The moon is a harsh mistress (closed)

The trials of Julius Magnus-Solo were great indeed. He not only had to maintain a pristine public image, but also had to run his criminal and legitimate businesses. Occasionally he found it all hard to deal with by himself. He couldn't make a meeting in Courscant if he had an illegal deal to make and he couldn't shake down a traitor if he had to balance his finances. What he needed was a partner. He was a powerful dark lord and simply could not and would not oversee every minute detail. In this need e began to search through his contacts and knowledge of the underworld to find a suitable partner. One who Julius felt needed him just as much as Julius needed a partner. His research pointed to a few candidates but the most promising was a man who went by the name Fawkes.

Julius would make this journey himself, no intermediaries. He prepped one of his ships, a small unassuming one, that would allow him to move freely and without suspicion or attract unwanted attention. Naturally he masked himself and cloaked his entire body. He wore a black, unassuming loose cloak with a hood that covered his entire body. A copper toned metallic mask covered his face. To the average eye he would seem a typical wanderer who just wanted to be left alone.

He left and headed for Nar Shadaa. The center of crime in the entire galaxy. He never enjoyed is trips their. Despite the undercurrents of suffering, the planet was full of upstarts and guys seeking to get an edge. No discipline, no foresight.

When he touched down he let the flow of the moon wash over him. The pain, the suffering, the strife. It was refreshing and he basked in it for a few moments before moved forward. He landed on the pad that he controlled and made his way into the passages of the city. He let the force guide him to his target. Once he found his man, Julius entered the sleezy bar and ordered a drink. He sat down next to Fawkes. He immediately began to project very subtle soothing feelings through the force to Fawkes to make him put his guard down and be more receptive. Julius, by trade, was a powerful Sith and manipulation of people through the force was his specialty, in fact he was probably one of the best at it in the entire galaxy. It was by these methods he had achieved his power, it made people more willing to follow his will. He could also read stray mental thoughts and the very beings of others. He began screening the upper most layers of Fawkes' thoughts to truly determine if this was the right man, the man Julius hoped him to be. He did this ever so lightly though so even one atuned to the force might not feel it happening, only a skilled master would know his ind was being invaded. After a few moments he began to speak. The metallic mask changed Julius's voice entirely but the friendliness, the confidence, and the charisma all carried through.

"Fawkes... fear not, I am a friend with a mutually beneficial proposition for you. I understand you are not content with your current... situation here on Nar Shadaa. I can remedy this. You know your own potential, the power you know you should have, and the incredible things you could do with it. Given the chance, I am sure you could change the face of the criminal underworld. I am presenting you with that chance, your big break, and you know... breaks ike these are hard to come by."

Fawkes immediately clocked the black-cloaked man as he wandered into the Cantina. The Echani knew from experience that it was never wise to completely forget your surroundings on Nar Shaddaa. It only took one stray mugger to gut you for your credits and all of his effort, all of his strife would have been for naught. The cloaked man sat next to Fawkes on a blood stained stool and ordered a drink, the echani glanced quickly at his face and noticed a copper-coloured death mask hiding his features. Fawkes slyly dropped his vibro-knucklers onto his hands in case there was a confrontation, this man seemed to alert to just be another drunken lout. Before Fawkes could make a quick exit through the back door, the stranger spoke:

"Fawkes... fear not, I am a friend with a mutually beneficial proposition for you. I understand you are not content with your current... situation here on Nar Shadaa. I can remedy this. You know your own potential, the power you know you should have, and the incredible things you could do with it. Given the chance, I am sure you could change the face of the criminal underworld. I am presenting you with that chance, your big break, and you know... breaks like these are hard to come by."

The man spoke too eloquently and sat too upright to be from Nar Shaddaa. He wasn't a Hutt so there was no way he could stand the smell of Nal Hutta, whoever this man was he must of traveled far to meet Fawkes and offer this proposition, Fawkes was intrigued and began to speak his thoughts out loud:

"Hmm, if you were an assassin you wouldn't of announced your presence, with that piece of information and the fact you must of traveled quite far to be here I can assume that your offer is genuine. You hide your features though so either I know your face or others do. I won't ask you to reveal your face, as whats the point in asking a masked man who is, but I would like to hear your offer so please carry on."

Julius smiled under his mask. The was sharp at least, or the force persuasion had done its work, either way he was in. It was simply a task of framing the issue in a way appealing to Fawkes. Julius waited and continued to scan Fawke's outer thoughts. He nodded and understood that what he was saying was being received well. Confident, Julius continued. "Here on Nar Shadaa there are rules, conventions, and people you must respect. This only serves to stifle one's own business potential. Why try to plant your seed in an overgrown, unruly field?... but you know this and feel this already."

