Dažbog's Coffee Shop

"Power, wisdom, knowledge. The pull of omniscience. The burden of that weight. The chains that bind you and hold you up. As ancients go, the whills are not the only ones to have seen the gravity of the stars and how it directs life among the swirling and turning islands in the cosmic mire." She looked at her clawed hands again, 6 fingers of gray brown dexterity. She had never been among these stars. This was a new place to her, she could feel it, but still she understood what she looked like. It didn't take long for her to understand the history as it moved through her like air through lungs. She should give them a name to call her, but this was not her set of stars, she was a stranger to this place. It would not do to use the name she had been known as back where she was created. "Be stilled, bearded one. You can call me Niah. The place I am from, my people carried a different heritage. We enslaved, we were cruel, but I see here they went down a much more bloody path. I am not interested in walking their path."

Eralam snorted. It sounded like a truck with air brakes venting pressure.

"I'd say you both could learn a thing or two about trusting ancient beings with immeasurable power and why it's almost never a good idea, but that's just me."

The Shard produced a bottle of liquor and passed it towards the newcomer, as if to challenge her to put his assertion to the test. The was nothing wrong with it or its contents, mind. Make of that what you will.

"I am curious as to what you have in mind, Dazbog. This one isn't of our universe, at least not wholly. What possible use could you be to each other?"

"No. It is made of much the same stuff as yours, stardust and dreams, agony and angst."In her grasp, the liquor mellowed to something palateable for her, and she added a bit to the coffee sitting in front of her. Perhaps it would lessen the bitterness of the brew, as her tongue was not used to such things. She set the bottle back on the bar, her hands once again bringing the cup to her lipless mouth to drink gingerly and not spill the concoction all over herself. The cup was not suited to the features of a Rakata. "I am not suited to immeasurable power. I seek only to be free of the prison I have occupied for the last several thousand years. Time has stretched on long enough for me within the confines of that place. Only by casting my mind out to the galaxy around me have I eluded madness. I have long been an distracted observer of this realm. What further would you ask of me? My powers here are useless. I am only whole now here because of your power and my knowledge of how to manipulate it."

Tired of trying to drink from a cup made for humans, she allowed the pull of the force tug at the lip of the contain and draw it out to a more flat and elongated spout, better for pouring the drink past the sharply pointed teeth she had. Setting the cup back on the bar in front of her, she stacked the thrice fingered hands back on her lap. "I accept your offer. I will be your eyes, so that I might see this galaxy for what it is. And what it is not. However. You must free me from the vault on Lehon and that is no easy task." Tugging on the tendrils of the godlike powers so ensconced on the planet, she used them to create a projection of the ruins of a temple on Lehon, and walked them through the intricacies of the problems of freeing her. "This is all that remains of the Temple of Chaos that once stretched towards the heavens. Beneath it, concealed by hidden doors and passages is another eternity vault. Those entombed here were violent and unhinged, the unpredictable who wrought destruction and sought to topple the greatness of our empire. My sisters and I were the volunteers who choose to be entombed with them, to keep them in check. To act as their wardens. A great deal of strife befell Lehon, the crumbling empire lost the temple and Lehon and with the defeats, the temple was destroyed. Part of it collapsed in and killed our charges and my sisters. I alone am all that is left of them. I cannot get out of the temple on my own, I need your help. Release me from my eternal prison and I will do as you ask."

Eralam sighed.

"Get Chilly-poo to redo my chambers and I'll give it a go."

The Shard stood and stretched, mechanical joints popping and groaning in a disturbingly organic fashion.

"I'm not saying you guys lack a sense of adventure, but you guys lack a sense of adventure. Seriously, when was the last time you got into a bar brawl?"

His form shimmered and shifted to that of a tall, lanky human wearing tan boots, jeans, and a black T-shirt that proclaimed, in plain letters, "I am comfortable with violence." Around his waist was a leather pistol belt, studded with .45 Long Colt cartridges. On the left hip was the bearer of such cartridges, a converted Colt 1851 Navy. On the right was a sword, technically an espada ropera, but called a rapier by most. Over it all was a long canvas duster, faded with time and repaired so often it was hard to tell where the patches and stitching began and where the coat ended.

"I'm not what one might call subtle, and I don't pack the punch I did as a Whill, but I reckon I'm bored enough to give freeing an ancient, potentially dangerous being from a prison that's nearly as old as Dazzie's granola."

Eralam nodded and popped the sphere in a pouch.

"Well, I best be off. I'd be a fool to try this by myself. Got some recruiting to do. Anyway, remember what I said about the chambers."

And just like that, he was gone, leaving behind only the fragrant smell of burning pipe tobacco.