"No. I've never met a bigger diot, that's all you need to know. No style, no finesse; he thought gang fighting the largest raptor he could find made him King of the Hill. A childish mistake; he should never have been a Lodge Master. He then thought that throwing his lot in with the Empire was oh-so-clever, but Matadan was never going to be the equal of Rogan."
You are walking now up what seems to be an interminably huge set of stairs. This is not a staircase, though, it is the outside of a building, so the stairs come down in four fiections away from tjhe top, which is very high; the final effect looks like a Ziggurat (stepped pyramjd) with a flat top. These stairs are very long and shallow, and it must be a good half mile up to the top.
"Rogan offered us the ultimate hunting experience, and he made it clear that it was that or obscurity. Faced with that, what did the Hunters care about working for others? He convinced the Hunters, the Hunters run the Guilds and the Guilds run the planet, so he was covererd. Matadan didn't think about that, he just saw whar Rogan had, saw what the Empire was, and thought the second would give him the first. Didn't take him long to mess oit up."
"More dangerous than you can imagine," says Drakkon. "Certainly the most dangerous Hunter in living memory, for generations, maybe centuries or more. But doomed in... an inevitable way. I think he knew it. He didn't really care any more." He fingers the whip at his belt. "Oh, the prey that has been brought down with this weapon over time..."
You are nearing the top now.
"In an odd sort of way, no-one minded the wars much. What Rogan did led to them, because when he died it all fell apart, but he broke us free of what happened after the Jedi, and compared to that the near destruction of our civilisation seemed a trivial thing. That's the problem with my people; no real sense of proportion. Matadan especially. But you should remember that, nom Matadan's rule was no worse than the wars before or after it. I know what you are thinking; that he was dictatotial, cruel, vicious, could not be questioned... this is Lanzar, Senator, not one of your 'civilised' worlds. No-one cared. He didn't have anything approaching the right to rule, but no-one greatly cared about that either. Not enough, anyway.
"I didn't start the war that toppled him. I just brought a bit of order to what started spontaneously, and that's because Matadan fundamentally misunderstood even his own people."
The top of this place, which you are nearing, seems to be a large square, but you can't quite see what is atop it.
Finally, you have reached the top.
There is nothing at the top. I mean that literally- there IS no top, it's a gap.
In fact, what you are atop now is not unlike a large arena... except that it is WAY too tall. The shallow steps that took you up here were long; the steps that lead back down again are incredibly short and steep; it's not far away from being a sheer drop downwards. You'd have to be damn sure of your balance to even take a few steps.
The effect is quite harsh, and the less active among you feel that you might lose your step and pivot down there any moment.
As you peer down, that effect is not helped when a moment later there is a flash of colour from below, and then your vision is filled with wet, leathery flesh, and teeth. Lots and lots of teeth.
RARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!
Something slashes across your sight, and a chunk of rock is taken out from a few feet beneath you... before the flash falls back down again.
Considering that it started at the bottom, you are feeling a little shocked about anything that cna jump like that.
"Welcome to the Justice Pit," says Drakkon.