Log:Skywalkers: Captain Rey and the Ice Pirates of Ilum

Skywalkers: Captain Rey and the Ice Pirates of Ilum

OOC Date: March 20, 2018
Location: Ilum
Participants: Rey, Sesti Greystorm, Ax, Jax Greystorm

The members of the order had decided that it was a good time to make a trip to Ilum to retrieve Kyber crystals for when they are needed. Scan from orbit though had revealed that the ancient cave that the Jedi order had used was inaccessible as a massive storme in the area. The storm had caused temperatures to plummet to dangerous levels, and white out conditions on the ground made it impossible to find the cave.

They team had been about to turn back when a second much newer geological marker and landing beacon had appeared on sensors in an area ahead of the storm. The current weather condition would allow for around a three hour window to investigate the new cavern before the storm moves in. Though a newly bult packed landing field waited them. An old, worn but maintained theta shuttle set on the landing pad. The ship had been disarmed and bore the logo of University located in Theed. The engines cold and no other signs of life around the shuttle.

At the mouth of the cavern signs of civilian climbing equipment for three individuals had been found.

At the bottom of cavern, well the first ledge the members of the team found themselves. A tunnel to the north is dark though any light reveals the gleam of kyber crystals. The same with a narrower tunnel to the east. Over the side of the lip and to the west peering down appears to be every type of kyber crystal color imaginable though the blue and greens are more common, as the glimmer in the light provided. Other than the ropes from the climbing equipment there is no signs of the university team already here.

Jax was wearing cold weather gear, a heavy coat, the warm pants, knit mask, goggles, and the heavy gloves. He steps away from the rope he repeals from and holds up a glow rod pulling up his goggles, "Wow that's a long way down."

Having flown here in the Wayward Blade, and utilizing it's advanced sensors, Ax had a good layout of the landing area and had coordinated with the others. The ship had been outfitted for cold weather and had been used in more than one trip out here to gather crystals and he had a genius engineer for a wife. Still though, given what they'd found upon arrival, he'd decided the ship would serve better in a low orbit relaying sensor data to the team on the ground, so Ax had docked with Jax and came down with the Corellian.

"This is definitely nastier conditions than previous trips," Ax mutters, bundling up in his fur-lined parka. He even wore his old cloak over the parka for a bit of added warmth. "I can't feel my toes, though I don't know whether that's from the seven pairs of socks or the cold."

Keying up his comm, Ax calls to the Herglic cohort he'd brought with the intent of doing the heavy lifting. <<Blade, do you copy?>> he asks, getting a bit of garble and static in response before the droid aboard the ship calibrates the ship's comms to compensate for the storm. <<Roger that,>> Ax says. <<Just keep me posted of anything that might pose more of a threat,>> Ax says.

Starkiller Base had been cold, especially in her Jakku clothing... but this was on another level!

"I've never even seen clothing this heavy." Rey had commented prior to leaving the Falcon, she'd been given a set of cold weather gear and had managed to put it all on and not feel too out of her element...

But now that she's outside and not far from where Ax is, she's standing there with goggles on, fur-lined hood up and her arms clutched around her midsection. Her teeth are chattering inside her half-mask that is pulled up over the lower part of her face.

"I think we should just consider using different kinds of weapons, going forward." She tells Ax while he's talking to his Herglic friend. "Perhaps stun weapons. That are manufactured on a tropical island somewhere?"

"Probably from the socks," Sesti tells Ax with a slight grin. She turns to Jax as she looks around the cavern. "I looked around the other ship when we arrived. It looks like they were ready to sit down to dinner, then decided to leave it there for some reason. I do not know if they thought they would be coming right back, so they did not bother to close the ramp, or if they were leaving in too much of a hurry to close the ramp." She pauses to think. "Or if the ramp mechanism just plain froze in the weather here and they could not get it up and came down here for shelter. But why not eat their food, first?"

Rubbing her mittened hands together, Sesti looks around at the crystals, the light that reflects from them reflecting again from her goggles. She's added a tighter fitting hood under the usual leather tunic that covers her armor, and another, slightly tighter, woolen tunic can be seen underneath. A woolen muffler stands up in front of her nose, covering her mouth and neck.

Jax grin but the full knit mask covers his mouth, only the condensation escaping it shows that he's using his mouth, " Funny story, Ax has one of those. It's called a stun saber. That or maybe we can get Chewbacca to teach us how to use Ryyk blades and bowcasters, they're tropical right?" He looks to the others, "So looks like we got three different routes to go." He says motioning with his glowrod to the different caves. "You think we should try finding these folks or stick to the mission?"

