SotB: Haggler's Pawn

*There isn’t much beyond drunken debauchery that Gristle remembers of the night he lost his holocron. Luckily, Major Kith'skra's cousin, Haskit, has a possible lead…*

### Characters:

* Session 1
	+ R0C-K4
	+ Zeevo the Hutt
	+ Serenity
	+ Gristle
	+ Alro Hi'kot
	+ Seela Vida
* Session 2
	+ Rhuk
	+ Erdogan Cael
	+ Reo
	+ Esenenna
	+ Lee
	+ Saber Scintel

## Mission Report

*From session 1:*

The agents are brought into a briefing with Major Kith’skra and shown a fuzzy image of what appears to be Gristle’s holocron, followed by a live connection to Haskit, the major’s cousin and a relic dealer. Haskit had been in possession an artifact matching the description of Gristle’s holocron, but doesn’t have it in her possession. She asks Gristle how much the information is worth to him, and he offers up everything he has in order to claim it. Zeevo and R0C both offer to help as well, pitching in some credits of their own. Just then, Haskit’s connection drops and the crew is left with one lead: the pirate Haskit sold the holocron to, Jaral Aenet.

Gristle and Alro do some research and find that Aenet is the leader of a small group of pirates loose associated with the Yiyar Clan. some old enemies of the agents. Her crew has had ongoing and recent dealings with the rodian salvagers. Knowing this, the agents head off toward the Wheel to meet with their contact there, Brun Brux. The agents use Serenity’s telepathic speech ability to pass a silent message to Brun, asking for information about Aenet and the Yiyar Clan’s recent activities. Brun plays along and takes the agents into the back room, placing a communication jammer on the table.

Zeevo and Gristle begin asking about their suspects, and Brun informs them that Yiyar Clan Salvage has been doing surprisingly well after the loss of Yav, their former leader. Aenet’s involvement has mellowed them a bit, but the struggle for the clan’s leadership is still ongoing. They’ve been scavenging sites all across the Outer Rim and selling off whatever they find valuable, so the idea of Aenet purchasing an artifact is a bit odd. Gristle asks about Imperial activity, and Brun seems worried by the lack of movement from the local ISB agents. Satisfied with the information, the agents move on and head out to the Yiyar Clan’s location on the station.

At the front door of Yiyar’s territory, Zeevo is offered a rude greeting by the attending guard, but the hutt uses his charm and a light bribe to gain access. They’re taken to meet with Otol Nal, the clan’s current leader, any many of her henchmen. Zeevo introduces himself as Thala the Hutt, but the rodian gangster is skeptical, and asks for his true identity. Alro makes an electronic transfer of credits at the same time, suggesting that names don’t matter, only the deal at hand. Otol is still wary, but agrees to listen, and the agents ask after Jaral Aenet, asking to be introduced. Otol is worried that they might have ill will, but Gristle assures her that they just want to do business and make some contacts. They’re given Jaral’s last known location: Taleucema, the capital of Saleucami, as well as a comm frequency to contact her, as long as it can be secured.

The crew heads off to Saleucami, but runs into a few hitches during the trip through hyperspace. They arrive in orbit with some undue stress on the hyperdrive, and Alro stays back to repair it while the others go out to seek out some older contacts. Specifically, they head to Krezo’s shop to see if he does any business with the relic-hunting smuggler. The crew heads into Krezo’s shop, Zeevo and Gristle still keeping up their disguises, and ask about his dealings with Captain Jaral. Krezo does business with her regularly, and at the moment, she’s grounded in the Taleucema spaceport, but she has some slicers on her team that are working on getting her ship out. Knowing that their time to catch up to the captain is limited, the agents head back to the spaceport to track down her ship.

In an attempt to get Alro into the station’s systems, Serenity attempts to distract some of the nearby station guards, but is noticed. Zeevo moves in to cover her. Alro, using Gristle’s stealth field, cracks into a console while the guards are distracted and looks through the list of impounded ships before finding one matching Krezo’s description: the Silver Star. With the ship’s name and location in mind, the agents head up to the dockmaster’s office to inform them of Jaral’s crew’s attempt to slice the station’s systems. The dockmaster is alarmed by the news, and starts looking into the request, but is taken aback by a sudden breach in security. At the same time, there’s an explosion that rocks the spaceport and alarms begin blaring. The dockmaster mentions that the explosion came from several docking bays down from where the Silver Star is docked,

Knowing where their lead is, the crew heads down to the Silver Star’s docking back and finds Jaral’s crew gathered up with her slicers working at getting the ship’s restraints released. Alro gets into the system to find that the first docking clamp has already been released and attempts to expel Jaral’s slicer from the spaceport’s systems, but can’t manage it. Zeevo slithers up to fire his spray stick at the slicer, but the shot doesn’t connect. R0C charges in toward Jaral, but she and her bodyguard return fire, knocking the axe out of R0C’s hand. This doesn’t deter the droid, however, and he quickly grabs his axe back up and charges in, landing a lethal slash across Jaral’s torso. Her crew, shocked and in awe of the carnage, roar out in anger and their slicer frees the last of the docking bay’s security.

Gristle then runs in and dives for Jaral’s body as she falls, brandishing a cerebral stabilizer and securing it over her head just as the life begins to leave her. She’s kept alive, but only barely, and the agents use her life as a bargaining chip, offering to let them leave with her if they tell them what heppened to the holocron. Jaral’s guards tell them that they sold it to the old clone troopers living in Blackwind Crater, but they don’t know where it’s gone since then. Satisfied with the lead, the crew hands Jaral back over and leaves for the crater to find the clones.

The search doesn’t take too long before they find a camp deep in the jungle. They manage to get fairly close without being detected, and Gristle uses that opportunity to approach in as unthreatening a manner as possible. Still, the clones are paranoid and call for him to stop before he gets too close. There’s a tense exchange as Gristle requests knowledge of the holocron, while suggesting that he would like to know what they plan to do with it. The clones are unwilling to let much go, and Gristle throws out the name of one of the clones he’d served with at the beginning of the clone wars, which their commander seems to recognize. From there, the doctor floats the lightsaber out of his bag, prompting the clones to stand down and apologize. The rest of the agents are let into the camp and are taken to the holocron, which the clones had purchased for safekeeping, knowing its value and not wanting it to fall into the wrong hands. When Gristle approaches it, though, he finds that it isn’t the one that used to belong to him, and upon activating it, is greeted by the gatekeeper forged from the memories of a Jedi Knight named Suljo Warde.