The Avalan Crisis: Drunken Drexl
Posted on Sun Jul 8th, 2018 @ 1:23am by Thane & Bomoor Thort
Edited on on Wed Jun 8th, 2022 @ 2:00pm
4,199 words; about a 21 minute read
Chapter:
Additional Stories
Location: The Drunken Drexl, Onderon
Timeline: Dusk, after "Trail of Credits"
Tags: Beast Rider, Beast Riders
OLD
Giving a bow of gratitude and then gesturing for Thane to draw slightly closer, he continued, “We are grateful that you would share this knowledge with us. With your permission, we shall head to this Drunken Drexl and attempt to surprise one of these bounty hunters.”
Queen Omina gestured broadly with an open hand. "As you wish. Investigate in whatever manner you ultimately see fit, Master Jedi, but note: this conflict with the Avalans is reaching a breaking point. Whilst I have every sympathy with your own plight and concerns for the well-being of your masters, no resolution is presenting itself and more and more of my people are suffering or dying with each passing hour." She gave both Bomoor and Thane a serious, measured look, punctuated as it was with a deep-set sadness she barely concealed with makeup and a piercing gaze. "I fear open conflict looms, and you may not find yourselves with many friends when the first real blaster bolt is fired."
"Let us hope it does not come to that," Bomoor nodded, being well aware of the truth in the Queen's words, "But we shall be prepared to fight for your people, as guardians peace in this galaxy. Thank you for your faith in us, your majesty."
NEW
Another instalment of The Avalan Crisis posts, chronicling the young Padawans, Thane and Bomoor Thort.
As the daylight waned, the shadows began to seep from the cracks in the old stone buildings that lined the narrow Iziz street. A short distance away, a modest market was packing up for the day and several street vendors were wheeling their goods along this little side road back to wherever they called home. The poverty in this city was striking, with people falling back on primitive wooden carts, not even able to afford basic conveniences like repulsorlifts.
Resting on the stone steps of the back entrance to the Drunken Drexl, Bomoor watched the slow migration of people, while also attempting to ignore the glances from a small group of displaced locals, who were starting up a small fire in a hollow droid chassis just across the other side of the cobbled street. He was not certain if they knew he was Jedi or simply did not see many alien species in this part of the city, but their attention was a distraction from his real task of focusing his mind on what was going on in the tavern behind him.
The Ithorian Jedi-in-training felt uncomfortable separating from his fellow padawan, given the human’s youth and headstrong nature, but he did trust that Thane would be better suited to investigating the establishment than himself who, as the current situation was demonstrating, could not help but draw a few gazes. He attempted again to find Thane in the buzz of activity within the building. Unlike the empty street, the tavern itself was rather busy; hardship and suffering are good friends with the liquor business.
While he might have struggled to pick up a stranger, it did not take long for Bomoor to relocate his close friend, who had moved away from his previous location and now was somewhere close to the main entrance. Getting a surface reading of his emotions, there was no change in his situation, so Bomoor attempted to feel out some of the other patrons in the bar, testing his ability to read auras over a distance. He knew Thane would signal him if trouble arose.
Drunken Drexl Cantina Music
It seemed to Thane, more and more as the years went by, that far too much time was spent scouring the taverns and public houses of the galaxy by Jedi in search of their quarry or information. Even at his sixteen years of age, the young Jedi Guardian had seen his fair share of cantinas, bar brawls and drunken sentients unashamedly groping aimlessly at one another, and he was certain he had heard nearly all of the standard tunes the typically-cheap (and probably also intoxicated) bands played. He had also seen more dancing girls and boys than he felt he should have been exposed to at any age.
As he stepped into the Drunken Drexl, Thane did not feel as though he drew any attention from the various patrons. Aside from the occasional non-Human garbed in GalactaWerks uniforms of varying divisions, who themselves were definitely isolated from the other social groups clustering within, nearly every other customer was the same species as Thane, and he was fortunate that his Jedi garb was not unlike the standard Onderonian fashion that had prevailed consistently throughout the centuries.
