Karvis
Player Journals => Niil Spaar => Topic started by: Collan on May 15, 2016, 06:08:21 PM
-
Collan sought out Niil immediately after the conversation with Kota.
-
Niil was at his bunk, digging through his belongings. He looked up as Collan approached, and waved a hand. "Collan! Be right with you, I was just looking for . . ." Niil found the case that held the training saber, and set it down on the bed. ". . . this. PROXY's willing to train us in lightsaber combat, and he told me that we could start as soon as we want."
"So . . . what's up?"
-
"Demaia," Collan said laconically as he came in.
-
Niil invited Collan to take a seat. "Anything specific? You probably spent more time with her than I did."
-
"Well...do you remember anything that might have indicated she knew what was momentous about Karvis? The General just gave me the third degree on her. Apparently he knew her. He wanted to know what prophecy or vision brought her to us."
-
Niil propped his chin in his hands, and let his attention travel back to the prison ship and Karvis. "I'm at a loss to explain why Karvis is so important. I know that she showed an interest in me, you and Trax while she was at the northern compound. No one else but the three of us . . . and a doctor, I recall her mentioning . . . knew where she was, and she wanted to keep it that way." Niil's eyebrows furrowed. "She said that if the resistance leaders knew where she was, it could 'complicate matters'."
Niil shook his head. "Part of me wonders if she was speaking about us. I mean, she told us that she had waited for us for two months prior to our raid on that prison ship. And she wasn't captured . . . she surrendered to the Empire. She said that it was the only path she saw that would get her to Karvis, where something important would start soon. But she didn't know what that 'something' was." He went silent for awhile. "I had a private talk with her right after that first meeting we had with her, and I had a fair amount of questions about the Jedi philosophy that she answered. That's when I also found out that Palpatine was a Sith lord."
"But I suppose I'm digressing. I do remember asking about Ch'lana, and she told me that he was a troubled man that could use a friend even though he wouldn't admit it." Niil smiled faintly. "I think she knew that I wanted to make amends for reaming him out on board that prison ship, and subtly steered me in that direction. She also told me roughly where he could be found, and to look for Jeremy Wilton."
"But back on Karvis when Ch'lana was about to board that ship without us - after he attacked you - I could hear her voice in my mind. She urged me to board that ship with him . . . no, that I had to be on board that ship when he departed, like nothing else in the universe mattered at that moment. She actually sounded anxious about that."
Niil looked up at Collan. "I know this might sound delusional and more than a tad arrogant, but were we the 'something important' that would start soon on Karvis? Ch'lana stowed away on our shuttle so he could get on board that prison ship, but what guided him there? Or who? And without his presence, I think that mission would've failed. He let us get on board in such a way that we bypassed a lot of traps and achieved surprise. Without that surprise, the Imperials would have probably detonated that bomb. And if he wasn't there, that dark Jedi and his cronies would have come straight for us. After we returned to Karvis, Ch'lana left. If it wasn't for Demaia's information, we probably would've never known where to start looking for him. And if it wasn't for him and his training, how would we have known about the Horuz system? Or gotten there, for that matter? I've never received a vision from the Force before my training, let alone two of them."
He shook his head. "Maybe I'm grasping at straws in putting that all together, but I've learned that there's no such thing as coincidences. All of this happened for a reason. Were we the important thing to start soon on Karvis, or merely part of an opening 'act' for something still about to happen there? I'm sorry, Collan, but I don't have a clue. I suppose we'll have to trust in the Force and let things play out as they will. It didn't steer us wrong about the Horuz system."
-
Collan frowned.
"I don't know...neither of us are particularly strong. Trax...Jex. I just can't see a convergence in the Force from us. Why did the Empire invade anyways?"
-
"You mean why did they invade the Karvis sector?"
-
"Yeah," Collan said, "I was a little preoccupied with personal stuff at the time. I was literally trying to figure out where I'm from and who I was. Next thing I knew Lendt was being bombarded and I was trying to get out of there."
-
"Well, for starters, Karvis Three is a great agricultural world, so it can crank out a lot of surplus for the Imperial war machine. And it's location makes it an ideal waypoint for other systems in the sector. As for Karvis One and Two, they have mining operations there, although they have to use radiation shielding."
Niil thought for a moment. "But I think there's something more than just that going on. Remember when we first met that dark Jedi woman on that asteroid base (OOC I think it was the asteroid base)?" I think she was one of the Emperor's Hands. That probably means that the Emperor himself has a vested interest in whatever was going on there. And that underground transport through the Bladesea that the Empire's supposed to be building? What's so important out there that they're willing to commit to such an expensive and time-consuming project?"
