Ask What Brings Us Together // A Hunt for a Hutt

[Ervius Xann]

By the Force, who could have thought that looting a sith tomb would be so boring! What did acolytes dream about? Why of course they imagined themselves as unstoppable explorers who uncovered a tomb for breakfast, ransacked it for dinner, and put up grand displays at their stronghold for supper. It was a quaint little fantasy, one of many that reality had the nasty habit of dashing and turning into poison.

Ervius had been a champion for a few years now and had been to his fair share of digs and expeditions. He visited deserts, swamps, mountains, even frozen wastes. Nothing could have prepared him for Korriban. For once, the Dark Side or the climate had nothing to do with his suffering. This ransacked tomb could offer little in terms of resistance to a dedicated explorer. Oh no, this time, Ervius's enemy was paperwork. The sheer amount of paper he had to fill could bury a tuk'ata alive!

The tomb did not even have any Force artifacts (otherwise, Ervius would not have told anyone about his expedition and would not have bothered hiring a crew). Ervius was here for the cultural ones!

Some sith would have scoffed at such a sentiment, but the (somewhat) young man liked history and art for their own sake. To hold a piece of the ancient society in one’s hand, a tangible connection to the past.. That had its own worth, not to mention the insights such pieces could offer to an inquisitive mind.

Suddenly, he felt as though a shadow of a shadow had passed over him. Another trained sith was approaching. Ervius could feel it by just how tightly the Force circled its other adept, not at all like the restless cloud which surrounded acolytes. He turned off his datapad and covered the tablet in front of him. Appreciation for history or not, sharing one’s research could have tragic consequences for a sith.

Spoiler: Image Credits

Credits

@Nerovec

 

[Dragus Jakar]

Dragus moved stealthily through the tomb, there was no way of knowing what kind of dangers lurked in ancient Sith tombs, and he was not about to stumble headfirst into a confrontation with one of the many things which could be lurking in the dusty tombs on Korriban.

Dragus had found the tomb by accident as he was exploring one of the many valleys Korriban had to offer. What riches will be found in this decrepit old tomb I wonder. He thought to himself as he slowly made his way through its halls, careful to watch for traps or any signs of unwelcome inhabitants.

As he approached what appeared to be a large room in the tomb, Dragus froze in place. He felt something, or rather someone. Someone powerful in the force, someone much like himself. He slowly equipped one of his lightsabers and inched closer and closer to the room. When he got to the entrance he took cover behind the wall of the entrance and slowly peaked inside.

Inside Dragus saw a young-looking man, his back currently towards him. Slowly he emerged from cover and advanced several paces before igniting his lightsaber. "Hold it right there." He said forcefully. "What is your business here?" He watched the man intently as he shifted his stance carefully, never taking his eyes off the mysterious man.

@Keisen

 

[Ervius Xann]

“Shouldn’t I be asking this question?” Ervius spoke in a dry tone of voice.

He looked at the intruder and realized that a warrior stood before him. The not-quite-textbook stance betrayed many hours of practice and quite possibly even more time in actual combat.

Ervius hoped to avoid fighting one of his peers for this husk of a tomb, but Sith had a tendency of being troublesome. At times, paranoia could cloud their vision, and the Dark Side would be only too happy to fan those flames from but a single spark. The champion hoped that the man in front of him was not one of those lost causes, but he had learned to assume the worst. Therefore, as he spoke, Ervius stepped back a few paces, shrouding himself and letting an illusion assume his place.

“If you’re here for the ancient riches, I will have to disappoint you: we’re both a couple thousand years too late,” the not-Ervius said.

Would that be enough, Ervius wondered, for the sudden guest to leave the expedition site? If some of the workers got murdered during their fight, there would be even more paper to deal with. Luckily, most of the personnel was busy in their own sections at the moment.

@Nerovec

 

[Dragus Jakar]

Dragus observed the man intently and raised an eyebrow as he turned around. He recognised the man from the academy, they had been in the same class many years ago. A small grin crept on his face as he lowered his lightsaber. "A pity there aren't any riches, but it's good to see you again after all these years Ervius. What are you doing in this dusty tomb if there is nothing to gain?"

He observed the man for several more moments before deactivating his lightsaber. He took several paces forward as he put his lightsaber back on his hip. "I assume you still remember me, Ervius, although it has been some years since we went to the academy together."

Dragus took his eyes off the man for a moment before observing the room. "Lovely architecture, not really my style, but who am I to judge." He said with a grin.

 

[Ervius Xann]

“Jakar?” Ervius asked. He did remember the man now that he had a hint of their apparent acquaintance. The two had never been particularly close, what with their different preferences. Whereas Dragus followed the way of the lightsaber, Ervius was inclined towards the more esoteric powers of the Force. “You should know that ‘nothing to gain’ is a relative term most of the time.”

The illusion melted away, and Ervius stepped back in its place, letting his power out of the tight hold he maintained throughout the introduction.

“I must say I’m surprised that you bothered to come here, although judging by your lack of information about this tomb…” he cast a meaningful glance at Dragus, not bothering to hide his small smirk. “At any rate, I am here for the cultural artifacts. Do you happen to know who used to be buried here?”

@Nerovec

 

[Dragus Jakar]

Jakar grinned. "Nice illusion Ervius, you were always the better force user." He chuckled at his remarks about the artefacts. "You know I care more about credits than cultural artefacts, but to each their own I suppose."

