The Force of Magic [Star Wars SI]

[Vyraco]

It's Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka, The Prophet of the Waaagh!


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQ7opAsUOQI&list=RDFQ7opAsUOQI&start_radio=1

 

[FTR2017]

Amazing work, methinks Palpy will run into inconveniences should the 'disposable asset' turn out to be tougher to chew than he expects after a stunt in learning--and converting to Hecate.

And that healer troll is a hoot, no wonder he was such a success--his smile was made from angels!

 

[Xx_BoneIdle_xX]

And then there are these Jed-eyes.

Click to shrink...

Typo: Jedi

 

[Boroda Orka]

Typo: Jedi

Click to shrink...

It's deliberately mangled)

 

[Boroda Orka]

We made it to Corellia without incident and in relative comfort, though I still found myself missing the apartments on Coruscant. The Consular, now proudly bearing the name Rung, was a fairly comfortable ship—at least compared with the shuttle and the Hammerhead. It was a relatively old vessel that had seen action in a couple of conflicts, including the Hyperspace War, but we'd bought it secondhand in good condition.

At the shipyards themselves, I ended up having quite an argument with some young engineer. Upgrading the ship's guts with newer, more powerful systems wasn't a problem, but when it came to rearranging the cabins, I eventually had to fall back on the argument of "I want it this way because I want it this way."

It even got as far as a meeting with one of his older superiors. The man listened to us, listened to the engineer, gave him a tired look, and asked, "What, exactly, is fundamentally impossible about altering the passenger compartments of a Consular-class vessel—a modular ship of our own manufacture?"

After a brief exchange in fluent engineer-speak, the supervisor suggested that Shmi, Romri, and I go enjoy "the excellent caf in our customer lounge, where everything is completely free." The look on his face made the unspoken rest of the sentence perfectly clear: while I teach this wet-behind-the-ears idiot a thing or two.

After tasting the caf, I remarked quietly enough for only my own people to hear that Shmi's was much better. The Togruta, already sinking her teeth into a pastry, nodded in agreement, while Skywalker gave me an appreciative smile.

"The caf here is pretty good," the former slave said, shaking her head and giving us a look of gentle reproach as she defended the local fare.

"If it were bad, I wouldn't be drinking it," I snorted.

"But the pastries are amazing. Try one, Boss," Romri said once she'd finished chewing.

I saw no reason to refuse and gave the local cuisine its due. The pastries really were excellent.

We sat there for about fifteen minutes before a polite young woman came over and escorted us to another engineer, one who had already been briefed on what we wanted. This man looked a little older than the first, though not by much. After discussing the "project" with us, he pointed out the weak spots, quickly sketched out his own rough version on the hologram, explained his reasoning in a way that was actually easy to follow, and named the price—which was, I have to say, rather substantial. Romri clutched at her chest and squeaked, "My heart!" Shmi giggled, and I shook on it with the engineer. Well, figuratively speaking. What I actually did was ask where I needed to sign to authorize the professionals to start developing the project.

I practically had to drag Romri out of the engineer's office by one of her lekku—she was already itching to start haggling the price down right then and there.

"My little aurodium Togruta," I said soothingly, stroking the hand I was still holding. "What's got you so worked up? That's only a rough price. They haven't even drawn up the project yet, much less given me a proper estimate. What are you going to haggle over now? Once we have all the paperwork in hand and something concrete to argue about, then we'll think about it. It's not like buying a blaster from a Toydarian! They're practically going to take our bird apart bolt by bolt—replace the reactor, hyperdrive, engines, part of the hull plating, the life-support systems. You said yourself it'd be expensive and difficult."

"You could've bought a brand-new Consular for less," the girl said, looking at me with tears in her eyes.

"Romri, you were the one saying we needed to upgrade the hyperdrive to a Class One," I sighed. "And there are better options than the standard package for pretty much everything else too."

