Kasimir

At the risk of potentially intervening in a game I am running: I may point out that nothing really stops you all from choosing to brawl in this thread itself and I will commit to taking any such brawling seriously in the write-up even if I can't actually mechanically do anything with it except to connect it to the results of the voting

Yet another bunch of clarifications: The current vote count I have is:

I don't actually remember this, so GM impartiality aside, I couldn't answer this even if I wanted to I recognise it is somewhat ironic, but let's just chalk it up to the fact I am starting to struggle with SE in my old age >> You have twenty-four hours left in the cycle! Get those votes and actions in!

Even More Duel Clarifications:

Rule Clarifications (wow suddenly you guys are so curious about the rules again!)

1. I have secured pinch-hitters. In the event that Turtle and JNV require replacement, they will be subbed in. 2. Rule Clarification:

Met one of my former students by chance last week, on my birthday. She thanked me for getting her to an A- and said I was one of the best TAs she had, probably because I really focused on trying to get my undergrads to do well in the exams. My teaching philosophy...isn't really the best, but I generally aim to help as many students pass as I can, because the module I teach, students largely don't take it out of passion, they take it to fulfill requirements so I don't see my job as being the 'cool' or 'fun' guy even though we do have fun/funny classes. I spend a lot of time drilling them in concepts and clearing up areas where students usually get confused, so they'll get good grades on the final exams. I think she underestimates how much work she put to get that A-, but I'm glad she remembers me, and that she has a positive memory of the class I did my job well. Peace

Rule Clarifications: Player List:

