[Rage at the Eclipse] - The First Phase [Applications now Open again!]

Planet Frajkt

Your home, such as it is. Here you live and work. Here, probably, you'll live and die, living forever int he shadow of spacecraft coming and going, in the adventurers and stories of millions of men and women who who'll fly among the stars, achieving what you never could, making and spending in the same day more than you'll probably see in a lifetime and probably, possibly, having nothing ever go wrong in their lives ever.

Fuckers.

You make your way down to your favourite bar. Or rather, the one you can afford to drink at, with your fellow dregs of society, drinking what you can only assume to not be quite entirely fresh liquor. But you've long since stopped questioning the bar keep. A large bear like alien named Zigrund who answers everything with a gruff hrmph as he pours your beer, fills your bowl with space nuts that you're pretty sure aren't natural. You don't know what a bear is and you don't care, so you drink your beer with your fellow schlubs, grouse about the day you had and wonder what you're doing with your life down at the Health Bar.

Outside the sun is in an Eclipse, and darkness falls across the starport city.

==RULES==

Welcome to Rage at the Eclipse, a science fantasy party based RPG game. You play a character living in the Starport city of Ghrek. The only real rules restricting the kind of character you create is I ask you only to limit yourself to characters I can fit into a relatively large car.

No playing fucking Kaiju.

Another rule is no leaving the fucking party. As in, you can't just fuck off when you want to have a solo adventure, I'll just effectively kill your character off and ask you to make another one. The only reason I'd have you guys in separate PM based adventures is because you're doing sneaky shit around the other characters.

In this game, you start off in the rundown public house known as the Health Bar, you are vaguely familiar with the other characters, to what extent is up to you, what you are doing there on the day of the eclipse is also up to you.

I will of course add more rules later if it proves necessary, but you'd have to do some serious bullshit to make me do that. This is a Gallo game, God have mercy on your soul.


==APPLICATION==

Name: Who are you?
Species: What are you?
Description: What do you look like?
Bio: Whats your story? How did you get here, what do you do and what do you want out of life?
Skills: What are you good at? Are you a fighter, a mechanic, a pilot, a scientist, a mage, etc.
Equipment: What do you have on you?

Name: Olion Wilnarr

Species: Human, apparently.

Description: A large man with a wrinkled, kind-looking face. He is silver-haired and heavily balding, and has a chevron mustache. Though he looks to be old, he is in fact younger than he looks, considering he has surprising strength and agility that you wouldn't expect from his appearance. His eyes are cloudy and prone to staring into the middle distance, and he's basically always smiling. Looking at him, if you are remotely familiar with humans, you would quickly get the impression he's a little unhinged.

Bio: Back in the day, there was a holovid series called Beasts of the Rim, wherein a handsome and youthful fellow called Olion Wilnarr went around the galaxy visiting dangerous planets with espeically dangerous wildlife and showing it off for the cameras. In some cases, he participated in recorded (and occasionally staged) hunts for particularly dangerous alien beasts and monsters that threatened rim colonies. Other times, he simply observed or explained various exciting beasties for the audience. It was a hit show which was well-recieved on many worlds. Over time, as Olion matured, he preferred to play the naturalist to the hunter, but the show's executives thought the ratings pointed in the opposite direction, more towards blood and action. Eventually, after years of playing the role of naturalist and fighting against the execs, Olion was forced into an early retirement. He was replaced with a different, more willing, hunter. The show continued going strong for several decades before eventually dying off, as for some reason the execs decided to stuff it with product placement.

After being forced out, Olion retired to the unexciting world of Frajkt. He had plenty of savings, but little to occupy his time, as he had been used to the busy life of travelling around between worlds to see (and occasionally shoot) their most exciting and dangerous wildlife. He was glad the shooting was behind him, but he missed the seeing. He kept on learning more about xenobiology and the varieties of plant and animal life out there amongst the stars, and kept himself in shape with training in case he could ever get his job back. But for all his overtures to his old bosses and to rival studios, it wasn't really on the cards. So he fell into despondency, then debauchery, then hard drugs. It took decades, but it was one hell of a slide.

