Welcome to Gaia! ::

(( Yeah, really! xd At this rate, Freya and Iria will have holos taken o' them with a Mandy in the background, gving them bunny ears! ))

Iria chuckled at Sunum admonishing Iust. "I have heard far worse. You should hear the things that stormtroopers say at times," she gave a slight giggle.
"I guess so, missy. Still, no call to talk like that." Sunum said. "Remember, we got a lady here," he told Iust.
"Yes," Iria said. She then closed her eyes, and pointed in the general direction of Ansion. "There. The world is called Ansion. It calls me in my dreams," then, her eyes came open. "That's where it happened." she pensively declared.

"Yes," Iria agreed. "I am ready to depart when you are,"
She then looked to Iust. "Then, we need to procure transportation," she said. With that, she sat on the floor, with an expression of intense concentration. "But, we should be prepared for anything. It feels cold. There's a place that not even the Vong go to. A haunted building,"

Link suddenly felt it.
A massive life form, a being of hunger and reptilian cunning, was moving towards the bait at a tremendous speed.
Then Link had a dreadful realization.
[Ghk'ik. You need a head shot to bring the beast down, correct?]

[Yes, Outlander. A shot to the Sinus cavity should pierce the brain. Now be quiet.] The Tusken leader said irritably.

[What if it sucks the Bantha down beneath the sands, like the Sarlacc?]

The tuskens looked to one another, their movements suggesting a dawning concern.

That was all Link needed. With that he threw off his cloak and hooked his sword to his back.

[What under the Suns are you doing?] Ghk'ik asked as he watched Link strap his blade to his back.

[I'm going to force it to the surface. Just be ready to take the shot.]

Before the tuskens could get out another complaint, Link lept off the side of the mesa, drawing a suprised grunt from the Sandpeople.

Link fell to the sandy surface, using the force to slow his fall.
He quickly sped across the sandy flats to the hobbled bantha, drawing his lightsaber from his shirt.

Then the Tatooine surface shook as thought the planet was collapsing in upon itself.
A massive pair of jaws pushed out of the sand around the frightened bantha and quickly began to close.

Then Link let fly with his saber, the ignighted dark blue blade cutting a scar across the beasts chin before returning to it's wielder's hand.

The beast roared and released the Bantha, it's maw sinking below the sands. The Monster burst from the desert, pulling its entire massive bulk out of Tatooine's surface, its head whipping about to locate the source of the attack.

Link pulled off his mask and tossed it aside.
"Bo shudda, Rcaulkorortu!" Link called out to the beast, his activated saber in hand. "Dobrah Link Darksun. Mee hodrudda chuba tah tombato!"

The Dragon cranked its neck around to spy the blond human with the dark blue lightsaber. It snarled as it recognized Link, the human who had cut sliced it's tooth off. It reared up to it's full height, casting a shadow over
Link with it's mass.

"Boska." Link stated calmly as he twirled his saber and assumed a stance.

Seventeen minor headaches and following a shout-session with the Tarisian prime minister, Elladan's forces were ready as they could to make a retreat.

Wayland had been evacuated best it could: the entire base had esentially been torn up and packed away into every ship and freighter they could manage. Everyone who wanted off as well accompanied them, including some two-hundred Noghri and a couple hundred or so random aliens and humans and a few belongings. All in all, it took a single Acclamantor to carry them all in, and a mostly finished Victory with a skeleton crew to defend it on route to Mandalore.

Taris wasn't much better either. Without their Star Destroyer and the few Tartans they had, they virtually had nothing save their defenses. Elladan didn't have the heart to ask them for anymore, but it'd have to be enough to expect them not to betray the Loyalists.

Mandalore, on the otherhand, was a hotbed of activity. MandalMotors was a hornet nest as carriers and support craft hurried back and forth. From what their intel had gathered, their time was running very short, and already their was disent in their ranks; apparantly, a rival faction with their own Mandalore was opposing their involvement. As far as the Council was concerned along with most of their Shock Troopers and half of the navy, they were traitors who lacked the resolve needed to protect their future.