Thane mused how that seemed to the be the case on numerous planets he and Master Sotah had visited, with often just their bearing and lightsabers being what singled them out, although he had already concealed his weapon out of sight. The Caanan also noted that his age did not seem to be a hindrance, as the relaxed beliefs of the natives did not seem to preclude a teenager of his age from indulging in public drinking. Often, that sort of thing would even appeal to Thane - not that he could afford to do that in his current situation. Besides, after the Outer Rim Conflict and the ongoing Avalan Crisis, he was sure the Onderonians deserved to seek some brief solace in whatever bottle or glass they felt appropriate.
Having passed through the initial room, a cluster of mismatched chairs and card game tables, Thane ambled carefully towards the opening at the back, which revealed a design he had found quite standard across the galaxy; a circular rotunda was the defining feature of this more open space, a few 'tenders working behind the round bar with various pieces of culinary equipment and alcoholic wares of fantastical colours behind them in the centre. Arrayed about this central piece were chairs, tables and the patrons themselves, having clustered into very obvious, discernible groups. Dotted along the outer wall surrounding the bar were doors leading out into different rooms, each populated by yet more congregations, although Thane could not make out who occupied which.
"Just some tea, please," he replied to one of the bartenders, who had been surprisingly quick at descending upon him as he reached the bar, although the older Human male, his face scored with years of sunsoaked hard labour, regarded him with pronounced suspicion before hurrying away to prepare the drink.
Taking the moment, Thane rested his arms on the circular bar, learning forward as he continued to stand and regard his surroundings more carefully. Stood closest to him was an array of boisterous GalactaWerks Marines, still armed and clearly despised by a large quantity of natives, who had given the offworlders a wide berth and menacing glares. They paid him no mind as he turned his attention away, letting his bright blue eyes wash across the cantina and towards some of the darker spots within the Drexl.
Using his eyes as much as his Force senses, he noticed a small group clad in hodgepodge materials, scarves and leather draped all about their muscled frames. Goggles hung from their necks or were tied about their heads, and what could only be claw marks decorated their weatherworn clothing. Thane felt an intensity from them that was entirely alien from the rest of the patrons, a sort of fierce determination and focus that was uncommon in non-Force sensitives.
Beast riders, he concluded, actually feeling a sensation of childish awe at seeing the fabled warriors, and a small smile spread across his youthful features, although he quickly suppressed it.
"Don't bother with 'em," the bartender interrupted Thane's thoughts as he shoved half-clean mug towards the Padawan, accepting a chit from him in the same motion. "They ain't friends of offworlders. Avalan lovers, the lot of 'em."
Thane thanked the man but did not offer a reply, noticing that one of the Beast Riders, a girl perhaps not much older than Thane himself, was eyeing him in return, a smile he could not quite place as either hostile or coy playing over her olive-skinned features. He turned away in slight embarrassment, feeling his pale cheeks flush slightly as he wondered if he had misread the situation. The bartender clearly picked up on, shaking his head in bemusement at the Jedi.
Focused as he became on avoiding the look of the young Beast Rider, Thane almost did not notice the elegantly garbed woman who was now quickly stepping around the more shadowy periphery of the rotunda towards one of the side rooms. Her clothing was clearly of regal Onderonian design, her upper-class standing not something that appeared out of place in the strange mismatch of nobility, peasantry and soldiers from both sides of the conflict that populated the cantina. However, something within the Force called to him about this woman - a concern compounded by the synthsilk shawl she tugged up about the lower half of her face.
Sipping his tea and immediately regretting it, courtesy of the burning sensation now engulfing his tongue, Thane picked up the drink and ambled round the curve of the bar to find an unoccupied table near the entrance to the room the woman had entered. Pleasant aromas of spiced foods and drinks native to Onderon were thicker on this side, and Thane felt his stomach rumble in response. They had been moving without reprieve since footfall on the planet, and had also been subjected to royal meetings, explosions, kidnapped masters and even a lightsaber duel with a ferocious Rift Jedi.
