Star Wars, The Old Republic: Legacy

Disclaimer: I do Not own Star Wars, or the Old Republic.

Warning: Spoilers for SWTOR possibly contained within. Not really sure how much will be spoilers, and how much with just be my random crap.

Thanks for tuning in here, folks. Going to try my hand at something here, Based loosely on the happenings of a single family tree covering all 8 classes in the SWTOR universe, set several hundred years after the Old Republic Online Games Story line.

Once I get a feel of what direction I really want to go in, I will try and make a Cover Chapter to explain the background that happened between the end of the story portion of SWTOR, and the galaxy as it is where I have set my story. Thanks for bearing with me.

Chapter 1: The Most sought after Salvage in the Galaxy

Catherine Elizabeth Chambers sighed heavily, holding her head under the cool spout of water spraying from the shower head, dreading the time, a few minutes forward, when she would have to exit the refreshing waters. She knew that this would be the only time before her shower the next day where she wouldn't be miserably baked and sweaty.

She lived in a hut she had build into the base of a large tree on the edge of the massive equatorial jungle belt on a medium sized planet named Heracles orbiting just a mite too close to it's sun. But, its atmosphere was also a mite thicker than normal, creating a humid environment the world over, especially in the jungle belt.

The planet itself would have been completely without value, had it not been the fact that this planet was the sight of one of the biggest battles near the collapse of the Second Sith Empire, nearly 1000 years prior. Her history was a bit fuzzy, but if she remembered the things the other Scrappers and various Archeologists liked to gabble when they drank too much of that swill Marko called "beer" at the Cantina, the battle, or rather, series of battles that littered the surface with the precious debris that was now the chief source of income for Casey and the army of other scavengers made their living off of. The science type boys and galactic historians said that it was the last major space campaign of the war, the last rally of the Empire, pushed back to its home system, where it held out under the republic assault for months calling in all reserves and making their final stand, while the rest prepared to defend their capital planet for ground warfare. But the ferocity of the final stand was apparently the final show that convinced the political faction of the Jedi supported Republic that it was too dangerous to allow the Sith to continue to exist. Thus, the Republic began a brutal extermination campaign against all the Sith, using orbital bombardment on the home planets of the Sith.

After years of this, the Jedi, already touchy over the turn, openly broke ties with the Republic. From there, it was only a few more years until the campaign moved from Sith, to all force users. They argued that this "purge" was so thorough that it was the reason why there were almost no force sensitive's left in the galaxy. Even now, almost a thousand years later, and 3 more failed galaxy spanning empires, force sensitive people were a small fraction of a fraction of a fraction of 1% of the galactic population, and there was still a scare surrounding them even in the heart of the galactic core.

So in most cases where there was a force sensitive, those individuals tended to keep it to themselves, unless, like in Catherine case, it was impossible to hide.

"Oi, Casey! Your lazy rear up yet?" A shout rang out from the front of her house, and she jerked her forehead of the ceramic wall, sputtering as water somehow climbed up her nose. She had fallen asleep under the stream.

"*cough* Yeah, I'm in the shower. I know it's redundant, but make yourself at home." Casey reluctantly shut of the flow of water, and stepped out. She didn't bother with the towel. Her Air unit was still broken, and it was just as, if not hotter than it was outside.

"Damn, Case, your unit still on the fritz? It's hot as balls in here!" She ignored her friend, and entered her bedroom, already starting to dry. She walked to her bedside, scratching a healing cut on the back of her arm she got in a good old fashioned bar brawl 3 days earlier. She popped open a plain little box lined with velvet she kept on her bed table, and pulled her mask out of it, and fitted it carefully in place. It was a simple little bone plate carved with nice little pattern, and something she always wore when going anywhere, if part because she felt more naked without it then clothes, and because while it didn't disguise what she was, it made people around her more comfortable.

