Episode 3.08, Kanter's War, Chapter 2 Report
General Summary
You have to hand it to the Tilles pirate clan. When they come to a party, they bring all the neat toys.
After Aerena sounded the alarm, we raced out of the main hall in all directions. Vanya and I headed out the front. It was easier to try to stall the Tilles gang from that direction.
Aerena headed downstairs to where Lord Erenn said he had an underground hangar. So’zen, who was in right mind again thankfully, headed up for that obelisk to the north of the castle. Good thinking, I’m sure before all this is over, we’ll need that thing.
Reese volunteered to run the communications and info board. Vance? Once more, he found a turbolaser turret to use. I really think he could be stripped down to wearing nothing but a bodyglove, get dumped in a barren wasteland, and still find a working capital ship class turbolaser to use in a fight. He has a talent.
Erenn Baize, or Vorbaize as he preferred, wasn’t idle either. Pirate or not, he rallied his people quick. They took to the battlements and the walls to get to work against the invaders.
Turns out, everyone would have plenty of work to do.
Flying in from the Honloo Dust Ocean shoreline were five pirates using Arcturus Wingpacks equipped with blasters. To the west, Tilles clan hot dropped an AT-ST with a trio of Aratech 74 bikes and the oddest frelling ‘fast attack’ vehicles I’d ever seen.
There were two of these things. Round as a Droideka droid in 'wheel' mode, just one was the size of a landspeeder. It had plenty of room for one driver inside the wheel. Either side had a weapons mount. These came bearing heavy blaster cannons on one side and a concussion missile launcher on the other. Best part? The outside 'round' was covered in a blaster resistant rubber.
Yes, they were riding weaponized mono-cycles. This planet just never seems to run out of odd-ball ideas. Must be something in the air.
None of that, not even the blaster toting mono-cycles, was the bad part. The bad part was the sandstorm cyclone roaring inland toward us from the Honloo Ocean.
Ah, Chalcedon. It’s always something new with you, isn’t it?
Only, I had heard of these monster storms before. Rumor has it they form in the deep Dust Oceans, then tear inland. Between lightning that hits like an orbital bombardment and sand ripping around like a mild sandblaster, it spelled ‘bad news’. It also spelled, ‘clear this up and fast’.
We got right to work. Aerena came roaring out of that underground hanger in some sort of customized assault shuttle. She came in from the castle’s east side. Vance opened fire at the flyers about the same time as Aerena.
The pirates knew how to handle those wingpacks, but Vance and Aerena were better shots. It didn’t hurt that Reese blasted out over the comm channels that the infamous Vance Kerplocken was fighting against them. That made a few break off their attack and hesitate. Still, at least one made it to ground near the obelisk. But So’zen was already lying, or standing, in wait.
True to form, So’zen stepped out and tried to talk the pirate that landed into either giving up, or heading back. It took a couple of tries, since that pirate was hard of hearing, but it worked. Then So'zen continued to work his diplomatic magic on other pirates when they got close. Meanwhile, we also learned a little about that obelisk.
Just like the one outside of Port Etmar, this was another ‘Force Antenna’. I could hear ‘echoes’ of people using their skill in manipulating the Force. Eerie. But there wasn’t any time to think that through, not with Clan Tilles rolling up in their pain wagons to the west.
Reese said hello by trying to overload the sensor packet on the pirate’s AT-ST. I think it worked because Clan Tilles started off using a decent attack formation at first. After Reese hit them with a sensor overload? Let’s just say I’ve seen sloppy drunk starfighter pilots use better coordination when challenged by, say, a doorway or a stool.
Anyway, Clan Tilles rolled right at Vanya and myself, trying to hammer open Clan Baize’s front gates with missiles or blaster fire. Clan Baize gave back as good as they got with some support from Vance in that turbolaser turret. That kept the heavy vehicles busy while Vanya and I dealt with the speeder bikes.
The bikes only took a few seconds. Then came that AT-ST and the monocycle things. Honesty, I’m not going to get past that they made combat monocycles. Just wow.
But all that armor meant we had to get creative. I can always trust Vanya to get way more creative when needed. She did this time. A blaster shot here, Force skill there, and then a quick lesson in how lightsabers can melt things… like the rubber around those monocycles.