Ax chuckles to Rey. "Normally, I'd say there's nothing here to worry about," Ax says, his voice muffled by the heavy scarf he was currently wrapping around his face. He looks to the shuttle. "But, for once, we're not alone. I know there are some small rodents and such that live here in burrows under the ice, but I think that's the only thing that lives here."

As Ax speaks, he's looking over the gear and the shuttle. "What's this?" he asks, bending over. Scraping a bit of snow and ice away from something. Things were definitely more difficult to do in heavy gloves, but he manages to uncover a datapad. "Maybe this will give us some insight," Ax says.

Ax looks over the datapad, having to remove a glove to do it as Jax explains his stunsaber. "I do have one amongst my collection," he says, kind of off-handedly. He moves his hand to the side shaking some life back into it. "Geologists here, a Dr. Amlih, a student Adren Myneer, and some mining engineer by the name of Nein."

Rey's goggle'd eyes look over to Sesti and then to the Shuttle that she's referring to possibly having mechanical issues, but the 'left behind dinner' stuff just seemed too odd. "Chewbacca suggested we do all of our training on his homeworld... But Leia believed it was a bad idea to put his people at risk when their world has suffered so much from the last galactic war."

The young one then looked to Ax and steps over to him, shuffling her legs in the snow to send it waving away from her knees as she goes. She peers at the datapad, then looks to the caverns. "I think we should proceed on our way... Do what we came to do, and if they are not here when we return then we should consider looking for them, once our cargo is loaded. But... I will do as the rest of you believe is best in this situation." She's well aware of her age and inexperience after all.

"I am not sure why we cannot do both?" Sesti wonders to Jax. "In fact, they may go together, if they are some kind of mining expedition." She listens to Rey and nods, but expels a slow breath. "I would be... loathe... to just leave and not try to find out if they are at least alive, still. Especially on a planet such as this."

Jax looks over the side of the cavern, "We should check in on his people. Sesti, Ax, and I have a friend among them and was the reason the Waywards got founded. They've always been strong allies and a noble people. We should make sure they can stand against the Order." He considers for a moment, "Who knows with the book types. Maybe it was a medical emergency, maybe some activity happened and they got excited?" He nods to either to head path, "The easy road then into the cavern? I mean they didn't take climbing equipment further down and it will be easier to extract crystals from there." Jax holding up his glow rod and this path too glitters with veins of kyber just beyond the radius of his glowrod, sparkling in the dark. As the group or at least Jax get down to where the crystals would begin the ground beneath their feet shakes and the sound of a great rumble starts.

Ax looks between Rey and the Shuttle. "Hard to tell how long they've been here, but given the environment here, prolonged exposure is never a good thing." He looks to Sesti. "You're the medical expert amongst us, and I agree with you on this one. If they're potentially in trouble, time is of the essence on this planet. We can come back for crystals at another time if necessary."

Ax looks to Jax, then to the climbing equipment. "Might be a good idea to bring this along. If there's seismic activity, there might be chasms or something we have to cross."

Rey nods softly inside of her bundled-up clothing to what the others are saying. "Sounds reasonable then." She tells them before glancing once more to the shuttle and then moving to follow after them. When the rumbling starts, however, the girl's eyes look upward and then around to the others. "Is this common?" She has to ask, starting to sound worried about the overall condition of this landing site and whether they're about to become lost in a snowy nightmare world like these Explorer's seem to have been? Rey starts to trudge her way through the snow to move away from the shuttle now toward the cavern entrance(s).

The rumble goes through the cavern, and, not wishing to go down the 'long way to fall' that Jax mentioned earlier, Sesti tries to back towards the wall. The rumbling moves a rock underneath her foot, and it rolls out from under her foot as she steps, taking her foot with it as it goes. Although she manages to not land on her back, turning as she falls, she does end up cheek to cheek with the floor.

Sesti doesn't get up right away, though. She lays there, and her eyes behind the goggles narrow. "I think our geological team is Sullustan," she says, before she pushes herself to her feet. "And the climbing gear is definitely a good idea."

"First for me. It's always cold here, sometimes there's blizzards that make life treacherous here, but never been here for a quake," Ax says, looking to Rey. "I don't speak egghead, maybe someone else can make more out of this datapad than I can," he says. "Something about seismic incidents or something," the Echani says with a slight shrug, using the force to grant him a bit more agility in keeping his feet in these circumstances.