Cycle Five: A Fine Addition Dust blew across the swirling expanse of the badlands and the wreckage of the galaxy’s first gizka-operated synth organ. A tiny hooded figure scurried over to the detritus after glancing about warily. Korriban was a bad world. Ko lopo, if there was a world that counted as it. The Umpee white troopers in their ship had left him here. Nees Bac did not think well of them. Little on Korriban to scavenge, and to be stranded among Chikua and far from Ayafa…it was a hard life. Nees did not know how he would find his way back. So he searched among the scrap that the Chikua left in their wake. Recently, there was a dust-up between the Ja’bo’ba and the Hunya Ja’bo’ba. Nees kept listening, even as the screeching green creature raised an alarm and threw wooden things at Nees everytime Nees showed his face, and even when he didn’t. Ayafa had encountered Ja’bo’ba before, and Ayafa remembered. Some Ja’bo’ba were Eyeta, and some were not. Umpee were Peketak, but that was the way of this world. Maybe the Hunya Ja’bo’ba were Peketak too. But Ayafa remembered the Ja’bo’ba who walked among the Masked Ones with a blade like the cloudless noon sky, and so Nees only knew he did not want to be where the Ja’bo’ba were. “Utinni!” Nees Bac muttered, glancing at how many parts there were to scavenge. Gizka milled about the dirt and the dry scrubs, cooing and hopping to and fro with a patter of tiny feet. Immediately, Nees unlocked his utility belt and produced a set of tools. The makeshift comms array could be scrapped and salvaged, even though blaster fire marked most of it, had damaged the components. And then there was the greatest prize of all. The wreckage of a hunter-killer droid model, strewn about the dirt ground. Nees Bac scrabbled eagerly into the remnants. The droid chassis, at least could be salvaged. As could the head, despite the blaster scoring. The memory core though, had vanished. Someone had taken it. Nees Bac chattered in disbelief. A long line of footprints stretched out, into the dust, and vanished in the middle of nowhere. Sajhe sat in the room above the Drunk Side, on a stool that had seen better days as a freighter supply crate, and played the hallikset. He had needed a bit of time, working on the strings, getting the hallikset in tune again. It was like the first time you touched the Force: you never truly forgot it, never truly lost the knack. Hallikset on his knee, and his mind awash in memories, Sajhe played. The quiet, sad song echoed in the small space where he had lived for years, and years. They’d played it during the Mandalorian Wars, every single time a soldier in Heron Company had fallen. Every single life lost under his command, and Sajhe remembered it all, carried it with him through the intervening years. “Ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc, ni partayli, gar darasuum,” he whispered. The dead were legion. And their names were written in fire, buried under the the dirt and stones and sand of a foreign world, atomised, drowned in water…all the many, many, many myriad ways beings could kill other beings. And held, for a moment, for eternity, in the Force. “Stop, stop, stop!” Dacken Humtumb was all but shouting. “This is a disaster!” Kalabel stepped up to the eccentric man’s side, carefully, and almost immediately had to duck as a blaster bolt hissed through the air where her head would have been. “Someone’s gone and weaponised the gizka. The poor gizka,” Dacken wiped at his forehead with a handkerchief. “They’re taking each other out!” As far as Kalabel could tell, a significant chunk of the gizka had been fitted with an odd assortment of weaponry, including tiny blaster mounts and flechettes. She didn’t know what sort of genius or demented mind would think of such a thing: the gizka were triggering misfires as they hopped about and banged into things, and somehow managing to take each other out in the process. “Waggs! Look, you know me right?” Dacken hunkered down, approaching one of the gizka, making clicking noises with his tongue. Bar9 bowled him over, tackling him as Waggs nearly fired at his face. “It’s…a solution to the gizka problem,” Myhar Impay reluctantly said. He was studying his datapad. Kalabel peeked and noticed he was running a set of calculations on it. “Left to their own devices, they’d breed and overtake Dreshdae in a couple more standard days.” “Can you be a bit more specific?” Smarts asked. He was frowning at the wave of gizka, but he wasn’t about to throw himself in the way of the gizka either. Myhar shrugged. “Three standard days, four if we’re unlucky. Those damned things breed like gizka after all.” Kalabel worried at her lip. “Right. That’s bad.” What she really wanted was a quiet corner, the soothing susurrus of her triangle puzzle, the warm comfort of its red glow. There was nothing she could do about the gizka shooting pretty much everyone in sight, anyway. She didn’t see where that was something she could do anything about, so she’d rather be somewhere else doing something she wanted. “Sithspit,” cursed Smarts. “Are you kidding me?” “I did say we have a gizka problem,” Myhar replied, his voice tight with annoyance. “They’re a pest in at least thirteen other sectors for a reason, and considered a highly-invasive species in fifty-two other sectors. Though given the ah, aggressive nature of local ecosystems on Korriban, one might very well prefer the gizka…” “You the gizka man?” Myhar turned. Natano Hamartano swaggered into the street with cocky confidence, barely twitching as a blaster bolt almost singed his head. His swoop was still humming loudly, parked on the side of the street with a healthy disregard for local traffic regulations. “I’m the ecologist.” “Yeah, yeah, whatever. I just want to know if you’re the guy who figured we got a gizka problem, eh?” “That would be me, yes.” “Good,” said Hamartano, grinning wolfishly. “See, the way I see it, I figure this gizka mess, it’s the sort of drek those Sith crackheads want. Gizka in our streets, shooting things up, the works. ‘Course, they made one very big mistake. That is, you made one very big mistake.” He patted Myhar’s shoulder, seemingly friendly. “For a while, I thought it might be the Jawa. Never liked that fella. Scurrying everywhere, figured I saw his paws on my ride one of those weeks!” He growled. “I told him, I see you anywhere near, I shoot you. He stopped. But I figured this sort of thing, Jawa’s got parts, right? Or maybe it’s someone like our Smarts here, eh, eh?” Smarts said, “You think I’d do something as crazy as give gizka guns?” “Yeah, well, stick with me here, I figured maybe I wasn’t so hot on the idea it was you. But we’ve got to do something, the gizka will put enough holes in everything soon. I don’t mind if it’s just me, but not with these damned gizka!” Hamartano hooked his thumbs into his utility belt. “Way I see it, there’s you, gizka man. You come running into town screaming about how we’ve got to kill those gizka. Funny thing is, that rustbucket, the one that nearly tried to murder the other gizka man.” He glanced over at Dacken, who was trying to intervene in the mass gizka slaughter. “It was passing itself off as a gizka exterminator. Figure you might know something about that, wouldn’t you? Thought you’d slip one of your own into Dreshdae, did you?” Hamartano’s grin grew just a little wider. “You thought wrong. I’m onto you now! I said we’d have to make things HAPPEN around here, and we’re not defenceless!” He squeezed the trigger. Myhar Impay collapsed to the ground like an emptied sack of grain. Just. Collapsed. “Well, that’s that,” Hamartano said, though Smarts thought he saw the man’s hands shaking, just a little. “Bet that was one of them! And now we’re safe, anyone seen any sign of Turtle or that drunkard?” “Who?” Smarts asked, baffled. Hamartano sighed, gustily. “Look, I can’t be doing everything for you, Smarts.” He thumped Smarts on the shoulder, hard. “I’ll take this side, you go that way. We gotta find them, before anything happens to them, eh? And mind the gizka!” Her claws scrabbled against the mass of stone that pinned her. She was alive. Buried in darkness, but alive. Tania! heaved. Stone pinned her, broken stone, crushed her beneath its weight. She could not make out any sign that Hanoi lived. Perhaps that was for the best. Her last encounter with the caves in the lowlands and that strange swirling thing…it had left her feeling strangely reluctant to pursue the caves. Not after the loud keening that hurt her, sent her fleeing back into the mountains where she brooded. And even now, she wanted to go back, felt drawn back to the prey that gathered in their caves in the lowlands, and…she did not know. She had not seen the light of their glow-sticks, but something called her. And she wanted to live. She wanted, so badly, to live. The weight of the stone flew off her, as though drawn off by the force of her desire. Tania! scrambled to her feet, slowly. Battered. Exhausted. There was a ripple in the currents that drew her attention. One of the prey species stood there, hooded. Like the ones she had faced, before her slumber, and yet different. Tania! could not tell the quality of the difference. She only knew it was different, as her left claw was from her right. The current stirred, tugging at her. What did it want? Tania! raised a claw experimentally, and the prey species staggered back, shouting. A more powerful tug, and Tania! lunged. This one was faster than the ragged one, dodging with a speed that was more like what Tania! remembered. Lightning coruscated from its open hands, lightning bright blue-white, so bright that it hurt her eyes, so bright that Tania! immediately felt the protective nictitating membrane slide shut over her eyes, so bright she glanced aside briefly. The lightning itself, at least, did not hurt. It was a curiosity. Tania! reared back and poked at the hooded one with her claws. Her claws stopped, as though they’d come into contact with a solid stone wall. She scrabbled, and thought she felt it part, just slightly. She applied more force. “A terentatek,” it whispered, almost reverently. “Out of the days of legend. Truly, no matter the setbacks, our victory over the Jedi is assured. We will take the Valley for our own. And with the power of the Valley stored in the sceptre, even Skywalker’s so-called Academy must fall to us! But first, you. Will. Serve.” She felt it, a strange pressure in her head. Currents reaching out to embrace her, to drag her down. She snarled, gnashing tusks. Tania! did not like it. Did not like it at all. “Stop.” The pressure snapped, and Tania! staggered backwards. One of the prey species stood at the mouth of the cave, holding by a thin neck some round object that Tania! did not know. All she knew was that it was not a glow-stick. “Get out of the way!” the hooded prey snarled, and this time, Tania! caught the pulse of current from the outstretched hand of the hooded prey, and the prey species slammed into the cave wall. Somehow, he’d managed to hold onto the object, Tania! wasn’t sure how. The hooded prey whirled about and turned back to her. “As for you—” Tania! lunged. She wasn’t about to give it another chance. “Damnit!” the hooded one snarled. She heard the familiar snap-hiss of a glow stick as it carved through her, burned through her. It hurt so terribly. She bellowed in pain, but the hooded one was fast, and reckless, and she wasn’t sure if she’d hit her prey at all. After all these years. The current tugged at her, for the last time. Tania! put herself in its claws, and went. Bookwyrm / Myhar Impay was executed! He was a Settler! Devotary / Tania! was killed! She was a Force-Sensitive Terentatek Who Is As Much A Settler As Any of You! @JNV and @ookla the POKE VOTE are both on notice here for a cycle of inactivity. One more cycle of inactivity and they will be either replaced by a pinch-hitter, if one is available, or killed by the latest hazard in Dreshdae! The cycle has begun and will end on Wednesday, 7th December 2022 at 0100hrs SGT (GMT+8)! Please be reminded that PMs are closed.