A boy could survive on Jedi food capsules and the Force for only so long before his belly took over the thinking.
Thane closed off the urge to buy some food and instead set his energies to focusing on the woman and the new group she settled herself in with. From his new position, he could spy the noblewoman ingratiating herself with a group of figures, each of which were ensconced in varying levels of armouring, but each had weapons, whether they be blades, blasters or both.
The bounty hunters.
The strange woman seemed to be engaging primarily with an older bald Human, clad in dull durasteel armour, whilst a muscled and angry-looking woman stood beside him, eyeing the other female with barely restrained utter disdain. Unpractised, their emotions were palpable, even to one as inexperienced as Thane, although the bald man was decidedly calmer, and perhaps even amused. Avarice plagued each of the hunters.
Whilst it was true that GalactaWerks was keen on employing mercenaries and their ilk to parade around their facilities and locales, whether it be for added muscle or to hunt the local wildlife - which was obviously in abundance in this sector - Thane did not feel that was the verity of this particular situation. He had a bad feeling about each of them, and a quiet voice within his mind told him this would lead him and Bomoor to their own quarry. It was a voice Master Sotah had always told him to listen to, and when alone as he was, the Padawan was not keen to dismiss such advice. Even so, his hand still brushed over his concealed lightsaber.
"-nd the prince's men did not see you?" Thane heard the woman mutter in a haughty tone, using the Force to localise his hearing on their conversation.
The armoured man crossed his legs and exhaled derisively, "Of course not. Do we ever disappoint you?"
Making an intentionally-exaggerated reach behind the well-dressed woman to grab his pint of dark ale, he took a swig before continuing, "But for the sake of pleasing you, I am happy to go over the days events again, assuming you keep the drinks flowing."
Thane's interest spiked even more, and it took a great deal of control to take just a measured sip of his weak tea and avoid staring at the pair. It took even more concentration to keep his Force-focused hearing attuned to their half-hushed conversation. Despite his efforts, he did notice the woman flash a quick glance in his direction, noticing she had quite attractive, distinctive almond-shaped eyes.
Useful to remember, he thought, his mind almost slipping back to that smiling Beast Rider from a few minutes ago.
"Of course," the woman muttered to the man, raising a hand with a credit chip clasped between slender fingers to a passing faceless serving droid, which immediately dispensed more of the thick brown liquid into his tankard from a port built into one of its multiple appendages.
"Hey!" The thick-set female hunter then exclaimed in disgust, puffing out her chest and standing in such a way it proved she was in fact a few inches taller even than the armoured man. "What about me, you waadasla or'dinii?"
Thane could feel the narrow layer of emotional film within the woman, apparently a Mandalorian, that stopped her from actually crashing the back of her gauntleted hand against their mysterious benefactor slipping. Despite her size and obvious threat, the large woman was a cesspit of insecurities, jealousy and pride. A troubling mix for one so physically dangerous.
As an aside, Thane had always wondered why Mandalorians felt such a compulsion for blending their language into Galactic Basic when they were speaking. It rarely won them any friends beyond other Mandalorians, given the lingering animosity that much of the galaxy still felt towards them for the New Mandalorian Crusade during the Galactic Dark Age, even centuries later. The existence of the Mandalorian Exiles also did them no favours.
Hiding a grimace with yet another practised sip of tea, Thane hoped he never had to deal with any of them in the future.
After another flick of a wrist and another credit chip, another plume of fluid gushed from the serving machine's wrist and the fight was apparently avoided, the Mandalorian retreating a couple of steps with a grunt.
After taking a long sip, while staring with mirth at his upper-class employer, the bald Mandalorian exhaled, “Ah! Now it may not taste the best, but this Onderonian brew still hits the spot. So, a full recount of events was in order, yes?”
He tapped the glass in his hand with a tarnished bronzium ring on his ungloved hand as he summoned the words for his story, “Well, following the plan, we ambushed the three targets once they were far enough away from the Keep for the prince’s men to stop tracking them. The Cerean one tried to make a stand but pacifism got the better of him and we quickly bound and delivered them to the location you specified. I maintained a guard there while old grumpy here took the one with the droid arm off to do the other job.”
