[IC] Star Wars: Revanchism [Knights of the Old Republic/Mandalorian Wars]

[Sundered Echo]

"Master Dreamer, this is Jedi Padawan Valek Xannoh, requesting coordinates for rally point. I'm surrounded by creatures. Nothing I can't handle, but help would be nice."

The sudden sound of her Padawans voice in Ayessa’s ear was reassuring as all around her chaos broke out. Though neither given by the Jedi Council or chosen by her, she took her role as his master very seriously. His safety while learning the ways of the Jedi was her responsibility, and though he insisted on his capacity to fend for himself, she still couldn’t help but worry. She ducked behind a tree to respond - the Mandos seeming to pay little attention to her as of yet.

“Valek, it is good to hear you still live. Do not activate your comm again, I will find you through the Force. Be prepared to hold off Mandalorian Warriors until I arrive. Remember I would rather see you retreat than die.”

She cut the comm then, resisting the desire to give him a lecture about staying alive. He was a little too quick to reach for his Lightsaber in her opinion, but she had yet to see whether that meant he would fight on when fighting was foolhardy.

Before she could worry about her padawan any more, however, there was an explosion behind her and fragments of wood flew all around her. Several smaller splinters slashed across her face and through her filmy robe, stinging as they drew blood but otherwise not truly harming her. She had been too focused on looking outwards for the other Jedi scattered in the forest to notice the approach of a Mandalorian wearing armour that she could see denoted him as a superior next to the others that had set upon the small group of Jedi.

He evidently did not consider her much of a threat, for if he had he would have been able to kill her with a carefully placed grenade instead of firing a blaster at her hiding place. “Come out and fight me, if you can!” The Mandalorian sneered. Ayessa drew in a deep breath, taking her Lightsaber in hand. This Mandalorian clearly did not consider her a threat, he had probably never seen a Miraluka before, and so she likely had the advantage. Still, she was nervous.

Igniting her Lightsaber with a flick of her thumb, she stepped around the tree - straight into a pair of blaster bolts. Her Lightsaber flicked, quick, concise movements sending the blasts into the ground. The Mandalorian warrior quickly followed through with an overhead strike at her neck using his vibro blade, throwing his blaster aside as he did so. Ayessa’s Lightsaber rose to meet it, her one handed block being pushed back a disturbing amount by the force. The Mando laughed as he swung again, this time at her side. “Is this the best the Jetiise can offer? Crippled weaklings?” The words stung, but not enough to rile Ayessa. She was too focused on his blade.

She blocked the next strike with two hands, using the Force to augment her strength at the moment of contact, and this time she was not pushed back. The Mando responded slightly slower then, not expecting to be so resolutely rebuffed. With his guard open, Ayessa use the chance to quickly finish the fight with a swift slash across his chest. Her lightsaber contacted, but rather than flinching back and falling as she expected, the Mandalorian stepped into the blow, her fast but weak strike merely scoring his chestplate.

He swung his armoured gauntlet at her, Ayessa only barely leaping back in time to avoid the likely bone breaking blow. She had never seen armour so resilient before. Still, it was no match for the Force. As she blocked another swing from her foes sword, she could focused on examining his armour. It was thick, but it seemed to her that there were many concessions made to enhance mobility, leaving large areas lacking the solid plating that turned her strike so easily.

When the Mandalorian next attacked, she did not block, but leapt aside with Force assisted speed, before proceeding to give him a solid telekinetic nudge towards the closest tree. She wasted no time exploiting the manoeuvre, no sooner had the Mando run head first into the tree than Ayessa had taken her saber in both hands and stabbed with all her might into the thin armour beneath his arm. This time the armour hardly slowed down the brilliant blue blade of her weapon. The Mandalorian warrior fell as she withdrew the weapon, the light of his life force going out.

Her duel over, Ayessa turned to face the remaining foes, Lightsaber up and ready to deflect whatever fire came her way. She felt elated, relishing the victory over the foe that had insulted her so, but guilty for feeling that way. Jedi were not supposed to enjoy battle. They fought only when there was no other way. Indeed, here, there was no other way. It was kill or be killed. Still, she could decide how she felt about it later, when the blaster bolts stopped flying. Right now she had to focus on the task at hand - surviving the battle.

