Draylin spins in the direction of the explosion, utterly surprised. Looking around and seeing no immediate threats, however, he deactivates his lightsaber and turns to his companions.
"What in blazes was that?"
Temil jumps on the spot, then turns around to the cloud of fire engulfing what was previously a shuttle. "It... seems like their ship exploded.", he utters after a small while, before looking down at the bodies of the Reborn, shaking his head. Pausing only to take the lightsabers off the bodies, he rubs his chin. "Perhaps they were worried we'd get the information.", he suggests. "So they detonated their own ship. I suppose we'd best secure the...surviving stormtroopers, then call the Temple." He sighs. "As much as I'd like to see what they've uncovered, I doubt it's wise to continue before we call. Investigating an energy signature and thwarting ex-Imperial fractions are two different things, entirely."
He taps his wrist. "Thel, could you establish communication with the temple? We'd need to notify the masters, at least." Taking off his cowl, he sighs once more. And this morning, dirty boots were my main concern.
"Would someone be so kind as to assist in disarming and securing this prisoner?" says Kon. The stormtrooper continues to float eerily in the air.
Draylin shakes his head, brought out of his distraction by Temil and Kon Laan. He moves to do as the Kel Dor suggested, removing weapons from the Stormtrooper.
"Anyone have some binder cuffs?"
"..Uhh....yeah...umm...Irina...I'm..uhh...over...by the..uhh...explosion...we'll..need the..uhh....uhh..long range thingy..," the crew hears over comms, Thel is obviously shaken up.
Thel is sitting in a patch of brush semi-curled up trying to collect himself.
"Three. Not bad."
Before he has a chance to do much else, Joran sees the second Reborn go down. His eyes snap to the shuttle as it explodes, a slight frown forming on his face. Figures.
He shrugs and moves forward, bounding over the log he had been behind and into the clearing. As he moves toward the others, he keeps his rifle raised until he's sure none of the other stormtroopers are getting back up. Only then does he lower his weapon. "Can someone go get Thel and make sure he didn't get hurt or soil himself? We're gonna need to call this in." He turns his attention to the floating trooper. "Cable might also work if no one's got any cuffs on them. Or a blaster bolt in the leg, if running is the main concern." He moves to remove the stormtrooper's helmet. "We're going to need to have a little chat, friend."
Ean removes the helmet of the trooper that he shot, placing the white dome over his head. If the helmet is still functional, he looks at the shoulders of the other troopers, searching for a insignia or designations.
"Thel, think of all the fun we will have sifting through that wreckage trying to see if it tells us anything about these infiltrators."
"Trooper , I am Ean Flennic of the Imperial Navy. Mission report."
Irina nods at Joran and go and retrieves Thel, Its okay Thel, let's go down and see if you can help them with the tech okay? Some new Imperial toys for you to look through, right?
With Thel in hand Irina punches the proper codes into her long range wrist communicator and broadcasts that we have prisoners and need guidance on next steps.
Irina move to join the group and prisoners, urging Thel to join her...
Ean, you do find a sort of symbol on their armor. It is similar to the standard Imperial cog; however, it is divided by two thin vertical bars. You do not recognize it.
The captured Trooper scowls at you.
"Bah! You're as bad as these Rebel scum; listening to that traitor Pellaeon, allying with Jedi! You are no Imperial!"
Irina, you get through, and Master Skywalker answers back. Clearly, he has been making this a priority.
You provide the broad strokes of the situation, and he responds.
"I'd dearly like to know how they got back on the planet undetected. I'd like you to examine the wreckage of their craft; maybe it had some type of cloaking technology. If you're all still uninjured, I'd like you to look around in the temple and search their possessions, as well. Maybe one of them has some datapad or something that will inform us of their mission.
Excellent work capturing one of them. Bring him back with you once you return. Do what you can to bind the rest of them; I'll send Master Solusar out with a shuttle to retrieve them as soon as he's available.
Well done. Stay safe and get back as soon as possible."
