Star Wars: Rise of the Battlemage

With our bounty collected and the Rebels working hard to get their newly purchased salvage ready to leave, the crew and I took eight hours to sleep and recover. We landed the Chariot and the Intervention on a random plateau not too far from the pirate base, set the B2s to patrol and slept. When we woke the crew prepared to leave, and I made my way to Nevue to discuss our latest business venture. I was curious just what kind of timeframe he was thinking, since we hadn't really talked about that.

It took a few minutes to get over to the camp and find the Zabrak rebel, but eventually, I was directed to one of the sealed habitats overlooking one of the landing pads. I entered and spotted him leaning against a window, watching his people prepare to leave. He spotted me and nodded.

"Deacon. You leaving?"

"Yeah, just about to head out," I confirmed. "But I need to know the timescale for checking out this space station."

"Resources are tight at the moment," He admitted with a frown. "The rescue mission and the preparation for the base moving away from Thila Command is taking up a lot of ships and people."

"You want us to wait," I stated, picking up what he was hinting at.

"Yes. Something like this is a big operation, potentially bigger than what we did at Alpha Base," He pointed out. "And we are short on manpower. I mean, just look at these pilots."

He gestured at the window to the landing pad, where people were beginning to familiarize themselves with the controls for the starfighters.

"I basically grabbed everyone who could fly a starfighter, with no concerns about if they could do it well. We are pre-calculating the hyperspace jumps because only one of them knows the required astronavigation."

"How long?"

"A few weeks. Maybe a month," He explained, rolling his eyes when I frowned. "Deacon, your crew has been moving at lightspeed since you got them together, but the rest of us travel at a slightly more reasonable pace. I'm sure you can find something to occupy your time until the Rebellion is settled enough for another asset seizure like that."

"Probably," I admitted with a shrug. "But you should have mentioned this when we were negotiating."

Nevue had the decency to stay silent after that, at least partially acknowledging that I was right. Without another word, I turned to leave, heading back to the Chariot. This wasn't the first time Nevue had been less than clean in a negotiation, and it left a bad taste in my mouth. I made a note to make more contacts in the Rebellion so that Nevue wasn't the only one I could call when I wanted to make a deal.

It didn't take long after I climbed aboard the Chariot for us to lift off of the planet and out of the toxic environment. We made a short jump into deep space before calling everyone to the lounge for a crew meeting.

"Before we start discussing our next step, I want to congratulate everyone on a job well done. Ground team, we all performed as well as we could hope, and I think we learned a thing or two as well. It could have been a bit cleaner, but all things considered, well done," I said with a smile, patting Tatnia's back while everyone congratulated each other. "Space team, well done as well. You handled yourself well and took minimal losses. Had any of those ships made it down to the surface, we would have been in deep shit. Everyone earned their pay today."

We spent a while talking about the fight, both on the ground and in space, before eventually transitioning to what was next. I looked at Miru, who perked up from the attention.

"What's the repair time look like for the two raindrops we recovered?"

"One of them is already being worked on by Leddy and her team," Miru responded. "I'll just need a few hours to finish it up when they are done. The other might take the better part of a day. We have limited resources for parts though, so I'm worried we will run out."

"Do what you can," I said with a nod. "How about the commando droids?"

"Those should only take a day by themselves," She explained. "From what I saw, I should be able to fix those with parts I have, but when we have the opportunity, I want to order some more parts that should be compatible with them, just in case."

"Make a list, get it to Tatnia or Nal, and they can order it to coincide with our next landing," I agreed with a nod. "Nal, have you heard back from Rabben?"

"Yes, he said he might have something for us, but to give him a few days to put it together," Nal explained. "He invited us to visit so that we could discuss it in person."

"Huh… alright. I'm all for visiting. Nevue revealed that he wanted us to wait before we go hunting for the Station Omega, so we have time," I revealed. "Though if I'm honest, I'm half tempted to go hunting for it myself. It would take a lot longer considering we don't know where it was originally set up, but it could be done with some work."

