Moldimort!

In recent years, galactic trade across Korel and the entry of burgeoning new spacefaring powers has rendered the galaxy small and crowded. At least, in the opinions of many. Even the Centauri, with their mass thought control in the form of memetic engineering have been unable to entirely weed out every soul with the spirit of a pioneer, a scoundrel, or an explorer. There is just something about the controlled, already-developed environment of central planets that turns some people off.

Pa'u Zhotar Zhun is a Burninite Pa'u of the seventh level who grew discontent in Burnination. She found an amiable leviathan, which took her to the backwater trading world of Kyrulia, which is located approximately between the Bastian Dominion and the Veridian Dominion, so not near any major trade routes. However, anyone in the business for tax-free merchandise likely knows the planet.


Sarava Luera is a Centauri herbologist and medic. At least, this is how Zhun thinks of him. She has a great respect for Sarava, and they have come to Kyrulia together.

Order Captain Micah is a hired merc for the small-time leaders of this world. Keep in mind, there is only one settlement on this planet, and it has maybe 60 other people in it at the time this group of traders is here. Nevertheless, the settlement has a leader, and leaders like having good guards to keep order. Order Captain Micah, rumor has it, was a pioneer, which brings along a pretty negative connotation. That said, no one who has ever met him has made any complaints. This is fairly well a foil for Rhllor, a merc from Bastet who reportedly came from a fairly well distinguished armed force, but has been nearly pinned down for various crimes since.

Kraden Frane is the mechanic on Kyrulia. A Christanan engineer, it is thought, with a lot of cybernetics. Again, it is speculated that he was once on the crew of a ship in the navy of Christana. But for some reason, Kraden seems to dislike speaking of the past. If I had lost that many limbs, so would I.

By sheer dumb luck, these few from so many different walks of life happen to be walking by the archway entrance to the town when strange things start to occur. OK, so the mercs happened to be guarding the arch at the time, and it's the others who witness the event only by luck, but that sounds way less intense, so we're going to stick to the sheer luck bit.

A small man of no identifiable species (unless, of course, anyone remembers what Hobbits look like) appears head first, then neck, body and arms, legs, then feet in an event that doesn't resemble any known teleportation technology. There's a purple line that traces his form and vanishes when he fully appears. He's dressed like a carny, with absurd striped pants, a frock coat, and a staff.

"Eh, Frane. Sorry about your family. I wonder if you wouldn't like to get them back?" He doesn't speak to anyone else at this point, but he did just appear within the gate the mercs were guarding. So... yeah. Weird things start to occur.

Keeping his rifle at a low ready position, R'hllor hisses at the man. He utters a series of hisses, purrs, and chirps, which, if anybody knows the common tongue of Bastet, would say, "Hold it right there, clown! Who are you and what is your business here? And don't smart-ass me by saying you're looking for Frane. I heard you the first time." Of course, this would be moot if Mr. Baggins or anybody else around doesn't speak Bastian. R'hllor isn't about to start speaking English.

(OOC: For anybody not in the know, Bastians, being cat people, don't have the vocal structure for human languages. There are some who manage to but it's incredibly rare. Tomasa, a Bastian Jedi, is one, and she struggles with it.)

The cyborg carried his bag to town with the sun roasting him like a pig. His breath smelled of Whisky which was the only thing keeping him from collapsing and giving up. As he reached the gateway a small man appeared and brought up old wounds. This caused Frane to ignore the guard, bust the gate open and grab the man. "What the hell are you on about and how do you know who I am."

Although Talent Sarava doesn't directly respond to the 'hobbit' (he vaguely remembered something about them from reading a fantasy novel all those decades ago), he does turn to Pa'u Zhotar, and pulls her aside. "Excuse me, Miss Zhotar, but did you see what I just did? If my senses haven't failed me, did that man just appear inside the gate? Barring some kind of teleportation technology that I'm not aware of and that shouldn't be here, something seems quite off here."

"I am one who can heal that which was done to you," the figure responds, "just follow me."

The creature steps outside the gate.

To the onlookers, both Frane and the creature disappear when Frane grabs the creature.