Flennic's voice takes on an edge that no one on the task force has heard, an echo of his years of service in an unforgiving military organization.
"I think you will find, trooper, that I am entirely an Imperial, and that you may be particularly interested in my scores in the Information Extraction courses at the Imperial Naval Academy, not to mention the twenty years of my career. Since I'm guessing you have never served on a ship under Emperor Palpatine, I'll caution you not to question my Imperial credentials again. Now let me make clear what your choices are: You can report on your mission to me and we can maintain a professional relationship. Failing that, I will treat you as an enemy combatant, take you to spend some time with an interrogator droid, and then hand you over to Jedi Master Skywalker for him to rip the information from your mind. Which will it be?"
I hope none of these young Jedi feel it necessary to protest that Skywalker wouldn't do something like that.
Your bluff seems to work, and your demeanor cows the Stormtrooper. His face goes white.
"They...they say that the Jedi can shred your brain and learn your most secret truths...look, I've barely been a Stormtrooper for a month! They just told me if I was captured to say something like what I said...they knew who you all were so we were briefed...please, I don't want to face a Jedi Master!"
Draylin grimaces, about to say that Master Skywalker would never do such a thing...but as he opened his mouth, he caught the look from Ean, so he decided to busy himself doing something else.
As Master Skywalker suggested, Draylin examined the gear of their defeated foes.
Kon regards the young trooper inscrutably. Clearly there is a lot roiling around inside his head. Then he turns to watch the temple in case anyone else decides to come out while the questioning is going on.
I will assume you don't search the Stormtrooper currently being interrogated.
On your fallen foes, you find;
3 Blaster Rifles.
1 Blaster Rifle with a standard targeting scope.
1 Blaster Pistol.
4 Utility Belts with Medpacs.
4 Frag Grenades.
2 Lightsabers with synthetic red crystals.
If you wish to strip their armor, you would have 3 sets of Stormtrooper armor (+6 armor bonus to Reflex, +2 equipment bonus to Fortitude, includes helmet package) and 1 set of Scout Trooper Armor (as combat jumpsuit with helmet package).
The Reborn have orange cloaks over their homespun garb. One of them, however, does have an encrypted datapad on them.
Irina leans in to whisper at Ean, Who we are? Did a probe droid land unmolested or is there an Imperial spy? Irina lets her eyes linger over Ean and then bumps the officer with a shoulder to show her intensity was a jest. Louder she says, But we really should find out more about that
Draylin does not strip their armor, but he does remove all of the weapons and other equipment. Upon finding the datapad, he grunts, then turns and looks for Thel.
"Thel! Got something for you. Think you can crack into this sucker?" Draylin asks, holding the datapad aloft.
Thel stares up at Irina as she approaches, tears in his eyes. After her words of reassurance he sniffles a little while standing up and brushes off his jumpsuit.
As he walks, following Irina back to outside of the temple, he maintains a muted, haunted expression. Once they arrive, mid-questioning, Thel just stares glassy-eyed through the prisoner into nothingness. Draylin's shouting of his name seems to snap Thel back to reality and Thel meanders over while pulling out his own datapad (an oddly exceptional datapad with all kinds of wires and devices wrapped around it).
Thel takes the datapad form Draylin and plugs a wire, attached to his datapad, into it. Within about 30 seconds, the crew's datapads beep with a new message.
"You know, I'm still not hearing a report, Imp. I'm not sure we've got time to wait for you to decide to start cooperating, either. Or for the droid to convince you to do so." Joran smirks and draws his knife, considering it as he twirls it in his hand. "Would you like to do the honors, Flennic? Or you want me to do it?"
As Joran's tactics become increasingly distressing, Kon finally steps closer and places one of his knobby hands on Joran's knife arm. "There is no need for such measures," he says.