There weren't many of her species left in the galaxy, what with them all being force sensitive to an extent, and walking around advertising the fact that you had just two slight depressions of skin where normal, human humans had eyes tended to scare people. With this, it seemed that most people just thought it was some sort of decorative visor, and she didn't care to correct them. Besides, it was kinda pretty, and from what her mother had said, way back before their enclave had been attacked by scared settlers several planets and more years ago, that this mask had been in the Chambers Family form back in the days when the Miraluka people were more than just an oddity in the footnote of galactic history. But such things were as far from her concern as could be. She adjusted the mask using the curling horns on the bottom to center it on her nose, and turned away. If anything, it helped pull focus from the splash of freckles across the bridge of her nose and cheeks. She had dried already, and was beginning to sweat. She moved to her dresser, opened a drawer and rummaged briefly through the mess of rumpled clothing. With a satisfied noise, she found what she was looking for, and pulled a wrinkled strip of dark purple cloth out. She wrapped it around her chest, clipped it, then rotated it until the clip was in the back, and it lay flat, covering her modest assets while showing off and accentuating her limited cleavage. But far more important than that, was that the "shirt" was made of a light, spongy material that breathed well, and also helped absorb sweat for evaporation and cooling. She dug out a pair of simple, brief style panties, pulled them on, then tuned to her closet. She looked longingly at a pair of cutoff shorts, sighed, and pulled out her faded Wraid Leather pants, and began pulling them on. She would have preferred the bare legs, but they were going out into the deep jungle today, farther than anyone on record had gone, and these pants offered a better defense against whatever may lurk there.

The Wraid was a carnivorous reptile native to the desert planet Tatooine, and its skin was often used in hot weather gear because while it was surprisingly tough, it still kept the wearer reasonably cool, sue to the beast nature as a hot weather, active predator. She added a pair of socks, grabbed two ornate sticks carved out of bone off the top of the dresser, and then stumped out of the bedroom, down a short hall, and into the kitchen where her friend was sitting at the table, picking her nails with a curved hunting knife. Her friend looked her over with kind, ice blue eyes, before whistling softy.

"Eh, Casey, I thought we were working out in the jungle today, not dancing in the Cantina." Casey grabbed her long black hair with one hand, and transphered the carved sticks to her teeth long enough to gesture rudely at her friend, before finishing tying up her hair at the top back of her head, and using the sticks to pin it there. Case turned to look at her guest, co-salvager, and closest friend in the galaxy, Celestina "Angel" Taliaferro. She was dressed exactly the same as Casey, save her top was black instead of the dark purple. Angel smaller than Casey, sporting a true petite build rather than the tall athletic body Casey maintained, though that was not to say that angel wasn't well muscled, she just had a touch more padding that smoothed out her angles and tented her "shirt." While Casey had managed a fairly dark tan after her years working salvage on Heracles, Angel somehow managed to be lily white, maybe a shade or two darker than her long blond hair, which she had tied up in the back, but left out two parallel bangs that hung down past the outside of her eyes to the chin. She was as different looking from Casey as could be managed, but just a pretty, if not edging her out a pace.

"What are you on abut now, Angel? You're dressed the same as I am." Casey moved to the food cooler, and dug around, hoping to find something no less than 3 days bad.

"Right. That's why I said "We" and not "you." You know I will back your play. 'sides, I hear that dancing isn't a bad paycheck when the spacers are in town."

Casey grunted as she dug, and Angel simply enjoyed the show from her seat. Things were not quite learn to be a stripper desperate, but it would not be far off.

"It's not quite change of career bad yet. But if we don't make a strike soon, you might have to move into the house with me, and we'll have to leverage off some of the land." Angel continued to survey Casey's back acre. She lived in another tree carved house a bit further down the property. Originally they had shared the house Casey lived in now, but one late night, too much alcohol, a rather violent drunken make out session, a 3 hour screaming fight, a broken wrist, and a cracked rib later, they decided it would be best to have their own separate space when they needed it.

"I can live with that. But you'll have to get a bigger bed." Casey straightened up, and closed the cooler, empty handed.

"Why's that?" Angel gave her a sweet smile.