Ax looks like he's about to say something else, but then stops. Holding up a hand. "Shhh." he mutters. "I think they're digging or something up ahead," he says, pointing down the tunnel.

He tucks the datapad into a pocket and puts his glove back on, "Damn it's cold," he mutters before he begins heading down the path.

Jax holds out a hand steadying himself. The hood of his jacket covered in dust. He moves out of the mouth of the cave towards Sesti but she's already up on her own. He moves to pick up some climbing gear. "Probably a good idea. Well lets go see what they're doing and see if we can snag some crystals." He says joining up with the group and ready to head back.

Rey adjusts her hood ontop of her head because it felt like cold air was seeping in, she was sure it was... but the adjustments seemed to do no help in solving the problem. She's trudging on ahead with the others when she sees Sesti fall over which makes her move in her direction. "Are you alright?" She asks the other, turning to look back toward Ax and Jax. "Sullustans?" She asks, knowing the barest amount about that species, Nien Numb was one... she'd met him with the Resistance.

Rey offers a hand to Sesti to help her up, which shows that the girl is wearing at least two different types of gloves. "They're inside the caverns?" She asks, eyes then going up and forward. "We should go and say hello then... let them know we're friendly and not... ice pirates." Rey'd read a book once, back on Jakku, it had been called 'Ice Pirates of the Enter Ring'. She'd never wanted to meet an ice pirate after that... whether they were real or not!

Sesti thanks Rey for the offer of the hand, but she's already mostly to her feet when it comes. "Sullustan," she confirms with a nod, a nod that rolls in the direction that Ax is heading. "That way." She dusts off the particles, getting some sparkles on her mittens as they walk. "Ice pirates?" she asks, raising her eyebrows. "I never heard of pirates that went raiding for ice."

They travel aways and the whine of machinery and the occasional word in Sullusetse can be heard. Then abruptly the floor falls out of the cavern a good 30 meters. There's another rope harness here. There's no other way but down. The ground rumbles again. The cussing intensify and the machine wine picks up.

"I think they're just regular pirates when your on a frozen planet. Funny you mention pirates. When I was first with the Resistance, I ended up in a hair ball scheme with a Talz named Lofty to steal some weapons form a band of pirates on Jakku. Things went sideways and the op ended with me stranded on a pirate transport... by myself. I annoyed them so much they pushed in me an escape pod to get rid of me. I thought I'd ended up a pirate." Jax looks at the wall ahead and the hole in the floor. "Looks like we're going down." Then securing the rope and climbing equipment on the side. He goes to bounding down the wall. He makes the first bound but it's the second one he slips and his hand brake falls loose and he's in free fall towards the rocky floor.

"Ice pirates?" Ax asks. "I guess there might be such a thing on Jakku or maybe Tatooine," he says, grinning behind his scarf, though the smile is seen in his eyes. Climbing gear slung over his shoulder, Ax moves forward, watching his footing closely. "Ice would be one hell of a good commodity on Jakku."

As they push forward, the climbing part comes in and while Ax manages to keep his footing, with the help of the climbing gear, it was obvious he was no expert spelunker. The vast majority of his climbing experience was done inside the maintenance corridors of ships. Jax's fall causes concern, but Rey's quick actions help ease his mind.

Ax's comms start making noise, the Echani putting it to his ear. <<Roger that, keep me posted.>> Ax looks to the others. "Storm's picking up. We might want to pick up the pace and let the geologists here know."

"No, they didn't 'raid for Ice'." Rey explains to the others. "They were 'made' of ice. It was a fantasy story, you know... Make believe. Or at least thats what I'd hoped while reading it." She hears what the two men say about her homeworld and it just makes her shake her head inside of her hood and masks. "I made ice with a machine I pulled out of a Mon Calamari vessel. It lasted in the the heat in my cup all of one hundred and seventy five seconds... I had a lot of free time on my hands to count them back then."

Thats when the ground gave out though and she saw Jax fall! "Jax!" Rey chirps out, her left hand grasping tightly onto the gear keeping her climging while her right shoots outward toward her companion! He quickly finds himself caught in a bubble of invisible Force, the flow around him altering to deny the power of Gravity and to reverse it... or stablize it.

It takes her only a moment longer before she's raising him back up to where he was.

"Don't. Do that again." She says to him from behind her winter coverings.

Rey's heart was pounding faster then and she looked over to what Ax was saying.