He turns his attention to the young stormtrooper and says, "You don't want to be hurt or killed. You're a prisoner now, all you can do is look out for yourself. Your shuttle is gone and your Force-using allies are too; we'll figure out what you were doing anyway. Our slicer has already cracked your logs. You might as well save the time and tell us about your mission parameters, so we can treat you comfortably as a prisoner and make all the arrangements for your safety. I would like to help make this painless and simple."
He pauses.
Beat.
"Just tell us all of your mission orders."
You make an otherwise unpalatable suggestion seem completely reasonable to the target. You must be able to communicate with the target, and the suggestion can't obviously threaten the target's life. The target won't realize later that what he did is unacceptable.
"We...we were just here to escort the Reborn. They were to find...something. I don't know what, it's something to do with the Force. If it wasn't here, we were to move on to Corsucant, disguised. It's...somewhere in the Jedi Temple. But it's...hidden. Dangerous. But my superiors want it."
Somewhat uncomfortable with Ean and Joran's actions, but not quite knowing what to do about it, Draylin makes his way inside the temple, searching for whatever the Reborn were looking for.
Draylin, it is certainly an older, long unused temple. Vines have crept in through millenia-old clefts in the ancient stonework, and the forest, despite the generally clearer area the temple is situated in, is clearly encroaching and trying to reclaim this edifice, as nature is wont to do.
The temple consists of merely one large chamber. In the middle of it is a pedestal that you can only assume, at one time, housed an object of some significance. Based on the size and shape of the pedestal, it would have been no larger than your standard datacube. This pedestal, however, is empty, and judging by the dust and cobwebs, has been for a long time.
Unplugging and stashing both datapads slowly, Thel wanders back toward the ship explosion site to sift through the wreckage for anything valuable or of use. As he does so he maintains a dazed, zombie-esk, lost vibe.
Joran shrugs, placing his knife back in its sheath. He moves a few feet away to skim through what Draylin took off the rest of the stormtroopers, pocketing a couple extra power packs as he goes. He then notices a rifle with a scope attachment. I've been hoping to get my hands on one of those. He kneels down, taking a few seconds to remove the scope before placing it in one of the pouches on his belt.
Temil, frowning, turns to stare at the Republic soldier, but sees Kon has the situation firmly under control. Raising an eyebrow at Joran once more, Temil stares him in the eyes, saying nothing, though the look is clearly judgemental.
As the party walks in the temple, Temil's initial reaction to the missing relic is that of sudden surprise, before the cobebs and the dust paint the rest of the picture. His brow lowers for a moment, as he quietly sits down in the dusty environment, closing his eyes to feel the flow of the Force. "Perhaps we could all search for any signs together. Mistress Kayzeld, you are free to join us, of course.", he addresses the other two padawans and the noblewoman without raising his eyes from the ground. Breathing in and out in slow intervals, he attempts to chase away the all-too-recent memories of lightsaber combat, exploding shuttles and captive interrogation.
I assume you are using the Sense Surroundings application. Nothing seems to jump out at you; there are no concealed enemies.
Moving outside, however, you do find yourself drawn to some larger chunks of the destroyed shuttlecraft. Looking at them, you can see that they are curiously made; this is not the standard design.
Irina scans the area casually and nothing jumps out. Um Kon. Do you think you might get this fine trooper to expand more on how they knew who was on planet?
Kon turns his head to regard Irina and listens to her as she speaks to him, pauses for about two seconds, then inclines his head. He focuses his attention back on the trooper.
"As my companion asked: How did you know who was here?" he says.
As Temil concentrates, the temple itself doesn't stand out in the Force as anything out of the ordinary. Perhaps it never were, or perhaps the relic has been gone too long, the place falling silent. Standing up with a slight look of disappointment to his face, he feels he should investigate the ship. "Thel?", he reaches for his handheld comm, but the look of the ship's design rubs him weird, despite his lack of interest in the field. Is... is this?, he ponders, as his memories lead him to lessons in the Androti Villa on Naboo, and a long talk with a distant relative, trying to instill in the young boy the pursuit of science at all costs, and even sharing some secrets Temil has kept to this day. He puts a hand on his chin, responding only with a "Hmmm..."