"Cause I wouldn't want you to have to sleep on the couch." Casey grunted, and began digging through the cabinets over the sink.

"Whatever. Is the droid ready to go?" She brushed something square and wrapped in metal, and was both pleased and irritated as she pulled 4 military grade ration packs. She tossed them on the table, and moved to fill their canteens.

"Yup. We're just waiting on you, chief." Angel stood, stretched, and moved to join Casey, grabbing flasks from the counter, and began filling them from the army of half full bottles of liquor. "Ugh, are the rations all you could find?" Casey nodded, capped the canteens, and tossed them on the table.

"Yeah, but we'll shoot something to supplement them with tonight."

"Goody. I love the taste of Womp Rat." Casey repeated her rude gesture.

"Whatever. Load the stuff in the bucket. I'll grab my arms and meet you out there." Angel capped flashes, slipped them into her leg pockets, then gathered up the stuff on the table and walked toward the front door. Casey smiled slightly, and walked to a cabinet on the other side of room, and opened it. While everything else she owned had a worn and dirty look, the inside of the cabinet was as clean and well kept as if it were new. She pulled her Blaster pistol out, a standard, bulk order low impact model out, and clipped it to her belt clasp. Then she pulled out her real treasure. It was Longeye high powered scoped hunting rifle. With its genuine wood stock and paneling, it was a beautiful combination of high and low tech. It was good art.

She placed it gently on the table, then lifted a black Wraid leather jacket off the back of a chair, and slipped it on. Adding the Jacket, she went from Space port harlot, to respectable frontiersman. She pulled her pair of well worn leather fingerless rifle gloves out of the cabinet before closing it gently and stuffing the gloves in a pocket. She hefted her rifle again, set it to rest, the butt in the crook of her elbow, the barrel resting on her shoulder, and moved outside.

"Morning, Arty." She said, giving a wave to the high capacity lifter droid, RD -4Z25, that she had bought way back before Heracles, and fixed up into a real asset. It made a whistling noise followed by a hiss, and continued checking over all the equipment on the 4 buckets that Casey and Angel had to their name. Whereas Arty was essentially a large square power and control unit, the buckets were nothing more that large dumpsters with null grav plates and rocket engines attached. Arty would attach to the top of a bucket, fix his anchor hooks to hard points on the buckets bracings, and "fly" the bins to the scavenge site to load whatever crap they could collect, until the bucket was full, then "fly" it back to the property and fetch back a new bucket as needed.

They were heading farther then anyone they knew had ever gone into the deep jungle before, which was to say, part of the Jungle belt about 30 miles deep, where hostile native life and machinery still active even after several centuries seemed to be in sufficient numbers to cause anything smaller than an military platoon a very low survival probability. But they needed to go further out now, with most of the salvage picked clean.

There were 3 base types of salvage that came out of the jungle. First, was artifacts. Ancient guns, apparatus, crystals, computers, ect. Basically any whole items that were of foreign manufacture. Next was salvage, which was mainly parts of artifacts, like broken weapons, droids that had to be destroyed, stuff like that. Finally, and least was scrap. Basically, anything metal that was poor quality, or just solid pieces was scrap. There was open prices on both meter square plate, and melt down scrap. But with all the easy finds taken by the scrappers that could afford to keep their droids cutting all the time, even the scrap market was drying up.

Casey moved to the table standing near where the buckets sat, laid her rifle down gingerly. She hefted her tool belt, and tossed it over her shoulder after a quick check confirmed everything was on it, And clipped her vibro-machete to the opposite side of her belt from her blaster pistol. Then she lifted her rifle again, turned, and walked to where Arty had lowered the ramp to the inside. She moved to the back end, raised about a foot higher then the rest, and hung her belt on a hook next to Angel's, and snapped her rifle into the clamps made special to hold it. She then moved to the operator panel, and began doing the preflight check off. By the time she finished, Angel had finished humping in the equipment, and Arty had attached himself and was ready to herd it.