The cycle has ended! Stop PMing me orders, stop voting, just stop! >>

You are not the only one...

I feel like y'all are recharging your energies after that show of democratic solidarity on Silho :eyes: The cycle ends in 24 hours more! Get those votes and actions in!

Flimsi glued to the notice board at the Drunk Side:

Rule Clarifications: Player List:

Cycle Four: Half A Sith The mood at the Drunk Side was little improved by the knowledge that the sonic emitters had been sabotaged. “Someone should go out and fix it,” grumbled Lib Wubum, who was not remotely thrilled that his quarry seemed to be nowhere to be found. He batted away a gizka that was inspecting his electro-spear with annoyance. Kalabel was sitting with her back to the corner, fiddling with the red triangle puzzle. Immediately, at his words, she warily placed the puzzle back into that hidden compartment of Bar9, for safety. There was something about the puzzle that made her want to shield it from others. Maybe they’d take it from her. The problem with Darkness, Kalabel thought, was that her mind couldn’t seem to get off it. Sajhe’d gone out on an errand somewhere, she saw him leaving out through the back after receiving some sort of flimsi note he’d washed into the sink. Where did that leave her, besides being the Chosen One of junction boxes? This clash of Sith cultists of some sort and Jedi supposedly roaming around in Dreshdae, if the Sith were to be believed, if Turtle wasn’t blowing things out of hand… She didn’t know. She felt as though there wasn’t a place for her, not quite, in that sort of world. A couple of gizka were hopping about, on and off of Bar9 and the patter of their footsteps made for a comforting rhythm, even if the gizka did get everywhere. “You’re good with repairs, aren’t you?” Shil-Ou-Te said, looking over at her. “I think old Galtaran swears he’s never taught anyone that good. Reckon you could fix the sonic emitters.” “Right,” said Kalabel, and tried not to feel as though the room was drawing in on her. And then Darkness, all around, smothering. “Smarts could do it too. But we fix things, we don’t kill tuk’ata. And the way Barles tells it, half the tuk’ata in the Valley have been using that offworlder as a chew toy.” There was…she had a trick to deal with the tuk’ata. The day she’d found the puzzle. As though it was calling to her, beneath all that dust. But she didn’t want to talk about it, and she didn’t know it’d work, anyway. One thing to venture beyond the emitters to explore the Valley. Another thing to entrust her life to it when she worked repairs. “But you could,” pressed Shil-Ou-Te. “Right?” “You’re very interested in the emitters,” Tantyck observed. The man had withdrawn into himself after the death of Nodice, and the ensuing lockdown at the spaceport. He was sitting at an empty table dealing himself sabacc cards, but now he glanced over at Shil-Ou-Te. “Or at least, you’re interested in who might be able to fix them. One might think this raises questions about whether that interest comes from.” Shil-Ou-Te smiled, and it was that sort of smile that half of Dreshdae would’ve said was too friendly, and the other half of Dreshdae would’ve said that Shil was just that sort of guy, the sort that everything rolled off. “C’mon, Tantyck, the last thing any of us needs is to wake up to a horde of tuk’ata in Dreshdae again. Or a shyrack swarm. Stang, that’s probably how that terentatek got in in the first place!” “Nodice was talking about you, the night before he died,” Tantyck continued. Shuffled the sabacc cards, fanned them out again. A perfect Idiot’s Array. “Said he thought there was something fishy about you, about the way you weren’t taking any of this seriously.” “Am I?” Shil laughed. “The way I see it, you’re reaching, Tantyck, you and Nodice both. You haven’t got anything on me, but you just want to find someone to blame for the comms outage and the emitter sabotage.” “Funny,” said Tantyck, clinically. “Shouldn’t you have said that you’re innocent?” It was said that the best masters of the game of kozun could see a game-losing move thirty steps before it was made, measured out in the black and white stones of the game board. Shil saw that move, in that instant, spelled out in the grim faces of his fellow settlers, in the way hands went to stun batons and blasters. Sajhe, after all, wasn’t there to enforce that rule right now. There was the loud sound of a blaster discharging, and Shil crumpled to the floor. Moff tossed aside the blaster he’d grabbed, and returned to smoking fifteen death sticks simultaneously. “Nothing against you, I have,” muttered the diminutive alien, who’d claimed to be a Jedi school reject. “Bought death sticks from me with extra death, you did.” “Statement: There are holes in my memory core.” HK-47 said, advancing on the food meatbag. Better things to be done, such as exterminating the gizka who were appearing around the village in large numbers, croaking and cooing away. But there was the food meatbag. And the puzzling gaps in his memory core, as though some things had been deleted. What, HK didn’t know. And that was the trouble. “Puzzled Statement: I feel as though I should know you, Master.” The food meatbag turned dark eyes on HK. “Say what you called me out here for, HK,” he said. “Contemplative: I wonder if those holes were deliberate. The last time my assassination protocols engaged, they did so completely, suppressing all memory of the previous masters.” “I never used you as an assassin droid.” “Indignation: Then what is the purpose of having an assassin droid, if one won’t use it for targeted elimination?” “It’s not assassination if it’s the heat of battle, is it?” “Resignation: I would suppose so. Evaluation: This still brings us back to the heart of the problem.” “Does it?” asked the food meatbag. He turned his back and began to walk away. Out of the badlands. Back towards the rusting old settlement of Dreshdae. “Probing Query: If one has information, why would one choose not to share it?” “Why would one choose, indeed?” HK-47’s reflexes were still faster than that of a mere meatbag. His sensors registered the minute shift of weight as the food meatbag was about to take another step, and In the millisecond between that shift of weight and the next, servomotors whined and he whipped up the slung blaster rifle and squeezed the trigger, inhumanly fast, inhumanly precise. The food meatbag jerked about, and the scarlet streaking blaster bolt burned into the palm of his open hand, deflected off-course. A tracery of green slowly pushed upwards about his boots, and the food meatbag knelt to run his fingers through them. HK-47’s memory banks identified them as wetgrass, which flourished during brief deluges in the rainy season on Korriban. The wetgrass curled about the food meatbag’s boots, out of season, out of place. The food meatbag glanced over at HK. “Don’t try that again,” he said. This time, HK let him leave. Although his equipment had been affected when the local comms infrastructure had been taken down, Myhar Impay had resorted to more mundane methods. At this point, he was hunkering down in a crop field in the outskirts of Dreshdae. Nalan Dicaeo had been willing to talk anybody’s head off about the latest conditions, but there was something more troubling that Myhar’s latest survey had revealed, before his sensor network had been cut off. There were too many gizka. He counted far too many gizka, cooing as they hopped about and frolicked in Dicaeo’s field. It had to be done the old way, tallied on a field-standard datapad, but Myhar was fairly certain that the gizka were not