You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. A popular drinking and dining establishment located in the city of Mos Eisley on the desert world of Tatooine, Chalmun's Spaceport Cantina is run by the Wookiee Chalmun.

A single story building made of sandstone, the cantina consists of a bar area, private offices, a VIP lounge, a private hangar, a basement, and a phony shop in the rear. It caters to all sorts from across the galaxy, with spacious areas and wide arched doorways to allow patrons of all sizes passage. Unsurprisingly, a fair share of these guests lend to the cantina’s seedy reputation.

Entering through a small portal on one side of the building, a small passage curves around into the main bar area. Featuring many themed spigots resembling the heads of IG-series assassin droids, the bar is capable of producing several dozen drinks of Chalmun's own concoctions. Surrounded by eight different alcoves filled with stools, tables, and even a bandstand, the bar wraps from the public area around into the private back room.

Entering the cantina, the cloaked figure stepped to one side, melting into the shadows. Once adjusted to the dimmer lightning, sharp, dark eyes scanned the room. She took note of potential threats or obstacles that might complicate her mission. She was also mildly pleased to note that her entrance went largely unnoticed. Just another plain, unremarkable human blending into the crowd. A resigned sigh left her lips as she moved toward the bar in the center of the cantina.

Rasilvenaira StormRaven hated Tatooine, but it really wasn’t the planet’s fault. No one ever seemed to have decent rum available. Still, she had to play the part for the job she’d been given. Pushing the hood of her cloak back, she eyed the bartender- a middle-aged human that looked like he wanted to be anywhere but here. She couldn’t blame him for that sentiment.

He stepped toward her. “What do you want?”

“Do you have any rum?” She already knew the answer, but still felt compelled to ask. The universe could choose to surprise her, after all.

“No.”

“Whiskey?”

“No.”

Naturally. So much for being surprised. Rasilvenaira shrugged, disappointed in the unimaginative universe and its missed opportunities. “Fine, just give me something wet, preferably not poisonous, not pink, and we’ll call it good.”

The bartender gave her an unamused look and poured a drink that was a suspicious shade of almost-glowing green. The Sith eyed it, but put the credits for it on the bar and pulled the glass closer. The bartender collected the credits and walked off to wait on other patrons. Rasilvenaira sniffed at the drink and then took a sip. She managed not to grimace or cough at the horrible taste, just barely. She shook her head, slid the glass a little further from herself, and then pulled a datapad out of her pocket to look over the job details again.

Intercept target carrying valuable information on tech resources that Imperium could use. Target is a male Rodian. Be discrete. Others may also be after this information.

Hmph. She thought. Rodian? On Tatooine? She glanced around the room, counting at least eight male Rodians that she could see from where she sat. Right… they’re worse than gizkas. She smirked at the last bit. Be discrete? When am I not? She shook her head and put the datapad away.

Knowing her Quaestor as well as she did, then it likely meant she could assume that ‘others may also be after this information’ translated to ‘people know about it and will probably get in your way, kill them if necessary’. Wonderful.

The assassin casually leaned one arm on the bar and let her gaze drift idly around the room again. Rasilvenaira was assessing each of the Rodians she saw, trying to determine which one might be her target when the cantina door opened again.

She looked over and couldn’t help but arch a brow at the figure that stepped through the doorway. Tall. Armored. Chiss. Well, now that was something you didn’t see on Tatooine every day. The Chiss definitely stood out from the crowd as she made her way further into the room.

The Warlord studied the Chiss’ appearance and hummed thoughtfully to herself. The Chiss was armed, but didn’t carry herself like someone comfortable with using those weapons. Then Rasilvenaira’s dark eyes spotted something that caused a faint smile to flicker across her lips. The comlink the Chiss wore looked entirely too familiar, having seen an identical one many times in the past.

As the Chiss’ ruby gaze started to shift back in her direction, Rasilvenaira turned her attention to the glass on the bar again. Suffering through the horrible taste once, she was prepared for it this time as she picked it up for another drink. “Gah! Gizka spit, that’s awful,” she muttered.