"Alright, all green on this end, close the ramp and lets be off." With a whine of hydralics, the ramp slowly closed up, sealing them in the box. There was a shudder as the first null grav plate powered up, a lighter one, a miniscule one, and then a strong shove as the main drive engine fired, lifting them into the air. Casey moved to a corner, where a threadbare cushion sat, and flopped down on it, setting her back to the wall. "It's more then an hour to the spot I picked. If you want to catch a nap, now's the time." She didn't answer, but walked over, pulling a paperback book out of a side pocket, and braced herself against Casey. She didn't mind of course, and let herself be lulled back to sleep by the steady droning of the engine.

(...)

The Deep Jungle, as it was called, was actually not as dense as they had expected. If anything, it seemed a little lighter treed then their usual scavenging grounds. Casey was in the lead, her rifle held loosely, but she was ready to snap off a quick shot if a threat menaced them. Angel had one of her own Peacekeepers out, ready to burn anything that moved. The was a rustleing int the bushes of to the left, and Casey spun a fired instantly. The was a clunk, and a small explosion. Blaster bolts flashed in from in front and to the right as more ancient droids opened fire from the shrubs. Casey turned again, working the bolt, fired, turned, worked the bolt, fired, and lent let out an exclamation as a bolt hit her in the shoulder and she fell. She dropped her rifle and drew her pistol as she fell, nailing another 3 droids on her back. She swept, but Angel, crouched behind a tree, had already taken down the other droids.

"Well, that was fun. You still alive Casey?" She reached under her jacket, and felt. She was burned, but not bleeding.

"Too soon to tell. But it will hold for now." She rose, grabbed her rifle, and signaled Arty for pick up. He would bring the bucket, and they would load up the scrapped droids and weapons. She let Angel stand guard while she and the droid loaded the salvage.

"Not bad, is it? We already pulled enough for a full payment. Working blasters, and 10 full biped droids, mostly intact."

"Yeah. Haven't heard of anyone getting anything other than pieces in months. If we fill this bucket alone, we'll be set for two or three months, easily."

"Notice anything odd about these droids, Case?" She turned to look at Angel.

"Yeah. These droids are in good condition. They don't have any exposure damage, but are clearly as old as the ones in the lighter jungle." Something had been bothering Casey about the droids, but she hadn't noticed it until Angel had said something.

"Yeah. What's that say to you?"

"That they are either protecting something, or that whatever has been holding them had recently been opened."

"So we are totally going to go look, yeah?"

"Was there ever a doubt?"

They decided to try the direction that the first droid had come from. About half a kilometer away from where they entered, and 3 droid attacks later, they reached a small hill, with a vertical crack about 4 meters tall marring the face of it. Even a cursory glance showed that the "hill" was sporting heavy, ship grade metal more than a half a meter thick. Angel ran her hand down the exposed, sheared off metal.

"Casey, I think I can see dollar signs again. Can you smell how fresh this site is? By the Egg, Casey, I think I might faint. Even if this is just a shuttle, could you imagine what the electronics alone might fetch? Oh... and if there are some intact relics... ooooohhh..." She petered off, imagining the treasures they might have stumbled upon. Casey was indeed nearly salivating at the prospects of what could lay in wait for them. Needless to say, her cooling unit would get fixed. Then, she would have real food, and if their luck was good, she might even be able score enough credits to get a battle droid, just for an extra set of hands and guns.

But there was something she didn't like about the wreck. It was almost as if cold air was seeping from it, like blood from an open wound. It made her uneasy, but not enough to walk away from such an incredible stroke of luck.

"Alright, let's check it out. But Be alert. I don't like the feel of this place." Angel nodded, brought her guns up, and edged slowly into the cleft. She called out a clear, and Casey slung her rifle, drew her pistol, and stepped through as well. She need not have bothered, as the inside was slightly larger than cavernous.

