THE PLANET BARANCAR...
Trini Halrixien, adventurer grad student, leaned on her elbow as she looked out at the bleak, industry-scarred landscape of the planet Barancar, touch-typing at a datapad balanced on her lap.
After thousands of years, there isn't much left of Xim the Despot's fabled shipyards. The land molders under leaden skies, scattered with the remains of once-mighty industry and scarred by the byproducts they once generated. It's a fesedsds-
The speeder-bus jounced as its repulsors caught a crater in the ancient highway surface, causing the little Amaran to mistype. Sighing, Trini picked up her datapad, looking at what she had written and backspacing to correct the typo.
Trini had arrived on the planet Barancar about an hour or so before. Her reason for coming to the planet, as usual for her travels, concerned the past; she had been given a special assignment by her pre-Republic history professor, and having nothing much better to do, she had taken it. In hindsight, she wondered why; archaeologically speaking, it was a dead end that better scholars than her had chased answers down, and she wasn't sure why her professor's suspicions should be any more successful than the countless others who had sent grad students on wild mynock chase.
The Lost Crowns of Tion were a myth, and ten thousand years of fruitless searching had only reinforced this notion. While it was widely accepted that Xim had taken the heraldry of conquered noble houses as trophies, the notion that there was a vast trove of these items secreted away somewhere seemed ludicrous in the face of the fact that nobody could seem to come up with so much as a jeweled scepter.
Extra credits were extra credits, though, and Trini would humor her professor, at least this time.
Idly, Trini looked around the bus, seeing who else was on it. She wondered what business some of them had on Barancar; certainly something more rewarding than her task. Or so she assumed.
After thousands of years, there isn't much left of Xim the Despot's fabled shipyards. The land molders under leaden skies, scattered with the remains of once-mighty industry and scarred by the byproducts they once generated. It's a fesedsds-
The speeder-bus jounced as its repulsors caught a crater in the ancient highway surface, causing the little Amaran to mistype. Sighing, Trini picked up her datapad, looking at what she had written and backspacing to correct the typo.
Trini had arrived on the planet Barancar about an hour or so before. Her reason for coming to the planet, as usual for her travels, concerned the past; she had been given a special assignment by her pre-Republic history professor, and having nothing much better to do, she had taken it. In hindsight, she wondered why; archaeologically speaking, it was a dead end that better scholars than her had chased answers down, and she wasn't sure why her professor's suspicions should be any more successful than the countless others who had sent grad students on wild mynock chase.
The Lost Crowns of Tion were a myth, and ten thousand years of fruitless searching had only reinforced this notion. While it was widely accepted that Xim had taken the heraldry of conquered noble houses as trophies, the notion that there was a vast trove of these items secreted away somewhere seemed ludicrous in the face of the fact that nobody could seem to come up with so much as a jeweled scepter.
Extra credits were extra credits, though, and Trini would humor her professor, at least this time.
Idly, Trini looked around the bus, seeing who else was on it. She wondered what business some of them had on Barancar; certainly something more rewarding than her task. Or so she assumed.