supposed to be a species native to Korriban. Even worse, they were extremely invasive. Back in the days of the Jedi Civil War, the planets of Kashyyyk, Manaan, Tatooine, and even Dantooine had all suffered localised gizka infestations. It was a lesson to be wary of, and a lesson in the resilience of the gizka. According to reports submitted in the aftermath of the War by Republic soldier Carth Onasi, even the planet Lehon in the Unknown Regions had found its ecosystems taken over by invading gizka. And now there was Korriban. Myhar found it troubling. The local gizka population, by his indicators, had quintupled since he had begun his measurements! Almost as though their growth was being subtly encouraged… Myhar frowned, and closed his datapad. He had to get back into Dreshdae, and talk to the others. One way or another, the local gizka problem had to be solved. The gizka-operated synth organ was a glorious, glorious mess. Gizka, as it turned out, could not quite be trained, though Dacken Humtumb was moderately confident that he’d yet to find the proper incentive. The gizka milled about the badlands, croaking and cooing as Dacken rubbed Waggs behind his ear nubs. “C’mon,” he coaxed. “Get back to your places!” Note after note, strangely discordant, yet strangely harmonised, sounded as gizka hopped everywhichway without particular care for the swipes of Dacken’s conductor’s stick—a laser screwdriver that’d probably seen better days in Dreshdae’s spaceport. “Biggs, shoo!” The gizka bumped its head against Dacken’s boot and cooed again. More gizka were gobbling the bait up, or simply chasing tiny dust devils, rather than playing out the piece that Dacken had been trying to teach them. That was fine, Dacken thought, firmly. You didn’t try to force gizka to do what wasn’t in their nature, just enjoyed the results of the music that the gizka were producing. The sharp whine of a series of blaster bolts put all of that to a halt as a menacing, rust-plated figure drew up short and opened fire. The amplified music was abruptly silenced. “Irritated Statement: That recording was getting on my nerves,” said HK-47, as he shot the recording apparatus that Dacken had cobbled together to boost short-range comms. It screamed with a snarl of feedback, and then crackled into unsteady static-filled white noise. Another shot put everything out of its misery entirely. “Assessment: This makes you the meatbag who managed to restore short-range comms to the settlement for a time. Menacing Observation: You seem to be doing something nefarious with the local gizka population. The same gizka whose numbers I have been hired to control.” Without any apparent fear, Dacken scrambled to confront the assassin droid, arms outstretched. “Now listen here,” he declared. “The gizka are simply marvellous, marvellous! These beauties are exactly what a world as steeped in gloom and darkness and whatever-have-you as Korrriban needs. A jolt of gizka cuteness to the system, exactly what the doctor ordered.” He scooped up a gizka, and proferred it to HK as the gizka wriggled about in Dacken’s grasp but was evidently willing to stay put. “See?” Dacken, at least, was quick enough, or cunning enough to let the gizka drop, and it hopped away quickly as the assassin droid opened dire. “Oi! Watch it with the blaster bolts!” “Statement: The gizka are taking over. You should know that. There is only one solution now.” “It’s nothing to do with sixty-six, is it?” Dacken said. “Utter Bafflement: What?” “Honestly,” Dacken admitted, “Just wanted to distract you for a second. Scatter!” he shouted to the gizka, as he pressed a button on his comlink and threw down a smoke grenade. It hissed and thumped to the sand and then burst, letting out a glorious puff of pale smoke. “...Well,” said Dacken, hesitantly. “That didn’t go to plan.” Still, the destroyed equipment appeased him by letting out a keening shriek, enough that the gizka were beginning to hop away. “Mocking Query: How many fleeing gizka do you think I can kill in one standard second, gizka meatbag? And perhaps I will kill you as well.” Dacken threw himself down as the assassin droid trained the blaster rifle on him. “Weary Statement: You have been a constant thorn in my side, a persistent nuisance to the mission of ruthlessly exterminating all the bzzt gizka on this planet. And so you must die.” Dacken Humtumb still had some survival instincts. But he could not outrun the programmed reflexes nor the accuracy of an assassin droid. He flopped to the ground. A hooded figure stood over him, and not a single bolt touched him. “Unnecessary Observation: Ah. I was beginning to wonder where the local Jedi had gotten off to.” Dacken looked up and gaped. “Stay down,” urged the Jedi, for there was surely no other entity this brown-cloaked figure could be, though a hood masked his features. The last blaster bolt bounced off the upraised length of a verdant lightsaber blade the same vivid green as the sprouting wetgrass, and careened away into the distance. “Protocol: Jedi meatbags on this world are to be killed.” HK-47 laid down a line of precise fire, but the Jedi advanced, the lightsaber singing as he deflected each bolt—left-right-left-right-right-right when HK-47 altered the pattern, the lightsaber blade spinning about and humming as bright scarlet blaster bolts were battered away into the air or whined harmlessly into the ground. “Watch out for the gizka!” Dacken yelped, scrambling backwards. The Jedi, at least, had the assassin droid’s full, lethal attention. HK-47 flung a sticky grenade, and then a thermal detonator, both charges beeping countdowns as they bounced and rolled towards the Jedi, who simply slapped them away with the Force and sent them rolling into the distance. The Jedi slashed, the green lightsaber curving out in a lethal arc meant to burn through the assassin droid. HK-47 blocked, with the stock of the rifle, and although the metal of the rifle glowed red, the blade failed to slice through. “Gloating Observation: If you were planning on hunting Jedi, investing in a cortosis weave is worth your while.” Now, HK-47 counter-attacked, punching at the Jedi. The Jedi caught the assassin droid’s arm, but a two-pronged saberdart popped free from a hatch on HK-47’s arm and sank into the Jedi’s free hand. The Jedi wavered and he set up a push, shoving HK-47 back several paces. The assassin droid raised his blaster rifle again. “Unnecessary Statement: Goodbye, Jedi.” The bolt was precise. HK did not miss. The Jedi’s lightsaber snapped up to parry, driven by something beyond mere flesh, despite the paralytic poison coursing even then in the Jedi’s veins. The bolt burned through HK’s memory core. “Protocol: Initiate emergency shutdown and memory wipe.” The next sweep of the lightsaber blade burned through HK’s midsection, bisecting the assassin droid in half. HK’s photoreceptors went dark as every system went offline. Silho / Shil-Ou-Te was executed to thunderous applause! Thus democracy lives! He was a Settler! Hael / HK-47 was killed! He was a Murderous Assassin Droid and Gizka Exterminator! Oh, sorry, that's not the information you were looking for. I'll come in again. He was working for the Desann Reborn! Ecologist Myhar Impay reports Dreshdae is experiencing an emergency surge in the local gizka population! For the duration of the next cycle, players may send in RP orders about what to do with the horde of gizka and I will accept and process them where possible! Gizka, gizka everywhere! The cycle has begun and will end on Monday, 5th December 2022 at 0100hrs SGT (GMT+8)! Please be reminded that PMs are closed.