"I think you're ri-" Zhun responds, but stops when Frane and the creature vanish.

To be clear, Frane and the creature are still standing there from the perspective of Frane, but they are invisible to everyone else. The others just witnessed them disappearing.

Frane started following his him after letting go but had many questions. "Why would you help me?"

Drawing his sidearm toward where the creature in response, Sarava says, "...was that what I just saw? What in hell was that? Whatever that thing was, it certainly couldn't have been up to any good. If I see that thing come back and... Frane... isn't with him, I'm shooting to kill - I'm not going to take any risks here. Whatever it is, it seems strangely... dangerous."

He says, "Quiet." Not that anybody can probably understand him. Looking around suspiciously and keeping one arm on his carbine, R'hllor starts flipping through his helmet's vision modes from infrared to ultraviolet and thermal vision. His eyes naturally see a bit into infrared and ultraviolet as is but extra help is a nice bonus.

(OOC: Gonna hang tight to see if Sacae wants to respond. If nothing, I'll go on.)

(OOC: Sorry was a little busy the last couple of days)

*Order Captain Micah watched the exchange with mild amusement from the shadows under the arch. He never said very much considering many thought he was a secret baby-killer and cannibal because of his association with the Pioneers. He watched curiously as the Christanan and the midget (I know its a hobbit thing) disappeared. He smiled and laughed under his helmet as the Centauri and Bastian proceeded to freak out though they didn't hear him as he kept his helmet's audio off.

Micah *thinking*: Well it looks like I might actually get some action today.

*The Order Captain pushed himself off the wall and walked quietly towards the other two mercs. He, himself, was almost 7 feet tall and muscular which both features were amplified by his purple and gold customized Paladin armor. The paint job was intimidation in another sense of the word. He was highly noticeable on the battlefield and people recognized and understood the threat he posed immediately just looking at the armor. To the innocent the armor was a symbol of a hero, to bandits and other scum it was death incarnate. To further push the image he left the Ordenreich insignia on his shoulder plates, though it was almost scratched off. It was still noticeable but clearly seen better days. In Ordenreich tradition this was the sign of a fallen knight. While the Order Captain had little use for symbols the scratched insignia did increase his intimidation value. In his hands he carried a pump-action shotgun. The shotgun itself of standard issue in the Ordenreich military but Micah modified it to fire much more powerful rounds therefore making him have to modify the shotgun for fully automatic to pump action (Halo 4 shotgun in short). As a Pioneer he did lot of scouting for them which really helped his skill set for tracking people. He thought he might give the other mercs and hand with his skills set. He quietly walked past the two mercs not saying a word and after he got five steps in front of them he knelt down a pulled a small circular device out of his utility pouch and placed it on the ground. Thanks to state of the art translation software that he "commandeered" from the Ordenreich when he defected he was able to understand some of what the Bastian said. The translation wasn't perfect but when he said quiet the Order Captain was able to understand. He turned his head slightly so he was partially facing the Centauri Talent and slowly put a finger up to his gold visor silently signaling for the Talent to be quiet. He then turned his head back to the device and tapped a few commands onto the tacpad on his left arm. The device then sent a ping through the ground. The ping detected several people walking that the Order Captain quickly filtered out because he knew those were the inhabitants of the small settlement. After filtering out the locals he watched his tacpad display to see if he could find the Christanan and the hobbit/midget thing.*

(OOC: Sorry for the late entry. I don't get notifications on RPs till I post in them and I was busy with schoolwork. Also sorry for the longwinded description I wanted to make sure everyone had a clear picture of my character. In a nutshell he is a silent Halo Spartan. Also yes he does talk more later. I posted a picture of what my character looks like in the discussion thread for this RP if you need a reference for what he looks like)

(OOC: Stop spamming the thread OOC! Yeah, that's why I missed that response. My bad. Sorry Christana.)

"Because sometimes the universe is kind, I suppose," the creature responds to Frane. If Frane follows the creature beyond what he sees as the gate, he will find himself somewhere he does not recognize. It's a dark chamber with a long table lined by massive torches that throw off light, but the room is so large that it's not enough light anyway. Once there, the creature offers to allow him to speak to the souls of his lost loved ones.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Rhllor sees something, but then his equipment mysteriously shorts out, and ceases functioning. He caught no more than a glimpse of Frane following the creature out the gate. But he does know that Frane seemed to have been following the creature out the gate.

