Homeworld-Panna 7
The Panna system is just off of the hyperspace lane between Felucia and Raxus, both hot spots during the Clone War, though there was no big battle in this system the confederacy had a base here in which they mined resources. After the CIS was defeated and left the area, in came several crime bosses which became known by the residents of the Panna system as the 7 Warlords. They each rule different parts of the system in their own unique way. On Panna 7 a warlord named Jevu’Kyne rules.
She is a Chis and focuses on the minerals and ore deposits of the area which she delivers both to the other warlords and to the Empire once they took over. Since this was once a confederate base there are still a lot of droids around. These droids are the main force of miners with a few poorly paid supervisors of varying races. Most of the denizens of Panna 7 are pirates, smugglers, and outlaws that use Panna 7 as either a hide-a-way or a base of operations. As long as they pay their dues to Warlord Jevu’kyne they are allowed to stay.
Deal with the empire- the warlords ruled the area unrivaled during the end of the clone wars. About 3 years after the fall of the republic the empire sent several star destroyers into the system and insisted the warlords pay their dues. The warlords wisely accepted and agreed to pay the empire 40% of their earnings both in money and in material goods and in return the empire doesn’t bother them too much. On Panna 7 the empire comes around every 6 weeks to receive a shipment of ores and minerals. They usually stay for about a week and then leave. Since it is schedule based most of the outlaws leave the planet for that week just in case the empire decides to go around snooping.
Under the Warlord there are several Barons who each control one of the 5 main cities on the moon. The one I live in is called Veloran City and is under the control of Baron Thululu an Advozse, and a rather fat one at that.
The city is actually a downed droid control ship (which is actually really big, like huge. It is about 2 miles in diameter and about .6 miles tall.) only about half of the ship is actually lived in. The Baron lives in the entire middle section along with his cronies. The space in between the central ball, which is called The Baron’s Balls, and the outer ring is where most of the common folk stay, think basic city folk rather than the sketchy folk. The closer one goes to the outer ring the worse things get, it is basically the slums. That's where I live, well almost there. I am like right on the edge of the civilized area and the slums. Most of the gangs of pirates and criminals have their strongholds inside the front part of the rings, by front I mean the side towards the opening in the outer ring. The back of the outer ring is used as a droid factory which is what this city is primarily used for.
The other 4 cities around the moon are used for mining the ores and minerals for warlord Jevu’Kyne. This city is the one that creates the mining droids that the other cities use. While the gangs and such control the tips of the outer ring and the Baron controls the center and back of the ship, the middle of the rings, called The Interior are a scavenger’s dream, that's my playground. Ever since my Dad disappeared and my Mom died I have spent my days and sometimes my nights scavenging old droid parts or tech that is lost in the depths. I sell most to the Baron, but sometimes to the gangs too. I also use the scavenged material to create gadgets for the various forces, though I keep the best for myself. I guess I should move on to my own story now.
My story- Well I say my story, but first I need to tell of my parents. I am the daughter of Dimetry and Alise Rivenholt. My father is a human from one of the core planets, he would always tell me such wonderful stories about a planet city and a planet so full of plant life that when the sun was on it it glowed green. I loved those stories, now that I am older though I think it is all a bucket of screws and no driver, there is no way there could be that much green anywhere. I don’t know this part, but my father was a padawan in the jedi order when the empire took over and the republic fell.
Having been saved by his master he fled here to Panna 7 where he met my mother, fell in love and had me. He got a job as one of the supervisors of the droid manufactory and every day when he came home he would tell me about all the cool droids they were making in there. I snuck in there once when I was 8. I wanted to see where my father had worked. I didn’t get to see much because the security there is very high. I was almost caught, but I lost them in The Interior, that is my kingdom not theirs.
My mother was a Mikkian from Mikkia itself. She left the homeworld when the clone wars started in order to become a starship engineer for the republic. She didn’t tell me a whole lot about her job as a ship engineer, but she did tell me stories about her life on Mikkia, I don’t remember a whole lot about the stories, though I will always remember the song she would sing me whenever it was time to sleep or I was scared or sick. She was always singing that song. I don’t remember what the song was called, only how it goes () . After the fall of the republic mother managed to help father stow away on a smuggler ship and both of them ended up here on Panna 7. Their shared circumstances led to them spending more and more time together and a year later out popped me, the loveable tinker this story is all about. Now I don’t know any of the jedi stuff, that was kept super secret as if anyone even mentioned the jedi they were ostracized or even taken in for questioning.
