The Search- an unfinished SWG tale

[A brief biographical sketch introduces my old SWG character, then his story starts]



Glawen Etzwane


Human male, looks to be approaching early middle age...that just might be the way he looks, though.

Glawen grew up on a backwater planet in hard circumstances, which he rarely discusses. He got off-world by joining a Mercenary Outfit, and traveled to far places, doing things that he would rather not remember now; combat changes a person, rarely for the better.

He was invited to Tatooine by Starke, an ex-Merc friend of his, who offered to cut him in on a business opportunity. When he arrived at Mos Entha, he could not find him. For what followed, his story will be told in installments on this board.

To summarize, Etzwane is proficient with a carbine and plans on mastering the Scouting and possibly Ranger professions. He has an interest in tinkering with Weaponscrafting as well. He is normally of calm demeanor, and often seems to be thinking; unkind persons would say: brooding. He has been known to have mood swings. Apparently, he has a lot to think on. Or, conversely, a lot to forget.


~~~

The Search


I

He threw the mineral surveyor across the camp.

"Damn junk!" he shouted. He sat down hard on the packed sand,
wiping his sleeve across his forehead. He looked around for his satchel,
breathing hard. Surveying and sampling was one way to make some
credits, to keep himself in gear, to keep the search going.

He got slowly to his feet, strode a few paces, and then crawled inside the
bubble tent. He pulled the water bottle out of the bag, and drank deeply,
his sweating face upturned towards Tatooine's twin blazing suns.

I will find you.

----------

Hours later, both suns were down. He was in his tent, laying atop his sleeping bag, moving restlessly. His mind was a turmoil of thoughts, of plans. He faded in and out of consciousness.

It was a glamorous life to those who had no idea, no clue, what it meant to be boredfor days, weeks, and then to frantically move, and to find oneself in sudden life-and-death peril, to face danger, to kill another man or to die, and to justify it, to rationalize it, 'it was him or me'. Mercenaries. The reality was far from the holovid images of adventure, where battles were some kind of honorable test of right and wrong. Firefights were short, ugly, and the aftermath was sickening. But it beat working in the mines, or spending one's life in a warren of poverty and despair. He even knew some good men who were his fellow Mercs. Starke, for one.

They were on a backwater planet, guarding a forward position in a ruined town in some dirty civil war, far from Imperial law. Who knew which side was right and which was wrong, who cared. It was combat pay. Him and Starke had been on sentry duty when the fanatics came screaming out of the dark, brandishing their old-fashioned slugthrowers, and when it was over, he was alive and Starke was too, just barely. Starke had taken a slug in the left hand as he fired upon and killed an attacker that had been drawing a bead on Glawen's back. Starke lost the hand. Glawen was grateful, and, when the plasteel hand proved to be unsatisfactory for further combat duty, Starke had resigned from the outfit.

Glawen gave him half of his credits and made him promise to stay in touch. A year later, Starke had emailed him, and had transferred 5 times the credits Glawen had given him from Tatooine. Starke urged him to come with him and be a business partner with him.
Glawen jumped at the chance.

----------

The next morning, he worked on the mineral surveyor until he got it working. He set off in search of a concentration of ore. His mind wandered.

When he had arrived in Mos Entha, there was an email awaiting him. It was the last contact he had had from Starke. 'Many have looked for the Krayt Graveyard, searching for the Dragon's Pearls', he had written. 'I seek a Jawa named Corba who I have heard has knowledge of this place. Wealth beyond our wildest dreams, Glawen. Hurry here.'

That was all. Glawen did not find Starke. Some of the people he had questioned seemed...frightened.

----------

He was losing patience.

At the rate he was sampling, it would take him months to gain enough credits, credits he needed to make people talk. Talk about Starke. He was still handy with a carbine, and had supplemented surveying with hunting, selling hides and bones in Entha to the artisans.

But he would not lose sight of his goal.

Find Starke.

A little voice in the back of his mind laughed at him, and told him it was the Dragon's Pearls he really sought.

Glawen rubbed his face with his hands as he walked through the desert.



---------------------



II

"Al'halek, Talahnn."

"A'halek, Glahwenn!"

Glawen nodded to the old Trandoshan sitting near the entrance to the cantina. Talahnn, stranded on this backwater wasteland, was a fixture here, begging for a coin or a drink when the Imperials were not around. Glawen had fixed his crude datapad that had been fractured in a drunken fall, and the large Trandoshan considered him a friend.

The cantina was dimly lit, and his eyes took a minute to adjust from the brilliant sunlight of Tatooine. The crowd was small this afternoon; he sat at a table towards the rear, and ordered a drink. Greelik's band was playing again, performing a lively tune.

"Good to see you back", Saundra said as she sat at his table.

Saundra was a dancer that Glawen had talked to on many occasions; she knew quite a bit about who was who in Mos Entha, and, seeing he was a good tipper, had struck up the occasional conversation with him.

"Thanks. How's business these days?" He drank from his glass.

"Not bad. Thinking of traveling to Bestine once more, there seemed to be more money flowing there, if I can find some stage time."

Glawen nodded and watched the band.

"Any word of Starke?"

Glawen shook his head; a group of boisterous prospectors came in the door, talking loudly to each other, and sat down in front of the stage.

"I know it's your business, Glawen.." began Saundra, but Glawen shook his head.

"I came here for a business opportunity."

"Is that all?" she said. "It seems that you care for him, very much." She looked into his eyes briefly.

