Log:The Uninvited
The Uninvited
OOC Date: May 10,2017
Location: Art Gallery
Participants: Kylo Ren, Rheisa Dirleel, Mandl
Art Room
This room showcases mostly work by local artists, but there are usually a few pieces acquired from off world. Right now, it's filled by a diverse blend of paintings, some works of scrap metal sculpture - priced moderately low to quadruple digits - and more primitive things.
The walls are a lighter shade of grey than the dark, slate floor in this chamber. The overhead lighting is lower than in the foyer, maintaining an ambience of calm, and soft woodwind music plays in the background. A large, colorfully woven grass mat serves as a rug in the center of the floor, probably to catch the droplets cast off by a little, three-tiered bronzium fountain burbling there. A few green, leather stools are scattered around the room for guests use to sit and contemplate wherever they will.
Amber glass sconces warmly illuminate alcoves in three walls, creating cozy nests for a few rustic pots or figurines. One wooden sculpture resting there is a squatly carved humanoid with horns and two pairs of headtails. If the v-shaped form of teats hanging to the knees is any indication, it depicts a female.
A narrow case of clay pottery stands tall, just to the right of the doorway, and features muted tones of grey, white, terracotta, and geometric designs. Two more cases - sleek, black cabinets with an armored glass top -run the length of the wall beside the pottery case and contain hand-crafted jewelry and small boxes/figurines worked from wood, bone, and stone mediums.
The back third of the room is cordoned off by a window-wall with door, allowing visitors to watch attending artists labor away at their craft. The transparisteel is vented in one section, and can be opened from the workers side to allow for conversation between the public and selves. A couple countertops and metal cabinets hold supplies while two metal tables, supporting various tools of the trade are bolted to the center of the floor. There is a small kiln in one rear corner and a sink in the other.
There is an archway in the front leading back to the foyer.
The small assembly of drunken VIPs upstairs are nearing their limit and sufficiently entertained by the servers. The rest of the gallery has been cleared of visitors for the day, permitting its proprietor some much needed rest. Doctor's orders. While Kee'tch'ka mans the foyer/ramp to the upper lounge, Rheisa has sequestered herself away in the workroom for a little one-on-one with some lashing material. This far from home, the preferred koomba fronds are unavailable, so she's had to make do with some run of the mill string and a handful of twigs. A quiet lullaby sing songs forth intermittently from between closed lips - mostly through her nose - while the Togruta works. She's crouched ON the table rather than behind it, holding a loose dome of little sticks between her feet while both hands work deftly to thread string through. Either this is a prototype, or she's making a house for a very, very, very small thing.
She isn't alone, in this typically social work. On the other side of that transparisteel window - the public side, there are many familial faces watching. Silent sentinels of wood and bone, arranged by relation in their display case. It doesn't take an expert to mark them as togruta in form, even if the style is primitive. All save for one, standing alone on the bottom shelf. It...is clearly human. Ish.
While the gallery is mostly empty and the VIPs are all holed away enjoying their drinks and entertainment, a dark figure stalks through the gallery, heavy boots ringing dully on the floor. His hood conceals a mask of black and chrome glinting in the synthetic light, a gloved hand rising to wave Kee'tch'ka away when the protocol droid moves to intercept and direct him. The droid, on the brink of giving a greeting, inexplicably turns away with an "Of course, sir." The dark figure stalks on.
The thumping of his boots do little to hide his arrival as he turns into the art room where Rheisa is working, and the stormcloud of tension that fills the air around him does even less. When his footsteps stop, he merely stands, evidently staring at the artist as she toils, though the visor, black glass, makes it impossible to tell for certain.
Noise...no noise...it's all the same, to Togruta. Unless we're talkin' a crowded room of boomboom thumping music - that's a nauseating sensation waaaaay in its own class.
Movement stirs in the fringes of the artist's awareness. Her eyes, focused down on the symmetry of her work, do not see the ominous shadow trespassing into her peaceful sanctum. But the air whispers of it. Tremors, even, as heavy footfalls reverberate off the giant Ryl statue and shivering glass cases...and the idle singing stops. Nimble fingers continue to weave of their own accord, whilst bicolored eyes look aside to the pile of ditched excess she'd stripped off during an earlier round of clay mixing. Her chronometer is over there, buried beyond sight. "Drrrinks are not served down here," she informs softly, allowing the vented com panel carry her voice to the figure lurking on the other side. "If you are looking for the refresher, Kee'tch'ka can show you the way." Only then does her gaze snap forward, up, and lock onto the shadow that should be a face. For so expressive a creature, her face becomes like frosted stone. The inky bands striping her headtails subtly shift in intensity. "The Muse is close, to outsiders until morning." Her tone's changed. Guarded, maybe?