I guess finally we are getting to my story. My name is Quin Rivenholt I was born about a year and a half after the fall of the republic and the rise of the empire. For the first half of my life I had a great life. My father had a job that was super interesting and probably led to my tinkering obsession.
It also kept us well fed and clothed. My mother stayed home and took care of me and gave me an education, you know math, science, reading and writing. Mostly she taught me in galactic basic. Occasionally she taught me some words in her native Mikkian, but since that ended almost 6 years ago I don’t really remember many of them. Since I was still young I don’t have many memories of my family, though I do remember the one time my parents took me on a trip to the overlord’s floating space palace. They had saved up all year to take me there on my fifth birthday. The place was amazing! There were lights everywhere, lots of new foods that I had never seen before such as a spicy pancake, and so many other new things. They brought me to a droid fighting ring. It was between a droid that looked like one of the rock centipedes the travelers sometimes talk about seeing in the mines on Panna 7, I based Roger on them too. The other droid had like 8 arms each ending in a wicked looking spike. The fight was awesome. In the end the rock centipede looking droid won due to its more durable Jmoniam plating. That day was fun… unfortunately that was the last actual birthday I had. About a week before my 6th birthday I was out playing in The Interior with some friends and because we went in pretty deep I got back late. But when I was almost home I noticed dark smoke coming from the direction of my house. I of course raced back home only to discover the burned out husk of my home. I searched frantically for my family thinking that maybe there had been a fire. I eventually found my mother, well part of her. I think I found her hand first. It was just… lying there… in the doorway… missing two fingers. I think that is when the shock set in, because I remember just walking in a daze around the house without really even feeling anything, just numb. I found her legs in the kitchen and her body on the dining table. Finally I found her head sitting on my bed staring at me. At that point I screamed and ran from the house. I ran far and fast away from my home. I didn’t notice it at the time but looking back I can remember seeing all my friends and their families quickly closing their doors or curtains as I ran past them… sniff… sniff… Sorry I need a moment. It may have been almost 6 years ago now but I can still remember everything so vividly. Ok, now where were we? Right, I was running. I ran all the way back to The Interior and hid in a little box I had found a couple of weeks before. I am not sure how long I stayed there, crying until I fell asleep only to wake up and cry some more. I think it was my tummy that made me actually get up and leave. I went back to my house, the ruins of it. It was still there untouched. Usually, a house gets burned down or something and the scavengers show up like gem scarabs and just consume everything. But not this house. I didn’t know where my father was or why he hadn’t come to find me, but something must have happened to him too. I searched my house for anything I could salvage. I managed to find my plushy Kit Kit as well as a picture of my parents and me with the droid gladiator in the background. You want to see it? I still have it, one sec………….. Found it!
