20220115 Farmers don't make good Gladiators

I received a message back from Berka saying that the gladiatorial games had been moved to a new arena set up in or near Carapid Station. A human tech named Domiric Friosm might know something about it. I'll tell the Jedi about that whole thing when they have time to clean it up.
 
Decrypting the ancient flimsies from 175 years ago, I learned that the two obelisks in the west align with a third in the east. Together, if the Force and the sunlight align correctly, it could point the way to a hidden chamber somewhere on the Strosis Continent. Dr. Stavin believed, the third obelisk is somewhere in the Xemki Highlands. They describe not only the Obelisk of Light but a fourth, called the Obelisk of Shadow, which is said to house the knowledge of the first, original Dark Jedi to ever exist.
 
The flimsies were written by Zack Stavin in 7.14.12556 through 7.19.12556, which is 175 years ago. In the notes, Dr. Stavin has been studying the obelisks. His Jedi friend confirmed that the obelisks predate both the Jedi and Sith Orders. He describes the Obelisks as being similar to both ‘tuning forks’ and ancient ‘sundial’ clocks, if the Force was the “Sunlight”. But! The Sith Order subverted the obelisks somehow which has damaged their ability to act as a ‘dial’ or ‘compass’. Stavin wonders if the damage done by the Sith is repaired, could the obelisks resume their original purpose?
 
Vanya, mentioned shea had learned that this attach by Clan Tilles pirates was a distraction for Baize to stop him from interfering with their simultaneous raid on moisture farms to pick up some good ol' boys to hobo fight for their amusement.
 
We did not take kindly to that.
 
With Baize busy repairing his home's defenses and vehicles, we loaded a couple of the winged jet-packs into the shuttle, and Captain Koleen brought her X-wing escort. We followed a vision one of the Jedi provided.
 
Davish piloted the shuttle, and I quickly found an armored personnel carrying gunship with an ARC-170 well-weaponed escort.
 
I hacked their systems to make their sensors report that we were approaching from the opposite direction. Captain Koleen opened fire. The Jedi stayed very calm.
 
Captain Koleen, Vance Kerplokin, and Davish tactfully brought down the shields and engines of the fighter escort and the personnel carrier. Vanya leapt onto the carrier gunship and went inside.
 
I busied myself with the fragile communications and computing systems in the vessels, tying up the available memory, scrambling their in-vessel voice channels, and finally convincing the R5 astromech droid in the fighter to eject for its own protection.
 
Sozen had Vance prepare to receive that enemy droid and restrain it. I don't know how or why it's ejection thrusters aimed it right at the cargo door of our shuttle, odds being... Let's just say that it wasn't crazy random happenstance, maybe a Jedi thing, ha ha. So, anyway, that's exactly what happened. Sozen opened the door, the droid flew in, he shut the door. It was angry. It did not come here voluntarily. Vance fired an ion blast at it which put the droid to sleep and (thankfully) disabled the thermal-well booby trap the pirates had installed to keep anyone from taking the droid's memory core and learning the location of the pirate slavers' rendezvous point: The very southeast-most corner of the Needle Forest. At the bottom. With thousand foot tall mesa column's towering above.
 
It is a good place for a smuggler's hideout, but an expensive place to take unwilling gladiators. You can't possibly make that much money off of them.
 
Erinn Baize arrived and tended to the needs of the freed hostages. We discussed whether the more dire threat was from the Bomar Monks underground (Perhaps a regimen of Sisters of Battle would be interested in "cleansing" them from the catacombs.) or from the Tilles Pirate Clan who had hostages right at the moment, (or of course the Joyful competition might be edging closer to the obelisk and a plethora of Sith artifacts or worse if there is anything worse than that).
 
Vanya contacted a leader of the Sisters of Battle and asked them to purge the Bomar Monastery and to lookup the geneology of Erinn Vor(?) Baize. She made a call and made introductions.
 
Sozen and Vance then made a secure call to Chancellor Kanter. They introduced her to Erinn and they appeared to be ready (at a later time soon) to negotiate for the well-being of the common people. Derma the Hutt mentioned Grakis(sp?) the Hutt, ran a smuggler's underground facility in lava tubes under the Needle Forest.
 
Almon has had dealings with Grakis the Hutt. Vance theorized the Tilles Clan hostages might be headed to be infected with Almon's Tor Ceti puppetmaster parasites.
 
Oh boy.
 
So we loaded up our shuttle and X-wing with the Tilles Clan Friend/Foe transponder codes and sensor signatures of the two vehicles we had just fought (which I learned were the same as the ones we were now hunting) and headed south south east to hopefully intercept them before they took the remaining captives to the Hutt and Almon.
 
On the way, we passed over Port Etmar and the Infinity Temple. Interestingly, it appeared members of the Spartan Empirium were touring the obelisk and the rift in space directly above (at the moment) the planet. I'll have to get back to them. Hopefully the Chancellor secured their assistance in the Freeworlds. They would make good allies, hopefully. And we found an impressive view of the temple buildings carved out of the bedrock by truly ancient hands.
 
As we approached the Needle Forest, we read signs of small fighter-class craft in a Slalom Race going on today close to ground level. As if the towering rock columns were not dangerous enough to speed through, there was an actual water-moisture fog obscuring vision down in there. And there were two not racing; Koleen recognized them as a patrol. We were getting close to Grakis the Hutt's secret smuggler space port which few knew was based in long extinct lava tunnels underground.
 
The Jedi mumbled about creatures something like manta ray fish swimming in the air, probably invisible in the fog. And people living under the ground, frightened people.
 
Sensors barely showed a camouflaged base shield at the very south east-most nook. This was the place.
 
But how to rescue the captives? Surely Grakis and Almon had more defenses than just secrecy.