Ill Met By Moonlight

[Thaumas Drude]

Sights. Sounds. A maelstrom of swirling sensations. The odor of a thousand races. The cacophany of a thousand voices, speaking the words of a thousand worlds. It was a blanket of noise; a sheer wall of sensory overload. To the denizens of Cloud City, this was Market Row; but to Thaumas Drude, this was nothing short of hell.

The crowd bumped and buffeted, propelling him onwards like an unruly tide, meandering precariously around pools of crushing stillness that surrounded the stalls and vendors. He risked a glance at their wares, and felt his stomach turn. Some sort of twisted and inhuman creature, too impatient to wait before it began chewing on the entrails of the air-dried amphibian it had just bought, a stump of limb protruding from the corner of it's chomping, sagging jaws.

Thaumas fumbled with the screw thread of the flask strung around his neck, rattling it open and bringing it to his lips with a shaking hand. Alcohol sloshed eagerly into his mouth, a little escaping into the tangled jungle of whiskers that buried his features - a deliberate effort to conceal the face beneath. A fresh wave of numbness washed over him, that familiar and comforting disconnection that held the plague of sobriety at bay, and softened the edges of the aching void inside his soul, the inky blackness bleeding out into every aspect of his person.

He let the alien riptide convey him deeper into the bowels of Cloud City, further from the dankness of the landing bay where he'd disembarked from the seething cesspool of a transport that had conveyed him here, and into the squalid interior of the lower levels. Words scrawled upon the walls offered faint insight into the direction he traveled, each new enterprise plastering their graffiti directions atop those that came before. The word 'clinic' stuck out, almost religiously significant in the way the other vandalism sought to avoid disrupting it. Not the destination that Thaumas desired, however: his healing was of another kind, and lay elsewhere.

A tributary branched from the main crowded flow, cargo containers standing like rocks in the river's path, breaking the tide into rapids and stillness. Thaumas broke towards the relative calm, another drink stolen to steady his nerves before he delved into his pockets, rummaging for the scrap of pulp sheet that had hastily been stowed. He unfurled the crumpled scrap, twisting it in his fingers until the shapes conformed with a familiar word.

Royal.​

[Serrena Alcine]

In all honesty, there were probably a dozen ordinances and zoning laws being broken at that very moment.

Likely more if she were to actually count the things she'd told the staff were fair game. This wasn't the Royal Casino of old, anymore. This was the beating heart of Cloud City's lowest levels. If you wanted it, and it was illegal, there was someone in the Royal who could sell it to you. Providing of course you had the credits to pay.

It was a business, after all, and a mostly legitimate one on the surface.

Lambent crimson eyes gazed across the bar, watching the steady stream of sentients and servers alike come and go. They served all kinds at the Royal, unlike so many of the more 'select' establishments on the upper levels. Places she used to frequent before she landed in the gutter and decided to make it home. She could hold her own in places like that still, she just didn't bother. This...this was where she belonged. Once she'd stopped fighting that old need to be something else...once she'd embraced just how depraved she really was, things had taken a turn.

Serrena flipped her raven curls over her shoulder, head tilted to the side as she glanced over to her ever-present bodyguard. Olso stood stock still and glaring, something he did spectacularly well that she paid him equally spectacularly for. Well. That and...other things. Like his his shoulders.

Those should have been illegal. Perfectly sculpted and...and...illegal.

She winked as he caught her gaze and she pushed away from the cabinet she'd been leaning against. The ex-porn star sauntered across the floor, neatly stepping out of the way of the bartenders as she made her way to Olso's side. Fingers wrapped around a freshly made Cassandra Sunrise from a scarlet Zeltron as he offered it to her, and she pressed a kiss to his cheek by way of thanks. Man deserved a reward for remembering her favorite drink on his first night behind the bar. Serrena felt his eyes on her as she swept past, a smirk on her dark, glossy lips as she took a sip.

Ohh, he was definitely getting rewarded, the drink had the required kick and a little extra, just the way she liked it.

Her gaze drifted across to the pazaak and sabacc tables, ignoring the packed dance floor for the time being. Her comlink vibrated in her pocket, which she ignored for a moment in favor of hopping up onto a barstool, and then the bar itself in turn as the music changed, with a strategically placed hand from Olso giving her a boost.

Now Honey, you can't blame her
For what her mama gave her
It ain't right to hate her
For workin' that money-maker

She tossed back her drink in the span of a few seconds, dropping the glass in the Zeltron's outstretched hand. Definitely getting rewarded later. Serrena flicked her gaze down to the comlink she pulled out quickly before dropping it into his hand. Their expected 'guest' was inbound.

Band shuts down at two
But we're hangin' out till three
We hate to see her go
But love to watch her leave

Well then. Her night had just gotten even more promising. Boots (http://www.polyvore.com/cgi/set?id=218046957) deftly avoided drinks that weren't moved before she strutted her way across the the surface in perfect time to the music. Crimson eyes glittered as she cast them over the crowd toward the door, subtly watching and waiting even as she put on a show.

We don't care about the drinkin'
Barely listen to the band
Our hands, they start a shakin'
When she gets the urge to dance

[Thaumas Drude]

By the light of the seven infernos, where in the blazing suns have I found myself?

Despite outward appearances, Thaumas was not oblivious to the true, darker nature of the galaxy. He might have grown up within the sheltered confines of Core World civilization, but he knew the things that lurked on the fringes. In truth, he often found himself more at home there, submerging himself in the shadowed corners of nightclubs and casinos where anonymity could be exploited to it's maximum. He had seen things in those corners. He had seen what people did to each other in those darkened spaces, and what they did to themselves. He had sampled what they breathed into their lungs, or injected into their veins. He had been - or so he thought - the kind of person that one would find in a place such as this. He had thought himself prepared for this pilgrimage to the outer edge of the stars.