-
Collan pondered that for a second, "Why don't repulsorcraft work on the BladeSea. That never made sense to me either."
-
Niil grinned. "The wind speeds are too high. Remember, repulsor craft are, in a nutshell, very low-flying vehicles. They never actually make contact with the ground, so they're susceptible to strong winds chucking them around on their axes. Not something you'd want if you were moving at a good clip. That's why they stick to wheeled and tracked stuff - end ever AT-ATs. They're always maintaining contact with the ground."
-
Collan said, "Then...it'd be cheaper to build walls or create channels to partly bury transportation systems. Possibly leaving it easy for animal life to get across. Why tunnel? It's way more expensive. If it was minerals, then they would just mine. That suggests the tunnel is a cover for something else. And if Inquisitors are involved (not Imperial officials), that suggests something to do with the Force. I think we need to talk to Kota again."
-
"It could actually be a 'hearts and minds' project meant to win some goodwill with the people of Karvis, but I've never known the Empire to be so altruistic. Yeah, Rahm should know everything that we know - even if it might not seem relevant to us. We should start at the beginning; maybe give him a brief report of the missions we've gone on. He might be able to make some sense of it all."
-
"Something still bugs me about the invention, " Collan noted , "There was no resistance on Karvis until the invasion, right? The planet wasn't holding back any foodstuffs was it? Or other goods the Empire would consider vital?"
-
"Not really. There wasn't even an Imperial presence on the planet until the invasion and the Lendt Massacre. It all goes back to when Palpatine first came into power. Karvis actually supported him because they believed in what he was saying about a new order. That was before he started dropping his veil of rancor crap. Time passed, and the Karvis reps in the senate started getting more vocal about opposing Palpatine's deplorable edicts. I think what really did it was when the Karvis reps got ticked off with one of the more recent Imperial military expenditures, and threatened to tax all Imperial ships using the Karvis Three docking facilities."
Niil winced. "Yeahhh, that didn't go over too well. The Empire sent in a strike force two weeks later, captured the space stations orbiting Karvis Three, and pretty well took away most of the planet's defenses with that strike. The rest is history. The fighter battle was over pretty quickly, and the Imps shut down the system, seizing any ships that saw what happened and destroying others that tried to escape." His eyes narrowed. "That's when the ground campaign started, supported by TIE bombers. And the obliteration of Lendt."
-
"Yeah," Collan recalled in clear and sobering detail his interview with Palpatine, "The Emperor would not take any challwnge to his power. The second that was declared Karvis was going to be 'taught a lesson.'"
"I doubt there was an ulterior motive then. It could be in analying this we being Demaia's vision to fruition. There's really not enough data yet."
-
"Hard to say regarding all of that, yes. But we're just looking at the initial invasion of Karvis, and the underground transport through the Blade Sea. We did go on a lot of missions for the resistance between those times, though. Maybe there's something of significance in there . . . maybe not. That's the fun of analysis."
Niil thought back. "It should be interesting to see what happens with the power dynamics within the Imperials on Karvis now. Remember Plarn province? That's where the Imperial government is. What was the name of that oily bastard governor? Fiytha? Well, there's no love lost between him and Moff Karn, from what Senator Vess mentioned. Karn never even wanted the Imps on Karvis, but Fiytha did some string-pulling to force Karn to place his command on Karvis. Hell, if it wasn't for Fiytha, the Empire might not have decided to occupy Karvis after the attack."
OOC: Beyond that, I can't recall OOC anything that might stick out as certain oddities and/or patterns to show why Karvis is so important.
-
Collan rubbed his chin.
"And that nano poison...the one that got me attached to you guys from the Senator's cell. Why test that on Karvis? It gets out of control and a major agricultural producer for a sector gets taken down. That had to have been set up quickly."
-
Niil shook his head, mystified. "You got me there. Unless it was targeted for a certain species. With the Emperor, it's damned hard to guess as to what lengths he's willing to go to."
OOC: That's the mission I was wracking my brains over trying to remember! Did you have it archived somewhere? I don't recall seeing it on this site.
-
[ooc: not unless Craig has them. That was two computers ago and the irc logs died when the harddrive literally blew up]
"Yeah...but the Resistance was barely two months old then. Why do that test on a planet you just bombed into submission? And on a barely organized Resistance? We were contained...for the most part. I think maybe you're right; we should fill Kota in. He might see patterns we don't since he was outside Karvis."