The Togruta only let out a shaky sigh, clearly mourning the credits. Never mind that they were mine—she was suffering sympathy pains.

"But just imagine," I murmured into her ear, slipping an arm lightly around her shoulders. "You'll have a shower... your own personal shower."

"A shower..." the Togruta whispered, eyes lighting up as she clenched a fist and raised it in a determined little gesture. "For a private shower, any girl would kill without a second thought!"

Shmi was laughing softly beside us. Catching the look I gave her, the woman put on the same determined expression as Romri, repeated the gesture with her arm, and asked with a cheerful smile:

"Who do we kill, Boss?"

"What bloodthirsty women we have in this crew," I said with a smile, shaking my head as the female half of the crew laughed. "And while they're busy scratching their heads over the project, I say we all head down to Corellia. I hear the beaches there are absolutely incredible!"

Tano was delighted by the prospect, while Skywalker looked practically radiant with happiness. Hardly surprising—after so many years in the desert, getting to see actual seas and oceans had to feel like a dream.

---

Corellia greeted us with warm sunshine, fresh air... and customs. I was so sick of them I couldn't think of a single printable word to describe it. As if the regular officers weren't enough—and they were absolute hellhounds—there was a young Jedi there too.

That green little troll of a Jedi got on every last one of my nerves, mind-fucked me senseless, and left me feeling a sudden, burning sympathy for the Sith!

As if that weren't enough, those sadists descended on Arvik. They made him drain his flamethrower, threatened to "temporarily confiscate" every rocket for his launcher, and made him empty the fuel from his jetpack, leaving him with nothing but his blaster. By that point, the Mando's helmet was practically radiating bloodlust. Then, after I took off my amulet—which immediately began radiating power once it left the masking field of my robe—and handed it over to be logged and inspected, since the damn thing was big enough to smuggle spice in, Greenie started in on me. Apparently it was a Force artifact, and just who exactly was I supposed to be, walking around with such a lovely name as Siith?

Ooooh... And after I showed him all my documents again and told him I knew members of the Jedi Council personally—that he could check with Masters Windu, Yoda, Yaddle, or Rancisis if he wanted—the bastard somehow managed to become even more obnoxious.

"We're not going to bother the Council over something this trivial," the asshole told me with the most infuriating smile imaginable. Hand over the amulet and the dagger, he said, and go with the Force—but those two? Absolutely not. Who knew what those things even were...

I thought it over for a moment, then turned to the others.

"All right, people. Screw Corellia, the beaches, and the ocean. Fuck it. Let's head back. We'll stop somewhere else later—preferably somewhere with intelligent life."

The others looked disappointed, but for the most part they backed my decision with a chorus of agreement. I turned back to the "politely smiling" Jedi and bared my teeth at him in a vindictive grin.

"And you, Greenie—and you officers too—pass this up the chain: never, NEVER, will the Jabiim Mages' Guild sell you so much as the shittiest little artifact. Not one Corellian will ever be trained at our Academy! Not for any amount of money or promises!" I fixed the green bastard with a hard stare as confusion began to creep across his face. "Anything we sell to the Order will come with one condition: that it is NOT passed on to your green-robed brotherhood. And even if you decide not to tell your superiors about this, when your shipyards eventually ask me, 'Why Kuat and not us?' I'll give them the exact date, time, customs checkpoint number, and your names. And when the higher-ups realize exactly what opportunities you personally pissed away for the entire system, your asses are in for an unforgettable adventure."

And back we went, noses held high and huffing with offended dignity. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed another Jedi—a somewhat older woman—come over to Greenie and start asking him something, but by then I no longer cared. Corellia could go straight up Dozdrogodul's ass as a string of anal beads, along with all its sister planets. I was pissed at the lot of them. And so what if I hadn't gotten to spend any time on the beaches myself? I felt bad for the girls. Romri, at least, was a free woman, but Shmi and Suti had never even seen the sea. One had spent her life in the desert; the other had lived underground.