Eventually, he came to something of a realization and managed to stabilize his life. Modern medicine was a powerful thing, and with the right help he was able to heal some of the damage the drugs had done to his body, restoring his abilities to their prime, if not his appearance. But his mind had been damaged by both the drugs and treatments, leaving him with a somewhat reduced grasp on reality. Sometimes he would forget himself and imagine that he was still presenting Beasts of the Rim, and occasionally he would momentarily imagine himself in completely nonsensical situations. But most of the time, he was just... off. Strange. Hard to spend time around. But he remained focused and optimistic. He was healing, slowly. The mechanite pills that were costing the last of his savings were helping his mind slowly repair itself. And yes, he'd fallen back into drink, but it was just alcohol. And yes, the psychological temptation of the drugs was still there. But if he kept himself from sliding any further, maybe one day they'd let him go back in front of a camera again.

Skills: Olion is a xeno-naturalist! He's an old, washed up holo-star, who originally got into the profession with a mix of muscle, grit and knowledge of the natural world. He knows how to handle his old gauss hunting rifle, though he regrets ever having to use it. He knows how to wrestle animals - and people - in order to get close and deliver a lecture on the big beast he has in a headlock. And he has a surprisingly sharp mind for academic knowledge and interesting facts on all kinds of animals and plants from this part of the galaxy. He also knows quite a lot about how to acquire hard drugs, but let's not get into that.

Equipment: Just his clothes - he still dresses like an old-fashioned wilderness adventurer, boots and all - and wallet, to pay for his drinks. He still owns his old gauss hunting rifle, but it's in the back of his car outside, and most of his other stuff is back at his house.

Name: Francesco Indra Sunset Titan Orion "Shotgun" Jones

Species: Human

Description: A short (5'4") scraggly old bearded man of around 55 years. Wiry in build, as well as faster and stronger than he looks. His hairline has receded to the top of his head, with the rest of his bushy gray hair having been grown out into a sort of Einstein haircut. He also has a long, ragged beard. He typically wears a bright orange flightsuit adorned in armored plates and pouches, and carries an old combat shotgun he lovingly calls Esther. Beyond that, he carries at least eight knives at all times, as well as a heavy laser revolver (don't ask) he has named Twirly.

Bio: The story of Shotgun Jones is long, strange, and generally mad. Buckle up.

He began his life as a small child on the Junkworld of Trashman. A world of indescribable filth and pollution, Trashman hadn't always been that way. Once upon a time, the planet had been a thriving ecumenopolis, the center of an multiracial interstellar empire that had spread across an entire sector. Eventually, as all things do, that empire began to rot from within, leaving behind entire worlds as corpses of its ancient grandeur.

On Trashman, Shotgun Jones spent his childhood helping his scavenger parents find and salvage scrap and electronics from the world-sized city the old empire had left behind. They sold to various offworld scavengers and made a pretty good living at it. Shortly after Shotgun's twelfth birthday, though, things went sideways. His family ran afoul of the infamous Junk Mobsterbot: Scrappus Rex. A towering mountain of sapient machine, Scrappus Rex had carved an empire out of the world, running it as his own mafia state as he extorted legions of scavengers to maintain his constantly growing form. When Shotgun's parents failed to pay their dues, the minions of Scrappus Rex came for them and locked them away in the Great Scrap Mines. Shotgun himself only barely managed to escape by hiding in an old oil barrel.

Left alone on the world, and with no hope of ever getting his parents back, Shotgun Jones did the one thing he could: he scavenged and hid. Surviving off of forage, he eventually stowed away aboard a scavenger ship to get offworld. They weren't too fond of that, so they sold him to slave traders at the grand bazaar on Wel-tann V. In turn, the slave traders sold him to the Great Rockspice Mines of Chaingang VII. The mines were part of a slave economy spanning across numerous systems, all supporting the interstellar slaver empire of Supreme Slavemonger Skorch.

