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i also did be doin it


The locals were a people long plagued by conflict, their planet constantly commandeered for use as a battlefield. Brask knew little about their civil wars or their role in the wider Separatist movement of the Clone Wars, only that they certainly had a lot of leftover military material to make use of during the most recent siege.

They were a culture of civilians forced into soldiery, and Brask felt bad for them. His pity had been expressed through attempts to keep the Telosians out of the crossfire. While he had once taken part in operations where collateral damage was the goal it wasn't something he particularly enjoyed.

Once all the blaster fire had come to an end the veteran mercenary began to settle into his new, shared quarters. There was only so much space that could be spared for the disparate rebel hoard so slumber parties were the rule rather than the exception. No matter. One of the first lessons a soldier learned was to ignore any discomfort they felt sharing space with other people.

He had been in the bathroom cleaning out his eye socket when the first message came in, pulled away from the mirror with unkempt fur and the gaping hole in his head uncovered. The MMS was neither a surprise nor an annoyance, the Empire had enough resources to hire an army of competent slicers and Brask had no one to contact that wasn't a superior. A moratorium on comms wasn't the end of the world.

The second MMS was more concerning. Whatever weak point the Empire had found must have been a big one if it required explanation by both the Commander and his pet spook. But there was no use guessing at it when all would be explained in a matter of hours. Brask put the situation out of his mind for the time being, focusing instead on taking a well-deserved rest after such a hard-fought battle.

The roof of their quarters was as good a spot as any to sit for lunch, the Shistavanen parking himself next to his fellow Mando without bothering to ask for permission. A bit of old paint flaked off the side as he swung his armored legs over the edge, dangling his feet above the city.

"Glad you got out in one piece, old timer."

Alric was similar to him in many ways: a middle-aged veteran and a stickler for the old ways of Mandalore, not one of the spineless "pacifists" that had run their society into the ground. Even if they were from different clans and houses Brask saw him as a brother.

"Our luck'll run out eventually, but not yet eh?"

His own meal was less varied than the Human's, just lumps of near raw meat in some sort of off-white sauce. Simple and unappealing to look at, just like Brask himself.

@Psyker Landshark
With some luck I’ll have posted tmw or the day after


Took me long enough, thanks Stuff for letting me steal your template

EDIT: oh crap @Nytem4re i just realized you beat me to a explosives expert type, the woe of taking too long to make an app lmao. Assuming we're both accepted I can change Brask to fill a different role if you'd like

Ki'Tlex



Ki'Tlex had long ago figured out the secret to dealing with long trips in cramped ships: sit down, shut up and get some sleep. Unless you were actively dodging asteroids, missiles, or solar flares there was very little work that went into piloting when in open space, leaving you with far too much time and not enough to spend it on. Complaining wouldn't do more than annoy other travelers, making it a good way to get pushed out the airlock but a bad way to cope. It was better to suffer boredom in silence to keep rising tempers from joining the miserable affair.

Kottle had not learned that lesson yet. Whatever rudimentary thoughts passed through the infant's head were expressed frequently and loudly, gurgling screams and screechy groans echoing off the bulkhead whenever they weren't sleeping. Ki had made the requisite apologies for their charge's behavior which was about as much as they could do.

The infant cried out again as the ship approached Mother, the rudimentary rise and fall in pitch telling Ki two things: Kottle was learning the basics of their shared language, and they were hungry. The adoptive parent sought to encourage Kottle's growing vocabulary, answering the pitiful whining with proper whistling. A remarkable amount of information could be conveyed through the bird-like language but Ki kept it simple: <<Quiet down little one. I will feed you.>>

That was a process best done hidden under their cloak. Regurgitation was the natural way Kel'ta fed their young but humans were prone to being weird about it.

They emerged just as Nero the Self-Assured answered Alan the Pale's question, wiping their mouth clean with the back of a hand while the other three busied themselves in reswaddling Kottle. "It depends on the crew and the circumstances. I and you are in civilized space right now, a military-class vessel bristling with weapons would make any half-decent sensor array light up like fireworks. If they are smart they'll likely be in a secondary shuttle, something inconspicuous. Maybe even multiple ships that will split up and meet somewhere later."