Elshaek' , meanwhile, was hard at work designing new ships. His were vastly underpowered, and he needed to create entireely new ones. MandalMotors seemed to be backing them.

"We have a secure location where you can set up," the Council told him in a meeting at the beginning of the second day, just a few hours before they hoped to break the blockade. "Here are the coordinates."

Taking the datapad, Elladan reviewed it, then skeptically looked back up. "79-67-055? That puts us in the middle of the Unknown Regions. The REALLY Unknown Regions."

"Just so happens MandalMotors opperates a back-up shipyards and depot there, on a planet code-named Mandal. Nice, safe place where we send whatever that needs o be hidden."

"And how would I get there?" the chiss asked. "I can't rely on coordinates alone."

"You won't have to. Recall the EMP we were discussing?"

Ah. No wonder. "Oh, precisely. Get Detre to sneek in and meet us, then when we break through the fleet on masse, we synchronize the signals on all our equiptment and jump. Not only will their ships be disabled, and most everything but life-support knocked out cold, but we'd destroy any tracking systems or Interdictors they'd have. They wouldn't be able to track us, much less follow."

"Sharp mind," Mandalore agreed, giving the datacard back. "I suggest you warp randomly to a few planets, through them off track some. I suggest making stops at Manaan and Ryloth, and maybe Dac."

Elladan winced. Those were three seperate corners of the known galaxy. His hyperdrives would be in poor shape by the time they reached Mandal, if they made it that far. "We can expect Detre in a few hours. We'll be ready as soon as he arrives here."

All in all, he didn't have much more of a fleet then he did when he engaged the Bothan and his fleet. He had his Acclamantor, a second filled with personel, and a third with miscelaneous hardware and refugees, along with several corvettes and a single Victory. Accompaning them were a pair of Kedalbe-class cruisers, several dozen Syck and Kimogila fighters, some Crusader-class corvettes, and a single Canderous-class battleship which would lead the charge.

If all worked out, they'd make it out, leaving the rest of his fledgling Empire under the threat of invasion.

(On a side-note, I confirmed the leader of the Council was Mandalore on page 68. I'm aware my knowledge in Mandal culture is lacking, so if anyone wants to retort, PM me)

((you know, with EKs post, I've got a good feeling about this. Perhaps its the bon Jovi in my ears coupled with an imagination like mine, but I foresee a very intriguing storyline that could possibly unfold...))


The Slayer, finally ending its long journey through hyperspace, came into orbit over corellia. Veers knew the history of this particular planet. He had long since wished that Corellia would be its own distinct history course for the government in control; the planet never seemed to conform. It was almost like the Hapan cluster, independant of the universe around it, siding with the government in control, but only as far as its agenda would let it. Veers knew that even if the Sith controlled the galaxy, it would be very unlikely the planet would be fully willing to flip to their side.

As he addressed the landing party to keep on their guard, double time, he wondered about what evidence may turn up. Finding one man in an entire galaxy was not his true speciality; he was a man for commanding task forces and multiple captial ships at a time. His promotion had only come through direct servitude to Ferno, however, and Veers was not the person to be ignorant to the facts. He was replacable, since he was promoted, and now it came to him to become irreplacable to the Dark Lord's forces.

Only one month remained for Kuat to pull out his new command, his flagship. The Admiral kept the thought in the back of his mind, that this new palleaon would be the true handshake that sealed the deal. Respect from his peers, commanding not only a state of the art ship, but one with far more firepower to engauge capital ships than the others produced, all under the guiding eye of Lord Ferno. He had never been wrong yet, in all his visions. He surely knew what to build, when, and how, just look at the lightsaber collection on the first wall of his common chamber. Those jedi had succumbed to one form of function one way or another. This ship would be no different. This ship could be no different. Could it?

The Beast began slithering towards the Mesa, rumbling angrily deep in its throat as the tuskens fired futily.

Unbeknownst to the Dragon, Link had begun scaling up its side, deactivaed lightsaber gripped in his teath.

The Jedi held on tight as the dragon swayed back and forth, his fingers digging into the scales.

The Dragon suddenly reared back and roared angrily as he heard a Tusken give a triumphant cry. Link caught sight of the beast and saw that a cycler round had just pierced the animal's eye.
Now had to be the time to move.

