Episode 1.0 - The Festival of Great Trade

An Devaronian dressed in an expensive, immaculate suit rounded a corner in the spaceport tunnels. When he spotted Wuc'vulog a glimmer of recognition crossed his dainty features. The man took a moment to rub some invisible creases out of his sport coat before he walked to Wuc'vulog. With a glance he checked their surroundings to ensure that they were out of anyone else's earshot.

"Excuse me, but do you happen to know where the weapon shop is?" He leaned a little closer, "I seem to have gotten turned around, and thought you might be able to help."

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While trying to open the safe, Callista's lack of tools hampered her ability to open it. Seemingly by luck, she avoided a clever little alarm wired into the false terminal that could have tied into the building's security. Upon closer examination it became obvious that the mechanical parts of the locking mechanism were a clever decoy, clearly designed to lure an unobservant thief into tripping an alarm. But when she moved to notice those details Callista accidentally set her hand on the edge of the bin on the workstation. The bin of credits flipped off the workstation, flinging its credit chits in a wide arc around Callista. A metallic rain of light metal chits pattered across the 'crete floor even as the bin landed with a loud clatter.

(OOC: We made a mistake calculating your skill pool: Skulduggery is already 2y/1g so upgrading would make that 3y. You can reattempt without the boost/setback at the same difficulty, but threats will make it take longer. If you opt not to, keep the destiny point. And... that might've been loud enough for the guard to hear if she has returned.)

(OOC: Rexi's dark side pip means 0 success, 1 threat. Take 1 stress. For Nyree, 2 threat means she gets a setback die.)

Tarr played the hand, successfully bluffing Nyree while Rexi's card misbehaved and prevented him from playing anything useful. Tarr once again took the pot. He smiled and started the next hand.

"I can see that, the cards don't favor you today." Lors shrugged dismissively. "You know me, Rexi, I find various things to do. The problem isn't so much what I do, but the beings I come into contact with when I do them. It's always a good thing to have talented help."

Tarr winked at Nyree. But instead of making her more angry, the comment had the effect of making her become deadly earnest as she focused upon Tarr. It was fairly obvious that he was walking a line, but the nature of that line was unanswered and unhinted at. Nyree's eyes scanned the bar, but she apparently didn't see anything and relaxed.

"Anyway, down to business. Did you fellows have any trouble securing the shipment, or in delivery?" A lekku twitched tentatively, and Lors tilted his head slightly. "Assuming my laborers report that everything is in order, then we can make the agreed upon payment. Then I suppose you'll be off again."

(OOC: See this post for the chase mechanics and a brief change to how we're going things. It should simplify matters a bit. Lets track most of the details for this one in the OOC thread.)

Dr. Eliasan put in a call to the Turtle once she was in the speeder. Things were cramped, but that was the problem with fitting 3 people into a speeder for 2. Captain Rand responded promptly, but sounded as if he were tired and out of breath. The negotiations were simple, and they could leave once the Turtle had unloaded its cargo.

"Ok, we have transportation once we make it to the spaceport. Pepra, remove our job listing." Eliasan stowed her comlink out of the way and activated the copilot controls. "Let me help you, Khan, and perhaps we can lose our tail."

Eliasan had little skill with piloting, but so far the traffic and Khan's piloting had sufficed. Their tail had trouble keeping up and was now at medium range. In a last-minute-genius moment, Eliasan remembered that as a corporate vehicle the top speed was reduced by a governor in the system. In a few moments she disabled it and freed the speeder to reach its top speed, though that wasn't particularly impressive.

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Back at the Turtle, Rand watch the process of unloading the cargo. Tarr's thugs had some clever crates that could resist scanning, had a false bottom, and even had some false cargo to fill the top with—just to make the crate look innocuous. It was a tidy little job, and was completed in about a half hour. Once they had completed the task, they loaded their cargo lifters and were on their way.

Then Rand handled the call from Dr. Eliasan. He checked to ensure that their stores were topped off, and then made ready to take off.

As Callista settles in for her second try, she gets lucky and realizes that this is a safe that she's cracked before. Not only that, but whoever set the safe up only changed one digit of the original pin. Faster than you can say "Jabba's your uncle" she has the safe open.