The idea of parity between pirate and assassin made them hum, their equivalent of laughter.

"If the assassin in question is bad? Perhaps. Pirates expect open combat, even if they don't want it. They choose the wealthiest targets that are the least defended so that they can enrich themselves with minimal risk. More importantly, they are largely self-centered. But an assassin is taking a side in some conflict or another, even if only for money. They seek to kill someone of political or martial significance. An assassin who takes no sides is called a spree killer, and they're generally frowned upon."

They were highly qualified to speak on the subject. After all, they themselves were a pirate, a pirate with the memories of an assassin that had died long ago.

Alan the Pale caught their attention, Ki's curiosity enough to make them consider the boy's strange appearance even if they were polite enough to keep from staring. As they understood it, white hair and red eyes were not common in creatures from Earth. Albinism was a genetic defect that made creatures more visible to predators and worsened vision. And while humans had progressed to the point that such a condition was manageable in day-to-day life it was still strange to see it in a supposed soldier.

Although...Alan the Pale's features weren't as pronounced as they would have expected. Perhaps it was a quirk of the tricks played on his genetics.

Queen Anne's Revenge



Anne didn't like to second-guess Best Buddy Ki, and second-guessing Best Buddy Ki's friends was basically second-guessing Best Buddy Ki themselves. But she was a battle-bot, loaded up with all sorts of interesting information on the best ways to wage war and crush insurrections, not to mention the tips and tricks she had picked up from her Pirate Pals. And all of this information, all the after-action reports, historical accounts, and simulation results churned down into a stream of measurable data, it all pointed to a hard fact: this was really bad.

Moonstrike was shooting at Moonstrike...no, Moonstrike was being shot at by other people who weren't Moonstrike but worked with Moonstrike and now wanted Moonstrike dead. "Hey, quick question: if all these groups don't want us in charge anymore how come we're still in charge?"

It was a genuine question spoken with no malice even if the harshness of her preprogrammed tone took suggested otherwise.

"Since we're fighting a like, evil empire right? If we're the good guys we should listen when a whole bunch of people are angry about our mistakes. Also if we kill a bunch of them and they kill a bunch of us then there's going to be no one to fight the bad guys. Or uh, the other bad guys. Since we're kinda the bad guys right now."

The appeal to pacifism was undercut somewhat by the last-minute weapon checks Anne was performing, the machine running down the list of ammunition stored throughout her body. There was certainly enough for her primary, and the secondary so kindly supplied by the kid on the ship had enough fuel to melt through quite a few unfortunate souls.

The spaceboat lurched into the fray and Anne clapped her hands with glee, a mechanical giggle rumbling from her speakers as she automatically activated her Magnetize spell. With her boots firmly planted on the deck she could stare at all the pretty lasers shooting back and forth outside.

"I can't really do a lot in here but if you want I can float over to a ship, start smashing it up inside."

That would require opening the door which would be bad for anyone standing by her, but they could always just not do that.



Looking at the sheets, I think it's pretty funny no one picked ex-Republic/reformist.


I was thinkin about it for the character I'm making but Mando just seems more fun lol
Why not, I’ll bite!
Ki'Tlex



Ki'Tlex had spent the week acclimating themselves to their new home, their new team. And if they were being honest neither was much different than what they were used to. Cramped quarters that were slightly too small for everyone in them, lots of sitting around waiting for something to happen, and the knowledge that they'd be massively outnumbered whenever it did. Interstellar piracy and galactic terrorism shared similarities in terms of mechanics if not morality, or at least perceived morality.

Ki wasn't so delusional as to pretend that their previous career was better than their current one but they did wonder about the ethics of the shadow war they were now fighting. Even accounting for the vast differences in Kel'ta and Human aging the 'Star Marines' were very young. Lethal no doubt, but adolescents nonetheless. Most cultures would not think to recruit their young unless the stakes were truly dire, salvation or destruction hinging on every last able-bodied person picking up arms. Besides the loss of innocence there were practical concerns as well, the wisdom of teaching someone whose brain was still developing how to kill dubious at best.