I could, of course, have tried contacting Windu, but... something in me rebelled at the idea. It would feel like I was some little kid running to complain to the scary grown-up. Petty revenge like this was childish too, of course, but my soul demanded that I dump one big, steaming, fragrant pile* of lost opportunities right on the Corellians' doorstep—let them choke on the smell. They'd find ways around my "sanctions," obviously, but at least it would inconvenience them and ruin their day. We, meanwhile, were off to Rendili.

---

"Boss, why not Kuat?" Romri asked over lunch in the common room. At the moment, we were on our way to Rendili, planning to finally get the work done on our Rung that we'd left undone on Corellia.

"Tours," I snorted. "Both places let visitors tour active shipyards. Supervised and with plenty of precautions, obviously, but it can be done. Rendili interests me more—they've got a lot of relatively small orbital facilities, and Alto wants us to put something like that in orbit over Jabiim someday. Nothing major, just enough to repair and service our little fleet. Maybe build a few smaller things too—we've got the ore for it. So I want to see for myself what a real orbital shipyard actually looks like."

"Yeah," the Mando nodded. "Kuat's got the Ring. No way we could pull off something like that."

"Right now, sure. Give it twenty or thirty years and we probably could—but it would take one hell of an effort. Not that Jabiim needs anything like that at the moment. I doubt we'll need it anytime soon, either. The Commander-in-Chief has his eye on building up our metallurgical industry."

"Aren't you worried it'll poison the planet?"

"No, we've accounted for that. I'm actually going to start training mages on Jabiim specifically to design and operate facilities that process ore into metal, and that process is far less toxic than most environmentally friendly methods used for the same job. Orbital facilities are probably cleaner, granted. And the waste can be recycled into something at least relatively useful."

For a couple of minutes, we ate in silence, but then Arvik asked another question. Ever since we'd set out for Corellia, the man had been unusually pensive, and now he was clearly turning something over in his head again.

"Boss, listen, I know this is kind of a personal question, but why are you doing all this? Training those spellcasters of yours and everything. Don't take this the wrong way—it's just that I've noticed you always grimace whenever the subject comes up."

"That's a deep question, and it deserves a fairly long answer," I said with a grin, glancing at the interested faces turned toward me. I wasn't about to explain all my reasons, of course. The goddess's request—and the possible reward for fulfilling it—were definitely staying to myself. "First and most importantly, I suppose, because I believe it's the right thing to do. Sorcery, whatever anyone may think of it, is first and foremost a science. The science of magic. And like any science, it requires both theoretical research and practical experimentation. The more people there are working to push that research forward, the better."

"And before long the galaxy will be crawling with mages shooting plasma from their fingertips," the Mandalorian said with a crooked smile.

"True enough, but believe me, Arvik, pulling off tricks like that takes a lot of study and a hell of a lot of training. Your average combat sorcerer, after a couple of years of lessons and practice, might be able to throw out a shot like that once every twenty or thirty seconds. And let's be honest—while he's standing there straining himself to shape the right construct with an aura that's barely developed, even the clumsiest Dug with grabbing limbs growing out of his ass would fill that 'god of war' with plasma up to the tonsils."

"Boss, that's not fair to Dugs," Romri giggled. "They're really agile, and jokes like that piss them off."

"Truth hurts," I said with a shrug. "Getting back to sorcerers: by the standards of my homeland, I'm an above-average one. I'm good when it comes to knowledge and considerably worse at applied sorcery. I've been through wars in my time, and every now and then I used to go out and wipe out bands of brigands, but the path of a combat sorcerer—with their almost reflexive casting of a limited repertoire of magical constructs—was never for me. There are, of course, certain little secrets, tricks, and toys that can make even a noncombat sorcerer considerably more dangerous, but those are usually the preserve of spellcasters from powerful bloodlines or exceptionally skilled specialists in fields that aren't, strictly speaking, combat disciplines. Necromancy, chimerology, artifact-making, golemcraft, healing, and plenty of other branches can offer enormous advantages once developed far enough. On top of that, all of them have countless points of overlap, reinforcing one another—sometimes quite dramatically. But!"