Movement drew the Warlord’s gaze to the far end of the bar where she spotted a small, furry form. A Kowakian monkey-lizard’s beady eyes met hers, and the Sith chuckled softly. Why play a game of ‘pick a gizka’ with the Rodians in the room when she could let someone else do the work and then claim the prize when it was over? But, why not have some fun first? She dipped into the flowing current of the Force around her and focused her attention more closely on the monkey-lizard. They were pesky vermin but also disgustingly clever. She urged its innate curiosity toward the very easy to spot Chiss moving through the crowd and more importantly, the shiny bit of metal in the comlink.

Go on furball, you know you want it, she urged. The monkey-lizard dropped out of view. Rasilvenaira shrugged and finished the drink. The trick would either work or not.

A startled yelp came from the Chiss as the agile creature scrambled up her body like she was a tree and nimble little fingers plucked the comlink from the Chiss’ ear before leaping away with what sounded like a cackling laugh.

“Come back here with that!” The Chiss went after the small beast, crimson eyes darting back and forth as she tried to track the swift movements as the monkey-lizard scampered around the room.

The creature jumped up close to Rasilvenaira who quickly pinned it to the bar with a knife. She picked up the comlink just as a presence appeared behind her. Tipping her head, she glanced up.

“That’s mine, give it back,” the Chiss demanded.

Rasilvenaira shrugged and the device disappeared into her pockets. “No.” She stood and turned to look up at the Chiss who was nearly a foot taller. “I think I’ll keep it.”

“Thief.”

The Sith chuckled. “Been called worse.” She reached back to grab her knife and dropped the impaled monkey-lizard, its blood staining the Chiss’ boots. Rasilvenaira stepped in closer and smiled coldly. “I know where that gadget of yours comes from. The real question is just how far are you willing to go for what you want here?”

“Look, we’re both here for a reason. A reason I’m sure that doesn’t necessitate violence between us. So you can go back to being the drunk, I’ll work smart and whoever gets the data from our mutual friend gets to keep it. Do we have a deal?” Scudi wasn’t entirely sure who this thief was, or why the Chiss’s comlink was so important to her, but the taller woman didn’t want to resort to violence if there wasn’t a need for it.

Scudi waited for a reply, though one wasn’t forthcoming. Instead, the Chiss saw the Human put away the blood-stained knife and replace it with a double-bladed dagger. As the Human was bringing out her weapon, Scudi reached for the hilt of her saberstaff. There was a peculiarity to the armaments each of the women had chosen. Scudi, not being a user of the Force and Rasilvenaira being a user of the Force but preferring more conventional weapons. The women stared into each other’s eyes. Scudi subtly thumbed the activation switch, causing the two blades of her saberstaff to ignite. The sight of such a rare weapon caused whispers among the other patrons, some of whom fled in a panic, some frozen out of morbid curiosity.

The taller female advanced towards her more combat proficient adversary, her weapon held parallel to her body at waist height, just high enough she could raise it to block in a pinch. Sure enough, one end of the Human’s dual-bladed dagger was headed for Scudi. The Chiss raised her weapon in defence. The metal of the dagger made a clink as it bounced off the hilt of the staff, narrowly avoiding both Scudi’s grip on the weapon and one of the blades. Scudi saw the wheels turning in the mind of her opposition. Ras swung again, aiming low this time, Scudi had to retreat hastily to avoid taking a direct blow.

Scudi examined the room, if she looped back around to where the captive audience sat in their booths, she could utilise the distraction to get Bastion into the cantina. The slicer disengaged her lightsaber as she ducked and manoeuvred her way around the bar, hidden by customers who hadn’t fled after the initial confrontation. Deciding she had to seize the moment, a datapad was quickly in Scudi’s hands. Scudi navigated the menus of the handheld device like it were second nature and a sigh of relief left her lips when she heard the familiar beeps of Bastion. The dark droid’s frame gave him away more than his dark paint because of the dimly lit environment.