In the Rockspice Mines, Shotgun's small frame was used to fix the cramped, dangerous machinery and clear the thin, vertical shafts of debris for the drills. He quickly earned the nickname "Rockrat" there, but he was never particularly fond of it.

One day, a piece of mining equipment came back on early with Jones inside. He was nearly torn to shreds when a middle-aged space gorilla named Kharlin pulled him out, saving his life. From that moment on, Kharlin served as the boy's surrogate father, teaching him important lessons like "Best gruel is given out by Suzie. Big mantis lady. She's super nice." and "See that guard there? He spends most of the day napping, so you can goof off when he's on watch" or "Unrefined rockspice will give you violent shits. Like, really violent shits. You ever shit your intestines out, kid? You will if you help yourself to unrefined rockspice".

Good guy, that Kharlin. On that note, the mines always did smell like shit. It was a problem.

When Shotgun was 17, after four and a half years in the mines, a slave revolt broke out assisted by a resistance group called the Free Space Coalition. They were led by a mysterious female alien named Slave Ghost. Not much was known about her except that she was probably Sangarian (tall purple-skinned humanoid with four arms) and was a peerless pilot and warrior.

As the revolt broke out, Shotgun happily joined in, utilizing an improvised mining laser to blast his way out alongside the other prisoners. The FSC then offered them a choice: fight for the Coalition or be transported out of slaver space. Shotgun, being an adventurous one, chose to stay and fight while Kharlin (always being a relaxed, more peaceful sort) chose to leave. That was the last time they saw one another, and it was a tearful goodbye.

From that moment on, though, Shotgun was a dedicated FSC fighter. Trained as a pilot due to his small, light frame, he ended up piloting one of the Coalition's many scrap starfighters. Held together by nothing but jury rigging and prayers, the Slagbugs were nevertheless quite effective against the Slaver Squadrons due to their pep, ingenuity, and zeal. He aided in the liberation of countless slave camps, fought in numerous battles, and saved the lives of many during his time in the Coalition, but his most impressive story was the one that earned him the nickname Shotgun.

Once, when aboard the Junk Carrier Osiris, they were ambushed by a large armada of Slaver ships. Not having a chance to launch his fighter, Shotgun utilized his small frame to hide inside the ship's ventilation ducts. They were promptly boarded by the slave-hungry slavers, and the carrier was occupied by the enemy. Worse yet, it was reported that Slave Ghost herself had been aboard the carrier and had been defeated and captured by the enemy!

Armed with nothing but his revolver, and being the last free man aboard the ship, Shotgun crawled out of the vents and began creeping around. He managed to get the drop on one slaver with his knife, seizing his heavy combat shotgun in the process. Utilizing it, and feeling great synergy with the weapon, he began to fight a guerrilla war aboard the ship. Freeing many of the crew, arming them, and continuing the fight, they soon managed to overwhelm the attackers with their zeal! And in a final, heroic offensive, they took the bridge and freed Slave Ghost herself from the hands of the evil Slaver Admiral!

With the ship under their control, the FSC managed to escape their ruthless enemies yet again. Shotgun Jones was given a medal, kept the shotgun he'd acquired, and was known as "Shotgun" Jones from then on. He viewed it as a solid improvement on "Rockrat" Jones.

His adventures in the war continued for another decade and victory was eventually achieved. In a heroic offensive on the Slaver Superstation DomiNation, Shotgun Jones himself piloted the corvette that carried Slave Ghost and heroic retinue aboard the enemy station. Fighting alongside them to the bridge, he was there as Slave Ghost herself personally slew Supreme Slavemonger Skorch in a dramatic fiery swordfight.

Another medal was earned, a free republic was established, and slavery was abolished.

And then...there was nothing. No excitement, no adventure, no heroics.

Just an economic collapse arising from the destruction of the slave economy, horrible reconstruction, and depressing turmoil.

SOOOOO he traveled from system to system, fighting battles amongst the stars, and becoming less and less stable as the battles wore on his mind.