"Casey..." Angel said with hesitance. "What kind of ship do you think this is?" They were standing on some sort of catwalk. Stretching in front and away from them, fading into the distant darkness, was an opening so big as to make them feel as if they were outside. A bent guard rail was a few meters ahead, and slowly, carefully, Casey walked to the rail, scanning as she went. She peeked over the edge, seeing only darkness. She pulled out her pistol and fired a shot straight down. The glowing bolt vanished from sight before it hit.

"This place is huge." She muttered, wondering what the hell they had stumbled upon.

"What do you want to do?" Angel asked, a bit of worry in her voice.

"Do you want to check it out?" She seemed hesitant.

"Yes... I just get what you mean about the bad feeling in this place."

"Alright, then we'll work with cave conditions. Florescent paint, markers, sonic buoys, lines on our belts." Casey drew a 10 meter line off her tool belt, hooked one end to an anchor on her belt, and handed the offend to Angel. "Let's go find out what we've found."

(...)

It took them an hour to navigate the catwalk back to point where they had started. Debris was littered everywhere, almost blocking off some areas. But they had made it fully along the circumference of the place, finding several offshoots and branches, mostly choked off with rubble. Everything was covered in soot and burn marks, most of the electronic systems they encountered had burned, if not outright been exploded. But they had found a reasonably clear point of egress near where the split that had granted them access to this walled off walkway. Moving down it, they came to a partially slagged door, half melted, half blown clear of its track. Casey had to climb up it to get over it, helping Angel onto the warped metal after. She turned, and stopped dead.

They were at another metal ring, stretching around and fading into hazy darkness. Casey moved to the railing, and pointed her light down. It seemed to be another hollow space that stretched farther then she could see. Here and there, large banks of computer gear sat scorched in piles and against walls. They were near a short out croping and a disk like protrusion extended over the gap. There appeared to be a body laying in the center of the area. Blaster pistol out and ready Casey moved to the corpse, only to see that it was a droid flanked by the remains of two over sized turrets. True, it was not the first broken droid they had found, the place was litterally cluttered with broken droids. In fact, they had not yet encountered a single working model inside of the wreak. Unlike the other droids, those one was... shaped different. It was clearly a combat model, but lacked the overall carbon scoring that the rest on the outer ring had displayed, like a massive blaze had swept over them. This was obviously a combat model, a fancy rifle lay nearby, bisected and worthless, and the droid itself bore several clear blaster burns, and longer furrows burned into its rust colored armor. But otherwise, it seemed to be almost fully intact. Casey signaled Arty for pickup, marked the droid, and thought she might take a poke at it herself, before they scrapped it. Angel was looking around.

"So much is burned... but there aren't enough rends in the hull to be burning from atmosphere entry. And the damage to the computers is almost like they were detonated from inside." She turned to look at her friend. "What is this place, Casey?" There was an excitement in her clear blue eyes, but a hint of fear too.

"I don't think this is a ship." She replied. And odd conviction based on size and space management bugged her. "There is too much open space, and the turrets scrapped on that platform would have been excessive even in a capital ship. I think... I think this is a space Station." Angel looked at her friend for a long, quiet time before answering.

"Something this big, buried in our jungle? And still being intact? That Doesn't make sense."

"Well, based on most of the droids we've seen here, this is from the same period, or even before the 2nd Sith War. Say a space station was taken out of orbit by some act, and survived impact with the surface. That would give it more than a thousand years of weather to bury it. And with the rain we get, say it made a crater, it's not infeasible to imagine the low area collecting mud and growing. You know how fast the jungle will reclaim a site if not held back constantly. Let's keep going." She slid down the bowed door, and again halted. They had emerged into a new room, a faint illumination leaking in from a far wall. They stood upon a wide swath of deck plate flanked by two large pits. At about 200 meters, a short flight of stairs lead up to what looked like...

"Casey, am I crazy, or is that a throne?"

"Looks that way." Up upon a pedestal at the head of the stairs, raised a little over a meter of the floor was a blocky, smooth sided throne with a series of flat spire like panels at its crown. They began to move toward it, when something caught Casey's attention, and she let Angel drift up the stairs by herself. She halted when the cord that joined them pulled taunt, an turned back.

