#Gardulla Besadii the Elder | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

tranakin-skywalker · 10 months

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The padawans found out about it first, as padawans are wont to do. Getting into trouble without realizing the full extent of it, stumbling right into something so much larger than they could understand. In any other scenario it would have been fodder for their masters to tease their apprentices over and -later- rib one another with. But not with something like this.

Jedi, as a whole, didn’t tend to concern themselves with things such as the holonet. When there was a crisis somewhere out in the galaxy, they were typically brought into the know before even the news outlets were told, their response being what led the rest of the Republic forward.

There were of course those who would tune in to certain channels to watch their favorite soap operas, or catch up on the goings on in the parts of the galaxy outside of the Jedi’s jurisdiction, but it was really the younger generation who had any sort of presence on the ‘net.

So really, it shouldn’t have come as any surprise when a crowd of junior padawans and older initiates had gone running in search of Master Nu during their recreational time in the archives (or the several dozen senior padawans with their own personal access to the holonet who’d screamed across their quarters for their masters to come and see).

It did not take long for the news to reach the Council members, who immediately called an impromptu session to watch and review. There were many angry holocalls sent out inquiring why the Jedi hadn’t been informed of this development sooner, mostly by Adi Gallia. There were also many headaches developed, also by Adi Gallia who both dealt and received.

Mace Windu also had one such headache, brought on by watching the recording for the fifth time- or was it the sixth now?

The image was grainy, implying poor equipment, but the shot held remarkably steady throughout which spoke to some level of familiarity with filming. The grandiose excess of a Hutt residence decorated the space, covering over hard packed adobe walls and tiled floors covered in a thin layer of sand. It was apparent that this was no Nal Hutta, but the exile planet of Tatooine. This was the domain of Jabba Desilijic Tiure and- to a lesser extent- Gardulla Besadii the Elder.

Or it used to be.

The holo paned slowly over the large interior of the palace, lingering on the forms of a number of sentients, many of them scantily dressed, some of them no more than children, all of them with heavy collars around their necks. Some looked healthy, deceptively so, but there are others- thin with protruding bones, or open gaping wounds leaking out bodily fluids, and those missing whole limbs. The first few minutes were nothing but the camera moving through the inside of the palace, taking in the misery and the horror, from up in the audience hall all the way down to slave quarters deep below the palace.

There were other figures too- those dressed in dark desert weave and wearing a wide collection of masks over their faces. Some of them had what looked suspiciously like lightsaber hilts hanging from their belts.

They worked to remove the chains from the slaves while a voice spoke over the recording in Huttese. Mace wasn’t much familiar with the language, only understood a handful of words spoken. They were still working on getting the poor audio translated, but from what they were able to gather it was a rallying cry for other enslaved worlds to fight back.

The holo lingered a long moment on an opened metal collar, dried blood and bits of flesh stuck to the inside where it had rubbed skin raw. Then it cut suddenly, the screen black for a fraction of a second before suddenly illuminated with the blinding light of two suns.

The new perspective showed a town center of some sort, huge crowds of people gathered in streets and on the roofs of buildings, the camera panning down to capture the thousands of faces looking up toward the platform.

A slave auction block, they found out later.

The camera turned from the crowd to instead film the group standing atop the platform. There were more figures in black and brown, but unlike when they were within the palace, these had brightly colored cloth thrown over the rest of their attire, ponchos and scarves and wraps. Mace assumed there was some sort of cultural significance to it, but he didn’t know enough about the planet’s people to know for certain.

These, too, wore metal masks.

Beneath the desert suns it was easier to make out that most were fashioned into abstract animal faces, with fangs and horns and sweeping pieces that might have been feathers. All of them carried metal cylinders at their hips.

In the middle of the platform, surrounded by more masked guards with lit sabers in hand- colors a wash of oranges and yellows and greens and even one that looked pink- was Jabba the Hutt. Large gashes and lesions covered the expanse of his body, a heavy chain wrapped several times around his neck. It didn’t seem to be connected to anything- seemingly more of a humiliation rather than something to keep the Hutt confined.

The lightsabers pointed at him likely did well enough a job of that.

Standing between Jabba and the crowd was a lone figure in all black. If they were sweltering in the heat, they gave no indication of it, their long layers and heavy helmet seemingly inconsequential. It was a tall figure, humanoid and seemingly male in stature- though that was hard to tell beneath the dark clothing that seemed almost a parody of Jedi robes. The helmet they wore was dog-like, or at least that of a canine skull, with jaws that looked less like jaws and more like a muzzle. There was something altogether disquieting about the figure.