He had been mistaken.

Unlike on Coruscant or Corellia, the patrons of this establishment - of which humans represented a notable minority - did not wait for the cover of shadows, or the anonymity of crowds. Spice and credits exchanged hands in plain sight. Drunkards danced their mating dance not on dark dance floors, but on tables and stages. Couples pressed each other against convenient walls, clothes removed or sometimes merely just tugged conveniently aside, such as the dark deeds required. Thaumas had seen a great many things; but the sight of a Rodian sprawled across a holo-pool table, her legs and skirt draped over the shoulders of her red-skinned companion - whose head was buried too deep in her loins for Thaumas to even guess their species or gender - casually sipping her drink as if this were the most benign form of normalcy, was something entirely new.

Thaumas felt his eyes turn downwards, careful effort made to avoid witnessing more of the sin and sordidness around him. "Blessed Force, forgive these lost souls," he muttered quietly to himself, focusing his sights on the bar and nothing else, weaving his way slowly towards it. "They have been tempted by darkness, and know not what they do."

[Serrena Alcine]

Lambent crimson eyes followed their quarry unerringly through the debauched throngs of sentients that inhabited the Royal that night, even as she reveled in the gazes that traced her every asset. There was something to be said for the attention and the rush it provided, better than many of the illicit substances that were traded in some of the darker corners. Olso would likely have his very large hands quite full keeping the peace and keeping people away from her as per usual...but it was far better than the alternative.

While she was capable of taking care of herself, a fact her past had seen to in no uncertain terms, Olso could do with a menacing glance what took her a pair of sais and a fully loaded slugthrower. But it was more than just that, and over the years he'd become utterly indispensable to her. A brief scuffle drew her attention away from Thaumas' slow path towards the bar, as one of the serving girls found herself unceremoniously assaulted by a Neimodian with wandering hands.

It was Serrena's policy that if the servers welcomed that sort of attention, they were welcome to it. She would not prevent them from earning their keep in any way they saw fit...she would just insist on a proper cut of the profit. If, however, it was not welcomed, that was also acceptable, and they were permitted retaliation in any way they saw fit. So when the Neimodian hit the floor after a beautiful right hook, she winked at the serving girl and nodded as she went back to dancing her way back along the length of the bar.

When Thaumas finally arrived at the bar, his sights focused on the worn surface and seeing nothing else, she approached in time to hear the soft utterance. It drew a dark, luscious peal of laughter from her frame as she lowered herself down to sit on the bar, legs crossed as she leaned forward towards him. "Oh honey...believe me, they know exactly what they're doing." Serrena purred, crimson eyes drinking in the sight he presented, slowly coursing over him from head to toe and back again.

"Welcome to the Royal, sugar."

[Thaumas Drude]

To elevate his eyes and look upon the woman who spoke proved to be a mistake. Her blood red eyes peered at him, filled with evil and mirth, though he did not shy away from the monstrous vision no matter how much his heart might emplore him to. Royal was not an affectation that suited this establishment, nor its apparent matron; but the Blessed Force had led him here, to the nest of demons within this haven of sin, and who was he to protest the will of that which binds us all?

The corners of his mouth tugged upwards into a grimace that, with more than a little disgust, acknowledged the words of the Royal's seeming harlot-in-chief.

"To know, and to know are not one and the same," he countered, though even as his words began he had already lost faith in their chances of being heard for the truth that they were. "The dog knows that it barks, and bites, but cannot know the consequences of those actions, for such understanding lies beyond the limits of its comprehension. By the same notion, these lost souls cannot comprehend the way their darkness diminishes the light of the cosmos, nor the stain left behind upon their eternal essense."

Drude's mouth opened to say more, but his words were halted by hesitation, expelled instead as a faint sigh of resigned frustration. To debate morality with a devil was as futile as demanding of the darkness that it relinquish to the sun. In time, it might seem as if such efforts were consequential, but eventually that blackness would return once more, and that state, however long it might take, would be the ultimate end. For some, there simply was no hope of redemption; but perhaps there was a chance for those in their orbit to be steered, with due care, towards the light.

His attention shifted, returning to the crudly drawn words on the scrap clutched in his fingers, that had directed him to this place. This was torment, as close to the dark afterlife that so many cultures feared as one might find within the mortal realms, and yet as much as it cloyed and clawed at his sensibilities, he knew that this was where he belonged. Some believed that their actions in life might lead to worthy consequences in death: that the wicked would be punished, while the just and true would find peace. Thaumas knew better: good or bad, all who died returned to the Force; and it was the purview of mortal men to see that justice was done. Perhaps another man in his position might have twisted such a notion into a crusade, carving a path of wrath and redemption through the dark corners of the galaxy: but to do so would be to become the darkness that one sought to subdue, and Thaumas knew that he was not the kind of beacon of light that such a holy mission required. He was quite the opposite, a dark soul that belonged in the company of dark souls: and so here he was, inflicting upon himself the kind of torment that the cosmos had not seen fit to provide for.

And yet, despite that acceptance of his own irredeemable sins, Thaumas Drude did not lack for hope. His own soul was trapped on the accretion disk that spiralled towards the darkness and entropy of oblivion, but for those in his orbit, and those who crossed his path, there was still hope. Perhaps the demon-eyed harlot was correct, perhaps many of these souls did know the full extent of their circumstance; but not all, and not always. Some might still find their way from darkness back to light, and Thaumas would strive to be the shepherd moon that steered them into that stable orbit.

His eyes returned to the woman once more.

"We have a mutual acquaintance, you and I, if I am not mistaken. I come with greetings from Erebus: my name is Thaumas Drude, and I believe I am expected."