Hoth: Blood and Ice

[Jo'ren Rath]

With some time on his hands as the ortolans fixed up his ship, and having already helped to make the Common rooms much more livable, Jo'ren decided to explore. He found himself in the command and control room. It looked like someone had already started working on it.

Walking around he became lost in his own thoughts. It had been a day. Finding Avi on the cruiser and, oddly, crashing the ship, had turned out to be pretty fortuitous. Then all the familiar faces. Who would he bump into next?

And of course, Thy.

But why were they all here? And why hadn't the pirates attacked them yet? His thoughts turned to what Bizi had said about the base, and its ghosts.

[C5-PT]

"Greetings yellow parallel, unable to find green rhombus?" a droid said standing by the main command console.

[Jo'ren Rath]

His gaze snapped across to the odd droid. It didn't look like an Assassin droid...of course all the best Assassin droids looked like something else. He moved a bit closer.

"Hey droid. Who's yellow, and what's a green rhombus exactly? I mean, I don't see anything like that on the panels." Jo'ren pointed at the command console. Maybe its language processor was broken?

[C5-PT]

"This unit is C5-PT, and currently despite red perpendicular to green secant situation is green bilateral," the droid replied.

[Jo'ren Rath]

"C5-PT? Okay Petey, I think you're telling me things are fine? Or at least not critical." He tapped a chin spike. "So...what would you call a really bad situation? Like if there was a reactor leak, and not a small one."

[C5-PT]

"Currently no red vertical incidents, currently," the droid responded.

[Jo'ren Rath]

"Alright, now we're getting somewhere!" Red vertical is bad, got it. "So is your language processor red vertical? Oh, and who brought you Petey? Republic? You don't look like an Imperial droid model."

[C5-PT]

"This unit is green bilateral, and this unit belongs to gold intersectors," the droid responded.

[Jo'ren Rath]

"Gold intersectors? What's that? Republic?" He traced out the Republic symbol and pointed to it. Then the symbol of the Empire. "You know what these are Petey?"

[C5-PT]

"Yes, yellow parallels," the droid responded. "Gold intersectors are the makers, this unit is engaged in verdant perpendicular for black vertical."

[Jo'ren Rath]

A datapad was removed from the utility belt. "Right. So." He started typing out the relevant information. "Republic = yellow parallels. Empire = black vertical. Makers = gold intersectors."

He looked at the Droid again. "So who are the makers, why did they leave you here, and what do they want?"

[C5-PT]

The droid responded, "Gold intersectors are gold intersectors; this unit is verdant perpendicular for pink vertex to avoid white vertical."

[Jo'ren Rath]

There was a long pause. "Huh?" He started to looking for any signs of obvious damage feeling quite tempted to be the cause of said damage if not.

[C5-PT]

The droid just looked back at him in silence.

[Jo'ren Rath]

Joten tried to work through that last part. "White vertical. You want to avoid white vertical. Is that like...destruction? Death, well, deactivation I guess?"

Something occurred to him. "Say Petey, is there like, a big sheet of something I can write on around here?" He started looking for one of those hydroperspex tactical boards with the erasable markers.

[C5-PT]

The droid wandered off and brought back something for him to write on after a few minutes. It verbalized, "Here yellow parallel."

[Jo'ren Rath]

"Thanks. Wait, I thought the Republic was yellow parallel?" He looked confused. "Or is that just what you call all of us?"

At the top of the board he wrote: Jo'ren's guide to Petey the Protocol Droid

He started filling in the few things that had so far been translated. Or at least the bits that seemed right to him.

[C5-PT]

The droid responded, "Yellow parallel is not gold intersector. Must verdant perpendicular to find black vertical. But first yellow parallels should green circular green secant."

[Jo'ren Rath]

"Right right. So your makers are gold intersectors and everyone else is yellow parallel." He wrote that down.

"White vertical was death or destruction. Black vertical is...someone you're working for, or want us to find? Verdant perpendicular is how we find them?" He scratched his chin spikes. "Pink vertex, you lost me there. But green circular and green secant must be something to do with finding an important thing."

Ugh, puzzles. "We're gonna need someone much smarter to figure this out."

[C5-PT]

The droid pointed to the ceiling and then the ground, "Green secant." Then continued, "Yellow parallels should green circular green secant very verdant radial."

[Jo'ren Rath]

"You want us to go deeper underground? And that would be...good?"

This was like that old Sith kids holoshow about the vinecat. Lexi! Where kids would get themselves in trouble and Lexi would sometimes help them if they showed themselves to be proper Sith. Otherwise Lexi ate them, but the point was the cast would try to decipher what had happened to little Jimi by asking the cat questions and watching what it did.

[C5-PT]

The droid verbalized, "Yellow parallel shows blue vertex."

[Jo'ren Rath]

"So blue vertex is impressive strength. Killer abs? No you can't see them." He thought about the context a bit more. "Oh wait."

He wrote: Blue vertex = intelligence or intuition (or similar)

"This is like one of Lord Savas' classes. Okay Petey, can you show me the best route to get to green secant? We're probably going to need more power for an elevator but maybe there's a stairwell?"

[Jub'Lub]

The robed Twi'lek of blue pigmentation entered the command center. He was aghast to see one of the True Sith, talking to a protocol droid and scratching himself. He noticed he was writing on a board and approached. As he grew closer to the Sith, he overheard him say something about a blue vertex.

"Excuse me, are you talking about my head? my lekku? I hadn't realized you noticed my arrival."

Jub'lub was a bit on edge, being in the presence of the sworn enemy of the Jedi, but he kept his cool and reminded himself that they'd have to work together if they wanted to stop the White Maw and get out of this alive. Still, he never thought he'd be talking to a True Sith so casually.

[Aphr Ahaya]

There was another that got tired of sitting around being nearly frozen. Despite being wrapped in thermal cloaks. Aphr had hoped to find the control room to turn on some kind of heating, but instead found.... Was that Jo'Ren? And someone else, a blue Twi'lek, which was amusing.

This could be fun

With her thermal cloak wrapped around her and over her head, it wasn't easy to tell who it was.

"I'm guessing this room is also a frozen wasteland?" the girl said.

(ooc - 1f committed as per here)