The cycle has ended!

No. *I was going to elaborate, but decided it'd be really funny if I just said no given my epistemic advantage **For legal reasons, this should not be taken as anything other than my being persnickety about what WBGs are.

Thanks for making vote logging easier for me? Two and a half hours left in the cycle!

A reminder you have around twenty-three and a half hours left in the cycle! Get those votes and actions in!

Alright. More GM clarifications in plainspeak because player confusion continues: Force Sense and Force Lightning are essentially abilities with a cooldown. The only thing I check for when determining if a player can send in a Force Sense / Force Lightning order is whether they've sent one on the previous term. Suppose Wyrm and Ashiok are both Jedi. As long as neither Wyrm nor Ash have sent in Force Sense on C1, they can send in Force Sense orders jointly on C2. Similarly, suppose Meta and Sart are both Desann Reborn. As long as neither Meta nor Sart have sent in Force Lightning orders on C2, they can both send in Force Lightning orders on C3. The only abilities in this game that are restricted to 'only one player can send this in at a time' are the unique abilities of the Jedi and the Desann Reborn: recruitment and Force Drain. Only at most one Reborn can send in a Force Drain order at a time, just as at most only one Jedi can recruit at a time. (I know this is not an elegant solution, but imagine this game if Jedi could breed recruit...like gizka :eyes: ) Any Cultist appointed as a successor to a fallen Desann Reborn does not themselves become Desann Reborn. Their accession also cannot be roleblocked. Look, let's spell it out as a concrete scenario. Suppose that Meta and Sart are both Desann Reborn, and Meta goes and gets himself killed C2. (This actually happened in the original MR2 which this game reruns, FYI.) Joe and Tulir are their Cultists. On the next cycle, I will automatically go to the Elim team and basically say, "K, look, Meta's dead now, y'all decide which Cultist will send in the kill now." As soon as they pick him, he'll immediately get access to the kill. (In a one Cultist world, this is a formality.) Don't think of this as an in-game mechanic you can substantively interfere with: think of it as a simple way to keep the logic that the Elims should get kill access without being overly mech-locked. The anointed Cultist does not become Reborn and does not count to their wincon and does not acquire any new powers beyond the ability to kill and any other powers a Jedi may have generously given them.

Another set of flimsis plastered to the noticeboard of the Drunk Side: Breaking this style. Major GM Announcement as I have noticed some player confusion on this front! Please be aware that as written, the rules for Force Lightning and Force Sense do not allow the ability to be used twice in a row! It does not matter who you targeted previously. The ability cannot be repeated twice in a row, you have a cooldown! While this is a breach in my usual 'Don't Ask, Don't Get' GMing style, I have noticed enough player confusion on this score that I think this needs to be proactively clarified! I am aware that some of the rule clarifications give the impression that Force Sense works like the modified Tyrian Lurcher. It does not. To explain how a redirect works with the cooldown: it doesn't. You can't redirect a player with an ability cooldown unless they are using a different ability, because cooldown means, "No can do, no can use," means that the redirect will not even be targeting a legal action in the first place. My apologies for my own confusion about the matter: this is my fault for copying the Lurch directly from MR2 and forgetting to do a sanity check to make sure it was properly explained. To be clear one more time: There are no protect/roleblock limitations in terms of target. Hypothetically, you could keep protecting or using Lightning on Wyrm every legal Turn. What you cannot do is to use the ability twice in a row. Incidentally, I should note there are target limitations on a successful Force Drain on an unprotected target: He's dead, Jim! You can't make him deader! There are no zombies in this game despite the Plague Trooper books! (For legal reasons, this paragraph and the previous one are simultaneously a joke and a statement of the obvious.)