I gave my listeners a serious look, emphasizing the importance of what I was about to say by raising my fork.

"All of that takes an absurd amount of time and effort, people. Otherwise everyone back home would be a mage, understand? Mental discipline, determination, the willingness to spend years pursuing a goal—that's what it means to be a real spellcaster. The overwhelming majority of my countrymen master such a tiny fraction of the Art that calling them mages would be ridiculous. Light a campfire after five minutes of huffing and puffing while shaping the most primitive construct imaginable? Oh, yes! A Great Sorcerer! Lord of Magic! Child of Hecate! Bah. Skilled craftsmen do a little better—they pick a niche, memorize a handful of weaves, and spend their entire lives perfecting them, selling their services for money: charging mana reservoirs, casting reinforcement or waterproofing enchantments, making magical lamps, things like that. Anything truly complex takes a long time: gathering knowledge, developing the idea, then actually bringing it to life. You understand? Take the Jabiim speeders, for example. Those are my design."

I glanced at Ras, who was listening as closely as everyone else. He nodded to show that he understood what I meant.

"A design I simply handed over to a couple of my students. On their own, it would have taken them... a very long time to come up with something like that and actually build it." I stopped myself before giving a number. The Stratuses had asked me to keep that information quiet, and after giving it some thought, I agreed with them. "Now it'll become their family legacy—something that could keep the families of some of my first students prosperous for generations. Assuming they don't squander it all by resting on their laurels and sliding into stagnation and decline."

"Complicated..." the Togruta drawled.

"Well, what did you expect?" I snorted, giving the girl an amused look. "Wave your hands around, stomp your foot, recite a funny little rhyme, and that's it? Nooo. Academies give you an initial repertoire of spells as part of your tuition, along with the theory behind them. Spellcraft theory, construct modeling, ritual design, mathematics, physics, geometry, biology, anatomy. Magic isn't some kind of miracle. If you're creating a spell of your own, you need to know and understand how it's going to work. Mana is simply energy with an almost limitless potential for transformation and application. What matters is skill—and skill depends on your knowledge, experience, a developed aura—the tool you use to interact with magic—as well as your reserves and your mind. All of that together is what makes a true spellcaster. So," I said, glancing at the Mando, "you don't need to worry about the galaxy being overrun by mighty mages anytime in the next thousand years. Unless, of course, I decide to train someone personally and generously hand over my own developments to the student—like I'm doing with Karray and Karina on Jabiim."

"Jedi have it easier, though, me thinks," the Gungan put in. He had already demolished his portion and was now sprawled blissfully in his chair.

"Oh, don't remind me," I grimaced. "'Feel the Force, guide the Force,' all in the finest traditions of Eastern-style monks—only somehow even more obscure. Sorcerers have it easier: you go through your first initiation with any practicing mage, learn how to control your aura... and then you're off on a journey millions of kilometers long, one that often ends for a very simple reason: laziness."

"No offense, Boss," the Togruta giggled as the others smiled knowingly, "but that doesn't sound any damn easier."

I looked at those muzz— mug— faces, waved it off, and popped another bite of food into my mouth. Even Suti was smiling, though hers was more sympathetic than amused.

"Sorry," Romri said, making her eyes big and pitiful as she spread her hands—nearly poking Koit in the eye with her fork in the process. "And getting back to Arvik's question: why didn't you just recruit a chosen few and concentrate all that power in a small inner circle of your own?"

I gave the girl a skeptical look. She didn't seem to be joking...