[Sep]

Collab between Ellri and Sep, with Echo butting in as a friendly neighborhood Mandalorian Warrior
OOC: Elara and Traest are pushing up a slope, currently in a clearing.

Traest pushed through the jungle, he could occasionally feel himself hit against twigs and other items of the underbrush as they continued uphill. Of course wearing armor it didn’t really bother him. Maybe after this the Jedi will wisen up and wear more than bloody robes was the thought that went through his head at the time. He raised his right hand in a fist and took a knee, he could hear someone up ahead but he couldn’t quite see who it was. Though then he saw the green blades ignite, he was sure that if the sound of warfare was not echoing throughout the jungle he would of heard the characteristic snap-hiss of the blade.

Ears sensitive thanks to genetics, honed by training and assisted by his helmet he heard the characteristic sound of some kind of speeder approaching, turning he saw a skiff approaching. Loaded with Mandalorians, bolts began to fire out of a turret on the vehicle and began climbing the hill towards them. “Sithspit, Get Down!” He dove into the mud, as he began sliding down the hill he stuck out his arm to try and gain purchase, thankfully he caught a stone. With an arm wrenching crunch as his arm was caught between the stone he was holding and another one his momentum was halted. Thankfully he felt that his arm wasn’t quite broken. Raising his blaster with his free hand he began letting of shots in the direction of the speeder.

Elara reacted instantly to the colonel’s shout. Using the Force to aid her movement, she ran after him, barely managing to maintain her footing on the slippery mud. Considering how the underbrush was, she was really glad she’d skipped the outer robes many of the other Jedi favored. She didn’t mind using them on occasion, but trekking through a dense jungle was not the time to do so. The two of them slid down the slope, using the minimal cover provided by the underbrush to its full advantage. Once down and on more safe footing, Elara ignited her lightsaber even as she took cover behind a thick tree trunk. She could vaguely sense that the colonel had taken similar cover higher up the slope, shooting back at the mandalorians with his blaster. She couldn’t see him, though.

Swinging himself round behind one of the bigger stones he basically crouched on it with his back against the slope, however it gave him adequate cover against the incoming fire. He was about to shout a warning to Elara when he noticed the concussion grenade launcher, however at that moment one of the Mandalorians decided to let fly with his jetpack and landing near the top of the slope above him. Traest rolled, out from cover allowing himself to slide backward down the slope. However as he had started with no momentum he did so slowly, and managed to get a couple of rounds off, scorching the Mandalorians armour. He flicked his heavy repeater onto full auto, releasing a volley into the Mandalorian. Knocking him over dead, however once the Mandalorian had tumbled to the bottom of the hill he released a couple of shots into the corpse. Just for good measure.

That was one.

Elara let out a yelp when the very-much dead mandalorian crashed down near her. She tried to use the Force to sense exactly where the other Mandalorians were, but it wasn’t easy. Though all the larger creatures had enough sense to flee, there were billions of other lifeforms just in one small part of the jungle. Her master had not trained her to easily distinguish sentients from the less evolved lifeforms in stressed situations. She did not know whether it was chance, luck or the Force that warned her about the incoming blaster bolt, but she twisted around, hitting it square on with her lightsaber. It deflected back at a slight angle, scorching the trunk of a large tree, but otherwise not having any real effect.

She trusted in the Force, letting it guide her movements, doing a wild series of jumps between the trees, just as often leaping off the trees as off the ground. Within a minute, she stood above the mandalorian that had fired the bolt, and it did not look like he’d seen her. At least he was looking all around as if searching for something. She could see he was alone. While it would have been easy to drop down and kill him, honor demanded that she fight him fairly. It was not the right according to the ways of the Light Side to kill someone that way. Instead, she dropped down, expertly slicing his blaster rifle in two, then immediately leaping to a safe distance.

Traest muttered in his helmet “Bloody Jedi” as the woman merely sliced the Mandalorians weapon rather than ending the fight then and there. However that was her problem now, he’d get back to it if he could. Lining it up he began releasing shots at the skiff again, those upon it made sure they were covered before releasing bolts back at him. Ducking behind the stone again he could feel the heat of several bolts go over his head, and could hear the sizzling in the mud as they made contact. He waited, giving it a thirty count. Even the heavy repeaters couldn’t keep sustained fire for long. Lowering his arm to a patch on his right leg he pulled out a flare, then firing it towards the skiff.