The safe contains:

- 2,000 credits
- several data chips
- a holo-messenger
- a blaster energy-dampener


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(OOC: Poor Rexi, this is brutal: 2 darkside makes it 4 failure and 3 threat! The next check will be upgraded difficulty at 1r 2p. Suffer 1 more strain. Unless you demand an opportunity to recoup your losses, take a loss of 50 credits.)

"As you say, it is good that you all are resourceful," Lors nodded—and promptly claimed the entire pot.

"The cargo is in order, boss," Tarr's comlink crackled to life, "and has been offloaded. We're guiding the load lifters back to the warehouse now."

"Well Rexi, I believe that just about concludes our business." Lors eyes flicked back up from the comlink and he smiled. He glanced at Nyree and nodded. She placed her handbag on the table, removed a smallish sealed container and handed it to Rexi. "This is our agreed upon payment. And with that, I do believe our contract is complete."

"It was good to see you again. Do return and visit me sometime," Lors smiled, then laughed, "and I can beat you at Sabaac again!"

As Valoris slams the accelerator and tries to escape through the mass of vehicles, the pursuing vehicle manages to maintain their distance in spite of the traffic. It's too tight between the landspeeders all around for either vehicle to do much. Once Eliasan finishes settling in, though, things change for the better.

"There, Valoris, between those two large cargo speeders!" She gestures to the port side.

(OOC: Distance is the same, but Valoris' next check is now a base difficulty of 1 purple die, and he also gets 1 blue boost die.)

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Lors Tarr walked Rexi to the door. "An old card shark indeed," he chuckled, "but, it's better to be lucky at something than unlucky in our lines of business. Till the next time, Rexi."

Nyree doesn't respond when Rexi speaks to her, but watches him impassively.

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The Devaronian smiled and nodded appreciatively. "Actually, I'm just a broker. I'm not really looking for transport, but I'd heard that some people in the docks today might have some exotic merchandise." He lowered his voice to a whisper. "Svivren isn't nearly as peaceful as they say."

He leaned back and glanced back down at his suit. "Yes, I don't need to resort to 'rough stuff' as you put it to get what I need. If I'm looking for something very specific, and you manage to find it—would you be willing to sell it to me for a fair sum? You may call me Max."

He hands Wuc'vulog a card with his contact information. The card merely states his name, Max, and his job, Broker, in the plainest and least ornamented style Wuc'vulog's ever seen.

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Rand keyed the ship's comlink to all crew. "Attention all hands, we have our next delivery en route and should depart as soon as it is stowed. Please wrap up your business and return within half an hour."

(OOC: Once again, your difficulty is only 1 purple die but no bonus from Eliasan. You can have 2 bonus dice from your 4 advantage earlier though. The pursuing vehicle is now at Long range; 1 more net success vss their results and you escape.)

Khan's speeder had trouble fitting between the large cargo speeders and got scraped up a bit in the attempt. But the pursuing vehicle struggled to keep pace as several speeder bikes cut it off as they entered the roadway. In the sudden snarl of unexpected traffic, their pilot has to focus more on how they will get through the traffic than keeping up with Khan.

At the same time, Eliasan continues to copilot and point out another gap in the traffic. They can just barely make it, but if they do they could lose the pursuit completely.

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Max nods knowingly at Wuc'vulog's comment about joining the crowd. "Yes, it would be wise. Out here with the crowd recording devices are much less... precise." He reaches into the breast pocket of his suit and pulls out a very thin datapad and keys up a schematic.

"I don't know precisely what it looks like in reality, but this is a component of one of the first disruptor rifles. It is a highly specialized proton pump that is used to amplify the power drawn from the power cell to extremely dangerous levels. It was deemed lost, but I recently discovered that it was stolen from a private collection. We wish to acquire and study it. Later replacements of the component were much smaller, and therefore less powerful." He shrugged. "That's what I know. My client is willing to pay in excess of forty thousand credits for this component."

(OOC: I'm going to rule the chase over. Khan, Eliasan, and Pepra have a several minute head-start into the spaceport.)

As they squeezed between the speeders Eliasan risked a look back over her shoulder. The cargo speeders had moved closer together and forced their pursuit to take an alternate route. The spaceport was just ahead so it was obvious where they were going, but with luck they would be able to escape within the spaceport and evade pursuit.

"Looks like they had to break off and find a different route. I think we have a few minutes before they can catch up with us," she said.