Julius let Fawkes think back on his own misgivings about Nar Shadaa. He wanted Fawkes to be in the right mindset to hear his proposition. It was all apart of Julius' method. He was charismatic and convincing even without the force, it was his gift. A finely honed gift. Having allowed the perfect amount of silence for his words to saturate into Fawke's mind, Julius continued.

"Now what I am offering is fertile grounds where a man of your talents could flourish. You are far too skilled to stay here in this cess pool. You and I are not so different. I happen to have my own... organization that is centered on high risk trading. I feel if we melded our operations on a new location we could be quite successful. Does this interest you?

(Sorry for cutting it short, low on time)

Fawkes couldn't hold back a sly smile when the masked man said the words "fertile pastures". Perhaps this really was the opportunity the echani had been waiting for.

"You are correct of course. The people here have no ambition past the next spice shipment or the next dancing girl. Every inch it took to get me to the top cost me a gallon of sweat and ten-fold as much blood, and yet the Hutt's think i'm just there next krath hound. It's pathetic. The three titians of war are about to clash and my operation is simply not big enough to deal with the barrage of opportunities that are about to hit us. With my success and your information we could become the biggest criminal operation there has ever been."

Fawkes suddenly stopped talking and began looking thoughtfully into the distance and then slammed his fist into the bar, causing the twi'lek at the endto let out a little yelp of fear. The echani smiled, all though the name Fawkes held some weight on Nar Shaddaa, there were only a few people who knew his name outside of Hutt space and they were the investors of the Collective. At present there were only the Crime Lord's of Nar Shaddaa and one power broke who worked on behalf of a few, select clients within the inner circle of the Collective. Fawkes never like to be kept in the dark so he had the broker bugged until he found out the names of all of the brokers clients. There was barely a dozen of them - all of different races from a Quor'sav Spice Baron, to a Wookie mercenary leader. Surprisingly there was only one human the Corellian prime minister, a man named Julius.

"Why not! I cannot stay with these ambitious cretins anymore so if your information holds any weight and you can help me deal with certain.. Problems, then I will happily leave this rock to help create the greatest criminal organisation the galaxy has ever known. Fawkes couldn't help but let a smile grow on his lips as he said the last word. "Julius."

(Julius doesn't actually use his name while engaging in criminal activity but its fine, also determining the race of a totally cloaked individual with all the near human species running around might be a little difficult)

Julius raised an eyebrow under his mask. No one but the highest people in is organization knew his name and he knew their loyalties were solid. If this man could still find a way to find out his name then he had sorely underestimated Fawkes and overestimated is own security. Some people would die for this surely. Julius continued to focus on Fawkes upper thoughts and determined how he was discovered how his name was uncovered. Clever to say the least. This created a problem for Julius now however, he realized he would need to have some means to control Fawkes, so he would make the operation go down on his terms location wise. It also meant he might have to kill Fawkes one day if things went sour but that was an after thought.

"Impressive... most impressive. I am not sure what goes along with that knowledge but no matter. You certainly are the man I was hoping you would be."

He would not allow himself to appear perturbed that his secret was out, nor would he threaten Fawkes at least at this point in time. Julius was not sure if Fawkes knew of his abilities. If Fawkes did, he had given no indication, mental or physical, that he did. After a few moments Julius continued.

"I have the power to allow us to take our first steps toward total domination. The first is securing a new location where we might act freely. I was thinking Ambria, a small desert planet of little importance. We can turn it into the new Tattooine. I have the funds for us to lay out an extensive settlement. How does this seem?"

Julius was honestly growing excited, he could see the business potential flowing in his head. It would be glorious - and profitable.

(Sorry it was a little Cheeky From your voice, you would be able to tell that you were human-or at least a sub species of human and as you were not from Hutt space, then there was only going to be so many people who knew Fawkes name, and the rest were severely different shapes to humans that you would be able tell even if cloaked.

I just wanted to keep them both on equal footing if there to be partners, Fawkes feels he's safe because he could expose you to the Republic and you could tell the Republic where all the Spice is coming from and get Fawkes executed/arrested. I think mutual safety is important for this to be realistic, and this way Fawkes isn't simply getting manipulated by a powerful Sith Lord. Oh and btw, all Fawkes knows is that your a Republican prime minister that dabbles in corruption, not a full blow Crime-Lord/Sith Lord)

Fawkes could tell that he had hit a nerve by remarking on his name, but he shrugged it off. If they were to truly going to create a new criminal empire where their power was equal, then knowing each others identity would be important so that Fawkes didn't get back-stabbed by his new found partner. Besides, the echani was rather vain and it was an excellent way to show off his talents so that Julius wouldn't underestimate him again. The Echani raised his eyebrow at the mention of the planet Ambria:

"A fresh starts an excellent idea, but why Ambria? There's nothing there. Sure its close to Zeltros, and is in independent space so you wont have the Republic crawling all over your hyper-drive, but the worlds always been abandoned. Nothing there but rocks and sand." Fawkes stopped talking and leaned back slightly, giving Julius a questioning glare. "Unless you have some information I'm not privy too."