Prodding his colleague, he added, “Perhaps you can tell her how that went, if she doesn’t already know.”
The large woman simply spat on the floor in front of her benefactor instead of properly answering, looked away and just went back to sipping her drink.
Thane found it both amusing and disgusting, but it was all an aside to the information he had managed to overhear from the group, and it had taken supreme concentration on the young Jedi's part to maintain his facade and to keep the Force attunement going. However, he noticed now that the veiled woman appeared to once again be glancing askew at him, taking more notice of him that she had before, and he felt a flicker of recognition surging within her.
Mindlessly, he went to take another sip of tea, only to be met with the bitter remnants of leaves from the empty vessel, but he realised it was something he could use to his advantage. Raising a hand to remove the unwelcome bits of tea from his lips, Thane gestured with the Force to tug at the veil concealing the benefactor's face, although he knew the technique was going to be clumsy; he simply could not see his target all that well, and it was undoubtedly going to be a fiddly operation.
Although it took a second for the woman to recognise something was amiss, a delicate hand rising quickly to her concealed face as if to swat an insect away and to readjust the veil, she quickly realised that it was a cantankerous bug or poorly-attached garment afflicting her, and after a moment where panic appeared to begin to set in, she lost her brief and awkward conflict with the veil, and it came away at one side, revealing the dark narrow face of its owner.
Seeing her face in its full naked beauty, Thane instantly recognised her as one of Queen Omina's courtly ladies, one of the many that had been flitting about Unifar Temple when he and the others had first arrived on Onderon. And as those alluring eyes locked upon Thane, he knew that she had also finally recognised who he was.
Thane began to feel his own sense of panic begin to creep in as the woman, having now reattached the veil, began jabbering in a quick, hushed tones to the bounty hunters, who were initially nonplussed by her veil antics and her pointing towards the teenage boy sat further in the cantina. The bald man initially struggled to spot Thane, and seemed vaguely disinterested (as confirmed by a grunt) as the noblewoman uttered some comments to him. Thane also saw the glint of a credit chit pass their hands, and he could tell that by the way the man thumped his pint of ale down he had taken up whatever cause she wanted him to.
The bald man gave the hulking Mandalorian woman a shoulder, who at first looked ready to attack her friend, before hearing whatever it was he grumbled at her, apparently deciding to ignore him anyway. To their side, the noblewoman was still eyeing Thane, but looking ready to retreat from the Drunken Drexl.
Thane looked around quickly, seeking some way to avoid a violent confrontation where his lightsaber would be needed, even as his hand rested comfortably on its reassuring brushed metal hilt. Fortunately, he saw one of the Beast Riders about ready to stride past him, a platter of freshly-bought drinks balanced on one hand.
"Hey!" The young Jedi breathed in a forced, hushed tone to the Beast Rider, who only noticed him on his second grunt.
"What do you want?" The Rider asked impatiently, scowling at the young off-worlder interrupting his evening. Several strips of leather, clearly from different animals he had presumably slain, hung from numerous pieces of tattered clothing on the lean man, and his stench fit his appearance.
"The bounty hunters are planning to attack you," he said, waving his left hand in front of the Onderonian native as he planted the Force suggestion within his mind. "You should get your friends together and show them not to mess with the Beast Riders."
Thane saw the man's eyes glaze over as the Force-imbued words rippled into his brain, worming into the evidently-simple workings of his warrior's mind. In some ways, Thane was a bit disappointed at how easily the Beast Rider had been influenced, but was more thankful that the gambit had worked.
"Those bounty hunters are planning to attack us," he repeated mindlessly, but his eyes narrowed once more as his voice took a sharper edge again. "I should get my friends, and show them not to mess with the Beast Riders!"
The man diligently ran over to his fellows on the other side of the bar, whilst Thane rose from his chair and began retreating as nonchalantly as possible, just as the veiled woman did the same some metres away, even as the bald bounty hunter continued to menacingly advance.
