It took a little doing, but between Qurzer and Santos, we managed to land in the Jiroch system without any trouble. Ingrid stayed behind on the shuttle while the rest of us headed out into some kind of savanna. It felt nice to me, but Santos was really not doing so well in all the heat.

We were lucky enough to find a little cache full of extra food and water supplies on the way, but eventually we came across some landspeeders and a camp full of hunters. It looked to me like they’d been drinking some really bad water… The leaders were really aggressive and started out saying they wanted to hunt US. While I was in the middle of talking them down, Callia and Rakine somehow got them to go shoot at some trees for a while. I’m still a bit confused about how that worked, but it meant we got a free landspeeder to take us the rest of the way to the temple.

When we tried to park the ‘speeder in a little cave, these huge tusked cat things came out of nowhere and attacked us. We really didn’t have much choice but to kill them, because we needed to know for sure that our escape route would be clear. They got Callia and Santos pretty good, and with Ingrid gone I did my best to patch them up but I’m really not sure how well I did. Like, Callia was looking better, but I think I might have messed it up a bit?

From there we headed across what looked like a big, broken plaza, and we found a hut on the path to the temple where this crazy old man was cooking stew. He kept babbling on about how the master was hungry, and asking if we were on a pilgrimage, and trying to get us to eat his weird food. We couldn’t really get anything useful out of him but by that point I was definitely starting to feel like going there was an awful idea. Too bad the Jedi in the party couldn’t be swayed…

The temple is where everything finally went south. We found a few trinkets in a tomb, and then I scouted ahead because we could see some firelight in the next room, but it looked safe to me. Unfortunately I didn’t look up. When I came back again with the others, these huge spiders fell from the ceiling to attack us, and while we were fighting them off this shadow ghost with a creepy white mask appeared to start messing with our heads.

After that, it’s all a bit confused to me. I remember Santos grabbed my arm and did something to me, something that made me feel like I was burning up from the inside out, but afterwards some of my cuts and scrapes had knit themselves up. I remember being back to back with him as we fought off the spiders. But then something happened, something in my head. I mean, as soon as I set foot on a civilized planet, I can’t help but be hyper-aware of the fact that there’s a moving target on my back. The Suns are genuinely, actually operating on nearly every world in some capacity. This was just like, all of a sudden, I couldn’t think about anything else. My mind just kept racing: they’re everywhere. I can’t escape them. I can’t possibly ever repay them for what I did. They might go after my family, or my friends. Hell, some of my so-called friends might even even BE Black Suns, in disguise, waiting for the right moment to shoot me in the back. So in the middle of a huge fight, with some of us half-dead, I turned and ran.

My head mostly cleared a few minutes later, at least enough for me to come back, but even then it’s all a blur. I know I tried to shoot at the Sith – not a ghost, but actually some Jedi Callia used to know who had gone horribly bad. I remember that she used the Force to pull me over to her, and she had me by the throat… I’m pretty sure Santos tried to attack her, but as I was choking I was already reaching into my pocket for a stun grenade. I think that I thought I could take her out with me. When it went off, everything went black.

I’m still trying to piece together what I missed. The Sith woman got away… she was a Twi’lek, like me. Santos apparently carried me down to some altar to try to wake me up, and the temple spat out some little cube at him. Rakine really IS with the rebellion, and whensome of her friends turned up to back us up, they took our shuttle away, although they’re at least taking us to a safe location. I haven’t spoken to Callia, but Santos says she’s hurt really bad, maybe blind. I think I’m just going to steer clear of her for a while.

Things seemed pretty simple, just a little over a week ago. Make money, pay off the Hutts, get the Dash back in the air, and then it was just me and Santos, doing what we do best and staying one step ahead of our enemies. I don’t want to get pulled into a rebellion against the empire and I don’t want to try to fight Sith lords with lightsabers and the power to screw with my head or throw me across a room. The next time Callia feels the Force pulling her to some random planet, we’ll just forcefeed her quanya until she can’t feel it anymore and fly on by, as far as I’m concerned. What an absolute disaster.