Tilting its head like a curious predator, the figure turned to look the camera lens dead on. It didn’t feel like someone looking into a camera, but like something looking straight through and into the view beyond.

Each time Mace had watched the recording, that single look managed to make hair prickle up on the back of his neck. An animal response.

The figure in black spoke in Basic, addressing the holo’s audience and not the crowd actually present. The voice that came out was distorted through a vocoder into something that was more hard and mechanical than organic, it was still distinctly male, and distinctly authoritative. The rest of the video would prove that this was likely the leader of the whole affair, but even in the opening minutes, it was easy to tell here stood the catalyst for all that would crumble down after.

“You say that slavery is illegal in your Republic,” the voice growled from behind the melted teeth of the dog’s jaw. “And you say that Tatooine is part of your Republic. Then what is this we stand on? What is it that the Hutt empire has made its fortunes off of? What your own halls hide and Senators pedal behind closed doors. Look at what you have turned your blind eyes away from.”

With a gloved hand, he reached to his belt and unclipped a black and gray hilt. “We will not let you look away.” He then turned to the crowd and raised the saber hilt high over his head, calling out something in a language that sounded nothing like Huttese. The crowd thundered back in unison.

The saber lit with a wash of red as violent as a wildfire.

Lowering his arm slowly, the man turned to finally face Jabba, his blade hungry and crackling at his side. He spoke again- softer this time- but still loud enough for the gathered populace to hear. Huttese again, Mace was pretty certain, something about punishment- or maybe it was justice.

For a split second on Jabba’s face there was a look of pure unfiltered terror- the sudden fear in falling with the knowledge that the ground was coming and coming up fast.

Then that hungry blade slid easily into thick Hutt skin that couldn’t be cut by any other means, sinking into the hilt, fat bubbling and cooking with the heat of it.

Jabba made a noise that Mace never, ever wanted to hear again.

The man dragged the blade down- slowly- guts spilling out from where the Hutt was being unzipped like a field-dressed carcass, still wriggling. Jabba moved a lot less than someone being methodically disemboweled should, but that might have something to do with the dog-skulled man’s left hand being raised up like an open claw. Like he was pinning the crime lord in place with sheer will or- more concerningly- with the Force.

That obsidian black mask seemed to give a jackal grin as the red blade was pulled from the Hutt’s body and Jabba Desilijic Tiure was unceremoniously dropped to slowly die on the same platform where thousands of people had been bought and sold.

Stepping away from the smoking body, the Sith- for what else could this monster be but a Sith?- flicked his blade to the side as if trying to rid it of gore. A useless endeavor for a plasma blade, but there was something almost poignant about the move.

He stood facing the screaming, cheering crowd, but his head was tilted sideways just slight enough to look back at the camera from the inky black socket of the dog’s eye.

“You’ve spent long enough ignoring us. I suggest you start paying attention now.”

The feed cut to black.

#my writing #fic: groundwater #fic excerpt #ignore any spelling mistakes it's 2:30 am and i have not edited any of this

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goldensilvan · 3 years

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SW Spooktacular Exchange

happy halloween!!! this is my fic for @coffegost for the halloween exchange run by @starwarsfandomfests!!

i’m sorry about the delay - i’d set it up as a queued post and tumblr ate it. i hope you enjoy and that you had a great spooky season!

Being in Boba Fett’s service had never been dull – neither of them were dull people, so Fennec supposed that made sense, but ever since that mission had gone bad on Tattooine and he’d rescued her, downtime had been very scarce.

Maybe that was her fault. It had been her idea to cut out their own little corner of Tattooine and rule it like kings, and she had vouched for Din’s character before he and Boba had met, but it was definitely not her fault that they were now being morons together in some kind of unholy romantic union, and that was the reason her precious alone time had been cancelled, so she felt comfortable being grouchy and irritable at the situation.

Babysitting.

The little goober spent most of his time at Luke Skywalker’s School for Gifted Children or whatever he was calling it, but Din would occasionally pick him up and take him for a week or two because otherwise his unused dad instincts would eat him from the inside out. Din had shown up at their door after moping uselessly around the galaxy for months to instead mope uselessly around their palace until Boba had bullied him into taking Grogu out of school for a couple weeks, and it had become a regular thing ever since.

This was good and right, and meant that nowadays Din spent 80% of his time in a mood parsecs better than she’d seen him before, but it also occasionally meant that Din and Boba’s plans collided with his custody weeks and she was asked to babysit. Grogu was typically a pretty easy kid – Din would never have succeeded at keeping the tyke safe while staying sane himself if he hadn’t been – but sometimes, like any kid, he got a little fussy.

