Shiva

Veritas Lux Mea

Captain Maria Thorne & Judge

---

Maria nodded at the pilot.
"Alright. I'll come back and check on things again in a while, but for now I'd better go update our passenger. Let me know the second something blips on our scans."

As she had done with the others, Maria left without waiting for a response. The captain wasn't one to stick around and chitchat (unless you got her relaxed), and even less so in circumstances like they were currently facing. She marched down the catwalk to the galley.

The warm scent of coffee drifted down the hall, getting stronger as she approached where she'd last seen their guest, and silently Maria thanked whatever god still looked after her. Just the smell was enough to lift her spirits slightly.
"Seems someone tampered with our fuel line," Maria informed the Judge as she entered. "It's slowed us down a bit, but we should reach our destination relatively on time."

The Judge, having been quietly working on his second cup of coffee, looked up with his yellow eyes as the captain addressed him.
Time was irrelevant to him. He had plenty enough of that - all he needed to do now was wait.
He had even more time now, since that bomb had sucessfully achieved what it had been intended to do.
"Your crew is incompetent if they didn't think to check for tampering before we left."
He sipped his coffee.
"Then again, perhaps the oversight was intentional."

If the captain was offended by what he said, it didn't register on her face. Or perhaps she was simply too preoccupied with obtaining some of the precious energy-restoring nectar she'd been craving to pay much attention to what he said.

"I'm partly to blame as well. I should've checked to make sure all the proper scans had been done," She replied, pouring some whiskey into her mug along with the coffee. "As far as their intentions, I can't see anybody in the crew having much motivation to blow up the ship. Not that I'm completely ruling that option out. More than likely, it was one of those low lifes back on The Hub."

"More than likely?"
The man's tone was amused, possibly even scoffing.
"You haven't done much in the way of investigation."
It wasn't an insult - more of a simple observation.

"Well right now my first concern is making sure we're not complete sitting ducks if some pirates decide to raid our crippled ship, and making sure I don't pass out."

There might have been a slight edge to her voice, but it was nothing personal against the Judge. The poor woman was just tired. While she finished fixing her beverage, the captain muttered under her breath about 'damn yahoos' that wouldn't give her a break and 'cowards trying to blow her up.'

She took a long gulp of the whiskey/coffee mixture.

"My engineer is currently trying to fix our fuel line. When that's done, I'll have him help with identifying some aspects of the explosive. Might help me pinpoint it's origin. At the moment, though, I am going to sit down for ten minutes and drink my damn coffee."

As if to emphasize her point, the woman plopped down at the table adjacent to his.

The Judge nodded slowly, gazing into his own mug.
"One of the few things worth waking up for," he replied.

She snorted, the corners of her mouth curling upwards in a small smile.

"I can definitely agree with you on that."

It didn't take long for her mug to find itself empty, and so she got up again to refill it, using the same mixture. She held the bottle of whiskey up and looked at the Judge, evidently offering to share with him.

Why not?
After all, he was alone out here. No one around to tell him he couldn't drink "on duty".
It was a short move of seats for him after he took up his mug to sit down across from the captain.
He wasn't familiar with this kind of alcohol but hey - liquor is liquor.
he accepted the proffered bottle and topped off his coffee with it before handing it back to the woman, silently going back to drinking.

Maria had half expected him to reject the bottle, but was pleasantly surprised to see that he didn't see to be as rigid as the last Judge she'd been around. Man wouldn't even look at her without sneering. Then again, it probably helped that this one wasn't currently on duty, and they weren't in his jurisdiction.

"Don't tell the doc. He'll probably lecture me about 'ruining my health,'" She said, then added mostly to herself, "I wonder if he knows how much this bottle has saved the health of some of the crew..."

"I don't know what you think I'll be telling him."

Maria smiled. "I knew there was a reason I didn't hate you."

Yes, I am for real

Welcome to the Guild! Hope you enjoy it ^-^ If you have any questions about how stuff works, feel free to shoot me a DM. I've been on here for a few years now, so I like to think I know my way around and could be of some help.

Veritas Lux Mea

Captain Maria Thorne

---

While her pilot and engineer flirted argued, Maria listened. An eyebrow had arched in a disapproving manner as the woman gazed at Ansgar. Their antics were usually amusing, but at this particular point in time, Maria had little patience left for foolishness. They needed to get the ship back up and running before pirates came and pounced on them like buzzards on a rotting corpse. They were limping along, sure, but they weren't exactly in a position to be fending off raids. The Captain waited until the rest of the crew had their say, and then flipped on the comms.

"If the pair of you are done circling and pointing fingers at each other, let's get back to fixing the half dead ship, shall we?" It was more of a statement than a question. She decided to ignore the passive aggression from Kev towards their doctor, and continued on without waiting for anyone to answer. "Andrea, continue scanning for vessels in the surrounding area. If someone decides to take advantage of our situation, I'd like to have a little advanced warning." She flipped off the comms. "Ansgar, take a look at the damage and see how fast you can jury-rig something to get us to the Glao port. I don't care if you actually do have to use bendy-straws, figure something out and get back to me."

Having said her piece, the captain turned around and went to go check on their cargo and make sure none of it was damaged. The last thing they needed right now was to be forced to reimburse a disgruntled Glao after screwing up their merchandise, on top of having to buy parts to fix their ship. Maria was muttering a string of profanity as she trudged back up the catwalk to the cargo hold, where she proceeded to start cracking open crates and check on what was within. For a moment her gaze floated over to a small corner where the supplies for the rebellion were hidden behind a metal panel, but Maria didn't dare check on them right now. If the Judge caught wind of the weapons, there was a slight chance he may want to intervene. Best to check on them when there was a little less excitement going on.