Outside the glass, there is only a solitary figure in black, but something is making the window feel more like the wall of an aquarium tank, with inestimable pressure built up against it and only a thin wall of molten silica in between. The masked face stares, immobile, for a few moments longer, before it lifts slightly and a harsh, crunchy voice, deepened by the vocoder, begins to speak.
"I have heard rumors that your gallery contains the finest art in Hutt Space," come the words, seeming louder than they ought to. "Perhaps all of the Outer Rim. You must be very proud of your accomplishments as curator." Evidently the admonishment that the Muse is closed has little bearing here.
Rheisa Dirleel has grown accustomed to the staring. The staring when she emerges from alleyways(rat in mouth), the staring when she scolds her son in grunts and garblygook, a different sort of staring when she transforms into a fashionable and bedazzling host for gallery events...but this is different. This staring is not the same. She can feel it, as one feels the unseen eyes of Shili's bigger mouths watching them from the tall grasses.
A self conscious hand lifts to finger the killer's claw hanging between breasts. The other ceases its work and goes still as she considers this strange visitor through the looking glass. Her dismount from the table is fluid, one leg creeping after another sideways until all ten toes are hugging the floor. Her timid steps forward are less so. A pronounced stiffness afflicts the right leg. "Prrride is not something I seek to display." Her chin tips forward just a touch. "But it pleases me, to see others find happiness here. I seek to use my gifts wisely." A pause, as she comes to rest a foot shy of the barrier between. "What is it /you/ seek?" And where the shit is Kee'tch'ka!?!? He was supposed to lock the damn doors. "Some things are for sale. Some things, I can make 'special' - unique to each person."
"Art and history, so often intertwined," the dark figure muses, gloved hands clasping calmly behind his back, a posture which does little to lessen the aura of power and seething danger rolling off of him. "I am sure you come across a great many artifacts as you seek to fill your gallery with the very best pieces. Some strange. Some twisted. Some... evil." The last word is used almost reluctantly, as though another might have better served in its place. "I am looking for one such artifact. I would pay well if you can deliver it to me." Another pause, and the atmosphere seems to tighten almost palpably, a sensation perhaps more severe for Rheisa's unique senses. "Those who serve me find themselves very well /rewarded./" Although unspoken, the reverse idea pushes itself forward in the curator's mind; that those who do not are rewarded after another fashion.
- Beep*beep*beep*
A little device on the woman's left wrist signals a hike in heartrate - not that it helps to improve her oxygen levels any. Nostrils twitch. Headtails tense, flare at the base. DANGER! or PISS OFF FOUL BEAST! or ...nah, there's just those two interpretations, in native Togruta. One bare foot after another treads silently over the stone floor, leaving fading toe prints as she goes. One finger keys in the code and the door opens, where she stops and hovers there, partially immersed in a tension too thick to breathe. For a patient already in end game heart failure, this isn't as new a feeling as it could be. But it is way more unnerving.
Her eyes flit off this mystery figure to her 'people' behind. Back to the figure. She swallows, edging nearer into the abyss by a whole six inches, then stops. The urge to circle, to inspect, daresay even touch is there, but the prickly sensation holds her at bay. Is that something shiny dangling there, past a sweep of coat? "The gallery has some old things, yes. But more, it is place for local peoples to show their arts. To sell, make monies. Very few old things. All of them - they come to me. Gifts." ...or thieved from thieves by her gang of thieves. "Most of those, I send home...to be with the people who made them. Who gave them a spirit." Her blotched throat bobs again as a nervous drool runs down the back of it. "What is it you think I may find, to give to you?"
Within the art room, a dark figure with a hood and mask is facing down the curator of the Muse. They stand facing each other, some invisible, tenuous force keeping the Togruta at bay, if not restrained.
"Something old. Something powerful." The voice that pushes forth from the vocoder into the room is crunchy and harsh, stripped of warmth by the electronic processing, deeper and louder than the tone suggests it ought to be. It's an unnerving effect, compiled with the aura of darkness and roiling anger that seeps into the air around the dark figure. "Something that left one of the moons of Endor thirty years ago. It is art, in a manner of speaking, artifact in another. I want it found, and I want it brought to me." The details are slim, but the dark-robed individual seems reluctant to reveal any more details without assent from Rheisa.
Mandl waddles in, curious. Eyeing several works with polite astonishment, it raises one of six fingers to the commanding Human basso. "Excuse me, madam? My eyesight prevents small numbers from being legible at great distances. How much is the wooden Togruta?"