"I could hardly blame them," Sesti replies. "At the time I was not sure if I wanted to do the same, or kiss you." She grins to her husband as he begins to climb down. "Sometimes I am still not sure," she adds, before he decides to slip and take a tumble. She hitches in a breath, and her hand goes to her ever present med kit. But then, Rey makes sure he doesn't hurt himself, and it's hard to tell if she's disappointed or pleased.

Jax finds himself caught and yelled at by a woman that wasn't Sesti. The knit mask hides his bewildered face. A sheepish, "Yes ma'am." escapes him befoe he finishes his descent properly. He's herd mumbling to himself, "It's weird when it's not Sesti... or Kadi." He though looks to his wife, "And you're worried they don't look out for me or yell at me."

A few meter beyond the glow of the glow rod the glummy shape of a small mining drill about the size of an e-web on a tripod can be seen, the small squat shape of a Sullustan bent over doing something at what is a wall of darkness. Though at the noise the drilling laser stops and the Sullustan comes to face our group and appears to be holding a Blastech Dl-18. They yell out in his/her native tongue and the sound of a translation droid following, "Who are you? What do you want here? You better not be Ice Pirates!" Then there's the weak sound of a human woman's voice, posh, educated, Nabooian. "*cough* *cough* Mala... I've know you for 20 years. It's never pirates." The Sullustan calsl back, "Vyln, please don't talk. I'll handle this."

Upon seeing the pistol, Ax just holds his hands up. "Hang on there, ma'am... sir..." Damn, it's hard to tell with some alien races. "We're not pirates, but the storm topside is getting worse. If your ship isn't fitted properly for extreme ice conditions, it's not going to do you any good." Ax looks between the strangers. "Which one of you is Dr. Amlin?" he asks. "We found this datapad topside and with the storms coming, thought we would make sure you were all doing alright before we set about our own business." As he speaks, he very slowly and deliberately pulls the datapad from his pocket, doing his best to not seem threatening.

Rey would've been showing a slight grin at Jax's response, were her face visible, but its just all masked up in cloth and goggles. So she just continues on down in the climb and when the voices speak up she turns to see Ax leading their way in responding...

Rey drops down to the floor and then turns to face them as well, reaching a hand slowly up to push her goggles up off of her eyes and her mask down off of her lower face. "We're not here to cause harm, we're just simple explorer's, come for trinkets of a sort." She tries to explain, her eyes glancing back to the others with them.

"I promise you, we're not Ice Pirates." She adds then with a soft nod of her head. "Foul creatures that they are..." And that last part is muttered.

Waiting until her husband joins her on solid ground, Sesti gives him a grin, and then her mittened hand whaps at his backside when he passes, somewhere in the region of where his rear should be under all that extra clothing. "Yes, I am relieved," she tells him drily, but there's a glint of humor in her eyes behind the goggles. When they are confronted with a blaster weilding miner, she steps to Jax's side, but she doesn't say anything or draw a weapon.

Mala lowers her blaster looking a bit relieved after hearing Ax and Rey's words. Though maybe the words about the storm intesfying aren't sinking in... yet. She eyes those gathered, "Well maybe not pirates but explores or scientist here for kyber crystals. Either way can you help us. The sesmic shocks started back up and we rushed in to get samples and retrieve data. Then there was a cave in. My friend Vylin is trapped and being crushed. The boy.... he." The female Sullustan looks away, "Can you help me free Vylin?"

Vylin for her part is letting Mala do the talking since she's not trying to shoot the would be 'ice pirates' and the young chipper Ice pirate Captain. The Nabooian woman for her part was trapped on the tunnel floor under ice and rock on her back. Just below the waist. It was perhaps the Force that the woman wasn't in two.

Jax grunts as Sesti swats him. He looks to the others, "Probably best Sesti looks at her before we go to moving stuff?"

"Of course we'll help," Ax says. Kyber crystals can wait, after all. Especially when there are potential lives at stake. "We have a doctor with us, fortunately," he says, gesturing to Sesti. "We should be able to get your friend out, but our methods are... Well, you have to promise not to speak of this day to anyone in the future." Not that the Echani would refrain from helping if they refused.

Once Sesti has been indentified as the doctor, she advances forward, pulling down her muffler and pushing her goggles up to her forehead. "Hello," she says quietly to the woman. "Please do not move Doctor. We will have you out, soon." She pulls a scanner from her medpac and looks at the woman's eyes and hands, then down towards her midsection. "None of her organs appear to be ruptured, it would be safe to remove the pressure of the rocks from her back." There's a little tightness at the edges of her mouth, that Jax would recognize.