"What's up, Case?" She looked up, like she had forgotten Angel was there.

"Huh? Oh, nothing, sorry. There's something I want to examine down here, go ahead and check the chair out." She unhooked her end of the tether, and returned her focus to the... aura she could see.

Being a Miraluka, she did not have the organs specifically designed to allow her the collect light to be processed into visualizations. Her species had evolved on a planet where the light from the star proved to be detrimental to the eyes of the human who had settled there. Generations of the radiation sterilized the eyes, while the strong nexus of force energies inherent in the crust of the planet infused with he people. In short, the infusion of natural force came to aid them as they slowly lost their vision, and replaces it, meaning that the Miraluka actually saw the universe with the force itself. As a side effect of this, it was not unusual for strong force emanations to be visible to them, in the form of an aura around the event. It could even be on people who had live overly virtuous or vile lives. It was believed that items used by these types of people for long durations, or for particularly heinous deeds, could absorb and radiate this even after no longer being in contact with their masters.

What Casey saw made her cease doubting this. She moved forward cautiously. A skeleton lay, propped against the wall, decayed black armor and cloth draped over and among the bones. The skull looked odd, a black, corroded apparatus seemed to be fused to the bone, and it distorted all but the empty, black eye sockets. But laying in between the leg bones was a grey cylinder, about a 30 centimeters long with odd curves and a recessed buttons here and there. From it, wafted dark red and black fog, boiling up from the object and dissipating a short distance away. She had never seen an object bearing a force aura before, and it fascinated her. But it also intimidated her. She didn't know what it was, but the aura didn't look... friendly. But curiosity overpowered her caution, and she ducked down, reaching to grab the item. As soon as her fingers closed around it, her back went rigid, and she stood upright, frozen in place as a scene filled her mind.

She stood on a reddish brown, dusty world, herself decked out in void black heavily armored clothes, a heavy cloth cape draping regally down her back. Her face was the only exposed skin, and it was pale and lined with dark veins. In her had, a meter long blade of scarlet light glittering from its end, the object she found was clenched. She looked out, over the dusty valley and the corpses of her underlings, and her opponent, already beginning to be buried by the windblown dust. It had been a decisive battle, a difficult fight, but she had emerged victorious, and she would continue until there were none left to oppose her will, and her blade would carry her to her goal. Not the one she held, of course. It worked, but it was an inelegant and brutish cudgel. Like a dulled blade, it was unsuited her surgical skill, and would be discarded when she could find a replacement worthy of her...

"Casey, you there?" Angels worried tone cut through her fogged senses, and she came back to reality. She shook her head to clear it, and looked toward Angel. She tossed the cylinder back down at the bones, and it bounced once, powdered crystal trickling out of its top. It rolled to the edge of the massive pit, teetered for a second, then fell, gone to the darkness. "Are you Okay?" Angel asked, and Casey realized that she must have already asked a number of times, there was real concern in Angel's voice.

"Yeah... sorry. That... whatever that thing was, was not friendly." She had wanted to say "Evil" but thought that it would seem weird to do so. Angel still looked at her with a strange expression, then jerked her head to the chair.

"Looks like that thing is bolted to a rail so can be raised and lowered. It looks like the bolts were jammed on impact, but I bet with Arty's help we could cut it down and tow it out."

"Yeah. It's weird. All the droids in that we've seen here are long disabled."

"Well, this place is obviously huge. Maybe they are coming out of another breach we haven't found?"

"Maybe. Either way, let's start loading stuff up." She went to signal Arty, and found her hand was shaking and her palms were sweating. She steadied herself, took a deep breath, and signaled.

It took 10 full hours to get all the salvage their 4 buckets could carry back. They both we so exhausted they all but passed out on the return trip with the final bucket. They were awakened by the thump of the final bucket setting down, and Casey said her goodnight to Angel, had Arty lock down the buckets before stumbling inside, putting her rifle in it's case, and just stripping down, dropping the rest of her kit wherever it fell, before hitting the bed, and passing out.

End 1