An immeasurable /sad/ swells up from within Rheisa's core and threatens to seep out an eye. Just the organic one, though. "It is lost," she echoes back, forming an assumption based upon his desire to find this lonely, wandering thing. But then there's a ripple in her echolocative map of space and before the Bith can raise that curious finger, the Togruta turns her head to stare in a less than welcoming fashion. More like deer in headlights. "I am sorry, if Kee'tch'ka did not explain at door," she starts, heavily accented basic not quite as deep as Ren's vocoder, but it's thick with /something/. "Is Vee Eye Pee partee, upstair. Gallery close early, today." A few stirred steps hobble her forward to plant between Bith and Kylo. Maybe it's an effort to shield this somehow more awkward thing than she, from the sinister entity haunting her space. Or, maybe it's so she can better address the question, with a point to the case. "Dese? Seventy-four," her fingers flash a 7 and 4 accordingly showing that yes, she can count! Much praises. There are 73 togruta, plus 1 robed human figure, carved in similar style, etched with curious symbols and personal effects. "Not for sale. Those," she points to another case, where a few generic, faceless statues are housed. Tinkets. "One hundred, twenty. I show you better look. Maybe in morning?"
The mistaken identification from Mandl doesn't seem to register with Kylo, as the dark figure stands there quietly while Rheisa explains the pricing, but by the time she's offering to show the Bith more closely, his hand snaps up into the space between them, outstretched and clawlike toward the misgendering agender lifeform, using the power of the Force to send spikes of pain shooting through the creature's enlarged brain. "I do not recall giving you permission to speak," the vocoder almost spits, the air all but thrumming with the exercise of cruelty ongoing in the art room. The permanent sneer on the mask can't deepen, but continues to scowl steadfastly at both non-humans. It's so hard to hire good help these days. The hand drops, and the dark figure turns with a whirl on the heel of his boot, the silver handle flying from his belt into his hand, igniting into a fearsome, unstable blade of red, crackling and off-venting steam and burnt ozone.
As he strides from the room, the lightsaber darts out to drag a line of angry, ragged molten metal and glass across the pristine display of generic figures, then another on the back-hand, before the blade collapses shuddering back into the handle and the dark figure exits into the main gallery, where a robotic voice can be heard exclaiming, "Oh! Sir! The mistress is not to be disturbed!"
Mandl seizes! Mandl sputters! Foam gouts from the Wayward's mouth as it twitches helplessly, collapsing to the floor. Having no eyelids to shut, Mandl lies as inert as a switched-off droid, and the Bith has met its match by several orders of magnitude.
"But--" Confusion (because wasn't she supposed to answer!?) wilts instantly into an empathetic mess as the Bith gets a clear whallop of she's not sure what, but fairly certain her tall, dark, and angry guest has something to do with it. That's before the crackling fire stick ignites, of course.
For a moment, a kindled memory brings a whiff of campfire smoke to Rheisa's nostrils, riding on the back of the ozone. Her knees sink into the dampness of forest floor upon the unyielding stone, and one small word escapes her tongue. "Ghedai." She's eyes only for that legendary weapon, seeing beyond the devastation it leaves in its wake, and into an increasingly distant memory. The rest of her senses process the remainder of what's left behind - angry spirits, grappling for remnant of her consciousness.
Mandl rises, eventually? Though dazed and groaning, it does cast eyes about for a ... utility closet? Not foolish enough to wipe priceless artifacts up with other, less-priceless artifacts, at least, the Bith have something resembling 'culture' and 'manners.' Once it has attended to its own mess, it checks Rheisa's breathing and pulse?
Mandl says, "Curator? You ... have wakefulness? Curator?"
The curator's not dead. Not yet. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next month...but damnit, not today. She's just had another spell, it'd seem, and just lays in a half-curled sprawl while her delicate cardio system tries to settle itself.
"Wh-I...good night, sir!" Bless poor Kee'tch'ka, for he knows not what storms out the door. "How insufferably rude," the droid tsks to self while shuffling on in to the display room. And it's there that he stops, just a step inside the archway, to stare with unblinking, amber eyes at the catastrophic warp to his Mistress' carvings' case and jewelry case and pot..."Oh!" it exclaims in horror before taking note of the actual sentients upon the floor. Mistress included. "My photoreceptors must be malfunctioning," he distresses and flails an arm.
Mandl says, "Droid, call... someone. A doctor for your master's species!"
"What....what has happened?" Kee's torso swivels back and forth in repeated examination of the OBVIOUS damage. "How--not a sound!" The droid's processing ability has met its match with this picture before him. One moment he was minding his own business, warning a non VIP against entry and the next, he's watching said Non VIP exiting the premises, where there is much apparent damage to the western gallery wing! The odds of this happening under HIS vigilance are negligible, that's why he was appointed to his role!! WHAT IS HAPPENING!?!!?
"Oh!" And now, by Mandl's prompting, he realizes that his Mistress can't be angry with him, because she is, in fact, unconscious. "I will notify Master Raim immediately." And that he does.