"This technology is... something much more advanced than anything a party such as this one should have.", he comments as soon as the others make their way to him. "And if I know my manufacturing companies, which I do,", he points to a piece of debris, "this is a cloaking device. It would explain why these assailants chose to detonate the shuttle - but it would also imply they have immense resources.", he concludes. "But not manpower, or at least, trained manpower.", he continues as he paces around. "We must contact the Jedi Masters at once.", he says, his tone of voice sounding nervous for the first time since they've landed.
"Did you think Republic politicians and military coming together with Imperial officers and Jedi would go unnoticed? Every government has traitors willing to sell information for credits. Yours is no different."
Kon remains as impassive as ever.
"If it is their plan to raid a Jedi Temple on Corellia, then we should head there. If they have such resources, this is unlikely to be their only shuttle, and it seems like they can get 'stormtroopers' anywhere, not that these jerks qualify. Let's get moving. The sooner we can get back to the temple, the sooner we can leave. Whatever forces are moving here are obviously wealthy if poorly prepared."
Joran finishes sifting through the gear and stands. Deciding he probably shouldn't further involve himself with the questioning, he instead takes note of where everyone is. He spots Thel off by himself, seemingly wandering listlessly. Joran decides to lightly jog over to where he is, bending to grab the looted blaster pistol as he does so.
"Hey Thel!" Joran calls out as he gets close. "You all right, kid? You seem pretty out of it."
As Thel is sifting almost mechanically through the ship debris he seems to focus on certain pieces over others.
"Hey Thel!" Joran calls out as he gets close. "You all right, kid? You seem pretty out of it."
Without looking up or stopping his activity, Thel says in a monotone voice, "This plating seems to have been modeled after the Sun Crusher. It's not as good though." Thel then pulls out his unique datapad and hooks up some cables to a larger piece. After tapping several times on his pad, the debris piece shimmers translucently and then stops. "Yep, some sort of cloakable alloy..."
Joran raises a brow at this. "Sun Crusher, huh? Cloakable Sun Crusher tech? Can't say I know too much about all that, but it doesn't sound good." He pauses, first taking a second to cast his eye over the rest of the material around them, then to watch Thel work, apparently numb to everything else around him. Joran sighs at this. "It takes some getting used to..." he mumbles to himself.
He reaches out a hand and places it on the young man's shoulder. "Come on, Thel, let's get out of here. Not much else you're gonna get from a bunch of scrap." Joran motions behind him. "Besides, I think one of the others grabbed those Reborn lightsabers. Now's probably the best time to get your hands on one."
"Oh. I suppose..," Thel says slowly getting up. When Joran mentions the lightsaber Thel looks visibly I'll. "Nonono...No lightsaber. I'm not working on that anymore." He immediately begins walking quickly back to the ship looking up at the treeline until he's back on the trail, almost tripping several times on the way.
Kon interjects, "Should we check the temple ruins here, in case the intruders missed something?"
Draylin, already in the temple, will look around for anything out of the ordinary.
Draylin, you find nothing else in the temple.
You feel like you've swept the area pretty thoroughly. You can easily hall all of the enemies weapons and equipment into your ship.
Now that you know how the path down, Joran, getting out is not quite as difficult. You're also not worried about stealth this time, so the return trip is easier. It's a smooth, uneventful journey back. In the time it takes to return, Jedi refresh their Force Power Suite.
Upon your arrival, Masters Skywalker and Katarn await you in the hangar bay. They greet you, glad that you're all safe, and ask you to accompany them to a briefing room. You've never used this one before; it's a little more militant than you're used to, with several rows of seats rising up and facing a central desk and HoloProjector. Master Katarn gestures towards the seats, indicating that you should be seated. When you are, he speaks.
"From what we can tell, you all did well out there. I'd like a full report, though."