Though the mandalorian looked to have a blaster holstered at his right hip, Elara was a bit surprised when he instead drew a heavy-looking blade that was sheathed at his right hip amidst a series of what she thought had to be curses. She had never seen, or heard of, anything like it. The color of the blade itself was an oily gray, as if the surface of the metal itself contained some sort of oil. She held her saber low to the ground, sure that it would be easy enough to cut him down. No metal weapon could possibly stand up against a lightsaber.

He bowed his head once, then rapidly stepped closer, swinging at her left shoulder with a diagonal slash. Elara was shocked to see how well he wielded the blade, but not nearly as stunned as she was when she blocked the blade and found that her lightsaber did not cut through it. In fact, she could see that it did not even appear to dull the edge. The weight of the blade against hers forced her to bow down a little. All her training had been against others fighting with lightsabers, so a blade with actual mass was virtually incomprehensible to fight. She twisted around, trying to let him press his blade into the ground and swinging around, hoping to slash him across the back.

There was a flash of light as flare lit up, Traests visor immediately darkened to shield his eyes from the light he was focusing upon. Diving to another stone nearby, he stopped once the light faded he could see the damage done. Which was minimal obviously, it just gave the Mandalorians a nice flash meaning the skiff had lost his position. He sighed and aimed his blaster again, aiming high and waited, for them to show their heads. The helmets were likely made of the same material as the rest of the armour however being a helmet it would likely be thinner, and not as heavy.

Unfortunately, the Mandalorian did not go down as far as she thought he’d do. His blade didn’t bury itself in the slightly marshy ground. He seemed to ignore her strike at his back, which she did not understand until it landed, for then it simply slid off, merely scoring the lacquer on its surface rather than breaking through. Instead, he stopped his swing before it struck the ground, swinging his blade two-handed and striking at her blade hard, clearly trying to get her to drop it. Elara had no doubts that if her blade had been as heavy as she thought his was, she would have dropped it, but because the entire weight of the lightsaber lay in its hilt, she managed to hold on. She jumped straight up, using the Force to boost it when he slashed at her abdomen, barely avoiding his blade with her feet. Twisting around mid-air, she landed behind him facing his back. Having learned her lesson from before, she tried to strike at the left armpit, where it looked like the armor could be weaker.

As she landed, Elara was shocked to see that instead of twisting about as all the jedi she’d sparred with had done, the Mandalorian had drawn his blaster and started aiming up and back in the opposite direction. By the time she’d started her swing, he had only begun to twist about in realization that she was not using a jetpack. In a small corner of her mind, she wanted to halt her swing, but could not possibly do so in time. The sound as the blade cut through the underside of the Mandalorian’s shoulder defied description. It reeked of flesh being burned. She stared in shock as the severed limb fell to the marshy ground, the blaster pistol still clutched in its hand.

His shots, while heavy shots and in quick succession at long range they began to arch out. He cursed to himself and wished he had packed a longer range weapon for the mission. That would be a note to keep for later, he couldn’t even use the Mandalorians rifle as he was down near the bottom of the hill where he could occasionally see the light of Elara’s lightsaber. His shot making contact with a helmet of an unlucky Mandalorian he watched as the body fell over. The skiffs population was thankfully dwindling, with two kills to his credit and the other tangled up with Elara the odds were evening. However they weren’t quite as high as he would like yet, but no jumpers were nearby. The closest ally was at the top of the hill playing with some form of wildlife. He ducked behind his now charred and dented stone as a new chorus of blaster fire came at him, this time however the skiff ignoring the Jedi began to re-orientate.

He dove head first into the mud down the hill, ensuring not to land upon his bad arm. Occasionally sticking his hand in to slow him and change his direction, it wasn’t far and at the bottom he rolled to slow himself. Coming out kneeling he could still see the Jedi through the trees who apparently had just disarmed one of the Mandalorians, literally. He ran into tree line as the skiff tried to get a bead on him, pieces of bark broke off and went flying as they were hit by laser bolts. Though a thud resounded as well as an explosion, several… larger chunks of a tree came flying and he hit the dirt, thankfully his armour protecting him from the wooden shards, however he landed on his already hurt arm with another crack in cried out in pain from within his helmet.