And tonight, he was fussy. Not your typical toddler tantrum, though. Oh, no, that would be too simple. This was a weird little telekinetic goblin who may not be able to verbalize his desires, but he could certainly make himself understood.

“You want Din. I get it. I wish your dad was here, too,” she tried, voice verging on desperate. No one else was around to hear her flounder with a kid. “I really, really do.”

Something else fell to the ground behind her, and she could only hope it wasn’t something expensive.

“I tried to talk your dad into taking you. I did try. He was too worried to take you to visit a Hutt. Not sure why, since the entire time he had you he socialized exclusively with criminals and hired muscle, but that’s dad instincts, I guess. My dad brought me around assassins all the time and I turned out fine, though,” she lied. Not the dad part, that was true enough, but she didn’t want to explain her trauma to a… however-many-years-old child he was.

He seemed to calm a little listening to her babble, so she continued with that.

“You know where he is tonight? Visiting Borga Besadii Diori. Fancy name for a slug, huh? Boba likes her better than her cousin Durga, though, and hopes she’ll take over the clan if he dies. He’ll probably die soon, which is all the better for our business; he wants to build this big superweapon –”

Whoops. Maybe she shouldn’t explain complex and needlessly violent Hutt politics to a kid.

“Either way, she’s looking into taking over Gardulla’s old palace, and Gardulla’s daughters aren’t too pleased but they have to host their clan elder. Boba and Din are going over to make trouble.” A gross simplification of the plan, but the only one that wouldn’t require a lecture on interspecies criminal relations.

“Wanna hear about the last time they visited Borga? It was a costume party. Your dad looked pretty funny, and I think I have some pictures…”

She fumbled for a moment before getting the right holos to show on her comm. Fennec had found the costumes herself and was quite proud of them – they were intended as pajamas, but were stretchy and could hide both armour and a multitude of weapons. For Boba, she’d chosen a convor, an owl that supposedly had all kinds of mystic hoodoo associated with it but was mostly just adorable under the majestic air. Din had received a lothcat costume – pretends to be aloof but secretly more of desiring of affection and attention than you’d think.

The holo had been taken while they were getting ready, and Din’s helmet was in his hands for once. His smile was a little exasperated, but the fact that he’d allowed the holo at all was such a major concession after the months of earning enough trust to even be allowed to see him without his helmet off was so touching that he could’ve been making the rudest gesture in the galaxy and it still would have been a generous gift.

It was not, however, a gift for her.

The gift was Boba’s, and you could see his gratitude and love in every line of his scarred face. He was looking at Din with such a look of open affection that it could melt even the coldest of hearts. Fennec had always considered hers to be hardened, considered herself immune to this kind of stuff, but she had to concede that it was sweet.

Armoured footsteps echoed in the hall beyond this room and Fennec tensed up for a brief second, her hand resting on her ever-present pistol before she recognized the cadence and relaxed.

“Why are you showing your blackmail material to my son?” Din asked, announcing his and Boba’s presence. He didn’t pause before striding over and sweeping Grogu into his arms, the little traitor gurgling happily and showing no signs of the little terror he’d been twenty minutes ago.

“It’s cute,” Boba argued, his helmet already off. There was a hint of a fond smile lurking at the corner of his mouth. “My favourite picture of you.”

Fennec could picture the look of disbelief on Din’s face behind his helmet. “Your only picture of me.”

“Fine, it’s also my least favourite. Most hated. Why aren’t I allowed to be nice to you?”

“Nice, mean, I don’t care,” Fennec cut in. “You get to clean up your kid’s mess and you owe me so much booze before I’m willing to babysit again.”

“Were you not nice to Fennec?” Din asked Grogu, who cooed innocently and looked up with massive eyes, the wounded look of a child trying to ask if his parent really thought he would ever be anything but perfect, and Din melted as he always did, fond and ridiculous. “You little rascal.”

“The great Fennec Shand, defeated by a tiny goober,” Boba said wryly, just a hint of humour around his eyes.

Fennec rolled her eyes. As if he wasn’t just as soft for Grogu, if not softer – three deeply, notoriously hardhearted mercenaries, all weak for one little green troll. It was a little weird to think, but they were all together thanks to the kid. She didn’t hesitate to point this out, prompting yet another debate between the three of them (or, well, herself and Boba with Din’s quiet judgement and very occasional comment) about reputation and bounties.

Unnoticed by everyone in the room, a small child, once orphaned and having waited patiently for the Force to grant him another family, smiled.

#i'll crosspost tomorrow on ao3 #star wars #the mandalorian #my writing

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