These days, Shotgun Jones is regarded as a madman, and rightly so. But he's also an excellent pilot, and can still hold his own pretty well in a firefight.

So he still gets work. Sometimes.

Skills: Shotgun Jones is a pilot, and a damn good one at that. Beyond that, he also has some maintenance and mechanical skills, and has a great deal of experience fighting with his weapon of choice: a shotgun.

Sadly, Shotgun Jones lacks a ship of his own. Ships are absurdly expensive, and Shotgun is not a rich man.

Equipment:
-Old FSC flightsuit, patched and haphazardly armored, with a matching white helmet bearing a worn FSC insignia on each side (broken blue shackles beneath three blue stars). He sometimes wears his medals on the flightsuit when out and about.

-Esther: Shotgun's old heavy combat shotgun, seized from a dead slaver during the Liberation War. Esther may be old, but she still hits like a truck.

-Twirly: Shotgun's old laser revolver. He's not as attached to this weapon, but it's a pretty good sidearm.

Deadline is Sunday and I'm hoping to get at least six players before starting.

Name: Lucy Lilburn

Species: Modified Human

Description: 5'6" with straight black hair, light brown skin and dark brown eyes. Wears a black suit, white shirt, black skirt, tie and shoes with white socks, very office looking, with a more casual spin in terms of style. Wears shades often. Quite MiBish. Unknown age, looks to be about 20s. Wears two golden rings with different signets on them.

Bio: Lucy was part of a... well, her story begins about 50 years before she was born. A galactic spanning cult/corporation began a program, collecting various embryos from various xenos races, bringing them to a hidden planet where an ancient artifact known as The Gate was located. There, the embryos were seeded with a combination of radiations and electromagnetic signals from The Key, another artifact found nearby The Gate. Over the 5 decades of collecting embryos, Lucy was the first successful embryo in that A. she didn't immediately become sterile or explode and B. didn't appear to be horrifically mutated mid-process. After that, she was raised by the cult, known as the Seekers of the Silver City, or just Seekers. The Gate was seeming some sort of precursor artifact or some other kind of nonsense, the Seekers didn't really know much actually, in all their time working on researching the dead planet and it's artifacts, the furthest they'd gotten was to the point of activating The Key and interacting with the Keyhole, which they'd managed to decode into a hellishly difficult and incomprehensible collection of constantly changing code and jargon, but, The Key had made someone with the ability to make sense of the code, theoretically. Someone whose mind could rapidly change to become the perfect machine for reading and manipulating the information filtered by it.

The main problem, was that whilst Lucy did have the possible ability to reach the potential of being able to sort out the code and make sense of it, in the code with pit-traps of knowledge, where Lucy had to temporarily learn some new area of mathematics or astronomy and such which set her back in her focus, meaning she had to begin again, but with the new knowledge to step over that particular area of code. It was like navigating a huge maze of information, seeking out some far off point. But even then, the far off point they were looking for was one point out of a million others. To make a darts analogy, Lucy had the ability to throw the dart far enough to hit the board, but it was a crapshot of whether or not she would even hit the bulls-eye apparently.

Eventually, the corporation began using Lucy to deal with other problems that came their way, financial predictions, breaking into virtual vaults, cyber-security, etc, and Lucy slowly became aware of a schism in the group. One half was focused on the more mundane matters, money and infrastructure and power. The other was focused still on cracking open The Gate and forming their religion of seeking a higher reality, focusing on people and politics and power. The Keyhole was still being used to test more embryos, but only one more embryo had shown any promise at the time where, action happened. A splinter group kidnapped Lucy from the planet of The Gate, a group more focused on the material side of things apparently, and got her out of there amidst a mess of violence and explosions, most likely crippling a lot of the work Lucy had done over the years. Still, she didn't have much love for anyone in the Seekers of the Silver City, regardless of their side of the schism. During the escape, she paid attention, she practiced when she could, she focused on her goals, and a month into the trip of navigating through shell rides, laying false trails, and covering their asses, Lucy killed her captors and fled herself, after looting everything she could from them.