He was starting to lose faith in his earlier assessment that it wasn’t broken.

At first Elara didn’t know what to do next, but when the Mandalorian warrior turned about screaming in rage, swinging widely with his blade, she had no choice. She continued fighting him. His rage made him much harder to fight, for it gave him much greater strength. She tried to fight back, but the aggressive ways of the Ataru form simply couldn’t cope with his assault. having no plausible way of defeating him, she turned to the Force, lashing out with a telekinetic blast, pushing him back hard. She could possibly have continued her attack then, but dared not do so. Instead she jumped straight up, leaping into the trees, using a mixture of Force-assisted acrobatic jumps and Force-aided speed to get away. Moving rapidly in a round-about fashion she eventually landed shortly behind the Colonel, taking cover beside him.

[Nib]

Joard turned, his thumb moving toward the ignition switch on his lightsaber. Before him was a man with blue hair, his blaster and lightsaber drawn. Seeing the lightsaber, Joard moved his thumb away from the ignition switch on his, relaxing slightly at the sight of his friend and rival. A small smirk worked its way over his light golden features, and he had opened his mouth to speak when he heard the sound of a lightsaber shutting off, the roar of a beast followed by the roar of another beast, and finally the sound of claw against flesh. It had happened quick, and Joard was expecting to turn and see the mangled form of his new Padawan between two beasts. Instead, he turned and saw his Padawan talking to the Trandoshan Republic soldier and the dead form of the beast that Nero was facing off with. The young Knight heaved a great sigh as he turned his back on his friend and walked through the brush toward Nero.

“Thank you for saving my Padawan, Trandoshan. I owe you one. Nero, are you alright?”

Joard looked Nero up and down, inspecting him for an serious wounds. After inspecting his Padawan, Joard turned back to Tamare to speak to him.

“Tamare, am I glad to see you. Where did you land at?”

The sounds of blaster fire could be heard off in the distance, and sounded as though they were getting louder and closer all the while. Joard looked around the clearing, taking in the three friendlies. Despite being a soldier, the Trandoshan had handled himself well with the indigenous beast of Gthrak. He could prove useful in battle as they made their way through the jungle, but the question was “Which way should they head”. There was the objective to think about, but Joard held more stock in his fellow Jedi. The Jedi could very well change the tide of the battles against the Mandalorians. Of course, Joard would also do what he could to help the Republic soldiers as well. Staring off toward the sound of fighting, Joard brought his wrist up and tried to tune into several comm frequencies. He managed to tune into a frequency in time to catch the tail end of a message.

“... unknown. Lots of… trees.”

The fragment was followed by a reply shortly after.

"Leto, this is Knight Zhiss. I am with your master. I want you to hide yourself as best you can. Once you do that, concentrate and focus on your master, so we can use the force to find you. Do not call out and stay off the comms, the Mandos are probably already hunting us. May the Force be with you."

With that, the comm went silent. Joard continued staring off in the direction of the blaster fire. That must be the Mandalorians hunting the Republic forces. Joard wondered whether they knew the Jedi had finally joined the fray in order to help the Republic forces. He slowly turned his back on the sounds of battle and looked at each of his three allies.

“You all heard that. There’s a hurt Padawan somewhere, and the Mandalorians are scouring the jungle for us. He sounded hurt. We need to find him. It’s hard to tell how close Zhiss and her group are to him. We could be closer, and even if we aren’t, we still need to try and find others who survived the crash before the Mandalorians do. Are we all in agreement?”

[Kiddo]

“We have one wounded in the trees. They’re coming down. Do something,” one of the other Jedi informed Lu. She squinted at him for a moment, taking offense at the last part of his response, but then turned to engage the enemy as a blaster bolt brought her present situation back to the fore. They could hash out the chain of command later, if the idiot survived.

“Only about a dozen enemy signatures, Lu. I’ll watch your back,” Wolf assured her. Lu just nodded and crouched onto the ground, flipping the bipod into position under her rifle’s barrel and then lying down behind it. She tested the trigger lightly, listening to the capacitor charge in response and then begin discharging with a whine that sounded almost like disappointment. It was a good gun.