bloody hell thanks for warning me my prof was suggesting we go colab pro too no freakin' thanks i am getting grey hair just sitting here watching it slowly process each epoch and unable to sleep it's hell i tell you im half-tempted to offer my analysis services to the highest bidder im that bored oh wait crap there's world cup i totally forgot in the rollover and convnet mess good force BAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

bro my convnet is on Epoch 48 if i close it & go sleep u just know colab is gonna stop & waste all my effort i don't have a choice i gotta run it :sob: Rule Clarification:

Rule Clarifications: Player List:

Cycle Three: I Don't Think So In the break room of the spaceport, Nodice’d started a sabacc game. Rustled a battered deck of cards from his coat pocket (his lucky deck, if you asked him, though it was questionable how lucky it was given how patched Nodice’s coat really was, and the fact he’d been sleeping rough at the Drunk Side.) “Stakes?” asked Dacken Humtumb, as Nodice dealt the cards. “You in, Smarts?” The technician shook his head. “You play,” he muttered. “I have a comms array to fix.” He retreated back to the comms room to work on the array, as Tantyck joined the game. Figured that man’d find his way to the spaceport somehow, Smarts thought, disgruntled. But at least the prospect of a sabacc game seemed to have taken some of the wariness out of Tantyck’s gaze. Turtle’d said no to the game, backed away to begin repairs to a fuel port. Which left mostly just the three of them playing, along with Dash, another of Turtle’s colleagues. “Republic Senate rules,” Dash’d suggested, hopefully, but Nodice’d placed a credit in the pot, and somehow Dacken’d added a bunch of scrapped circuits, so now they were playing Corellian Spike rules for an eclectic array of scorched parts and credits. "So," Nodice asked, cautiously, after they’d settled into a rhythm of play, and were inspecting their cards. "What's been going on with comms? I've heard all sorts of things, half of which are too outlandish to believe." Dacken sighed gustily. "Something's thoroughly blundered and beefed up the spaceport central communications array. I don't mean just a little short-circuit either, I mean it's properly slagged. Practically melted. Here, take a look," he held up a half-burned circuitboard. "I salvaged this from what was left of the comms, which is very different from stealing, because I'm reasonably sure nobody wanted it." Dash snorted. “Tell that to the ‘port head, man,” he flicked a few credits, signalling his intention to raise the bet. “Truth to be told, we’ve had better days. Now the old Commerce Guild offices are shuttered, and we get spare parts maybe every five cycles or so, when someone from the Spacer’s Guild makes a supply run here. Nothing goes to waste in Dreshdae, if you can believe it, and I do mean nothing.” Tantyck raised, confidently. “As I see it, only two truths matter: one, that these cultists hold ill intent towards this town; and two, they don't want—or don't need—to be subtle about it. My first bet would be on a gang swooper, of course, but not even they would choose to damage this establishment. Of course, that leaves just about everyone else here.” “Really?” Dash asked, eyebrow raised. “‘Cause the way I see it, nobody in Dreshdae since the dust remembers wants to make trouble. It’s the offworlders that do, and we’ve gotten a whole bunch of them in the last couple of months.” “Believe me,” Tantyck said, levelly. “It’s the ones you don’t keep an eye on that are real trouble.” Dacken rattled the dice in his clenched fists. “Yes, well, if you ask me, which you of course absolutely did, it wasn’t the gizka. It would never be the gizka, bless their little hearts.” “They get everywhere,” Dash grumbled. “Yeah, but that’s because they do need a safe place to nest,” Dacken said. “Besides, it was totally slagged, and gizka don’t wield welding torches.” Dash had to concede that. “A thought occurs: a place such as this one usually has security footage, right? I've no doubt the likes of this world's security systems are primitive and rundown to my cosmopolitan eyes, yes, perhaps, but... Has anyone thought to check?” Dash rolled his eyes. “Who do you think checked?” he wanted to know. “Utterly fried,” he muttered, disgusted. “We couldn’t even so much as get useful footage from it. Last back-ups were from last month, and we know the comms were working before that. I flipped Turtle for it, and he lost, so he gets to tell the head what happened. Unlucky bastard.” “You fancy yourself lucky then, Dash?” Nodice drawled. “Lucky enough for this,” Dash smirked, and then Dacken let fall the dice. The symbols matched. “Guess it’s time for a new hand,” Dacken said, with an enigmatic smile. Which was the point that a fairly large creature, and one far larger than a gizka crammed itself through the doors of the break room. Dash was the first to see her; he blanched and let his hand fall. Cards sprayed across the surface of the battered break room table. “Terentatek!” he blurted out. “Fierfek, that’s a kriffing terentatek!” Dacken spun about and gawked. “What a lovely beastie,” he murmured, gazing at the mass of spikes and claws. Tantyck yanked Dacken backwards. “I think this is the time we start running,” he said, calmly, assessing the bristling creature and deciding that she looked perfectly lethal and Tantyck, if anything, was a survivor. “I don’t think that did for our comms, though.” “Yeah, no,” Nodice managed, tersely, attempting to scoop up his credits. “Leave it!” Dash barked. “I’ll buy you a kriffing deck later, man, we have to go!” “This is my lucky deck,” Nodice protested. “Took it with me when we made the Kessel Run, I’m not leaving it behind!” He lunged for his deck. That moment met the onrushing claws of the terentatek. “AAAARGGHHHHHHH!” Nodice cried out as the terentatek’s claw swipe tore his chest cavity open. Blood spurted out onto the floor of the break room; Dacken stared at it, at the terentatek. The sort of thing you read about in tourist manuals about Korriban. Long extinct, bred to hunt Jedi by the ancient Sith. Some books said they weren’t extinct, merely slumbering, until a time the Darkness crept back into the