Temil looks at the others, as if indicating whether or not he should speak, then clears his throat. "We landed with no indication of what was about to come.", he says, putting his palms together and straightening his back. "As we did, we discovered the stormtroopers, and Thel managed to get into their frequency. Our two military minds chose to ambush them, and performed admirably, and we managed to capture some of the stormtroopers, but not before we encountered the Reborn. And allow me to say that Draylin is quite the opponent.", he says, locking gaze with Master Katarn for a moment, as he produces a lightsaber and puts it on the table. And I'm not mentioning the other unless they ask.
"Kon Laan interrogated one of the stormtroopers, and managed to find out that they were seeking a relic of some kind in the temple, which wasn't present as we investigated. I searched for the Force, but I couldn't feel anything about it.", he looks down. "The shuttle had detonated, rather than letting us capture it. Thel and I identified the ship as one carrying Star Crusher technology, and a cloaking device." He leans back. "If you don't mind me asking, what will you do with the captives, Master Skywalker?"
Master Katarn raises an eyebrow, considering. Luke chimes in.
”We’ll hand them over to Republic authorities. They’ll likely try them for espionage and sentence them to prison time.”
Kyle then speaks again.
”Did you find any information about where they may have come from or have been headed next?”
Joran takes a step forward to speak, his feet shoulder width apart and his hands clasped behind the small of his back. "On-site questioning of the captive stormtrooper suggests they're affiliated with an Imperial splinter faction. Hardly surprising, really. Some people don't know when they're beat." He shrugs and goes on. "Anyway, he also told us that if they didn't find anything here, they were to go to Coruscant in disguise and search for whatever it is they're looking for in the Jedi Temple. Chances are, that's where we'll find more of them."
Kyle and Luke share a look; when Luke nods, Master Katarn continues.
”Usually, I’d take more time to debrief, but from what you’re teling me time might be of the essence. If Coruscant was their next destination, they may already have dispatched another unit.
We’ve got our hands full here, and with the revelation that some advanced stealth tech is into play, we can’t afford to leave the students unprotected. Most of our Knights are already on other assignments, so I’m going to ask you all to head to Coruscant and follow upon this. Time is a factor, so you’ll need a fast ship.”
Luke grins, and for a moment you see the farm-boy from Tatooine break through his Jedi serenity. He then speaks.
”Fortunately, I have a very old friend with a ship that fits that bill perfectly. You have an hour to gather whatever you need, and then you’ll all meet up in the docking bay. Your transportation will be waiting for you there. Any questions?”
Draylin looked askance. He hadn’t really processed everything that had happened yet, but he knew that when he had time to decompress, Draylin would have to come to grips with the knowledge that he had just taken a life for the first time.
He did not have that luxury now. He simply listened to their new orders then excused himself to ready his supplies.
Draylin travels light; other than what he has, he simply packs a few spare sets of clothes. Then he makes for the hangar.
Thel still has a sullen expression as he stands slightly slouched. He says nothing.
Joran grins. "None from me. We'll take care of it, Master Skywalker, no worries." As they leave the briefing, he comments to the others, his voice a bit more upbeat and eager than usual. "No rest quite yet. Still, I haven't actually been back home for a few years, which surprises me now that I think about it. Sort of a shame it's a business trip, but hey, sometimes you gotta take what you can get." He casts a sidelong glance at a couple of the younger members of the group. "There'll be some time to clear your heads, if that's what you need. Just make sure you're ready to go, physically and mentally, by the time we get there." With that, he strides off to gather his belongings. In addition to his usual gear, Joran packs a couple sets of casual clothes into a bag and heads to the hangar.
As he already had almost everything he felt he needed, he arrives outside the docking bay long before the hour given by Luke is up. Joran places his bag on the ground and seats himself beside it. He retrieves the targeting scope he took from the temple a short time ago and sets to work attaching and installing it to his own rifle.
On the return Irina coordinates getting her "war chest" packed in a way to load it into the incoming transport just in case. Otherwise she checks her gear to make sure she is ready to go.
Thel solemnly shows up hefting a chest as well and then sits on it and begins fiddling on his datapad.