The Jedi were apparently keen on taking the fight into melee range, for whatever odd reason. Had they not been given blasters? The terrain did not really lend itself to melee, after all; too many roots to trip on and trees from which to get ambushed. But it seemed that such was the method of a Jedi, and Lu would just have to deal with it. Firing into the skirmish wasn’t an option, certainly, so she scoped out some other way of being useful.

A few of the Mandalorians were doing things the proper way: keeping range and providing suppression fire that the Jedi knocked away with alarming ease. They’d make good targets. Lu picked one with a particularly nasty-looking rifle, and squeezed the trigger. Her rifle hummed to life, the whine turning into a muffled roar until the click of blaster gas being released and the ensuing plasma explosion emptied the capacitors completely. She aimed for the neck area, a difficult target but one of the more-susceptible ones in Mandalorian armor. Her shot strayed a bit off of the mark, but it really did not matter; a normal rifle shot would have been deflected by most of the plating, but nothing but the thickest pieces could block her not-quite-legal shots, and the shoulder pads were not the thickest parts. The seering shot of superheated particles punched a clean hole through the enemy’s shoulder and got didn’t come out the other side. For a moment he writhed about, dropping his rifle, but he quickly collapsed as the ricocheting projectile did its job. He was either dead or seriously wounded, and either way, he was out of the fight.

As her weapon began cycling to prepare for the next shot, Lu changed her position, sitting up against her tree to position herself better for a throw. She tossed one of her chakram toward her enemies before regaining her sights. The Frisbee-like disk flew past the mark, but it didn’t matter so much; it just kept going, and collided hard with a tree, deforming so as to bounce back the way that it had come. This time, it was on target, and suddenly the edges burst to life with plasma. The Mandalorian’s armor absorbed the hit with nothing but a deep gouge, but there was still plenty of energy left in the throw, and the disk bounced away with its cutting edges off, veering for another tree to assault its target once more. It wasn’t a particularly effective attack; whereas Lu’s rifle was capable of piercing it, the Mandalorian armor was certainly a match for the weak lightsaber-like edge of her chakram. That wasn’t the point, though; the weapon was doing its job wonderfully. The target, who had been unleashing his blaster-bolt fury on the Jedi, had turned to see what the heck had just slammed into him, and his distraction was enough to give Lu the opening that she needed to put him down with a well-placed shot.

“Behind you, Lu,” Wolf informed her, activating his thrusters for a moment so that she skid a couple meters out of the way of her would-be assassin’s vibro blade. How he had gotten back there without her notice, she did not know, but Wolf had eyes on the back of her head. Good thing, too, else she might have gotten a nasty stabbing. Sure, she was wearing full body armor, but it was not quite the quality of Mandalorian stuff.

Lu dropped her rifle, letting Wolf pull it into its harnessed position, and grabbed for her other chakram as she stood. This was bad; her enemy was better-armed for close combat, and better armored for it, too. Her weapon ignited to life, the three edges where she wasn’t holding it glowing with plasma while the other one stayed nice and safely off. She caught the vibro blade’s edge with the chakram this time, deflecting it harmlessly to the side. That was really all that she could do, though; her offensive capabilities were restricted by his superior reach, and so she quickly backpedaled away in the hopes of getting some backup.

[HeySeuss]

Jedi knew telekinesis; and that's why when a grenade came sailing for Zhiss and she saw it, she instinctively hit it with the force and redirected so it was sailing right back at the sender -- it was an instinctive move from a gifted user of the technique, but it landed right among some of the Mandos and went off. It was a sonic grenade that went off with a tremendous sound even outside of the blast radius, meant to scramble her and her allies. Her attention was already elsewhere as the troopers with the blaster weapons near Valsil opened fire on the enemies, to the greatest danger in the force.

Not Knight Shayal, as it turned out, but another republic trooper, being pressed by a Mando with a vibro-blade. The technique wasn't up to her standards, but the man was pressing the Selonian trooper back.