A few years later, and Lucy has set herself up as an everyman for the local criminal network on Frajkt, taking custom jobs for whatever they happen to need. So long as she takes her time and the work seriously, it's rewarding and reliable, which is all she particularly wants. At the moment, just being able to enjoy some free time for herself in life, and not be stuck in some cyber-punk machinery is good enough, for now.

Skills: Lucy is very good at two things, one, is coding. When it comes to computer hacking and cyptology, she's excellent, and is familiar with most xenos programming.

The other, is whatever she happens to focus at purely for about two weeks. She seems to have another segment of her mind that allows her to reach about seven years of intense training in an area in two weeks of focus. It can increase past that but it has more noticeable diminishing returns after that point, and requires even more focus, but in the very short term, she can pick things up very quickly. Also, this area of knowledge that is taking up this "slot" fades rapidly if another area of expertise begins to replace it, so that if two weeks is spent learning how to paint real good, the past skill fades as is she hadn't used it at all for around seven years, and so on, and so on. It does allow her to pick up a familiarity with any skill afterwards, since, say, if someone spent seven years speaking a language, and then stopped for decades, they'd still be able to pick it up a bit easier than someone else, so whether she was using her normal brain or her focused brain, it comes a little quicker. And those two weeks of focus do seem to carry over to two weeks of normal training that stick around in her normal brain.

Equipment: Her hacking tools, the rings, both of which split open into input devices, and her shades which show the computer information as 3-d screens in front of her. A well-made handgun she's familiar enough with using. A collection of fake IDs she made. A wallet with aforementioned IDs and some Credits cards. A burn phone and a normal comms unit.

Name: Chroma Steel

Species: Stymphalian. A species of spacefaring-capable, but isolationist sapients from Erebus, a star system known for a large amount of unshielded, mineral and metal-rich planets. Stymphalian civilizations are known for their sophisticated technology (particularly material sciences and engineering) and stratified hierarchy, but little else is known. The hostile nature of the environment they live in and their low population numbers had made them been considered a minor power, thus not worthy of study or consistent interaction on a galactic level.

Description: Chroma is a metallic humanoid with the legs of a raptorial bird and iridescent feathers for hairs which she can raise or lower depending on her mood. Her eyes are large and white with big black pupils. She rarely blinks and emotes, furthering comparsions to robots. Chroma is strange and moody. She rarely talks which, when combined with a lack of human-readable expressions, can lead people to assume she is inscrutable and/or unpredictable. In reality, she is friendly enough and willing to play nice if people can get past her impervious air.

Chroma is moderately tall (6'0") and of an androgynous build. She is fairly typical for a Stymphalian in terms of height and physique.

Bio: Chroma migrated from the planet of Stymphalos in an effort to further her medical career. For all her dreams and ambitions, she eventually ended up working a thankless job at a third-rate xenohospital, where the hours were long and the pay was low. Eventually, the amount of hours exceeded the limits of her patience and she had enough. She tore an autodoc out of the drone storage, much to the surprise of staff, who knew better to get in a way of a large scary metal bird, and trudged off to a nearby bar to "celebrate" her early resignation.

Skills:

Innate: Stymphalians are notoriously resistant to a large spectrum of biological, chemical and nuclear hazards. They have a larger tolerance for extreme temperatures, both bone-chillingly cold and blistering hot, and discombobulatingly low oxygen levels. While they last as long as the average spacefaring human aganist bullets, lasers, and other forms of battlefield violence, their unnatural constitutions means they can offer to take unique...approaches to life.

Learned: Chroma is an (ex)xenodoctor of moderate expertise. The wide variability of her patients and ad-hoc training means Chroma is consistently familiar with xenobiology, and the sourcing, synthesis, and administration of proper pharmaceuticals on various species while exhibiting decent bedside manner. While Chroma is competent at triage, she is a medical generalist and may lack specialist experience for more unusual medical emergencies. However, like a proper doctor, she is willing to learn.