Having made sure that their Glao cargo was secured and undamaged, the captain walked up the steps of the cargo hold balcony to go check on the bridge.

"Andrea, how far did we actually manage to make it before some bastard crippled us?"

Shiva's old art thread

My newest OC! A drow druid by the name of Vierna.

Veritas Lux Mea

Captain Maria Thorne

---

There was an almost comedic pause between the ship shuddering, Ansgar calling, and Maria reacting. As the explosion hit and the metal of the hull whined, the captain heard dishes in a nearby cabinet clattering against one another. No doubt a couple of them would be broken. The entire ship shuddered around them, like an animal that had just been wounded, and Maria took just a moment to let out a sigh. There was no rest for the weary. When Ansgar's voice rang out, Maria stood up and ran in the direction of the engine room, not sparing so much as a glance towards Kev or the Judge before disappearing down the corridor.

Her pace slowed to a walk as the engine room drew near, and she took second to observe Ansgar to make sure he didn't have any injuries. When convinced of the engineer's health, Maria looked into the engine room, deciding against actually entering before getting the facts. Before speaking to Ansgar, Maria turned on the comms to respond to Andrea.

"The passenger, Kev, Ansgar and I are all fine," She replied, and then the captain turned to the engineer. "What the hell happened to my ship?"

The tone was little sharper than she intended, but the anger wasn't directed towards Ansgar. He was good at his job, and never would have been incompetent enough to cause this big of a problem. Whatever happened to the ship, Maria had the sneaky suspicion that it wasn't an accident. Someone had messed with her ship, and when she found out who they were going to meet her wrath.

This wasn't exactly the first time someone had tampered with The Veritas. A year or two back, when Maria had just started to get a crew together, some useless bag of Glao scum thought it would be a fun idea to try and murder everyone on the ship by means of a bomb in the Galley. Thankfully, the bomb was a dud, but that didn't stop Maria from nearly tearing the little beast limb from limb when it was discovered. If it hadn't been for her better judgement she might have thrown him out the airlock. Alas, she simply turned him over to the authorities on his home-world to be imprisoned for his entire lifetime, which would probably not be very long given the state of Glao prisons. Okay, maybe her "better judgement" was slightly influenced by a drive of vengeance that just happened to be of a legal means this time, but that's not the point.

Maria had half a mind to wonder if the Judge could have been involved, but what reason would he have to sabotage the ship? They were out of his jurisdiction, and he had no evidence that any of them had done anything against his government. Not to mention he would have endangered his own life. No, it didn't make sense that the Judge was the perpetrator. Whoever it was, they were more than likely on the hub. The captain wracked her mind, trying to think of the people in this area of space she'd pissed off who would like to harm her and the crew. The list was somewhat longer than she would like to admit. Government officials and other humans notwithstanding, they had stepped on a lot of toes as they tried to build the rebellion, and she wouldn't put it past any of them to try and kill the crew. The universe had been a relatively quiet place before the humans came along, and not a lot of people were thrilled about the ruckus the rebellion was starting to make.

At the very least, no one had been seriously injured. Cookie had even emerged from some cranny where he'd been hiding, and was now rubbing on Maria and Ansgar's legs, evidently wondering what the humans had done this time.

(Closed Due To Adulting & Poor Managment)

Still wanting to join this. Crap just hit the fan irl and I'm just starting to get things put back in place again lol

Veritas Lux Mea

The captain had taken a moment to apply the medicine Kai had prepared to the burn on her arm. Damn thing. One small moment of clumsiness, and now she was going to be feeling it for days. Maria wasn't exactly accident prone, but recently she'd been feeling more and more fatigued, and had been getting somewhat less graceful in her day to day life. Nothing major, just enough to be annoying. She hadn't given herself much time off as of late. Between the rebellion, her crew, the ship, and her family, there had been no time left for herself, and it was all starting to catch up with her. One of these days she'd need to take a nice, long, relaxing vacation. Unfortunately that day was not today. However, she might be able to make room for a nap later.

"Thanks, Andrea," Maria replied to the pilot. "Let me know when we get close to Aspen."

The Glao would likely be rather grumpy about a human ship "invading" their territory, so Maria wanted to be on the bridge in order to calm their nerves and make sure they didn't get blown up. As fond as she was of their lovely pilot, the captain didn't think she would be very diplomatic, especially given her current mood. Speaking of that... Maria stuffed the cream in her pocket and started towards the galley.

The Judge had, of course, informed her of his intentions, but she still had an odd feeling in regards to him. Maria would never admit it to the crew, but he made her uneasy. Thankfully she was an expert at repressing and hiding emotions. At any rate, she still wanted to see if she could draw any information out of the man. As long as it didn't put her crew in danger, Maria didn't really care what the Judge was up to, but she still wanted to give herself another opprotunity to get a read on him. She entered the galley just as Kevej offered their guest some refreshments.

"Seems to me like our friend's coffee cup is empty, Kev," She said, sitting down at one of the tables in the room. "Personally, I could probably drink a whole pot of coffee by myself right about now."

(Closed Due To Adulting & Poor Managment)

I'm just trying to come up with a post I'm not completely ashamed of 😅

(Closed Due To Adulting & Poor Managment)

@Silent Showers Awesome! Thanks!

(Closed Due To Adulting & Poor Managment)

Definitely want to be a part of this. It seems really chill and relaxed. In fact, I'm pretty sure my blood pressure went down 5 points just from reading that intro lol

Just one question. Would you like us to make a minimal character sheet, or can we just kind of jump in?