Zhiss had time to line up her stroke, through the man's jetpack, which cut the controls and sent them man flying up of his own accord, presumably screaming within his helmet. Suddenly, silenced reigned -- the troopers changing used blaster packs for fresh and full reloads, Valsil's padawan brought down from the tree, and a gathering inward. And some of them were looking her way, so she gave them the plan, "Gather up supplies off the dead Mandos, whatever you think you need, but do it very quickly, because we are headed for the objective. We will rendezvous with any other friendly survivors en route. If you have commo, use it. We need to hurry, we made a lot of noise and lit some fires. We need to be away fast."

She was already pulling the belt off a Mandalorian corpse -- some sort of blaster weapon, which she wasn't as keen on, but macrobinoculars, a datapad and miniature holoprojector that she'd inspect later, extra rope and other things that seemed useful. A few grenades. Others did the same, grabbing what they found essential. Zhiss had an idea of what would be needed here, but the military types knew better precisely what they needed in field conditions. She tossed a medical kit over to Valsil for Leto, but that was about all they could do for the Padawan, given the short time. They had to move. The idea of another firefight lent urgency to the quick movement and hasty organization and then they were on their way, Leto on the back of his master.

[Renny]

Nero Acerbi

Nero rubbed his nose, the pain of bumping into the evolutionary muscled and animal mass was a bit much. He hoped that it wouldn't bruise over. “Forgive me for... umm, not pay attention,” he offered in apology. “The force is amassing with emotions of warfare. Rage, anger, and bloodlust.”

When he heard a voice call out to him, he could final feel the all too obvious force users around him. He took note of Joard but even more so of the blue haired man behind him, his uniqueness basically screamed for attention. He didn't look strong at all but he knew from his training to never allow first opinions to be his last.

He nodded curtly at his Jedi Master, the newly appointed Knight notably less than Master Rose in various areas. But he was still a Padawan, his place was beside his Master, learning and taking notes of the proper etiquette of being a Jedi. So he had no place or words in the decisions of Master Joard.

He rubbed the nape of his neck, his pale features twisting a bit at the prodding disturbance of war. It sent a fresher tremor of fear down his back. He wasn't guaranteed his life out here, with a bunch of randomly placed and ill-prepared Jedi and Padawans, it was a combination of lights and matches, fuses that would soon detonate. He just hoped he wasn't no where near it when it did.

[Celeste]

Tamare hummed and shrugged at Joard's question, lightsaber still in his hand, ready for the sudden appearance of new foes. He tried not to stare too much at the corpse of the creature his fellow Padawan had slain. The first glance had made him sick to his stomach and filled him with a sort of guilt. It was not fair that the non-sentient creatures of this planet fell victims to the madness of war.

He lit his saber and nodded when Joard proposed searching for the lost Padawan. At this point, Tamare felt that following the Knight was the only thing he could do, at least if he wanted to live through this battle and achieve something.

Then, he nodded towards the other Padawan, the one with pale hair, and offered a flimsy smile, forced but necessary. He did not trust any of those present to hear him speak, so gestures would have to do. So far, his companions all seemed capable and committed to this battle, which was a good sign that he was in good company, at least so long as they did not too much ask of him.

Tamare's ankles still hurt, but in his heart he felt the need to move, to crawl his way through the mud, the ponds, the rocks and the vegetation, to jump from one branch to the next.

It is just like the undercity.

The thought escaped from him before he could restrain it, and it brought him goosebumps.

And just like in the undercity, death lurks around every corner.

[HeySeuss]