Glawen watched the band, and finally spoke; "I owe a debt to him", but he never got to finish his sentence. A man dressed in dusty work clothes walked up to the table and looked at Glawen with a challenging stare.

"Please forgive me." He nodded to Saundra. "I wish to speak to your friend for a moment, if you please."

Saundra got up from the table and walked into the back. The stranger seated himself.

"I know of this man you seek." He sat, contemplating Glawen.

"You do." Glawen finished his drink, careful to act casual.

"Aye. He and I had worked together on...a project. Seems that all didn't go as planned. He is gone now."

Glawen shifted in his seat.

"I can prove it to you- I have an item of his you may recognize."

"Let me see it."

It's in a storage locker at the Starport, friend." The man stood, a small smile on his face. "Shall we?"

Glawen stood and followed the man out into the bright and brutal daylight.

As they walked out, Talahnn caught Glawen's eye. The Trandoshan made a
quick gesture, and then looked away. Glawen instantly became alert, and nodded slightly.

As they passed through an alleyway, Glawen heard the footsteps coming up
behind him. In one fluid motion, he gripped his vibroknuckles from a pocket and wheeled around to see a thug approaching, armed with a long knife. As he turned, the man he had followed out of the cantina reached under histunic; Glawen lashed out with lightning speed, and left the man gasping and grabbing his chest as he fell.

The knifeman approached, tossing the blade back and forth between his hands; Glawen took up a defensive stance, and walked slowly backwards. This lulled the confident thug into action. As he sprang forward, Glawen lunged to meet him, raking the vibroknuckles along the man's arm that had grasped the blade. He heard a sharp intake of breath, and then he drove his elbow against the man's ribs with force. His attacker dropped.

Glawen knelt in the street, picking up the knife while he looked for the first man. He looked up the alleyway just in time to see a man in a junior officer's Imperial uniform pointing a blaster pistol at his chest; two Stormtroopers stood behind him at port arms, their deadly carbines glittering blackly in the unforgiving sun.



----------------------------



III

A man trotted slowly through the nighttime wastelands of Tatooine. A heavy pack was slung over his back, and he wore a satchel along his left side. He gripped a carbine in his hands. He wore a jacket and fatigue pants; upon his feet he wore Tusken Raider boots, light but sturdy, well-adapted for the desert.

He navigated by bright starlight; every few hundred paces, he knelt and pulled out an image intensifier unit from his satchel, and carefully scanned the landscape for thermal readings. Scattered about were small animals, who ran at his approach; larger creatures he steered clear of. Once he saw a lone prospector's camp, and gave it wide berth.


The Imperial Leutenant sat back in his chair, staring over the table at Glawen.

"Glawen Etzwane, Mercenary." The way he said 'Mercenary' made it obvious his feelings for that profession. "A small enough datafile...what brings you to this hellhole of a planet?" Though the officer was relaxed in appearance, his eyes were alert, reading Glawen, judging him.

"A business offer", Glawen said, and the officer smiled ironically.

"Yes yes, business. I'm sure. We have more than enough 'business' to keep track of here." The Leutenant stood suddenly, and walked over to look out his window upon the streets of Mos Entha. "I was assigned this post", he said reflectively. "Its part of my career path. I couldn't imagine coming here because I wanted to." He turned to look at Glawen.
"To be honest, from what I saw, you acted in self-defense. You disarmed your opponent without lethal force. I can't hold you on charges for that- there's enough scum in this city to worry about as is. But, I want to make this clear." He stared into Glawens eyes.

"I don't trust you. And I'll be watching."


The man found a large heat source on his viewer to the northwest, giving off readings indicating non-biological origin. He jogged slowly up a rise, and found a ridge that he layed down upon, focusing on the readout of his intensifier.


He had been DNA-sampled as standard Imperial procedure when questioned. He knew that he had to avoid further attention from the local outpost, small enough as it was. They had a large smuggling problem to deal with, and organized crime; most likely they didn't have the resources to keep track of him. As long as he didn't give them any further reason to. He never found out what happened to the knife-wielding thug after he was taken into custody; the man in the dusty work clothes had ran off and had eluded justice, both from the Imperials and Glawen himself. He wondered just what the hell was going on.

The man rose, and walked carefully down a steep rock-strewn slope. As he entered a broad canyon, the brilliant starlight showed an even darker mass against the canyon wall ahead of him. He heard the hissing of escaping steam; the smell of hot lubrication oil, and petrochemical exhaust fumes filled the air. The closer he approached, the more massive the great machine grew, towering into the sky, corroded metal radiating heat from the previous day, massive tracks sunk in the sand. No life was evident around it. Fighting down a primitive fear of the massive metal beast, He placed his carbine in his pack.

Glawen approached the Jawa Sandcrawler carefully.

He stood by the forward entry port, and was suddenly bathed in a brilliant electric blue glow. He shielded his eyes from the light, and, removing his pack, he placed a quantity of metal he had been harvesting in front of him, and stood back.

"A'halek" he said, and gestured to the case of metal in front of him. "Corba?"

There was silence for a few minutes. Then a hatch slowly opened. A Jawa waddled down the ramp, clad in the simple brown robe that was their common uniform. Unlike other Jawas he had seen, however, this one had an object dangling from its belt, an object that caused Glawen's heart to hammer in his chest.

A plasteel hand.



[Stopped playing SWG before I finished the story, though I still have a rough draft of the rest, involving a Bounty Hunter, an Imperial Probot, Rebel spies, and the Dragon's Pearls.]