"Perhaps we should give them some time and go searching on our own if they seem to be dragging their feet?" Vakim suggested. "We are not beholden to the whims of the Rebellion, but they are allies."

"Yeah… that's a good plan Vakim, let's go with that," I said, nodding in agreement. "Let's give them… two weeks? Three? If they don't get back in contact with us, we can go hunting by ourselves. Did any of you hear anything about this while you were in the Republic Navy?"

I looked up at the holo projected feed, which showed all four biological members of the Intervention crew, focusing on Vakim, Dazem, and Allum.

"No, but that's not surprising," Allum admitted, shaking his head, seemingly speaking for all three of them. "There was very little news filtering through the ranks, especially during the end of the war. We barely knew about things that directly affected us, never mind something that happened in a different part of the galaxy, and potentially before we joined."

"Fair enough. Alright, Nal, tell Rabben we are coming to visit, mention we need a landing pad for both our ships, but ask him what the Imperial presence is like on the Itander. If it's clear we can't land without getting caught, we might have to work something else out," I said, Nal nodding in agreement. "If everything is fine for us to land, get whatever Miru needs for repairs delivered there. We will probably be there for a day or two, so if anyone wants something, get it delivered there. Does anyone have anything else?"

"How much was the total sales?" Vakim asked, a curious look on her face. "I could only assume it was significant considering our individual cuts."

"The bounty got us one hundred thousand, we found fifteen thousand as we looted, and the starfighter, freighter, and salvage sold for just under four hundred thousand," I responded, unable to keep a smile off of my face. "We are doing very well for ourselves at the moment, but I'm pretty sure that if we end up settling on this Omega Station, we are going to be spending quite a bit of money to refurbish it and make it a livable, viable base. That said if anyone has any suggestions for things we should look into buying, even for just entertainment, feel free to mention it."

Over the next half hour, we discussed a few options, eventually settling on fresher food and some entertainment options. I very happily passed the buck to Dazem, telling him to come up with a final list and giving him a ten thousand credit budget. He agreed to figure out some options for both ships.

"Alright, I think that's everything for now. Calima, set a course for Itander, but drop out on the edge of the system so Rabben has plenty of time to respond," I ordered, the Tholothian nodding in understanding. "Everyone else, basic maintenance and downtime until we arrive."

We said our goodbyes to the crew of the Intervention, the holofeed dropping a moment later. Calima stood and stretched before heading to the bridge to start working on the hyperspace route to Itander, the planet Rabben and his mining town, Solinda, was on. I knew that the town and planet were probably significantly different by now, considering just what kind of profits Rabben was talking about when we left. I was curious about just what a gold rush-style population and settlement boom looked like in a Star Wars universe. I was also very interested in finding out what sort of offer he had in mind.

Once we were on our way, the familiar steady hum of hyperspace surrounding us, I made my way to the enchantment room, dropping down into the room's only chair and pulling off my Fortify Magicka ring. While fighting the pirates, I had been casting spells a lot, but I could still barely detect the difference between wearing and not wearing the ring.

In the game, fortify magicka added to your pool of magic, but here, the fortify spells were all about enhancing that aspect of the wearer. My fortify magicka ring should make calling on my magic easier, cheaper, and speed up how quickly my mana regenerates. Or it would, if it wasn't such a pitiful attempt at enchanting.

I frowned and tossed the ring onto the table that sat along one side of the room, summoning my grimoire and once again opening it to the enchantment section. At this point, I had gone through it several times, and despite mentioning the ability to use multiple soul gems on one enchantment, the book made no mention of how. I was about halfway through the second page when I grunted my annoyance, tossing the book into the air, the large tome disappearing before it could hit the ground.