Zhiss had gotten rid of her outer robes in the first few minutes of landing on Gthrak-- they were wet, they were in the way, and this place was a hot, steaming mess of a jungle similar to her homeworld, and her ancestry was sufficiently aquatic and reptilian; the water simply didn't bother her that much. She'd taken the equipment harness off one of the enemies. That included some sort of military ration, which she chewed on during the momentary stop for energy purposes, to replace what she'd sweated out, and purified water, which she drank gratefully. There was no telling what sort of alien flora lived in the water, and the basic precaution of not drinking the water. As she took care of the body's necessities, she looked over the cliff face that the Bothan wanted to climb, her eye finding the handholds and the spots. Certainly, with grappling cords, it was entirely possible. "Grapples won't go that far up. You'll need a lead to drill in anchor points. Once I start, get your next best climbers up there to run the ropes. I suggest you have Jedi do this for your men." Traest would hate that suggestion, but it made perfect sense to Zhiss -- so much of their training was athletic, and the Force allowed them to feel their way up on a climb in the dark. The Bothan no doubt intended one of his own to lead the way, but it was Zhiss that got there first. She trained as a guardian her entire waking life, climbed as a matter of athletic training and as one of the few pleasures the Jedi got to enjoy. She knew what she was doing when she fired the grapple to a likely point, just as she clamped the rope to her belt, which became her harness, via carabiners. She scaled quickly, being only lightly encumbered, but wearing gloves and boots suited to the purpose of climbing. As she made the ascent, using the grapple rope as her safety line once she got above the anchor point, she wedged spring-loaded cams into the wedges, or drove plasma-assisted spikes into the rock face itself, often moving laterally over the rock to create multiple anchors for the lines, for the next line of climbers to run rope through -- after all, they'd have to get their wounded up as well as the fit, and that meant a degree of foresight. Even despite her experience with lead climbing, it was a laborious process that required her concentration. Her muscles burned somewhere around two thirds of the way up, even with the good field boots and the gripper gloves, both broken in from prior use, but the Jedi conditioning held -- she found the places in the rock face to cling to as she managed to finally put fingers on the top of the cliff, and haul herself up carefully, head coming over the top of the cliff face finally...and eye level with the slavering jaws of some sort of slavering beast, a fanged, furless thing whose reek constituted a direct assault on her nostrils even as the drool seemed to drip liberally from its jaws...

[mdk]

Valsil didn't sense the danger at the top of the cliff until it was already on top of Zhiss. A bother. His focus had been on the troopers below -- tired after the battle, and having suffered losses across the full spectrum of their regiment, they would -- he expected -- no doubt experience low morale and broken moods. He policed their minds, watching for despair. If he had found it, he would have attempted to lift the soldier back, or at least isolate him from the others so that the emotion could not spread. But no such necessity had yet arisen. And while that might have said much for the preparation of the Republic army, it also meant that Valsil's silent vigil had distracted him from the task ahead, and left him unprepared to help Zhiss. With Leto on his back, climbing was slow -- he'd nearly reached the half-way point, but no further. The Padawan was in poor condition from his fall, and the team could ill afford to lose another Jedi to such a wound. That meant that helping Zhiss was the top priority. The Padawan would have to wait. With deft hands, Valsil made a knot in the climbing rope and, with a feat of balance, swung Leto off his back, and lashed him onto the cliff using his own harness. Leto dangled there helplessly, but it seemed the lesser of two bad options -- to carry him further would slow Valsil down, and to risk another Jedi was to risk the mission, and many more lives. "Someone will get you," he said in flat monotone, nodding to Leto with barely a pause. He barely paused before continuing the climb. Leto was limp on his knot, looking almost lifeless, but secure. Now severed from his safety restraints, Valsil was free to pick an alternative climbing route. He selected a series of branching handholds that terminated at the lip of the cliff, roughly thirty meters from the grapple point. It would be a riskier climb even with a rope, but success meant reaching the top at a safe distance from the beast. He hurried. More than once in his haste, he nearly missed his grip, sometimes dangling by a single hand, but usually just settling back into his previous position and trying again. He moved fast, but it was a long climb. Fortunately Valsil seemed to pick up speed as he climbed, as the force's guidance and his own limitations came closer in line. A hundred more feet. Sixty. Twenty. Ten. The fighting had already begun, and it was some distance away. Valsil crossed the threshold onto solid ground, drenched in sweat but unphased. He barely paused. Some part of his mind warned him that he might begin to tire soon, but there were more immediate threats. His saber flew into his hands, and he lit both ends, hoping to look as large as possible. He tried to attract the monster's attentions with a force-assisted roar, with marginal success -- then he ran into the fray. His only goal was to create room for the others to reach the top, so he fought for position right at the top of the rope, pushing the creature back with glancing blows. Once, the beast attacked a little too earnestly, and Valsil could only brace for the impact of claws and flesh -- but the swipe curved away at the last second, and the only impact Valsil felt was from severed fingers and hot, black blood. It howled, enraged but disabled for the moment. He'd bought a few seconds, and he used them to offer hands to anyone still on the ropes. "Hurry," was all he said.