To Thane's side, the Beast Riders were already grumbling to each other, and had already began advancing to where the bounty hunters sat in their section of the cantina, a few of the more intoxicated ones already finding blunt objects and other items to use as impromptu weapons. This had not gone unnoticed by the bald man, who had stopped to take stock of the development, surprisingly intelligent eyes darting from Thane to the Beast Riders.
Unable to help himself, Thane smirked, just as yet another bright idea struck the boy. Again, Thane reached out with the Force - only this time he made it more obvious to the bounty hunter, actually raising his hand overtly do so - and twisted it sideways in the direction of a large man who was sat beside the bald man, facing away as he spoke with another patron. Immediately, the unknown drinker's head shot forward into the table with a crack, as if smacked from behind, and he howled in both pain and anger. Almost immediately, the injured man jumped from the table, his chair falling backwards, and he glared into the bald man's face with drunken rage, reddened eyes bulging.
"The kriff you think yer doing?"
Having not taken in the sequence of events that led to the accusation, the bounty hunter gave a confused grimace at the man now addressing him. Flicking his eyes quickly to Thane and then back, he grunted, “Listen, I don’t know what you’re on about but just get out of m…”
Before he even had a chance to finish, the man headbutted the bounty hunter in the face, an audible crack just about loud enough to be heard over the music and general din of the cantina, which now gave way to a brief punctuated silence.
"Hey!" The Mandalorian woman shouted from some metres away, pointing a finger at the headbutter as she finally paid attention to what was happening. "Back off, scum!" And she threw the first of several drinking vessels that would then be thrown that night at her friend's attacker.
All at once, the remaining patrons flung themselves at one another in a mindless frenzy of assaults, a peculiar battle royale starting suddenly between the various groups that had been drinking in the cantina. Primarily, the Beast Riders were lurching towards the bounty hunters, with even the attractive young woman quick to leap onto the bald man to finish what the other drinker had started.
Thane had to be quick to duck under a chair being swung wide by another Beast Rider, even if he was not the actual target. Glass smashed all about him, and in the centre the proprietor was shouting ineffectively for calm from behind his bar, but he quickly retreated as a volley of pints were lobbed towards him. Off to the side, Thane also noticed the veiled woman had now made good her own escape, taking advantage of the carnage the Jedi Guardian had deftly inaugurated in the Drunken Drexl.
Whilst he cursed under his breath that she had escaped, he knew he had enough information for him and Bomoor to act on, and he had suitably pacified the bounty hunters for the moment. Looking back across the room as he did now, he could see three Beast Riders currently hanging off of the gargantuan Mandalorian woman, failing utterly to bring the behemoth of a female down. Had he more time to admire it, Thane might have found himself chuckling at the spectacle, but for the moment, he was more intent on avoiding being hit himself.
Darting down low, he began making his way towards the door he had entered the cantina from, although he quickly found himself rolling to safety to avoid being trampled by an overeager GalactaWerks Marine now pummelling one of his own colleagues.
With Thane now partially shielded from the brawl in the entryway, a familiar presence suddenly appeared at Thane’s side, “Well, I did ask for a signal,” came the impressively calm voice of Bomoor among the chaos, “Although one would have to be blind, deaf and dumb to miss this one.”
Bomoor shifted slightly to one side as several more-timid patrons made for the exit, ignoring the pair of Jedi crouched down by the door. Across the room, the bald bounty hunter had pushed over a table and began using it to push back the group of Beast Riders that were still intent on finishing the job started by Thane’s light mental suggestion. It was a testament to how fragile the peace was between the groups here.
“I am glad to see you are well, but is it too much to hope that you witnessed anything useful before all this erupted?”
Thane jutted a finger upwards quickly, deflecting a flying piece of cutlery away from spiking into his pale forehead before answering. "Oh, I dunno," he said, his cheerful voice just about audible over the din of the cantina brawl as he gestured to the clamouring patrons. "Fine Jedi diplomacy at work!"
TBC
*TRANSLATIONS
waadasla or'dinii = rich fool (roughly)
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