When it was done, and I mean all done, we 'borrowed' the AT-ST to free Aerena’s X-Wing and her astromech, Spukamas, from that EM-netting covering them. Then we convinced, or shoved, any of Clan Tilles’ pirates we got our hands on inside Erenn Vorbaize’s castle.
After all, it was all fun and games, but there was a life-threatening sandstorm cyclone bearing down on us. We made it back inside, with gear and all our fingers, toes, and other appendages, when the storm hit. Which it did with the enthusiasm of a wookiee ripping the arms off their opponent after a losing game of holochess.
Word of warning here… remember kids, let the wookiee win. It’s ok for the environment and great for you!
Then came the hard part. Picking up where we left off before we got a breather to go beat up an invading pirate clan. Namely, Erenn Baize, or ‘Vorbaize’ and his urge to use that moniker of nobility, ‘Vor’.
Reese and Vance, to some extent, tried to lean on the fact all of us worked together to give Clan Tilles a picturesque black eye. That whole post-combat glow was still going, so the new negotiation tactic seemed to work a little. But the pirate leader remembered the accusation about his Vor claim from before we got attacked.
To my surprise, he didn’t throw down with some sort of ‘duel of honor’. Instead, he produced evidence for his claim. ‘Baize’ was his mother’s family name. A Bothwani name though I got the impression she might have been native born Tapani. Then he tossed out the fun part. A ruined patch from years gone by with part of a Vor crest on it, or what was left of a Vor crest.
He and his mother had been dumped on Chalcedon after being exiled through the scheming and work of the Bene Gesserits. The sisterhood didn’t approve of Erenn being the son of a Vor. This could only mean the sisterhood had plans for his father to produce an heir that wasn’t half-bothan as part of their ‘holy mission’ to produce the ultimate Force user… that they controlled.
That last is a rant I’ll save for another time.
In any case, it was enough to go on. Through what resources were available, we tracked the patch and house colors down. This revealed that Erenn had a claim to a Vor bloodline… and what a bloodline it was.
Vorrutyer. As in House Vorrutyer, home of the bloody and sadistic Ges Vorrutyer. As if claiming, while on Chalcedon of all places, to be a member of the Vor nobility wasn’t bad enough. Obviously, the Force decided we looked a bit too bored today.
This also left us with a really nasty problem. Erenn Vorbaize was a bastard son of one of the bloodiest, sadistic criminals in recent Vor times. So there was a claim there to a valid Vor heritage. Now, as for House Vorrutyer itself? Only Ges was the bad apple… all right toxic sarlacc pit… out of the bunch. The rest would probably welcome Erenn with two cotillions, open arms, and vintage wine.
But he was on Chalcedon and not in the Tapani Sector. So calling out that he is a Vor suggests Tapani has a claim to territory on Chalcedon. This is literally not good. Wars have been started for less.
Then there were the Bene Gesserits. They exiled him because he wasn’t a product of their personal eugenics project to make a super Force user. Let’s get down to the fun nitty gritty. The public secret no one likes to talk about. These all pious nuns train their own assassins. Let’s really not ever forget that one. Erenn pops up with this Vor claim? He will have painted a huge target-lock on his back, maybe even on his front, too.
The debate circled around everyone. Do we tell him? What do we tell him? Then, there was needing to cement that alliance between his clan and the Freedworlds Republic like Chancellor Kanter wanted so badly.
There were too many ideas that just kept dancing around the problem. After a few exchanges, the whole thing got mired down and stuck. The key reason that I saw was whether or not this pirate leader was planning a bloody conquest while helping Chancellor Kanter. All that about his bloodline was just borrowed trouble for later.
So, I decided to stick my proverbial AT-ST in and get all this unstuck. At least, I was hoping to lube up the gears a bit and get things flowing.
Leaving the group, I tracked Erenn down in the hallway not far from the room where we had been debating his future. In times like these, I found it works best to go back to tried-and-true methods. So, I walked right up to our possible ‘Vor-to-be’ and led with my best.
“Lord Erenn? As you know, I’m Sir Davish Tam. I’m a spy and really, I’d love to know. Do you plan on a bloody conquest of the other pirate clans here on Chalcedon while ‘helping’ Nalerine Kanter and Vance Kerplocken, or not?”
I wasn’t sure, but I might have heard some sputtering from the other room.