[Ellri]

Elara had been among the last to start the climb. It wasn’t that she was afraid to climb up, but rather that she could climb quicker than most. She couldn’t quite deny that she was also a touch afraid of what might be on top. She’d scaled cliff faces in the past, but never while under fire, and not on a world quite like this one. The sheer height of the cliff alone made it stand out, both literally and figuratively. But eventually, after watching the others start climbing and seeing some sort of disturbance after the first two reached the top, she lost all patience. She had no idea what the disturbance was, but knew it couldn’t be good. Taking a few steps to the side to be sure to not risk being in the way of the others, she meditated for a few moments on the Force, then crouched down, only to leap many times her own height straight up, grabbing onto the cliff face. Once sure of her footing, she leapt up once more, leapfrogging up the cliff face until she stood on top, two score paces to the left from everyone else. The ones who had reached the top, at least. Most were still climbing. She took in the scene quickly. So far as she could determine, there weren’t any mandalorians up here. At least not yet. She did not, however, like how exposed they were up at the top of the cliff. And then there was that creature Knight Valsil appeared to be dealing with. Even from just a few seconds of observing, Elara saw how his attacks were almost mechanical, as if read from a manual rather than from actual experience. She didn’t know what the creature was, but couldn’t take the chance that it might be a smart and/or trained predator. textbook offenses were decent in mock duels, but not in actual combat. Both her old master and her husband had taught her that bit. After the knight managed to injure the creature through luck more than anything else, she did not hesitate for a moment to rush toward it. It had drawn back momentarily in shock, but a wounded creature was often even more dangerous than an unharmed one. Once again bolstering her movement with the Force, she half-ran, half-leapt towards the creature, igniting her lightsaber midair. Had the long-tailed creature been facing her, it could quite possibly have appeared as if she came out of nowhere. Since it wasn’t facing her, she really did come out of nowhere. Unfortunately, just before she could land a decapitating blow, the creature shifted position, turning slightly and moving forwards. Elara should’ve predicted that, but had not done so. Instead of killing the creature, her vicious slash instead chopped off most of its tail. A mere moment later, she was shocked to see that the creature was prevented from turning about to attack her. She didn’t see who did it, but someone used the Force to yank at the creature, throwing it well out from the cliff face, whereupon it discovered that air provides a rather significant lack of support for feet. It then plummeted down and would no doubt die upon impacting the ground below. She deactivated her lightsaber, clipping it onto her belt again. She was a bit tempted to grab the tail as a souvenir, but realized that would be a bit inappropriate. Instead she turned around and walked to the edge of the cliff, intent upon helping Knight Valsil and the others already up top to get the rest up. Unfortunately, just as they started with that again, some mandalorians far below had spotted them, for at that time the laser bolts began striking all around them. “Typical…” she muttered. The bolts weren’t particularly well-aimed, but a stray shot could be just as lethal as a well-aimed one if it were to hit the right, or rather wrong, place.

[Celeste]

Climbing the cliff face made Tamare feel strangely nostalgic. The great wall of stone, dirt and roots was not nearly as tall as the rusty metal towers of the undercity, but it was steep and hard, and for a moment he felt that same wonderful, exhilarating exertion he had felt as a child, crawling his way towards Uscru. The walls of Uscru had not been swarming with enraged animals, and this was another battle Tamare did not feel like fighting. He kept climbing, hands delighting in the feeling of the cliff's rough textures, feet more comfortable than they had been in years with only the tips of his toes keeping him upright. Had he not been in the middle of a battle, he would have taken his time and enjoyed the sudden life that was filling him, but this was a battle, and he was a Jedi, and he had to find Koryan, so he moved fast. He reached the top as the poor beast plummeted to the earth below and Mandalorians began to shoot at him and his fellow Jedi, and gladly took Valsil's hand while he unholstered his blaster and prepared to shoot. It was not the most accurate of blasters, but it would be enough to provide cover for whatever Jedi had yet to climb all the way up. He kneeled by Valsil and shot down, aiming as best he could while bolts passed him by. Many shots missed their targets, but those that did not fulfilled their purpose, giving the people around him some reprieve.