galaxy. Was this the time? Was this it? She didn’t mean harm, he was certain. Or maybe she did. He didn’t know for sure. Dash’d had enough. He dragged other two out the back door of the break room, shouldering it open by brute force. Tantyck, at least, wasn’t resisting, but Dacken seemed to have no real sense of self-preservation. “C’mon! There’s nothing we can do for him now. Someone’s got to raise the alarm, there’s a kriffing terentatek in the ‘port!” Kalabel studied her handiwork. The door to the Drunk Side at least closed now, which was an improvement over however it’d gotten jammed, even if it slid shut with an unsatisfying whoCK rather than the satisfying whoosh that had been before. “Thank you,” Sajhe was saying, as he handed her a credstick. “That’d set my mind at ease, at least, in these times.” Generous enough, and she thanked him as she pocketed it. She thought he knew what he was talking about. People getting all worked up about some sort of Sith cult in Dreshdae. She figured she’d seen everything, but that was new. Maybe not as new as that red triangle thing she’d found, buried in the dust the other day. Part of her wanted to just go back home. It was like a puzzle-box, she figured. She hadn’t yet worked out how to open it. Thought she heard some sort of quiet whispering, but maybe she was just tired. Sometimes, she felt like Old Galtaran was taking her for granted. Sure, he’d taken her in, said she showed real potential. Sometimes, she thought he was just glad of the extra pair of hands. Sometimes, she thought to run. That was Seth’s sort of talk, dreaming of the dust of a thousand worlds beneath her feet. There was a whole wide galaxy out there, and sometimes, Kalabel felt like she was rotting away on Dreshdae, forgotten as she played apprentice to Galtaran’s technician. Look where that’d gotten Seth though, sucking dirt after he ran his mouth off and someone shot him. Kalabel shrugged, uneasily. She didn’t like the direction of her thoughts right now, so she thought about the red triangle thing again. “Hey,” said Sajhe. “You alright?” She blinked, dragged out of her thoughts, and nodded. Over at the bar, a bunch of regulars were arguing again. Since people’d figured there were Sith in Dreshdae, or Sith cultists, everyone was jumpy. Sajhe’d banned blasters from his cantina, but that didn’t stop people from being on edge. Kalabel didn’t like that, it made her nervous. (“You kill me, and you’ll all be sorry,” Shil-Ou-Te’d said, mutinously. “Oh yeah? You some kind of Jedi waiting to help us with those Sith?” “Try me,” Shil-Ou-Te retorted.) “You sure?” She packed away her multi-tool and nodded, but a thought caught in her mind. “Those…cultists everyone talks about. Kos was saying. They’re looking for Jedi, right?” Sajhe nodded, solemnly. (“That’s ridiculous,” Kos snapped. “Next thing you know, young Saj’ there’s some kind of Jedi too.”) “Why’re they hiding?” Kalabel wanted to know. “Why don’t they just reveal themselves and confront the Sith?” And sure, maybe Saj’ was just a bartender, but he’d always had stories about what he called the Wars, capitals included, that seemed to belong to times far darker than what old Barles talked about. “Ah,” said Sajhe. “Well, between you and I, there’s a secret. Maybe it’s better that way. It’s the old sorrow, the old schism.” His gaze seemed to go distant. (“Ain’t right, those eyes,” one of the mercs at the spaceport’d said, ages ago. Kalabel’d been running errands for Galtaran then, and she’d heard him, all clad in his Mandalorian battle armour. “You think he’s young. But he’s got eyes like those who survived the Clone Wars.” “Don’t be foolish, Skirata.” “It jumps out at you sometimes, vod. There’s a world of pain in them. Suffering enough for an entire world.”) “See, there were those who chose mastery. Those who chose to shape the world, exert their desires on it.” She deserved better, thought Kalabel. She did. “And there were those who looked at the world, and thought it was beautiful, in all its misery and pain. And thought that to walk the path of desire, well, that was a chasing at the wind.” “And?” She wasn’t sure where that obtuse talk was leading. “And that the answer wasn’t to want,” said Sajhe. “The answer was to look at the universe, in all its misery, and all its darkness, and all its cravenness and suffering. And in doing so, to meet it with love. And maybe there are some who remember when the Jedi were best off not coming in glory as heroes or saviours. And maybe sometimes we don’t need Jedi, just the desire to love the broken places, to make things a little better. A little more tolerable.” He passed her a bowl of steaming stew. She wasn’t sure what was on the menu tonight. “Eat. You look hungry. Galtaran working you to the bone again?” “Saj’...” she hesitated. Didn’t know why it was so important for her to ask. “Is the Dark stronger, do you think?” “‘Course it is,” said Sajhe, and she understood what the mercs’d meant about those troubled, troubled dark eyes. “The Dark is always stronger. Even stars burn out.” Maybe that was why the Jedi didn’t fight. Why they hid. Turtle was working on maintenance in the fuel line. There weren’t ships in the spaceport now, but the fuel lines had to be maintained all the same, and the last time this one’d seen service was probably millennia ago, during the Jedi Civil War. He grunted as he twisted with his hydrospanner, and the recalcitrant screw finally creaked out. “That’ll teach you, you piece of scrap.” The lights flickered. Turtle swallowed. He was used to working alone, used to pretty much everything in the spaceport falling apart, no matter how much he and Dash worked on it, but something was giving him an overwhelmingly bad feeling about this. The lights flickered again. They went out. Then, for a moment, Turtle thought the emergency lights cut on, because everything was washed in red, but there was a loud snap-hiss and a vibrating hum that he didn’t recognise, and oh, Sithspit, he knew what it was, a hooded figure looming in front of him. He threw his hydrospanner, without thinking. The hooded figure held out a gloved hand and the hydrospanner stopped, abruptly. Swept out the fist to the side. He heard the shriek of crumpling metal, the clang! of