"Life is what happens to you while you're making other plans".

My old friend Stav had said that to me once, but I'd never really understood what he was talking about until this particular morning in the High City of Refuge. I was on my way to the room Resh had rented, to grab a quick shower before taking off on my pre-dawn date with Deladra, an intriguing alien girl I'd met that night at the Wayward Bantha. She'd explained earlier that the sunrises on Kidron were particularly beautiful, and I was looking forward to the two of us finding a nice, secluded place to sit down and not see one. But when I entered the modest chamber, all my plans fell apart.

Breathlessly, Resh explained what had occurred minutes earlier, culminating in Itar's abduction. Shortly after there came a knock on the door, startling us both. It was only my new friend Deladra, however, and despite a momentary suspicion, I invited her in to join us. Her knock was soon followed by that of Chief Batt and a handful of his peacekeeping force, who'd followed the disturbance to our door. As he questioned us, he was called via comlink by another one of his men, elsewhere in the town. It seemed that the phantom-creature's point of origin had been located...

ITAR

I don't actually remember the abduction. I suppose, if the paralyzing fear that Resh described was anything like he says it was, my brain may have buried the memory, in the interest of preserving its own sanity.

The first thing I do remember, funny enough, is rolling. Down some sort of ramp, or inclined tunnel perhaps, I recall rolling along, and soon coming to an unceremonious stop on cold, level ground. There were three or four figures standing above me, hooded. Though gripped by an intense fatigue, I mustered every effort to peer up at them through heavy lids, to catch a glimpse of my captors. Dim torchlight in the chamber helped a little, and I could see that they were Orfites, members of Kidron's indigenous species. Completely spent, my head hit the ground roughly, and I lapsed back into unconsciousness...

AVERY:

Resh, Deladra and I, along with Batt and his men, soon showed up at a grim, hovel apartment on the wrong side of town. There were already officers inside, who allowed us onto the scene in the hopes that we could make some sense of what they'd found there.

The walls, floor, and ceiling of the apartment were completely covered in scrawled hieroglyphics, as meticulous as they were macabre. But the sight of these was nothing compared to that of the apartment's sole occupant. It looked to have been an alien being, Orfite, and had once worn modest, dingy brown robes. These robes, however, and most of the Orfite itself, were now strewn about the small chamber, as though the unfortunate being had swallowed some sort of military-grade explosive. The sight of spattered alien blood mingling with the sinister inscriptions on the walls was too much for us, and Resh, Deladra and I quickly retreated back to the street, to try and shake the horrific images from our minds.

Chief Batt was right behind us, of course, but there was nothing we could tell him. He wandered off, speaking at length over comlink, then returned, urgency bleeding through his tones. "You'd better come with me," he told us, "you have an appointment with the City Manager, and the Council of Gordek..."

ITAR:

Well, I woke up again, this time alone. I was suspended in the air, inside a smallish cage made of some sort of tough, black wood. The cage hung in a dim chamber, about twenty meters across with a door on one side, and filled from end to end with smelly, running water. The cords that held my prison together were tough indeed, and it appeared my abductors had confiscated from my person anything that might have been useful in cutting through them. I set the cage swinging for a while, but quickly stopped - if I was gonna be trapped in a cage, I'd just as soon that cage wasn't under the murky water that lurked below me.

After a time, a trapdoor was opened above, and I could see another one of those creepy, hooded Orfites. The being wordlessly threw down a few objects, which turned out to be some grubby fruits and vegetables, only two of which I was able to catch before they tumbled through my cage and into the foul water below. As they splashed into the pool, the water began to roil ominously. I made a silent promise to myself that, if I got out of here, I'd try to find another route than going through the water.

As I ate the not-unpleasant rations, I was visited by a small, winged rodent, who perched himself on the opposite side of the cage, peering at me suspiciously. Having nothing better to do, I tossed him a small tearing of the fruit, which he snatched out of midair with surprising speed. Swallowing the prize quickly, the little fella creeped a bit closer, staring up at me expectantly.

Well, at least I'd made a friend in here...

RESH:

We raced along through the jungles of Kidron, by way of a speeder Avery's lady-friend Deladra hired for us. As we drove, Avery filled me in on the meeting I'd skipped. Seems this Council of Gordek was an organization of Orfites formed to smooth relations between visitors to their world and the various tribes, or 'Sahhs' both in the High City of Refuge and across the planet. Each Sahh was responsible for its own tract of land, and was completely autonomous from the surrounding Orfites. Apparently, the fellow we'd found all over the walls of his apartment that morning had been identified as a member of the Black Sahh, a mysterious sect that'd taken root in the deepest jungles of Kidron. Information on them was sketchy... all that was really known was that they'd been visited by an off-worlder centuries ago, and shortly thereafter had turned 'bad'. They'd kept entirely to themselves ever since, and were feared by all the other Sahhs across their continent. Evidently, what few Orfite scouting parties that had attempted to make contact with the Black Sahh had never returned.

Now, one of their number had been found dead in the heart of Kidron's only spaceport city, and presumably was responsible for our friend's abduction. The Council of Gordek wanted to know why, and had given us a free hand to use any means necessary to retrieve our friend... it was clear that the safety of any Black Sahh Orfites was not a concern.

While this meeting was going on, I had returned to the chambers of my strange new friend Rote, to discuss the situation with him. Rote explained that odd things had been happening in the town since shortly after his arrival - people seeing phantoms in the dark, city guards senselessly losing their cool and firing on one another, and a general sense of unease among the whole population. As a mission to test my mettle, Rote suggested I follow this disturbance to its source, and get to the bottom of things. When I asked him if he'd not want to come along, as this situation was obviously serious, he declined. Evidently, he was expected at a high-profile sabacc game later that evening.

...Not the kind of behaviour one expects from the individual who's going to be coaching him in this mysterious power of 'The Force'.

ITAR:

Well, had it not been for my little winged buddy, I could still be hanging in that cage today. As it was, the little fellow was a lot smarter than he looked. The more I fed him, the more he felt obliged to do me a favour. And before long, he was gnawing away at the cords tying my prison together. In short order, we had one of the barred walls ripped open, and I was faced with the unappealing choice of staying up here, and dropping down into the foul water below. Since the door on the far side of the chamber was too juicy a target to pass up, I held my nose and splashed into the pool.

It was about waist-deep, and filled with more than running sewage. Translucent tentacles reached up all around me, seizing my legs and pulling me toward its unknowable form. Swinging wildly, I hit the creature several times, as hard as I could, which seemed to stun it somewhat. Grabbing onto the ledge on top of which the door sat, I pulled for all I was worth while the beast struggled to get a better grip on my legs.