Rohan and Davin stayed behind to scour some more potential jobs for us. It makes sense. Those two can handle that sort of thing correctly, but I keep feeling responsible for Rohan now that she's holding onto that crystal. Truth is I don't know her that well- can I trust her promise that she'd tell me if anything strange starts messing with her head? Is she going to go throw it into the Sarlaac Pit while we're separated? Am I okay with that plan if it works? Maybe...
So we met with the moisture farmers. Turns out they've been under increasing attack from the sand people. After some discussion, we get the whole picture. Sure- they're violent, barbaric savages... but they are sentient. They're a BEING. And they don't much care for these foreigners and aliens on their homeworld. So it's a lot of territorial business going on. But the farmers? They want them gone. Killed. Spoke about someone that came in during the Clone Wars and just took out a whole village. Even the women and children. J- I don't care who you are. That's some messed up business right there. Anyway. It sparked some debate. Some of the group seemed more convinced by the farmers: sandpeople are monsters, kill them and stop the attacks. Me and Cham said that'd be outright murder, and I don't do that. We finally agreed to talk and Gryllis offered up her repaired protocol droid for translations.
We headed back to town then to chill for the night. At the cantina... things went south, a bit. Okay. A lot. Most of these people have no idea how to lay low or be subtle. The Gand saw someone she thought she'd seen before and decided to approach him and talk about it. At the same time, Deem has another of his strange visions. It had to do with Cham and Gryllis talking to that guy! Something about 'like a rock falling over an edge, the avalanche could not be stopped. We cannot change the actions that will follow'.
Well that's some bantha shit there!
Ya know what we find out? The Empire has bounties on us! On all of us! Standard bounty right now, at 1000 credits. But this is not good! We're going to need to get a change of attire here. And we changed the ship name again (Belair now) and we're just going to have to be better, much better, at flying casual and staying out of attention. ... something that I think becomes far more difficult when the Force is calling to you and begging to be wielded. We'll have to find a way.
And those two are convinced this guy, who willingly told us that we're on the bounty board, is not going to sell us out as soon as we part ways. Naive of them. Shoulda just left well enough alone.
We wrapped it up for the night and the next day headed out to find these Sand People. Gryllis had a decent idea of bartering our services in hunting down the gundarks, in exchange for their cease fire on the attacks. Decent plan. But our speeder broke down and... before you know it, they're checking us out. Alfie ends up mis-translating something and pisses them off and they come rushing down on us.
We managed to fight them -without- harming them too much. I stuck to fists. Everyone else stuck to blasters on stun. I mean, you can't hope to talk if you start busting tail too hard. I managed to get across to one of their guys that they should stop, and they acquiesced. We went through some more ... peaceful talks? (If you can call their grunts and growls peaceful) Turns out what they really want is some bacta. Some farmers used to trade up with them but that stopped years ago. So - we make a deal, Cham will heal their elders in exchange for peace on the farmers so they can transport their production and move on to new steads. It means we have to go to their village though... and that's going to be interesting.
Another first?
I let someone hit me. Let me repeat that for you. I let someone hit me. Turns out that the fella I knocked to the ground would've had to like... be expelled from shame or something in their culture. He had to even up the score. So I gave him my chin.
Bet you never thought you'd hear the day I did something like that, huh? Well, it was that, or all our hard work to get to this truce and agreement to talk be for nothing.
He didn't hit that hard anyway...