"Look at it this way: suppose I settle down on Jabiim, recruit a dozen 'Padawans,' and start training them. Secretly, 'under cover of darkness,' so no one outside our little circle ever learns about my 'mighty order.' What are we supposed to live on? Sell amulets? How long do you think it would take smart people to connect a suspicious little group of sentients with the sudden appearance of magical artifacts? Even if we sold them in the farthest corners of the galaxy, sooner or later someone would start pulling at the thread—and besides, you need contacts to sell anything in the first place. Magic or no magic, there's a reason sentients are called sentient—they have brains. Eventually some very serious men and women would come knocking and suggest that I share. Suppose we killed them all. Then they'd send more people, and we'd kill those too, move somewhere else, and repeat the whole cycle. Sooner or later, enough people would come after me that it would turn into an actual war—and I'm not omnipotent."

I took a sip of caf, squinted in pleasure, and gave Shmi a grateful nod. She smiled back.

"And then there's the problem of my students getting fed up with living like that. They want to eat well, sleep comfortably, and show everyone how 'powerful' they are—not spend their lives hiding in the shadows. Give it enough time and, best case, they run away from me. Worst case, they sell me out for money or kill me once they learn what kind of security measures I've put in place. So in the end, I either go live somewhere in the mountains with the goats, or I deal with society—which, in my case, means Jabiim, represented by the Stratus cousins. And we came up with the whole 'share the knowledge' strategy together, because sooner or later everyone is going to find out anyway. Then we're right back to the first scenario, only on a planetary scale—with a blockade fleet parked overhead, like Naboo."

---

We spent a full two weeks at one of the Rendili shipyards. It ended up costing less, though, because some of the orbital facilities were sitting idle.

After a bit of negotiation, they even allowed us onto the worksite, though they very firmly asked us not to get in the way. So for most of the work on the Rung, Shmi, Ras, Romri, and I were just observers, occasionally pestering the engineers and foremen with questions whenever they were in a good mood and had some time to spare. Most of the workers were happy enough to answer, though. I think the professionals were a little flattered that the client was actually interested in their work instead of constantly hounding them to go faster. Romri and Shmi were also a pretty good incentive for most of the male technicians to be extra helpful. Ras, meanwhile, somehow managed to strike up a romance with one of the women working on the ship.

So much so that by the time the work was finished, Risha Trant had signed on with us as the ship's engineer and mechanic.

At the same shipyard, we stocked up on maintenance droids, bought ourselves an astromech of the "bucket on wheels" variety, and picked up some "exclusive" hyperspace route charts. Romri explained that there wasn't much truly exclusive about them, but they did include several safe routes that our navcomputer didn't have.

And then we took off for the sea. Our destination was the Togruta homeworld, Shili. The planet lay in grid square L-8, relatively nearby—Rendili was in M-11—and for anyone with a ship boasting a Class One hyperdrive, it was practically next door. Romri promised us an introduction to her family, authentic Togruta cuisine—meat, meat, and more meat—seas, beaches, gorgeous landscapes in red, orange, and white, hunts for the local predators known as akuls**... and absolutely no customs! What a wonderful planet!

---

Author's Notes:

*"Fragrant pile" — a pile that has already been dumped, but won't make its presence known or start stinking until sometime in the future. Came up with that one myself.

**An akul is a large, dangerous predator with a powerful body covered in reddish fur. It moves on four legs and is known for its powerful jaws. Akuls breed well in captivity, and albino specimens have occasionally been born. (Honestly, I have no idea how this thing is supposed to pluralize. If I got it wrong, please correct me.)

---

Original Russian story

You can find more chapters on my Patreon.

The translation of new chapters will also be published here—but with a bit of a delay.

 

[readsalot]

absolutely no customs! What a wonderful planet!

Click to shrink...

That certainly sounds amazing
Also lol, Corellia lost something very awesome XD
They will be kicking themselves and the assholes behind the incident

 

[FTR2017]

Methinks that the Corellians will live long enough to regret this, as their competitors get the upper hand on them, mocking them all while at it.

As for Palpy? Once he learns about this, he'll be cackling as he'll be receiving benefits so long as he chooses not to strangle the gold egg-laying goose!