wear your hat tilted just so

Previouslies:

 


• Team Clergy Library Case

  
  Identify, get 'em monologuing, tidy up.
  
  
  

  
  

  The Problem

  
  

  (as we understand it)

  
  

  at least one murder, as part of attempted theft of Ancient Tech-Augur Book.

  
   
  

  Solving:

  
  

  1) We have caught part of the thief team. Nassha, a Witch of Dathomir.

  
  

  She has named the client who commissioned the theft.

  
   
  

  Let's call him "Alex".

  
   
  

  2) Turns out Eborreans can eat Force Wraiths.

  
  

  Life is good.

  
   
  

  
   
  

  Not solved:

  
  

  Captain Alina Zargat: the other person controlling or monitoring the job. We are currently in combat with her.

  
   
  

  In a previous career, she was a Bene Gesserit assassin. She left the order. I get a decent Girl Distraction effect by asking her to explain to me some dearly held BG teachings that never have made sense to me.

  
   
  

  • Why does a female-only religious order have their version of the "Chosen One prophecy" center on a boy?!
    
    Contents of trousers do not determine the resistance capacity of an untrained outsider to The Voice.
    

  
   
   
  

  Complications:

  
   
  

  1. FFS why. What is Sargon's fixation on the Choni? Why are so many resources being dumped into it?
  
   
  
  2. What is the actual content of this antique holobook? Does it tie into any part of the ex-B'omarr sites on Chalcedon?
  
   
  
  3. Jedi are not qualified to be social workers. Crimson Knights are not qualified to be OSHA inspectors. Mentats are not qualified to be Digital Tech engineers.
     
     We can do it when that's needed.
     
     
     But it's not what any of us are really trained to provide, career-pro style.
  
  

  
   
  Also, we have two whole other cases running at the same time.
   
  
   
  

  
  
  
  



---


 


• Team Clergy Sun Spear Case

  
  We have had an eventful ten days and change.
  
  
  

  
  

  The Problems, in summary:

  
   
  

  1) Commissar Celestima

  
   
  

  Temporary solution: She plans to spend the next century or ten being a living history educator, teaching about her culture and religion, and recording all she knows about events and places and cultures in her original life.

  
   
  

  She is Too Important to get involved in physical conflicts. Her mission might suffer for it.

  
   
  

  1a) Remember when we were gonna steal the Sun Spear?

  
   
  

  Are we still reallocating that in the name of the something-or-other?

  
   
  

  Maybe I should talk to our colleagues the CKs about doing that while everyone else at the Library is occupied.

  
  

  Or maybe not.

  
   
  

  The problem is that we don't know enough about what is currently going on with

  
   
  

  2) Lt. Felderk Jessip

  
   
  

  Solve in progress: I keep emphasizing the "HERO" part of his role as an Imperial Officer. Maybe he will find his own way to a more heroic path founded in his original enlistment in the Imperial Navy.

  
   
  

  2a) Lt. Jessip and that "briefcase of tools and data about the Commissar's avatar." He says they are necessary for the ongoing well-being of the Commissar.

  
   
  

  Commissar Celestima did not care about that briefcase. Therefore, it is smuggling something.

  
   
  

  Solving: Fully inform the Tolla Archive Library Security team about the whole mess, be available to serve when they scan it for potential hazards. Make sure both of our Orange Catholic colleagues are on hand because they're going to have much more relevant skills than I am.

  
   
  

  3) A certain "outlaw tech" got the technicians and rating pool interested in mustering out of the Imperial Military. Some of them were talking about asteroid mining. Others just want the next phase of their careers. All of them need their backpay from Coruscant.

  
   
  

  4) I need to see if I can somehow boost the "Death Trooper" set toward having a future. I have no idea whether the Mentat Order would tend toward helping return people to being people (not machines) who happen to have cybernetic parts, or if this entire thing squicks them out. I wonder if these lads would be interested in helping to form a task force for solving the Sukill issue when a cluster is suspected in a particular location.

  
   
  

  5) By the time we get back to Chalcedon, I wonder if we're going to hear that the rest of the team managed to recover both halves of the Missing Warlord Spouses, or if we're going to still have that to dig through on top of the whole "heavy grav droids wearing meatsuits" thing. And the "ragtag fleet" thing. And, and, and

  
   
  

  6) Seriously what is up with Alex and the whole "culturally appropriate the bits of various religions that would feature in a Jedi Quest episode with bad rubber prosthetics and a cheesy suit"? Has he considered top-notch medical care as a means to improve his potential lifespan?

  
   
  
   
  

  
  
  
   
  

 


• Mystic Mob Investigations: Where's Commander Maeques?!

  
  Make this make sense.
  
  
  

  
  

  Why did Commander Ivana Maeques take off a year ago? What warnings did she have? Why didn't the entire Order go on high alert in time to stay alive?

  
  

  Why did she not do what we're doing, go find other uninformed members of the order, and then inform them?

  
   
  
   
  

  
  
  
   
   
  

• When she doesn't have an "audience" Commissar Celestima is much more personable and conversational.
  
  Knight's hypothesis: She is afraid. She knows how alone she is. She knows that she is nowhere near the culture and society she understood. The aggressive Dark Sider is a protective act.

 

• The briefcase did contain a large collection of flimsiplast blueprints for Celestima's humanoid avatar. Essentially they will function as a "medical record".
  
  It also contained, hidden beneath the blueprints, some very old books, datacrystals, and scrolls.
  
  Some of them are in a different alphabet -- one Rook might recognize from the War, but he cannot place.

 

• Every material object to arrive goes through a standard set of scans anyway. They will subject this particular package to digital and nano scans as well, since it's supposed to have Choni contents.

Davish has found records that Commander Ivana Maeques came through here under a different identity, six months ago. She did not access any of the secure records, so info on what searches she was doing are vague at best. A lot on Bendu relics; something to do with Choni but not much, and something about Centerpoint Station in Corellia System. Mostly it was Bendu history, the Bendu timeline -- it looks like she was trying to backtrack the homeworld of the Bendu religion.

The Unboxing

Inside the battered, sticky, scrubbed case is a holobook: a bunch of flimsies, bound together. The cover is sort of leathery, dark with a pearl white trim. On the cover is the image of some sort of bird with its wings spread. In the middle of the bird is a starburst.

The librarians pause often to scan. They say this is indeed The Treatise of Inner Alchemy. It was written by Jedi Master Esam Stanev and Sith Lord Darth Krom.

It seems to be intact.

I think this book has the foundation of the modern kyber crystal.

And also of the modern Sappho Juice.

We never asked the Mentats "what led to the tradition of chugging a smoothie in order to See the Maths?"

We never asked the Solicitors why they train up to be able to wield a heavy "shillelagh of justice", when early in their training they all prove able to sense deceits or lies.

We never asked the Bene Gesserits why they monkey with that "melange" stuff to access the Other Memory.

We figured that we already knew.

I gotta sit down.

Lt. Jessip feels a bit lost. If he can't be an idealistic officer in the Galactic Empire's Katana Fleet, he does not know who he could be.

After a long conversation, interspersed with a bit of unsolicited chaplaining session, he goes to explain his immediate next steps to his officers.

(I have not explicitly told him that the "close confident" in question is Imperial Consort Yeager Lexics Martovich. That will be fun!)

Lt. J has information about a chemical signature, a detectable one, that is created by the existence of the Sukill.

It's time to pack up everyone who's going. We are headed back to Chalcedon system to find Yeager and his retinue.