Looking at the rocks and then to Rey. "Before you start moving stuff, look at the rocks around it. Think of them as gears, if you move one then another will move as well," he says. "I'll try to keep the smaller ones, but I gotta admit that this isn't my strongest skill."

Jax Greystorm comes to stand next to them, "I'll help you Ax. It's not my strongest suit." He says raising a hand and breathing steadily getting ready to use the force with the others.

Rey is peeling her hood back since they were inside the caves now, it wasn't AS cold... sure it was still cold as an Ice Pirate's heart, but it was at least bearable. Plus she was a bit on edge after the part where Jax almost fell, then the other people being down here with blasters aimed on them... now a person in trouble needing their aide.

"Right." Rey says softly to Ax and the others. She steps around the rubble and then looks to Sesti. "When I left them up... can you drag them over here?" She asks. "Are they able to be moved?" She then asks. "Let me know how long you need me to keep them up... otherwise... I'll try to return them to where they are once they're free of them. I don't want to make this chamber more unstable..."

And with that said, both of Rey's hands come up and her eyes close for just a moment while her fingers splay apart and then the rocks... move and slowly come up, not just one or two but all of them. She moves them apart with a potentially surprising amount of Force aptitude and although she did take Ax's instructions to heart, she wanted to really clear the spot out to make it as easy to get the injured person to safety... while the rocks just float in the air as though they were in the vacuum of space.

Jax, Sesti, and Mala place Vylin on a backboard. Mala had brought it with her. Then they slide Mala out of the way letting that Rey and Ax replace the rocks. There is no sign of the grad student lost in the rocks beyond. Though the removal of the rocks times with trimmers that start up. So the group leaving the drilling laser behind and get the doctor up the clift and too the edge of the cave. Though as they look out at the landing area, the howl of the wind and the snow has left the area in complete white out. It was at that time that Ax's contact message him. "That storm's really picked up."

Jax looks out in the white, "Getting to the Warrior is our only chance. I can see it." He says pointing it out. "Anybody got an idea on how to keep us together and no one get lost?"

Once they're all back up and out of the madness of the cave-in below, Rey is stepping toward the mouth of the cave with her eyes squinted and strand sof her tied-back hair blowing across her face. She reaches her right hand up and lowers her goggles down overtop of them, while her mask goes up over her nose again. "Its no worse than a Sandstorm back home." She says before turning back to the others. "Follow me." She tells them as she turns then to leave and she starts back out into the ever deepening snowdrifts.

A second later and there's a snap-hiss mixed in with the blowing snow and howling winds, but eminating from Rey's hand is a guide-lightsaber... a brilliant blue-white light that is hard to miss in the graying hues of the dying light outside.

"We have rope," Ax says. "We could link each other up," he adds. Pulling out his comm, he calls the Blade. <<Scan for life signs, that will be us. Make sure we get to the ships.>> There's an affirmative from Ax's co-pilot on the Pacifier in orbit, along with a notice on the storm's progression.

"WAIT!" Sesti shouts to Rey as she starts out into the snow. She nods her head towards Ax. "We need to link together to make sure you do not get too far ahead of us." She's pulling together the rope from the climbing, her eyes on the woman they've been carrying on the backboard. "We will not be able to keep up with you at your normal pace while carrying her."

They made it through the white out to the Painted Warrior, Jax had kept the engines prepped and running. This wasn't his first trip to Ilum and he did listen to his oldest friend, Kadi, more than he let on. He'd even had a pot of caf waiting. So it wasn't long before they were heading towards orbit and the Blade. Jax and Ax in the cockpit. Sesti working to treat the geologist, Vylin.

"Your shuttle," Ax says. "I have a winery on Naboo. If you want, I can come back after the storms and pick it up, taking itback to the University in Theed. Again, just don't tell anyone about how you were rescued or by who."

Mala picking up a cup of Caf, "Thank you young man. I never expected to find somebody from Naboo here. I won't speak a word." She says taking a drink. "The university would probably be excited to get their ship back." She reaches up to pat Ax on the shoulder as he was in the co-pilots seat. Then stepped out into the storage area of the ship.

Though as the Painted Warrior breaks orbit, Mala pulls Rey to the side, she reaches into a pouch, "I wouldn't believe it I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. Neither of us will say a word. I know Vayla. But I think these trinkets will help you more than they will for our research." Then presses a pair of uncut kyber crystals into the young womans hand.