“Found you.” The voice belonging to the Human declared. Scudi hastily tossed her datapad, her pursuer wouldn’t have the brains to go after it and would instead have to focus on Bastion before Scudi would be in danger again. The datapad appeared to freeze in the air as its natural flight path was being countered. The unintentional distraction allowed the Chiss to scamper away, the Human was focused on the datapad, which moved towards her. Scudi tapped bastion and pointed at the datapad as she passed the droid, clearly signalling it was his primary target. The droid couldn’t be shut down as quickly if the datapad was nothing but pieces littering the cantina floor. Bastion fired with a precision that took years of practice, or the right coding in his case. The datapad crashed to the floor as the Force user diverted her attention away from keeping the device suspended to avoid Bastion’s barrage of blaster bolts.

Meanwhile, Scudi was working her way around the central bar to the rear flank of the other woman. It was harder to stop bolts if you couldn’t see them coming was Scudi’s rationale behind the strategic calculation. It was all going swimmingly until Scudi saw the dagger in the air. What was worse was that it appeared to be moving towards her. It hadn’t been thrown though, it was acting as if it was still being wielded. Scudi made sure to remove the saberstaff from her waist before reigniting the weapon. She’d have to push the invisible Human back towards Bastion if she had any hope of emerging from the cantina alive. Then, Scudi’s theory on the hanging blades was proved right as the other woman’s visage became visible and she leapt towards the Chiss. Barely managing to redirect one of the blades of her staff towards the hilt of the weapon her opponent currently favoured, the slicer separated the dual-bladed dagger into two individual daggers.

Now wielding two daggers, Rasilvenaira was twice as dangerous, able to attack from two vectors at once. Scudi was forced to back off by the threat she’d accidentally created for herself. She’d only come to offer the Rodian refuge on New Raxulon. He was an old friend of a business contact the Chiss had made, and the man needed sanctuary away from loonies like this woman who seemed to consider herself an assassin of sorts. She knew he had data worth acquiring, but that was the second part of the mission. For all her meticulous planning, the Chiss hadn’t accounted for someone sending their mother to forcibly retrieve the data. Ras marched forwards menacingly, the Chiss’s antics had done nothing but infuriate the Palatinaean, whose eyes had gone black from their natural brown. Scudi’s long legs were working overtime as they furiously pounded the ground to move the slicer away from the angry Force user. Scudi didn’t dare look away from the Palatinaean and stumbled backwards into an empty booth.

“Bastion, follow my voice, I have eyes on the target.” Scudi managed to call out, hoping the droid would at least allow her to get out of this most awkward position. Scudi caught a glimpse of Bastion over the shoulder of the advancing menace, who seemed beyond reasoning.

Rasilvenaira heard the clunking footsteps of Bastion behind her and spun around, diving for cover as the droid opened fire. One of the blaster bolts slammed into the table she had hidden behind. However, it was the stab of pain in her left thigh that demanded the Warlord’s attention. She frowned as she shifted herself further behind cover and twisted her body to get a better look at the source of the pain.

There was a singed hole in her cloak where the bolt had passed through and a smaller, painful spot on her upper thigh where it had grazed her. Rasilvenaira frowned, and then cursed darkly as another round of blaster bolts whizzed past her. She wasn’t going to accomplish anything by staying pinned down by a walking scrapheap. Dropping the severed halves of what had been her favorite weapon, the Warlord intended to take every bit of her frustration out on the Chiss, but first…

Twin beams of molten silver ignited as the Sith drew her lightsabers. She moved carefully out of cover and quickly scanned the room to find where the Scavenger had gone. Rasilvenaira spotted a flash of sapphire blue as Scudi tried to maneuver toward a Rodian with pale green skin. Perfect.

Rasilvenaira let everything fade around her until the world narrowed to just her and the battle droid that took another step forward as it aimed the laser cannon at her again. Years of training her instincts and abilities came to the forefront as the Warlord brought her sabers up and settled into a ready stance while keeping most of her weight off of her injured leg. When the droid fired, Rasilvenaira seemed to blur as she let the Force flow through her. She reflected the bolts back at the droid, one bolt destroying the laser cannon. Another took out the droid’s left leg at the knee.