The Ordenreich merc finds that the usual display of the piece of tech is replaced in red, dripping letters that say "Not today ."

In any case, another creature appears, but this time taller and dressed differently. "Has anyone seen Moldimort?" it asks. "This is rather important."

Zhun is quite confused at this point, so says nothing. She also does understand the Bastian, so may be following his command for the time being.

He gets annoyed by the equipment malfunction. He reluctantly lifts his helmet to try to catch Frane's scent. Then the other creature appears. He swears in surprise, drops his helmet, and puts his carbine back at the low ready in the creature's direction. Satisfied that he doesn't appear to be a threat, he says, "If you mean the short clown, I caught a glimpse of him going that way before my visuals glitched." He points to where he last saw him and retrieves his helmet.

*To say the Order Captain was annoyed was a severe understatement. He was not happy with the defacement of his equipment.*

Micah *thinking*: Bastard vandalized my gear! If I...

*His thinking was interrupted by the appearance of another one of those hobbit things although this was seemed taller and looked different. When he spoke the Order Captain ignored him as he calmly gathered up his seismic gear from the ground promising to clean it later, hopefully he could get the vandalism off of it later. After he got his gear into the appropriate pouches he got up and turned fully to the hobbit thing making sure to emphasize his size and intimidation value. He merely shrugged when the man... thing... asked where the other hobbit thing was. He was clearly mad about his gear, the anger and annoyance was practically radiating off him. The Order Captain really had no right trying to intimidate the poor guy. He had no evidence that he's the one that defaced his stuff but he needed someone to blame dammit. Replacement parts for equipment this sophisticated was impossible to find on this craphole of a planet*

Sarava begins to back away from the scene, and quickly cycles through screens on his datapad, trying to bring up a quick psych scan. Damn it, I don't know what's going on, but this has got to be some kind of cognitohazard...

No problems afflict his equipment, and Sareva completes his scan without a hitch. No cognitohazard detected.

Yup, this is actually happening.

"He's no clown," the taller being responds. "He's nearer to the devil than to a clown. Did he take anything from you and do you know where he went?"

"He took one from among us," Zhun responds. "But they disappeared. I have no idea where they went."

(OOC: Burn, I think you're overcompensating for calling Doctor Fedorov a man all the time, because Sarava is male )

"Rather more importantly, how are you even capable of doing... that? You sport no visible teleportation technology, and I can't imagine that there's someone out there teleporting the both of you around without any visible activity. Unless you two can just blink in and out of reality - which, for all I know, could be the case - what you're doing shouldn't be possible."

(OOC: Stop ending the names of male characters in "a" >.> )

As he followed him he found a room that looked like something out of a horror movie. He tried to run out but then he heard a voice.

"Kraden?" A familiar voice spoke.

Frane fell to his knees, his one eye started to pour tears down his cheek. He looked back to Moldimort.

"What kind of game are you trying to pull here?"

"I have yet to meet a clown who did not remind me of a devil."

"Hm," the taller creature says, frowning at this. "Then I am too late..." It fades away without another word.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Before Frane finishes getting all his words out to Moldi, he realizes the presence of the man is not evident. Where did he go?

"Are you there?"

Same voice, insistent.

*The Order Captain watched the exchange which was very quickly breaching his patience threshold when the other being disappeared. The Order Captain finally spoke after he left*

Micah: What. the. f*ck?

"Indeed," uttered Sarava. "Indeed."

"Well it's obvious that something sinister is happening. Is it something we can ignore and pretend it doesn't exist? Of course, it has one of us somewhere," offers Zhun noncommittally.

"No, it could come back for another one of us. Though what we can do right now, I do not know. If I were to try to shoot him with my revolver, I would not doubt it would fail to fire. Direct physical attack may be out of the question and we are *not* calling for outside aid, particularly from a Lantern."

(OOC: Waiting for a reaction from Christana. If none is forthcoming, I guess I'll invent one.)