That last point seemed especially important considering the string of disasters that had hit the little insurgency recently. But Ki'Tlex wasn't there to critique morals or second-guess Moonstrike's choice in troops. They wanted to see how their new organization worked in the field.

They had listened impassively to the Fool's briefing, taking note of the fact that they were being given the unenviable job of putting their foot on a landmine to see how much pressure it could take before going off. Fair enough, they could do that...it just would have been nice to have their anti-personnel/vehicle/light aircraft robot with them. The one that was practically invulnerable to small arms fire, could cast magic, and carried a giant shotgun that fired half-pound shells. That would have been helpful.

Ki'Tlex saw Anne as an investment and a dear one at that. They had risked their life snatching her out of the Ascendancy's armory and done so again boosting the parts needed to make her operational. And then there was the pile of credits that had been dumped into repairs and rearmament, a sizable sum spent on making sure their tool was in the best condition so that it would serve them well. Having it taken from them, even temporarily, rubbed Ki the wrong way. Oh well. Divide and conquer, try not to get divided and conquered in turn. Oh and keep the infant they were lugging around from getting spaced. That would be unfortunate.

Ki kept their selfish thoughts firmly on their side of the dividing line, vague disappointment at being separated allowed to reach Anne without any of the deeper context behind. AI was tricky, prone to forming its own opinions and goals if not watched. Ki did their best to nip any of that in the bud by feeding Anne lies, and Anne was evidently content to believe them.

Queen Anne's Revenge



A mission! She going to go out on an actual real-life mission with a proper chain of command and everything! No more running combat simulations in her head or analyzing her weaponry for any inconsistencies, she was actually going to go out and get shot at! Wafer-thin circuitry transmitted impulses through a matrix of chips and wires, the informational input filtered past her artificial conscious so that it spit out an emotion: excitement. She was excited to go out into the field, excited for a chance to prove herself to her new friends and her best buddy Ki.

Anne was keenly aware of the fact that she had been designed to take pleasure in combat ops, her Ascendancy programming entirely reworked but not scrubbed clean. She was supposed to find war fun so that she was easier to order around and she didn't mind that. She had certain requirements she needed to fulfill just like actual living creatures did. The problem was that the loosey-goosey hit-and-run pirate stuff she had been doing for the past decade had been to her what a diet of dry toast would have been to Ki. Now she would be getting a proper meal with salt and pepper and the metaphor was getting away from herbutshewasjussoexcitedtofinallygettobeinarealwar-!

Anne. Please.

Whoops. The rush must have bled over.

Sorry! I just can't wait!

The apology was met with a wave of forgiveness, Anne taking the nonverbal assurance as a cue to go back to walking. The trudge of metal boots over the ship's deck was drowned out by the sound of Joey's briefing, Anne playing the key bits back to herself.

...assist Moonstrike in this Civil War...Nirrti, Queen Anne, myself...Shineyd... right into a warzone...fire right back... rebels just like us...

A flash of amusement rose from Ki's end of the connection before dying down. Anne took notice, pushing a wordless query that was answered by a flood of information. Information, images, feelings, and memories were piled in front of her to be sorted through, all of it run by her learning systems and compared to the swaths of the Net she had archived. It took nanoseconds for a meaning to be worked out:

Infighting is a bad sign in an insurgency. It weakens all groups.

That was true. And Anne did want Moonstrike to win soooooo...she'd just have to end the fight fast.

She walked on, Ki trailing behind her while tending to the baby they had so nobly taken on. Anne could confidently say that Kottle was a good kid, having cross-referenced their behavior and apparent intelligence with pediatric sources on several species.

As luck would have it they wouldn't be splitting up immediately, Anne's squadmate engaged in conversation with Ki's.

"Oh, I can use it though! My RoEs are very open-ended, specifically designed so that I can interpret them as I see fit. In fact-"

"She means 'hello, they and I are looking forward to working with you and them.'"

Ki's relative monotone silenced Anne's artificially gruff one, the machine grateful that she had her friend around to keep her in check. At least she had remembered to keep her volume down this time, speaking in more of a stage shout than an ear-splitting siren.

"Right! I'm looking forward to seeing you in action Nirrti, and I hope you two have fun on your missions."

@FalloutJack @Senhara @jdh97
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