At this point, I was pretty sure that how to use multiple soul gems for one enchantment was hidden behind whatever next stage I was going to unlock at some point, similar to how Adept spells and Apprentice spells took a while to unlock. Maybe the shift to Expert would reveal it, or maybe it was completely disconnected from that. Either way, I was not happy about it. Enchanting had the incredible potential to turn my crew into unbeatable juggernauts, but I was stuck making shit because the book refused to spit out what I wanted to know. I refused to equip my team with such crappy enchantment, especially not when the ingredients to do so were so expensive.

I stood up and grabbed a handful of soul gems and carried them to the Arcane Enchanter, grabbing a ring in my other hand as I went. I dragged the chair over to the table and pulled on my protective face mask.

Over the next five hours, I tried dozens of ways to switch from one soul gem to another without interrupting the flow of life force. At first, I tried linking them up both at once, but only pulling from one. That failed miserably when the flow of life force started to pull on the second gem as well, causing it to start pushing out life force. I managed to stop the process before it detonated the ring, but it was a close call.

I tried running them in parallel, switching from one stone to the next mid-flow, running the first stone around the second so I could simply let the first one fade and focus on the second, and several other ways. I was frustrated, mentally drained, and physically sore from hunching over the table for so long. What had once been mild annoyance at the grimoire and entities for trying to control what I could do, turned into a simmering anger that threatened to spiral if I let it.

Rather than push myself further when I wasn't getting any results, I took a break, leaving the enchanting room and grabbing my fortify magicka ring as I went. I sat in the lounge by myself for a few minutes, just letting my frustration fade for a while. When I was sure I wasn't going to throw a fit at the drop of a hat, I got up to make lunch for myself. A few minutes later, as I poked and prodded at one of the decency shelf stable meals, Julus dropped down on the other side of the table with his own lunch.

"You look rough, Boss. Everything okay?" He asked before taking a bite.

"Yeah, Just trying to figure out something for my enchanting. I refuse to start working on the armor Pola and Vaz are working on if all I can make are barely noticeable trinkets," I explained, gesturing to the ring I had put on the table. "It would be a waste, especially after having to jump through hoops to get the beskar."

"What's the problem? Maybe someone outside the box will spot something."

I shrugged and explained the basic concept and problem to the younger man, who nodded at the appropriate times. I wasn't entirely sure he understood what I was talking about until I was done, and he rather handily summed it up.

"So basically, you have to run multiple power sources one after the other, none of which have an off switch, and you can't shut it down to trade anything out?" He asked. "Why don't you run the gems in a loop?"

"The ring absorbs the life energy as it burns the enchantment in," I explained, shaking my head. "There is nothing to loop around."

"No, not the ring, just the gems," He clarified. "Then you can pull the power from the loop as you need. All of the energy will be in the loop so you can control the speed, and it will drain both soul gems at once."

It took a second for me to realize what he meant before it clicked in my mind. Abandoning everything on the table, I ran back to the enchanting room and grabbed two more gems, storing the partially drained ones away. I grabbed a fresh ring and sat down at the table.

Quickly tamping down on my excitement at the new idea, I went through the process of creating a mana storage enchantment matrix, adjusting it properly before finally working on the gems. Slowly but surely, I created a loop with my magic, basically a circle that had two spring-like swirls around two separate games. Life energy easily traveled around the loop, passing around the stones. I adjusted the swirls down as tight as possible to slow the flow before reaching out a tendril of magic from the ring. After a moment's pause, I latched the tendril on, completing the path for the life energy to travel.

I fought the urge to jump and shout when, after a long moment, nothing beyond what was supposed to happen happened. The flow was consistent and felt under control. The ring was stable as far as I could tell, and as long as nothing surprising happened in the next few hours, it felt like a normal enchantment process.

For the next six and a half hours, I sat in the same position, focused on my enchantment, doing my absolute best to maintain control of the process and keep the energy flow as slow as possible. When I finally slipped and lost the connection, the enchantment sealing shut and self-completing, I collapsed backward on the chair, breathing heavily.

When I had finally recovered enough to test what I made, I couldn't help but laugh and cheer in triumph.