice. For honor, for grace, for blessings--now we look ahead at the enemy, glare them down with definance, and we say..."> Mydas takes a deep, dramatic breath. <"Dinuir ni gar runi. Give. Me. Your. Soul.">
The other Gryphs laugh and begin a short chant. <"Give me your soul. Give me your soul...>"
The cryptic chant continues behind Mydas until he opens fire, and that first shot not only decapitates one of the scouts completely, but it also engulfs its body into flame. Kairi watched the Mandalorian taking up position with his eye to the scope, the hunter watching with keen interest as he lined up his shot, and began his strange Mandalorian chant. She listened with a brow lofted, but kept most of her attention on the pair of Tusken in the distance, and the careful squeeze of the trigger to come. She uttered. "I gotta get me one of those."
As she lined up her own shot, squinting an eye shut and eyeballing the other Tusken before it could react, squeezing her own trigger and firing a flash of laser that even she was surprised hit the rider. "Well damn!" She shouted in excitement.
<"Dinuir ni gar runi--"> Mydas prays as he squeezes the trigger on his sniper rifle, and the shot tears straight through the fleeing Tusken's chest clear and kills it upon impact.
<"He screamed enough. Others will probably come,>" Mydas says. "<Might want to take up a few positions around the hill so we can get some clear shots when they come.>" As predicted, over a dozen Tusken Raiders armed with gaffi sticks and rifles alike stream out of camp and towards the exact high hill where the raid party is positioned, warcrying as they surge.
The ones armed with slugthrowers hold them at the aiming position and run to the rear of the party, the others are at the front.
"<Give me your soul...>" Mydas prays to himself again, aims his sniper rifle, and squeezes off another shot aimed at the head of the being he already knows to be the leader of the skirmishers: the Raider's War Chief.
The shot strikes the Tusken in the left shoulder and appears to injure him, but it doesn't bring him down.
"KEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
The Tusken Raiders hurry towards the high hill, and at that moment, the firefight with the Gryph Raiding Party begins as the Gryphs begin firing their blasters and attacking with their vibroblades.
Kairi's brutal stab causes one of the skirmishers to double over the moment they're hit, while Mydas's picked shot at the War Chief nearly brings him down. The Gryphs rage against the riflemen and manage to either cut or shoot them all down, but two of the Gryphs are killed in the exchange.
The War Chief runs at Mydas with his weapon heaved high, and the skirmishers attempt to outflank the Gryphs on the right.
The woman looks mad in a melee, her semi-tamed hair, partially trapped under her helmet still manages to flail about as she moves to counter the flanking; though it looks more like she's just trying to cut a swathe; using her natural agility to move from one of the Gaffi stick wielding natives, to the next, sticking them with the vibrating pointy end of her blade.
Mydas rushes in and ducks a fast swing from the War Chief's massive gaffi stick. He grunts, then dodges a strike coming towards his right side by one of the Skirmishers. He raises his blaster pistol and fires at the chief's head, but it misses him by mere inches.
The close-quarters clash of blades and blasters tears on; Gryph warriors kill four more of the skirmishers with blade attacks and shout "GIVE ME YOUR SOUL!" after each kill. Even though the Tusken numbers continue to thin, they fight with unparalled ferocity.
The War Chief roars and makes an overhead strike at Mydas, while two Tuskens charge at Kairi with their weapons raised.
Kairi might have been whirling death, if her blade were a bit longer, which made her more of a whirling maimer. She dodged the attack of the skirmishing Tusken, and repaid him with a chestbound shank, landing another chest-thudding blow through his tan clothing in rapid succession. She had no macarbe chant, like the Mandalorians she fought beside and around, save for her occasional shout and shriek.
"<Dinuir...ni...gar..."> Mydas stands resolute as the War Chief approaches, but then rolls to his right side just as the massive gaffi stick is brought down upon his armored head. He immediately snaps his faster-firing DH-17 blaster from its holster, trains it on the War Chief's torso, and fires twice into its lungs and heart respectively.