A cold smile played across Rasilvenaira’s lips when the droid toppled over attempting to take a step onto a leg that wasn’t there. “Payback for ruining my cloak and shooting me.”

She spun the sabers with graceful motions and turned her attention to the primary reason she was here. The Sith growled under her breath at the pain when she moved and shifted her weight off her left leg. The injury was annoying but not unbearable. She had survived a lot worse over the years, after all. Rasilvernaria deactivated one of the sabers, exchanging it for a comlink as she returned it to her belt.

“Veritas, where are you? Time to make yourself useful.”

“Statement: Mistress, you told me to stay outside.”

“Yes, I know. But now I need you to keep an eye out for a male Rodian with pale green skin. It looks like most of the patrons were smart enough to clear out already but there’s some left, and one is the Rodian I’m after. If he comes out, detain him by any means necessary, without killing him.”

“Observation: Detainment would simpler if I had…”

“No! I’m still paying off the last time I let you keep your blaster rifle in a cantina. That’s why I made you leave it on the ship. Where’d you learn such bad manners anyway?”

“Objection: Mistress! I…”

“Just do what you’re told or I’ll reconsider selling you to the Jawas.”

“Resignation: Fine. The Rodian will not escape.”

Sighing at the droid’s attitude, she put her comlink away and stalked toward the Chiss.

Scudi glanced over when she heard Bastion fall over, and cursed under her breath. She reached the Rodian and was trying to hurry him out the door. The Plagueian pushed the Rodian on, urging him to go and then turned to face the angry Sith.

“Look, can’t we be reasonable, or is that too hard for you Force users to manage?”

Her answer came with a subtle movement of the Warlord’s hand just before an invisible fist slammed her backwards into the wall. The Chiss grunted as the air was knocked out of her, and pain spread across her back from the impact. She shook her head and looked up at the assassin but couldn’t keep a frown of confusion from her face.

The Warlord deactivated her lightsaber while she came closer, almost casual in her movements despite a slight limp as she favored her left leg. Scudi began to get up but the world around her went totally black. She regained her feet but stayed close to the wall as she strained her senses for any trace of the older woman.

Dropping her hand to her belt, a startled gasp escaped her lips when she discovered her saberstaff was missing, apparently knocked away when she hit the wall. Scudi tried to keep her voice steady when she called out. “Come on, is this really necessary? Can’t we talk about this like civilized people?”

Suddenly, the Chiss jolted at feeling a hand against her neck, followed quickly by a sharp prick. She tried to smack it away but found only thin air as Rasilvenaira had already moved away.

“There’s nothing to say.” The Sith’s voice was icy.

The darkness vanished and Scudi blinked her eyes against the rapid change. She started to move, but staggered back against the wall as her legs seemed to go weak. The Chiss swallowed hard, breathing growing more rapid and her gaze fell on the ring the Sith wore. A mirthless chuckle drew her eyes back up to the older woman.

“Yes, it’s poison.”

Rasilvenaira’s comlink beeped and she answered it. “Yes?”

“Statement: Target detained.”

“Go secure him aboard the Caliburnus. I’ll be there soon.”

Rasilvenaira smiled at Scudi. “I would love watching you suffer, but it’s just business. Time for me to go.”

She pulled the hydrospanner from her belt and pushed Scudi against the wall before driving the tool through one bright ruby eye and into her brain. Rasilvenaira paused to search the Chiss’ body for anything useful, and then pulled her hood up and left the cantina.

To Scudi’s surprise, Rasilvenaira didn’t stick to the dual daggers. Instead, she retracted them and in their place revealed a pair of lightsabers. The lightsabers the Human was armed with had white blades and a curved hilt. The Chiss wasn’t sure if it was merely a pragmatic move or had some deeper meaning. Regardless of the meaning of the gesture, it caused the Chiss to panic and bolt out of the booth she’d stumbled into. The Human drew her arms back before thrusting them forward, crashing into Scudi’s lightsaber staff which pushed the slicer backwards. There was something different about the Palatinaean. She was already stronger than Scudi, but the Chiss felt a level of strength, unlike anything she’d witnessed so far. It scared the Plagueian.