Fawkes had the feeling something was being held back from him, but he realized if it was important Julius would tell him - or he would simply have to wait until the time was right and force the knowledge from him.

Julius smiled slyly under his mask. Now he was in business. All that Fawkes and Julius ad to do now was build their empire. He thought back to th day when he drained knowledge out of a hutt minion. He had quite a bit of tantalizing information on some hutt operations, most particularly their operation on Ambria. It was run by a low time Hutt who has keeping his work very secret. Apparently Ambria wasn't the giant desert wasteland it was believed to be. Ambria contained a prize - Spice, particularly glitterstim the most profitable and expensive of spice. Julius nodded and said, "Trust me, Ambria is where we wish to base ourselves. I fear conversation in a place such as this."

Julius retrieved a datapad from inside his cloak and handed it to Fawkes. The datapad detailed the secret Hutt operation on Ambria, their importation of Energy spiders and other spices found on the planet. The operation was not very large and very well guarded. Additionally, th Hutt who owned it was fairly unimportant.

"A review of this data will indicate as to why." Julius said almost smugly. This data pad was worth quite a few credits but Julius was not in business to sell he info. He wanted to exploit it. Julius realized he was almost showing his whole and here all at once, but he needed to build trust with Fawkes and figured this would be a good first step.

Fawkes hands shook with anticipation as he was handed the data-pad. He made great efforts however to keep his expression neutral so that Julius wouldn't realize just how much power he now held over Fawkes.

The first page of the data-pad simply described Ambria's galactic location and the dozen of trade routes that had been created to neighboring planets - Like Kashyyyk and Onderon, all of which had taken into account the Republican baricades and outposts. The second page described the planets atmosphere and geographical qualities, as well as some information on what little settlements were on Ambria and what the native wildlife was like. The next couple of pages contained a mass list of contact names, mainly smugglers and people who imported spice into their system. Fawkes noticed his name under Nar Shaddaa Contacts who sell slaves. Curious. To get this much information on this many people...Julius certainly had been busy, and Fawkes finally realized just what type of person he was dealing with.

The third page was the most important of all though, as it contained information on the life-blood of all criminal organisations. Spice. The page began with a Bird's-eye image and co-ordinates of a Palace - obviously Hutt designed from its ostentatious domes. No, Fawkes realised - A fortress. A number of AA guns were situated on the four corners of the wall that surrounded the gardens and ports of the Palace, as well as numerous guards posted along the wall at various points. The pad also detailed their importation of energy spiders into the catacombs underneath the palace that were only accessible through the slave quarters, with a warning that the energy spiders had killed over 154 Slaves since the Operation began.The guard/Guest quarters were situated on the other side, with a massive throne room separating the two. One Borga the Hutt was also mentioned as being in control of the Spice operation, and his quarters resides at the northern end of the Palace. There were numerous other buildings within the palace, from torture chambers to a security mainframe, but it was the slave quarters that interested Fawkes - A plan began to from in the little Echani's head.

You obviously know how much this information is worth, and seeing as you trusted me enough to give me this information when I could very well run out of that door I'll give you a little information for free.

There a lot of vagrants on this planet. People of every species who simply have nothing left, and I was in the business of boxing them off and shipping them off-world to god knows where. Well at least I didn't use to know. Right now there are two options for taking over the palace - First option, we bring an army of mercenaries and attack the fortress head-on. The casualties will be tremendous and it'll probably cost us every credit we've got and hell, even if it goes off without a problem then we will still have an army of mercs who may decide they deserve the palace more than us.

The Second option is that we could hire a couple of specialist's - A very small team masquerading as slaves with the ones im actually selling, and then they could disable the security and I bet if you give those slaves some weapons then they could distract the guards long enough so that the team could kill the hutt. We could be waiting in Space around the planet for the signal that AA guns have been disabled and come into our new home as kings. What d'ya say?


(oh btw, I have a map of the Palace that we'll be taken over somewhere so I'll send it to you when I have the chance so that you understand the layout better.)

Julius nodded. Obviously the first option was out of the question and he hoped it was more of a joke than anything. This had to be done quietly, too much attention and their plans could be crushed. The second option was perfect. "The first option is simply out of the question. I support the second option. Its clever, effective, but risky. You would need an elite team to pull of such an operation. Have you any mercenaries in mind?"

This had to be done right and they had really only one shot at it. Julius hated wasting opportunities so e would have to be confident this would work before allowing it.