-
"Yeah . . . we'll probably have to put it all into point form or something along those lines, 'cause there's a drek-load of info on all our encounters and missions. We can expand on anything he has questions about." Pulling out his datapad, he offered it to Collan. "Do you want to start with how you ended up on Karvis, or me first?"
OOC: So I'm thinking just a summary of everything that happened on Karvis right from our arrival (maybe even events that led us to Karvis) until our departure with Ch'lana. I know the "insert memory cube" methods robs us from a lot of RP and interest, but RP'ing a Karvis report could take a loooooong time. ;)
-
Collan said, "You can first and then I'll jump in on Lendt. I was on the the run alone those first few weeks."
-
Niil grunted, and shot Collan a look of mock annoyance. "Sure, make me go first . . ." He turned the datapad around, sat back, and let his mind go back to when he was first pulled out of the academy by Master Dhoresh. Yeah, might as well start there and work our way up to Lendt. He started to list everything in point form, often going back to make corrections and additions as he remembered additional nuggets of information. It took him considerable time, but he finally got to the point just prior to the Lendt Massacre. So let's see . . . I've got my time with Master Dhoresh and my arrival on Karvis Three, our mission against the Blade Sea pirate gang, the weapons cache mission, the bio plant . . . I wonder if that one and the asteroid base were linked . . . the munitions depot, that damned bounty hunter Blaine Whitehawk coming after me . . . that should be about it. Collan joined our team when we went to investigate that asteroid base, right? So we'll work together from there.
Waving Collan over, he said, "Might as well pull up a seat here; I've gotten to a point just before Lendt, so we're gonna be co-authoring the rest."
-
Collan sat and started on his portion. The vision of little green Jedi Master. His escape. Travelling to Lendt and the bombardment. How he helped others escape and then how he'd been on the run. Finally, he got where he hooked up woth Pasteur's cell. The nanopoison was his first and only mission before being transferred over to the Specs.
"All right...that's me," He said when done, "Now we coauthor this thing."
-
OOC: Sorry to interrupt you currently scheduled topic, but I've got point form notes on a couple of missions on page 2 under OOC, General Discussion if it helps any.
-
Niil stared at the datapad for awhile, then nodded to himself and started to type. ?So, you first joined the Specs when we went to check out that asteroid base . . . What was it that the Empire had there? A quantum collider? They were taking the toxins from the reactor and using it to poison life within a preserve near . . . Megyek Ebol? Yeah, that was the place. We also snagged a few cannisters of anti-toxin from that base as well. And that?s when we first met the Lady in Red and her red troopers. I still wonder if she?s an Inquisitor or one of the Emperor?s Hands. That base was clearly important."
Niil shook his head. "Later on I'm gonna have to look up any information I can find about that preserve to see what stands out about it. Isolation? Certain species? Hmmm. I'll make a note of that." Niil punched a few keys, and stopped. "What was after that? I guess when we took out that supply depot and took a memory core dump (ie. Mission # 1). That was pretty routine, I guess. Still . . ." He wrote up the mission as if he was preparing an after-action report, and looked it over once he was finished. "All right, next one . . . Trax went on a solo mission against a data node facility near Plarn and brought back a prisoner as well as the codes and algorithms needed to crack that memory core dump (ie. Mission # 2), which led to . . ." Niil sighed. Yeah, he remembered that mission all too well. The prisoner break where a trap had been set for Nill, Trax and Jex. They got most of the prisoners away despite the trap, but in their escape they'd unintentionally rammed a civilian car with a family inside. The parents had been killed in the crash, which had orphaned their two children. Although Nill hadn't been driving, he felt as responsible for their deaths as if he'd been behind the wheel.
"The prisoner liberation from the detention facility," he said flatly, and started to type. Collan probably knew all about that mission, and Niil hoped that he wouldn't be asked to expand much on that one.
OOC: So Niil will create an after-action report on all the special forces missions listed, as well as any stuff that didn't involve the spec forces missions (ie. independents stuff).
-
[OK. It'll take a few hours to put all that together.]
-
It took nearly three hours to finish the rough draft of the report, and almost another two to finalize it with clarifications and additions. Empty containers of food and drink were strewn across the table, and Niil took a last chug from a mug of kavvy. He plonked the mug down with a disgusted look, and muttered, "Gahhh. Cold kavvy. I'd rather drink Hutt slime." Niil stifled a yawn, rubbed at his eyes and held up the notepad in his hand. "Well, that looks to be about it, unless you can think of anything else to add. We can take this to Rahm now. It should be easy enough to set this notepad up so that it vocalizes the text if Rahm wants to go over it on his own time."