He strolled forward and extended a hand towards his old friend, wanting to shake his hand. "I do believe Darth Retus was buried in this tomb, judging by the inscriptions I saw on my way in. Although my ancient Sith is a bit rusty so I might have mistranslated it. No clue who Darth Retus was though, do you have any ideas?"

Jakar looked around the dusty old room. "You know Ervius, when you are done looking for 'cultural' artefacts, I may have a job which might interest you, you can make a few credits and have an adventure with an old classmate."

@Keisen

 

[Ervius Xann]

“Darth Retum,” Ervius corrected. “He was an ancient Sith who had a rather strong talent for precognition. He was one of the very few who could produce genuine prophecies.”

The champion walked to stand in front of one of the corridors that led deeper into the tomb. Its portal housed a relief that depicted a tempestuous battle of epic proportions, as some of the figures (including the central one) were cast down from heaven and into the clutches of some unknown monster. A metaphor for the fall of the Sith Lord buried here.

“He had the arrogance to blab about his ability to all and sundry, so a number of lords banded together and brought the man down,” Ervius explained. “In the end, his own student killed Retum to earn favor with the victors.”

The champion looked at the relief for a moment before shaking his head and taking out his communicator.

“Lieutenant, how goes the dig?” he asked.

“We’ve breached the main chamber, though it was opened long before us by the looks of it,” a voice on the other end of the transmission replied. “There’s nothing here but an altar.”

“I’ll be there shortly,” Ervius said.

“Roger that,” the mercenary’s voice spoke before the communicator went into stand-by mode.

“Shall we?” Ervius looked at Dragus and motioned to the corridor. “You can fill me in on this mission of yours while we walk.”

Ervius did not fear that Dragus would steal anything from the tomb. While priceless to an archeologist, these artifacts had no power to them and would fetch quite the low price on any market. Few museums would be interested enough in acquiring some Sith paraphernalia of a well-documented period. Eventually, most of the materials from the tomb would be transported to Ervius’s house, the warehouse he rented in Dromund Kaas or his lab.

@Nerovec

 

[Dragus Jakar]

Dragus listened to Ervius carefully. If the man was interested in the information, he did not show it as he was casually glancing around the chamber, hands behind his back. Only when Ervius addressed him again did his eyes fall upon him. "Gladly, lead the way." He said as he gave him a nod.

Dragus walked beside his old classmate through the tomb. "The job which I mentioned is somewhat off the books. It is a bounty on a former ranking associate of the Desilijic Hutt family and the anonymous contractor wants him dead." Dragus took out his datapad and showed Ervius the bounty notice with a picture of the target on it. "Yur'baal Desilijic is the target. I normally do not take bounties, but he operates in Sith space, which caught my attention immediately. The pay is not fantastic, but building some reputation with the Hutts, and removing a dangerous individual from Sith space is never a bad thing."

Dragus observed Ervius' reaction for a moment. "I could really use a hand with this, if it was just Yur'baal I could probably handle him myself, but a small army of drugged up slave warriors protect him, and that is a bit too much to handle alone, even for me." In a rare show of friendliness, Dragus put his hand on Ervius' shoulder. "It is good that we ran into each other, I do not trust many, but you were always a trustworthy sort, even in the academy. So what do you say?"

 

[Ervius Xann]

Privately, Ervius did not think of himself as particularly trustworthy. He did, after all, kill his own master, extenuating circumstances notwithstanding. In either case, back at the academy Ervius simply thought of himself as adverse to petty intrigues of acolytes. Their little plots rarely had any real gain and mostly served, the man suspected, as entertainment for the overseers. The sith did remember Dragus now, a person who seemed to avoid betrayal, for whatever reason.

“Yur’baal Desilijik the Hutt you say…” Ervius trailed off, glancing at the reliefs all around the wide hallways of the tomb. “The name sounds somewhat familiar for reasons I can’t quite remember. And you say he operates in imperial space?”

Ervius did not attempt to hide his disbelief. The Hutts had a reputation for calculated ruthlessness and careful management of misery and its distribution across the galaxy. In fact, in that department, the slugs’s reputation rivaled that of the Sith. Still, they were also rather cowardly and never personally meddled where any danger could reach them.

“A brave Hutt?” the Sith mused. “How quaint.”

In the meantime, the two had reached the entrance to the inner sanctum. The wide domed hall greeted them with a bustle of the mercenaries who carried fragments of the fallen reliefs to special crates while a pair of floating droids catalogued the entire mess.

The altar that the lieutenant of this group reported earlier stood at the very center of the circular chamber. Ervius could still feel some residue hanging around the stone like a curtain. Someone had to conduct quite a few rituals on that slab back in the day for the echo of their actions to persist for so long.

“What is this?” Ervius looked down and lifted a large tablet with the Force. It looked like another one of the stones that surrounded the altar, but the underside had ancient Sith hieroglifs etched on it. “Curious, it looks like a… well, a hit list I would say. I suppose someone wanted to record their grudge for the ages. At any rate, I will study all of this later. Your offer seems somewhat more interesting.”

In truth, Yur’baal was a name Ervius recognized, and now he remembered why. That Hutt bought quite a large collection of artifacts from the old imperial era. Some said these trinkets had some Ramadan artifacts between them — those were probably wild rumors started by the Hutt himself. These slugs loved to inflate their own egos after all. Either way, Ervius would join Dragus on the hunt.

@Nerovec