the hydrospanner bouncing off some other panel in the fuel line. He was dead. This was it. “Please,” Turtle begged, even though he knew it was useless. Sith were the sorts of things you told new workers at the ‘port about, things to laugh at, and sometimes, things that kept you awake at night. For a moment, Turtle’s life flashed before his eyes, as the crimson lightsaber came down, leaving afterimages across his vision— “I don’t think so,” said a calm, amused voice. Turtle blinked. That wasn’t an afterimage. That was a deep purple lightsaber, the burning bright slash across his vision. Golden sparks showered where the blades met, cascading down on Turtle’s protective suit, but all things considered, Turtle thought that vivid electric-purple blade the exact hue of the bruised shadows of a Hurrikaine nightfall might’ve been the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his entire kriffing life. And it was the one thing standing between him and the Dark Jedi out to kill him. “Jedi,” hissed the hooded and masked attacker, hatred in his voice. Scarlet lightning coruscated along the length of his lightsaber, but nothing seemed to cause Turtle’s defender to falter. “Run along now,” Turtle’s defender said, quietly. Hooded as well, so Turtle couldn’t make out his features. “This one is not your prey, this day.” He parried a sideways cut with contemptuous ease. “There are always more of us, Reborn. Think on that, would you?” With a final, frustrated snarl, the Reborn let out a blue burst of lightning. Turtle squeezed his eyes shut against the blinding flare, reflexively. When he opened his eyes, the room was empty—his defender had switched off his lightsaber and was walking away. “Wait, who are you?” Turtle yelled, after him. “A Jedi,” came the reply, as the figure vanished into the shadows from which he had come. “What else would I be? Do try to stay alive this time, would you?” Crumpled to the floor, Turtle just enjoyed being alive. He took a deep breath, and let it out again, aware of the sense of undeserved grace, that something greater than himself was watching over him, had favoured him this day. “Stang,” Turtle whispered. “Stang it, I’m alive!” He laughed, even though it was shaky. “Take that, cultists! I’m alive!” “I’m telling you,” muttered Hamartano, mulishly. “These sectoral patrols are a mistake. We want to put a BLASTER BOLT right through those Sith wannabes, eh? Solve the problem right there.” The engine on his swoop bike hummed reassuringly. Hamartano wanted to gun it, but Barles and Vash were watching, and the last thing Hamartano wanted was another boring lecture. Sure, they’d fought in a couple of wars, and Vash saw off wild tuk’ata packs each season on her farm, but you’d figure that Dicaeo did the same, and Dicaeo was about as dead as a Triton moon, eh? Didn’t know how to have a bit of fun, and Hamartano’d no doubt if you sat Dicaeo on a swoop and gunned it, the guy’d scream and faint dead away. And wasn’t that the best feeling, the acceleration thrill kicking in when you pointed your swoop right towards the Xelric Draw and gunned it, waiting for the boost to kick in when you hopped the gap, knowing if you screwed up, it was just you on the desert floor, awaiting death. There was something powerful about it, something primal, knowing everything on Korriban wanted you dead, knowing every day you walked was a day you spat in the eye of the world and smiled and walked on with that cocky swagger. Everything killed on Korriban. Sith stuff, they said. Hamartano figured they were dead stuff, mostly. Targets. Put a blaster through it, anything died. “Impatient Statement: The mouthy meatbag is correct,” said the rustbucket, and Hamartano was really beginning to wonder why they’d even brought it along. They were kicking rocks, they didn’t need another rustbucket, much less to get it on a swoop. “There are no threats in this area. There are far better problems to kill with my time. Such as gizka.” “No,” Barles said, for the tenth time. Hamartano was beginning to agree with the rustbucket. At least they’d just one last corner of the sector to cover, before the old man would let them get back to actually doing things, rather than just checking emitters they knew were working anyway. “Listen, sonny. You want to do something, you’ve got to do it right. Impatience, cutting corners…you’re young, you want it all done now. And you, droid. The only reason you’re here is Saj’ vouched for you, got it?” “Resentful Utterance: Yes, Aged Meatbag. But I do not have to like it.” It was Vash who spotted the first signs of trouble, and that cut all thoughts of protest clean out of Hamartano’s head. Being a homesteader on Korriban was risky. The settlement, at least, was protected by a ring of sonic emitters, which let out waves of sound outside of the range of most near-human species, meant to keep the shyrack and the tuk’ata at bay. This made Dreshdae somewhat safer, though the emitters had to be checked and maintained regularly. It was technology used on rough worlds, like in the shadowlands of Kashyyyk. Barles’d insisted on checking the emitters. Hamartano thought the man was high on spice. But the comms sabotage’d unsettled him. And maybe Barles knew a bit of what he was doing, because there was a pack of wild tuk’ata savaging a body at the last emitter. Hamartano took one look at them, and winced as the tuk’ata turned from their latest chewtoy. One of them looked over at them and howled. “Sithspit,” Vash cursed. “Go, go, go!” Now they gunned the swoops, even with the rustbucket protesting. There was the whine of blaster fire as that thing fired anyway, despite the fact they were retreating. Maybe some of them hit, Hamartano didn’t know. He wasn’t a fool, and the fact that the sonic emitters had been sabotaged didn’t bode well. It meant that Dreshdae was now open to attack from tuk’ata and shyrack. Ventyl / Ibonek naw-Ibo was discovered on the boundaries of Dreshdae, torn apart by wild tuk'ata! (Stay active, folks!) He was a Settler! Xino / Nodice was executed! He was an unlucky Settler! Turtle / Turtle was attacked and survived! The cycle has begun and will end on Saturday, 3rd December 2022 at 0100hrs SGT (GMT+8)! Please be reminded that PMs are closed.