The War Chief clutched its chest and fell over dead.
With their leader dead and their ranks nearly exhausted by the Gryphs and the plucky, powerful young mercenary named Kairi, the remaining Tuskens turn and roar as they attempt to flee, but the other Gryphs chase them.
Mydas lets out a throaty, triumphant laugh right after the War Chief falls, and the remaining tribals turn-tail. "<The contract is for-->" he raises his blaster pistol at the backs of the the fleeing forces.
<"--all--">
Mydas puts his blaster on burst and lets it sing. Red streaks fly from the barrel of the blaster and cut at four fleeing Tuskens, with the shots entering their backs and leaving their chests.
<"--dead.">
Thoughtlessly the female mercenary joined the Mandalorians in the chase, she might have justified it with the idea that she couldn't let them regroup, they'd caught them off guard or something; but if she was honest with herself that thought process wasn't there. She caught the first one that was in her range, but rather than slow down and stop she shanked him in the waist with her vibro blade.
It wasn't long before she caught the next one, her hand almost looking like it flailed out its jab, catching the fleeing Skirmisher in the neck and biting deep, spraying the woman in its viscera. The figure fell before her, and she caught it falling, tripping over it almost so that she landed on the back of the figure that quickly bled out with her knees splayed haphazardly across the rough material of the cloak covering its back. She huffed air hard, watching some more shots ring out, Mandalorians chasing fleeing natives, where more were just resorting to shooting.
She took her time, and looked back down at the Tusken in post battle haze, a moment felt like a long minute, but after it passed she chuckled to herself and took the fallen hand in to her own, and began to count fingers with the tip of her blade. Time for a morbid trophy, or two?
Nearly two dozen Tusken corpses now lay dead on the sand in various states of evisceration.
The Gryphs all raise their arms in triumph and chant "HAIL FIFTY-TWO! HAIL FIFTY-TWO! HAIL FIFTY-TWO!"
For his part, Mydas simply begins collecting his own trophies, but mostly importantly, the 'sticks' demanded by Mak the Hutt.
Within minutes, all sticks have been gathered and tossed into the large hovercraft that the small army used to get out into the Dune Sea.
Mydas extends his right hand to Kairi. "<You're as good as vod to me now, Kairi,>" Mydas says. "<You fought with strength, ferocity, and ruthlessness. You stabbed fleeing beings in the back. You harmed people who didn't belong to you because they had something you wanted.>
Mydas nods slightly. <"This is Our Way,"> Mydas says.
"<This is Our Way,"> the other Gryphs repeat.
"<It is not The Way of the other tribes. It is not the way of the Revivers, and thus they consider us dar'manda. Outsiders. Scum. But we don't care, as we believe in the way of ambition. Of victory. Honor is in victory and in nothing else, Kairi. And thus you are honorable in our eyes.>"
Kairi had sliced people up, and taken trinkets she found interesting by the time Mydas and her met again. It was only now she thought about the pain in the ass it was going to be, to clean the blood out, but she laughed at herself for such a thought when she'd taken fingers as trophies.
"I'll assume vod is a good thing." She said, flicking a grin, the contrast of tooth white odd against the dirt and grime on her face from the battle. She had since cleaned her blade off, but only now holstered it, brow lofting once again at the repetition of the other Gryphs but rather than interrupting she listened to the monologue.
"Y'know, I knew a Mandalorian growing up, and still never learned much about em. But Reviver sounds like they want to bring back something dead, as you said, and things usually die for a reason. I learned ruthlessness being stranded, y'don't give a foe a chance to recover, if you can help it."
She paused, looking the Mando up and down, adding curtly. "So thanks, Mydas." She wasn't sure if it was the intention, but she clasped her hand to his wrist at this point to shake.
Mydas shook her hand and gave her a slight bow of his head. He turned around and watched as three of his brothers carried the three dead Gryphs on their backs towards the hovercraft. The time for mourning was not now, but he wasn't capable of feeling grief anyway.