Chroma has passing familiarity with firearms as mandatory conscription is not uncommon in Stymphalian civilizations. Chroma is a mediocre fighter at best but she will fight.

Equipment: Spacesuit armored enough to withstand a few good rounds of lasers and bullets. A medium-sized coventional firearm since metal bullets are far cheaper than laser rounds and a few magazines. First aid kit. Biometric scanner. Survival knife. "Autodoc," a semi-autonomous mechanical platform designed for assistance in medical emergencies.

Alright, four people will od for now. Applications closed. We start Boxing Day, American time.

Another slow evening at the Health Bar

Another day in paradise.

As usual, it was full of all sorts of wonderful people, your average street tough, tired stardock workers, cleaning staff, builders, taxi drivers off the clock, drunks, gamblers and other down and outs. Among them a couple of humans, an ex-Vid star who, if you squinted closely and were a fan of wildlife docudramas, you'd vaguely recognise as passingly similar to an old rimward explorer of some note. Couldn't be though, he's too old. The other was some tired ex-revolutionary, who, if you'd ask, would tell you some old war stories about the struggle for freedom, but his smile didn't meet his eyes.

A third human, this one keeping to herself off by a wall near some windows, simply minded her own business and looked fairly out of place given her corporate look. But this was one place where no one fitted in, so hardly anyone ave her more than a curious glance.

Most out of place of all was the Stymphalian, a species rarely seen outside of their territories, seated all alone in the centre table as the crowds filtered in. A card game was in its early stages of grumbles and losses nearby, several mean looking aliens off by the door were grousing and commiserating over some misfortune and everyone else sought the answers in the bottom of their cups.

And outside, the orange glow of the evening sun was slowly giving way to an unseasonable darkness as the eclipse moved into position.

Lucy was currently shuffling a deck of cards absently, she'd been given an all clear on work for a while after the last job went south, due to them ending up breaking into an empty vault because someone couldn't tell the difference between a 6 and a 9 on the calender apparently. She was trying to pick up card games and casino activities again and make some mad money later that way, but early days yet before she'd forget all those mission impossible holo vids she'd studied. She'd come here for a change of pace, but it was bloody packed today. Apart from that table with the Stymphalian buuut, yeesh. Then again, it didn't look super talkitive so...

She shrugged, and moved over, pulling up a chair to sit with it, giving it a nod. "You alright with me sitting here, yah? I'll buy your next round if it helps?" She gestured at it's cup and made a drinking motion to make her point. She didn't really know Stymphalians that well.

The Stymphalian's hair puffed up in mild interest as Lucy's offer. The table was unnaturally empty, though truth to be told, the reason for its emptiness was ambiguous. Stmyphalians, stoic and stiff, do not have warm reputations. On the other hand, there was a hospital drone sprawled haphazardly on the table surface.

"Yes," the Stymphalian said impassively. "You may." She pulls a seat for her as if the words were not enough.

"So there I was, rifle in hand," said Wilnarr, arm sweeping in an expansive gesture. "The iridex finally emerging from its crevice in the rocks. And I looked at it, and I saw these beautiful iridescent scales, I saw its intelligent eyes, and I couldn't pull the trigger! So the rigman, the guy recording the surroundings for the full-immersion folks, starts bugging me, telling me I can't hesitate too long or they'll have to cut it out, and cutting out bits from full-immersion is always a pain, I empathize with the guy, but..."

He put his hand on the table, looking away from the patrons he was regaling. "Couldn't do it. I was fine with chasing down megakroks and fire-skinks, those things are threats to lives and livestock, but this thing was harmless! So I got up and I went over to it, right, and it came right up to me! Super friendly! And that made some great programming, let me tell you, the audience loved that part when it got broadcast. The suits hated me for breaking script, but they tolerated it for the ratings boost. The thing was so kind and friendly! So I started telling the camera about it, one hand on its flank, like it was almost tame! But it's all in the body language, you see. They're smart creatures, the iridexes. It knew I was a friend." Wilnarr grinned, and took a big gulp of his beer. "I heard after that that iridexes got so popular, they started showing up in zoos."