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See that’s me and my dad and my mom. It’s the only picture I have left of them, I almost lost it one time when I was overdue on the Baron’s payments and he sent his hunter drones after me. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. I didn’t find much else in the house other than some money, which I was thankful for because I was hungry. I went to the market to get some food, but whenever I would get close to any of the stalls they would suddenly be busy elsewhere or with another customer, it was like everyone was avoiding me. I even saw my friends there but when I tried to approach them their mothers pulled them away and told me to leave them alone. It was a really confusing time for me. I did manage to get some food from one of the travelers that was unaffected by whatever was going on with everyone else. He also gave me some pretty good advice. “Get a cloak then nobody will know it's you and you can buy whatever you want”. I did get a cloak. Now that I was anonymous I could hang around the market and listen to what they didn’t want me to know. Specifically the reason as to why my mother was dead and my father was missing. Turns out it was the empire. They had just showed up unannounced and walked straight to my house, destroyed it, killed my mother and took my father back with them to the ship. No one seemed to know why they were attacked, only that they had been and that if they are seen associating with me, maybe they will be next. I left the market right then and headed for the slums. I managed to find an empty house on the edge of the civilized area and the slums. Thankfully it was right between two gangs territories and neither of them wanted it bad enough to mess with the other gang, so it became mine. It was at this time that I started spending more and more time in The Interior scrounging for bits of tech or items that I could sell to the gangs or the Baron’s people. After about a year of just scavenging I started to experiment, make my own little gadgets. I’ll never forget the first gadget that actually worked. It was just a little flying glowbulb. It would fly around my head as I went around in The Interior. This left my hand’s free to climb and move things out of the way. Unfortunately it got sucked into a large fan and was ground, crushed and blasted into oblivion. But it was a great first gadget, of course now I just have lights attached to my goggles and it works well. It was one of these experiments that got me involved with the Baron. I was trying to make a little hand held laser cutter so I could cut up the bigger sheets of metal plating to get to some areas that were a bit tougher to get to. Well the laser did work… unfortunately the output nozzle had a gap in the converter and instead of coming out where it was meant to, the laser came out just where my arm was. One bzztt later and there goes my right arm almost to my elbow. I’m not ashamed, I cried, I screamed. Lucky for me the cut was cauterized. Unlucky for me is that I was doing this experiment on a high part of the interior and in my frantic scrambling, making sure I didn’t die, my arm was knocked down into a small vent and was stuck there. I had no recourse other than to seek help with fixing my arm, and there was only one group who had the means and the willingness to help me. The Baron. I raced over to the Baron’s balls and pleaded for them to help me. It took over an hour of pleading before the Baron himself came out to see what the fuss was all about. After I had told him how I had lost my arm and after his advisor Gustove San told him of my reputation among the gangs as a gadgeteer he agreed to get me a new arm in exchange for working for him. I really did not want to work for him. I was getting very greasy vibes from him. Thankfully his advisor came up with a good compromise. The procedure to give me a new arm would cost 100,000 credits, a sum that had me wide eyed and gasping. So the Baron would pay for the procedure and I would pay him back by making gadgets and selling them to him and his people or by money if I came across any. I still didn’t like being indebted to the greasy tri-wrench but I was down an arm so I agreed.
The procedure went well and now I have a new arm, and it is a special arm, check this out. When I fold my fingers in like this it slides in and turns into a soldering iron, and if I fold it like this, my hand flips back and out pops a computer jack. I once used this to hack into one of the Ackley gang’s computers and download some data the Baron wanted. I managed to get a whole 3000 credits for that job. Though that is also where I learned that I have a bad stomach for flying, or driving, or any sort of moving vehicle. See I get severe motion sickness whenever I am moving in a vehicle and can see the ground or even feel the wind going through my tendrils. The Baron once took me out to one of the mines so I could do some work on a couple of malfunctioning droids. I couldn’t even make it three minutes before I was spewing chunks all over the Baron’s speeder. Suffice to say, the 3000 credits I got from my other job was now splattered all over the seats and floor of the speeder. Anyway I got my new arm, but unfortunately it was not nearly as steady as my original arm, thank goodness I am a lefty. So over the next 2 years I scrounged together enough tech and supplies to build my own mobile workshop and partner. And here he is, say hello Roger. Why is he called Roger you ask? Well it was a story my father told me.
He said that when the battle droids from this ship were actually functional they would always say roger roger, like who is roger. So I named my little guy Roger. And if I ever get another one of him you want to know what I will name him? Go on ask. Ask. I’ll name him Roger Roger! Hahahaah! That never gets old. Oh. What were we talking about? Right. Roger is kind of like my mobile tool kit and partner in crime. He puts and holds everything in place and I come up with the ideas and fuse everything together. The perfect team of Mikkian and machine. I guess we should get back to my story. I got my new arm when I was 8 and I made Roger when I was ten. I’m 11 and a half now. I have spent the last 3 and a half years scrounging, crafting, and hacking so I could pay off my debt to the Baron. I still have half of it left, but I think I can finish it off in just another year or so if I can find the right tech. Once I do, I am going to find a ship and a capitan, because there is no way I am flying one of those things with my motion sickness. Once I do I am getting out of here and I am going to find out what exactly happened to my father.