Link pushed the Force through his limbs and clambered up the side of the beast like a Kowakian Monkey Lizard on a Caffeine rush.
Half way up the neck he saw the beast smash the side of the mesa with it's tail, shaking the rock formation and ripping a house sized gouge out of the sandrock.

The Tuskens did not flee, instead barking insults and challenges at the titanic reptile as they unloaded Cycler rounds at it's head.
"One must admire their tenacity and fearlessness." Link stated as he resumed his climb.

He was almost 60 meters in the air when he finally climbed to the head.
The jedi balanced himself on the Creature's swaying, bony skull and took his lightsaber in hand as he clambered to the bony Nasal Plate.

He ignighted the saber and drew the blade up to stab down into the plate.
The Reptile finally noticed him as he prepared to stab.
Man and beast locked gazes for an instant.
Then Link plunged the weapon in, forcing the weapon to the hilt through the nasal plate.

The reptile howled an earsplitting yowl and violently tried to shake him off.
Link held on desprately to the saber, the creature's shaking worrying the saber hole wider. He felt his grip weakening as the creature whipped its head about.

May the Force be with me. Link thought as he rested his thumb against the deactivation trigger.

Link looked, made a quick calculation and then put his faith in the force.
He deactivated the saber and went flying.

He watched the Reptile begin to shrink, heard one final cycler rifle crack, and then watched as a rock outcroping drew closer rapidly, on a course to pass by him as he resumed his cerainly lethal trip to the desert floor.

As it rushed past Link whipped his sword free from his sheath and sliced into the side of the rock formation, using the weapon to cut down his velocity
It worked a little too well.
The weapon slowed Link down to a stop, and now he was hanging 20 meters in the air from a sword buried to it's hilt in a rock.

But that was a far cry from slaming head first into a dune like a missle fired from a launcher.

He gave a sigh of relief.
He looked over to the Krayt and saw that it was lying inert upon the desert floor, the Tuskens Barking cries of triumph.
Link gave another sigh of relief.

Then he looked up at his sword and flicked the vibration function on as he began to work at pulling it free.
With a sudden yank he succeeded.
Then he realized nothing was holding him up.
"Oro?!" he yelped as he began to drop.
Quickly he slowed himself with the force and slapped into a sand dune.

Once more he pulled himself from the grit and spat out a mouthful of sand.
"Job well done, this one supposes." He muttered as he spat out more sand and shook the stuff from him.

"So, that's why Master Brunhildt went into exile for years before coming to the Jedi Order," Kalnar said gravely, as Rusty finished the tale.

"Like, that Sarton guy was totally ewwy to the max!" Freya cried out. "I'd have totally cooked him too. Then, spit on him. After that, I'd have totally kicked what's left of the body in the junk a couple times for good measure!"

"To be sure, Sarton was by no means a nice fellow," Rusty had to admit.

"This action could have potentially drove Brunhildt to the dark side, were she a Jedi at the time," Kalnar said evenly. "Once Brunhildt found her answers, she sought atonement, even after administering justice to Sarton."

< I see what you are saying, honored Jedi Master, > woofed a wookie. < My father was forced to build that damnable den of Sarton's, and, when he merely tried to do the right thing, he was fried for it! > came the roar.

< Sarton got what he deserved, > another wookie roared.

"You totally said it!" Freya exclaimed to the wookie volunteer.

"Still, this sounds totally like Jedi business, not mine," Freya said, looking to Gunther and Kalnar. "I guess you're looking for some sort of nifty Force clues, then?"

With a chuckle, Kalnar replied, "You might say that, Lady Starsinger,"

Freya then nodded as she made ready to board the Aldera Ballet. "Then, like, may the Force totally be with you, then, Master Kalnar. Take care of Gunther!"

(( and, while I imagine there shan't be much complaint o' me doing this plot thread, let me say that Rusty was around in the time period, and indeed obtained a secondhand account from a reliable eyewitness. And, if you don't know the deal ... well, let's just say the fellow in question they're talking about wasn't a very nice guy, and leave it at that. ))