2 ABY – 06 Echo – 35 Primeday (Kirian) After a nerve-wracking transit through hyperspace, the Porgatu ultimately drops out without incident over Kirian in the Tirahnn System. Local authorities hail the ship and prompt Cheebs to contact Vaha Nacc, owner of Kirian Vintage Shipworks & Customs, to assist in landing clearance. Nacc asks them to land at his delivery facility (about 10km from his salvage yard the party had visited several days prior), which turns out to be a posh 6-ship docking hub and sales office. Welcomed back, they offload the cargo of parts, which Nacc’s personnel whisk away to an adjoining hangar occupied by a fancy new yacht. Nacc deflects Cheebs’ offer to help with installation work; he has enough staff to complete the job despite its now-rushed nature.
Careful to avoid any Kirian Shipworks personnel boarding the ship, or to offload any of the contraband they salvaged from Ktil (specifically the battle droids), the party tries to create a bit more room in the Porgatu’s cargo hold. R3-M3 and C4-BL3 remain aboard running diagnostics and consulting locally available databases while Cheebs and Kantarra go talk to Nacc in his sales office.
They give Nacc (selected) data and recordings and narrate him a summary of the events on Ktil. Cheebs and Kantarra notice a new detail in the data recovered from the Thrifty’s damaged computers: Video of a blaster shot hitting Darius (Nacc’s employee and the Thrifty’s pilot) in the back. The shot came from the cargo hold. Someone had tried to erase this recording before the ship was even damaged. This is more evidence against the newly recruited (and missing) first mate Khytra.
Vaha Nacc proves a hard-nosed negotiator – on top of the fact that every Kel Dor is difficult to read, thanks to their face masks. He praises the group’s resourcefulness and commitment to completing their job despite unforeseen difficulties galore. But he wants details, which Cheebs was initially loath to divulge. Kantarra interjects with her characteristic confrontational style and stares him down. At this key moment, with Nacc focused on her, Cheebs manages to tap into the Force enough to get a read on the Kel Dor, sensing a trust growing in him. That’s enough to convince Cheebs to give Nacc all the details he wants. Nacc professes an understanding of the delicacy of their situation and the need for discretion; he closes up the hangar bay doors to keep the Porgatu away from prying eyes. Kantarra and Cheebs return to the ship for the evening, agreeing to return in the morning to go over details.
Back on the ship, C4-BL3 tells them he has found it more difficult than expected to trace the larcenous archaeologist Kiarra Moonrunner, and her ship (the “Gagya Tartala”) is of a very common type, the Ghtroc 720 series light freighter. (There are currently 400 of them in the Tirahnn system!) Cheebs asks the droid simply to run a search for her and her ship anytime they come to a new system (or database). Exhausted, and relieved to feel relatively safe and taken care of, the party retires for the night.
2 ABY – 07 Life Festival – 1 Centaxday (Kirian) The next morning, C4-BL3 accompanies Cheebs & Kantarra to finish negotiations with Nacc over breakfast (featuring fancy cinnamon-flavored caf and plenty of blue milk). Before they get down to business, Nacc brings up 2 issues that came up overnight in reviewing the full data on Ktil. First, he asks them about the Ghtroc freighter that appeared overhead on C4-BL3’s sensor recordings. Discovering it was Kiarra’s ship, Nacc laughs, telling them he knows her and that she has been a customer of his as recently as a month ago. He suggests Kiarra probably thought the artifacts she stole from them wasn’t stealing but somehow “caretaking” and that she has a fancy Imperial archaeological license that allows such acts of brazen thievery. Cheebs is NOT amused. Also, he informs the party that his people have looked further into the matter of Khytra – and perhaps too of Kiarra’s reportedly mutinous crewmember Sasha who fit a similar description (white-haired, recruited on Tirahnn). Nacc says new evidence came to light that these both were probably members of a cult from Relatta that traveled to the Tirahnn system on an ultimate mission searching for some kind of temple on Ktil. Cheebs can’t help but remind Nacc that they had specifically asked if Khytra was an Echani from Relatta when the subject came up a week prior.
Returning to the business at hand, Nacc announces he “wants to invest in Ban-San Transport.” After reviewing the full data on Ktil, he’s now doubly impressed with the group’s resourcefulness. Cheebs communicates his feeling of urgency to reach the Outer Rim (omitting the detail that the war-torn planet of Mon Cal is their destination) as well as his reluctance to take on another debt/investor. Kantarra, however, favors taking on more potentially lucrative work for Nacc. Talks go a little better, with Kantarra contributing a surprisingly balanced and reasonable counter-offer despite her lack of business experience. (Contract killings excepted, of course.)
The party agrees to an open-ended work contract for Nacc using his salvage and scrap license. They will acquire specific parts for him on a job-by-job basis and deliver them to designated drop points, obviating the need for continued runs back to Kirian. They will take possession of the specialized Nu-class cargo container Nacc has which will physically represent their contract and go along with use of his Imperial salvage license. They are free to drop it at an agreeable location at any time should they need to suspend their work for Nacc. He also waives their facility fees and promises extra help for repairs while letting the party do most of the work. He’ll also have his repair crew install a cargo tractor beam on the Porgatu. Repairing the ship this way he estimates will take 3 weeks total for only the cost of parts (about 10,000 credits). In return, the party agrees to do their first 2 jobs for Nacc for 50% of what they could otherwise expect.
Relieved by a growing sense of trust in the Kel Dor, the party finishes breakfast with gusto and looks forward to getting their ship fully repaired.