There was no reprieve for the Chiss, as her rival continued to advance towards her. The taller female knew she couldn’t keep running forever. The constant movement was also disrupting Bastion’s line of sight so he couldn’t help if she kept moving around the cantina. Scudi would stand her ground and take whatever came. It was a learning opportunity even if it meant she got damaged. The shorter woman swung again, this time with a single blade as the other had been diverted to deflect Bastion’s blasterfire. Scudi felt the effect of the diversion as while still tough to deal with; there was less power in the Palatinaean’s assault compared to the previous effort.

Scudi was struggling mentally. She knew she was outmatched but had to keep acting like she believed she had a chance. A stoic expression barely managed to conceal her inner turmoil. The Chiss didn’t know what the Force user was going to do next, but she didn’t have to wait long to find out. The saber that the smaller woman had been using to fight her taller foe was thrown and hit Bastion right in his chest plate. The droid collapsed to the ground, now nothing more than a bunch of metal with a lightsaber embedded piercing his plating. Scudi watched on in abject horror. Without Bastion to provide the assist she was surely dead.

The attention of Rasilvenaira was now solely focused on Scudi, the Rodian patrons who hadn’t fled initially now fled as if a pack of starving Nexu was chasing them. The dimly lit cantina now only contained the Chiss and her Human adversary. Scudi frantically looked around for something to assist her in her struggle, only to find nothing. Now the slicer was genuinely desperate. Still armed, for the time being, Scudi wildly swung her saberstaff in an attempt to force Ras back towards where Bastion lay inactive on the floor. The Sith had other ideas though. A measured strike sliced through the hilt of Scudi’s current weapon. Scudi attempted to flee but found her face meeting the door of the establishment, sending her tumbling back into a supine position. The Chiss’s head popped up shortly before hitting the ground again.

Scudi saw the figure of the other woman advancing towards her, still with one lightsaber in hand. The slicer saw the white blade seemingly disappear as the saber was deactivated. The impact had blurred Scudi’s vision a little, but she didn’t like the look of what was in Ras’s left hand. The knife that had ended the life of the monkey-lizard was out again, perhaps to end Scudi’s life. The Chiss looked for somewhere to go to prolong her life. Much to her disappointment, there was nowhere to go. Realising she needed to present herself as non-threatening, as if the beating she’d received didn’t show that enough, Scudi knew what she had to do. Scudi sat up and interlocked her fingers behind her head before she made her plea.

“The Rodian, the one you were sent for, I can get him to you. If you’d made me an offer I’d have taken it, you didn’t need to tire me out and pull that trick with the door. I will need your datapad though since mine is broken. If you’re worried about me trying anything, you’re overestimating me. To prove my pure intentions, you can take my blaster. It won’t do either of us any good but if it means you’re more inclined to leave me alive then so be it.” Tears ran down Scudi’s face. She was shaking with fear, unsure if she’d done enough. The Sith weren’t known for their mercy after all. Her only hope was that her display of weakness would convince the Sith that she wasn’t worth killing. And if the slicer managed to divert the Human’s attention from the cantina long enough, she could get Bastion's remains and get off the planet.

Scudi’s blaster floated through the air in the direction of the Human. It dropped unceremoniously to the ground behind the Sith. The Sith didn’t trust anyone. She walked closer to the Chiss, knowing what she would do and knowing the Chiss wouldn’t see it coming. The Chiss remained in her defenceless position, whether she was too in fear to move or thought her attempt to work, she was still. And motionless targets were easier to kill. Ras threw her datapad to the Chiss, who unlocked her fingers and caught the datapad, eager to honour her word. Scudi didn’t see the lightsaber coming. The white blade pierced the Chiss, tearing through her amour and torso with lethal efficiency. Scudi collapsed into a lifeless heap, just like her droid had. Rasilvenaira retrieved her datapad before opening the cantina door, seeing her target moving towards her on the datapad. She’d have to hide the bodies before he showed up, but the Rodian would give up his valuable information to the Palatinaean.