"Groxshit." one of WIlnarr's listeners said. "My fore-giver saw one in a zoo back when he was a hatchling. You're full of it."

"Then your fore-giver has a terrible memory," said Wilnarr with a shrug and a grin. "People used to think the iridex was dangerous! Idiots. They're just too smart to be held in most habitats. Nobody thought they were worth the trouble of caging until they appeared on Beasts of the Rim. You can thank me for it!"

Shotgun glanced over at the naturalist, smiled, and swiveled the stool to face him with his drink.

"Here here!" shouted Shotgun, raising his glass before knocking it back. "Remember that episode! Caught it on reruns a few years back, good stuff!"

Lucy sat, inspecting the drone thing. Lot of weird looking tools on it, a few she recognised from a stint pretending to be a doctor. Wasn't sure if she should pry. She sipped her drink and eyed the Stymph. Interesting feather things, kinda cute, hard to read it otherwise, cause those eyes. Yikes, those eyes. That was always what threw her when interacting with aliens, the ones that even had eyes anyway. "So. Um. What's up. With all this. And hello." She put out there, a little unnerved, also trying to ignore the louder goings on by the bar.

"As the humans say, 'nothing much,'" the Stymphalian said. Her hair relaxed as Lucy took the seat, but her stare was intense as ever. She cocked her head. "My name is Chroma. Now you know my name, you do not need to fear me."

The disgruntled listener to Wilnarr's story groused his way to the space bear to refill his drink as Jones turned to regard the story.

Lucy sat at the table next to the Stymphalian. The drone on the table sparked and jolted once but died back down. The outburst brought a brief lull to the choir of conversations around the tavern, before, seeing it was not about to go haywire, everyone returned to their cups.

Chroma stared at the Autodoc. Her expression was unreadable as ever but the slight furrow of the brow (and the tightening grip on her sidearm) indicated this isn't the first time this happened.

"Still need to work out a few 'kinks,' as one says," she said coolly. "Should had finished my drone operator license before coming here. Would had been...helpful."

Yeah, being told she didn't need to fear it didn't help matters. She then jerked violently at the sudden sparking, but, hey, didn't explode, so that was good.

"Your, I'm assuming, medidroid busted? What happened to it?"

"I borrowed it," she said. "Indefinitely."

“Anybody here need a merc? Happy to fly for a good cause,” Jones advertised, since he was half drunk and it seemed like a good time to advertise.

Wilnarr stood up suddenly, gulping down the rest of his drink. "Yes! Flying out! Just let me know when we'll be leaving." He blinked, then shook his head.

He went over to the table where the young woman and the alien were staring at the drone. "Hi! I'm Olion Wilnarr." He held out a hand for them to shake. "Are you the drone-shot crew?"

"Ah, so 'yours' only recently then." She said, dropping the quotation marks heavily. She glanced over it again, looking for a panel. "So, is it a hardware problem, or a user problem then?" Lucy was getting mildly curious about this. Most people weren't up front about stealing medical equipment.

Or offering merc services. To fly? "Isn't a merc looking for good cause work sort of an oxymoron mister?"

And then, whoa, other guy here. She put a hand out cautiously to shake in response. "Unless I missed a message, nope. Chroma here maybe."

"For most mercs? Yes. For Shotgun Jones?" asked Shotgun Jones, standing up and spreading his arms. "It isn't an oxymoron at all! If you want to keep your heart in the right place, you have to be picky. Slavers can take a run and jump, I'd say! That said, I'm a pilot without a ship, and it can be hard to find a ship without a pilot."

"Oh, then what's your role?" said Olion cheerily, clasping Lucy's hand in a crushing two-handed shake. "Director? Logistics? Editor? Always good to have a professional holographer on site. What's your background, then? You look like you know what you're about." He looked back to Chroma. "Chroma, was it? You'll be shooting, then? Exciting!"