The Crew of the Pretio in This Week's Episode
Ne'vets Aharo - an exotic animal broker, both legal and otherwise, majority owner in the Pretio.
Duk'k - Sipsk'ud Bounty Hunter, recently rescued by the crew. Offering his services in order to get off this barely existing hunk of mud. His warning shots are dead center mass kill shots.
Sqarl - Quarren ex-whaladon hunter, recently hired onto the crew.
"Sid" - A peculiar woman who has shown to be a better pilot than the previous one. Possible Imperial ties, but a far better shot.
R2-H8(r) - Astromech with a confusing history, and harsh attitude towards most of the crew.
Evus - Twi'lek male, former slave, then former associate of Ne'vets, who has found his way back to the Pretio but caught back up in the nonsense of the Pretio. Former lover and boy-toy to the feared Rebel terrorist (and former Pretio crewmember), Latorna Savvn.
Wait and See???
Safely landed on the remote planet Belkain,
The crew of the Pretio are prepped to find
An elusive (and possibly imaginary)
Werewolf.
While the crew hacked out a plan
To meet the requirements of the agreement,
A random dash on the barren planet
Raised hopes that there could be
Something similar to a lycanthrope on the planet.
Of course, this poses the biggest problem of all:
If it is a werewolf, how exactly are they
Going to capture it......
The trek back to the Pretio was relatively quiet. A quick decontamination of their gear, just be safe and Ne'vets dashed towards his quarter, leaving the rest of the crew quite confused. Fearing the trap to capture the "werewolf" would involve his suggestion, Duk'k went to the kitchen and inventoried all the Space Salisbury Steak dinners, calculating how long they could stay on planet, and how many traps they could make with the meat in each meal.
A few hours later of pouring over research, Ne'vets emerged from his quarters with a pensive brow, and pulled the crew into the lounge.
He motioned to them to kill their recordings, if they were still going.
"I know what this is. It's a Shistavanen."
"Bless you," Evus replied.
Sid stood up and moved towards the closet, "Do you need a nasal wipe?"
"No, no, that's what this thing's called, a Shistavanen. Lupine features, just like a werewolf. Very isolationist tendencies, and rare enough outside their system that a feral one, like the one we saw, could very well pass as a werewolf."
Sqarl questioned, "So he's not a lycanthrope at all?"
"Not one bit."
"Is like that dog-man in the last cantina?"
"Probably not. Anyway, they're great hunters, fantastic night vision, but they are sentient, if anyone has objections to that, let's talk about that now."
Duk'k turned philosophical, "Well, if the people turn into mythical werewolves, doesn't that make werewolves sentient?"
"Well, yeah, in human form at least, but this is definitely more animalistic than civilized, but the Kingdom-Phyllum-Class-Order-Family-Genus-Species they're closer to us than true wolves."
The entire crew tilted their heads, completely confused. Only Squarl gave a cautious nod of approval, "So it's doable?"
"We can be sure that if we get bit by this thing, the one thing that won't happen is us turning into a werewolf. Maybe Space Rabies, maybe a nasty infection."
"The problem is, that crack in the wall, is its cave, that's its domain. We'll be at a severe disadvantage against them."
"And that's if it's the only one in its warren. There might be more of them," Sqarl worried.
"True, safer to lure it out, capture it, and lock it up."
"We covered kidnapping already in the interview, so I'm fine in this situation."
"Good, so how are we going to lure this thing out."
A long alcohol-infused discussion commenced, with one basic solution: With the droids permission, they would cover R2-H8(r) with Space Salisbury Steaks, put it in a conspicuous area for the werewolf, and lay in wait from a safe distance.
 |
| R2-H8(r), Pre-Meat |
Sqarl offered his services to go out and find any additional tracks outside, possibly a hunting ground. The next day, he double-prepped all of his equipment and went out on a multi-hour solo expedition.
Silver Harpoon gun in hand, and covered in natural wax to prevent moisture loss from the desert, he did find a spot just under three kilos from the Pretio, that appeared to be part of the hunting grounds. There was an obvious spot for a meat-draped astromech droid, and some high ground for some of the crew to hide.
Back on the ship, Sid was opening up space holovid dinners and removing the Space Salisbury Steaks for application on H8r, securing the cobblers in a container for the fridge, and discarding the dreaded brownies.
"Why am I doing this?" he asked Ne'vets.
"Because we need a proper meat-to-droid ratio to lure the creature." Ne'vets confidently affirmed. Sid nodded and went back to work.
After dinner, Sid, Sqarl, and Ne'vets escorted the meat-covered droid to the ambush site, and the sentients ascended the rock for their vantage point. Evus and Duk'k would stay on the Pretio, just in case something happened.
The night was quite brisk, but not too uncomfortable, for the trio to lay prone, to not stir up more of the powdery sand, above the hunting path where a droid, covered in meat, lay exposed for some random predator to attack it.
H8R kept his full accompaniment of lights and displays on, and occasionally moved around the area, to better attract something.
A few hours into the plan, Sid felt some sympathy for the the droid.
"Perhaps we should give the droid a gun..."
More time passed, as H8R completed his 528th equilateral triangle pattern, the smell of ozone could be detected for a moment, before a brilliant flash of light envelope the area. This crackling light source could be seen all the way back to a Duk'k seated atop the Pretio.
As the ambush team adjusted their eyes, they could see the same white energy crackle through the R2 unit, before the droid teetered over onto his side.
"What happened?"
Sid pointed directly forward, "The shot came from opposite us."
Sqarl corrected her, "It was an ion gun, he's still gotta be in this twenty-degree arc."
Ne'vets eyes caught the figure running into the night, "He's 150 meters out... and I swear to you, he's eating a Space Salisbury Steak..."
Back on the Kwenn Space Station, Kurt Morningstar was excited to see the first video upload from the Pretio had arrived and he began compartmentalizing it to for proper editing. Even he nodded approvingly with the blurry image of a supposed werewolf, and was impressed with the moxie of Ne'vets going , "I know what we're dealing with..." until all the recordings had the same abrupt stop at the same moment. The recording starting up again, with a quite awkward Evus with a writing pointer in front of a retrofitted radar screen.
***
GM Notes: Yep, despite having plenty of references, none of the characters, nor players have realized that they've encountered Shistavanen all throughout the galaxy. They never encountered a quite feral/primitive version of the species.
GM Notes: Yep, despite having plenty of references, none of the characters, nor players have realized that they've encountered Shistavanen all throughout the galaxy. They never encountered a quite feral/primitive version of the species.
They were lucky enough to remember to turn off their recording devices while they plotted their plan to deceive Amber Kincaid. The day 2 video will start with Sqarl's commentary while hunting for said werewolf.
Next: #94 - Chasing a Rancor?
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