STAR WARS: RETROSPECTION- Theft at Electric Court

Gallagher stands up suddenly, surprised by the change in environment. Does he recognize where he is?

No.

Gallagher will pull his hood over his head before the rain soaks him too much. What is around him aside from rain and the bench?

Darkness. You cannot see anything around you. Except for flashes of light in the near distance.

Gallagher will move toward the flashes of light. He wants to know what they are.

The hair on your arms and the back of your neck is standing up as you move toward the lights. There is a crackling noise and then a familiar humming, both of which rise in pitch and come together in a smash.

Gallagher pushes on, making mental note of what he is experiencing. Does he recognize the humming as a lightsaber? Or what the other noise is?

Yes, the humming is distinctly a lightsaber. In fact, it is yours.

The details are blurry, smeared by the rain and rendered unimportant. You get the sense that you are in a courtyard at the center of something. You are standing there already, you can see, your lightsaber out and flashing against something else.

Can I see what it is? Gallagher will move closer carefully, watching himself fight with awe. He has never been in an actual fight.

It appears to be a metal rod, in the hands of someone else. The rod is an ordinary piece of metal, yet it stands up the strike of your blade. And then it smacks across your temple, and you cringe as you see the bones in your skull illuminated as if by a shock.

And with the shock, you are thrown back into your seat aboard the Republic cruiser.

"We're here," Korth informs you, shaking your shoulder with a hand.

Gallagher wipes the sleep from his eyes, remembering what he saw only faintly. He tries to hold on to the images, so that he can recall what the Force was trying to tell him.

He will look out the viewport at the work below, wondering whether he should be excited to be at a new world or if this is something to dread.

"Crzkz," Gallagher says when he sees it. "How long did I sleep?"

"Most of the journey," Korth says. "Crzkz is not far from Coruscant."

The world below has heavy cloud cover; you cannot see the surface through the roiling blue and purple and gray clouds that rumble angrily through Crzkz's atmosphere. Lightning crackles amid the clouds constantly.

"It looks... unhappy," Gallagher says. "Is it always storming?"

"Typically," Korth says.

"Shields at full capacity," one pilot says. "Otherwise we won't make it down to the surface in one piece."

The ship dips down into the storming clouds of the planet, and for a moment all you can see are the crackling and sparkling lights of the storm around you, blue and green and purple and white. Bolts of lightning strike the cruiser's shields, flaring brightly and leaving spots in your vision.

Ultimately, the ship makes it below the storms just fine, and is beckoned by a hail from the Crzkzi planetary flight control. The message is fuzzy and you can sense the pilots' frustration.

"What has them frustrated?" Gallagher asks Korth quietly, so as not to disturb the pilots in their work. "Is it the comms?"

Korth confirms that.

"Communications on Crzkz are very difficult unless you have the proper equipment," Korth says. "Some of the units that the Crzkzi produce are the finest in the Galaxy, due to where they were designed."

"I suppose that makes sense," Gallagher says. "They're designed for the difficult atmosphere, meaning they probably work great everywhere else that isn't like this. And it's the same for anything else they make?"

Gallagher finds that interesting at least, even if technology itself doesn't thrill him.

"Precisely," Korth says.

After some fiddling with the comm's settings, the pilots are able to get accurate landing coordinates and guidance from the nearest Crzkzi starport.

Below the storm, you get your first glimpse of the surface. Crzkz is a world darkened by its eternally turbulent skies, and the rock formations below are indicative of the constant lightning strikes. Much of the surface appears to have been glassed over the years, and what is not is scorched and blackened and jagged.

The cities stand out starkly from the smoky rocks, composed almost entirely of white spires. Massive lightning rods rise above each and every building, in clusters all around the city. As you approach lightning hits several of them, and you watch as the energy courses down the length of the rods and is redirected somewhere else.

Gallagher is intrigued by the city and its tremendous difference from the simple steel skyscrapers that line the Galactic Center. He notes that the rods absorb the energy too, wondering what they do.

"Have you been here before, Master?" Gallagher asks Korth.

"I haven't," Korth says. "This is as new for me as it is for you. Though I have met a few Crzkzi, I have not had the opportunity to visit their homeworld. Until now."

The Republic cruiser is directed to a hangar bay at the heart of this particular city. There is a tense moment when a lightning strike connects with a rod very close to the ship and the systems falter for a second, but the pilots keep control.

Soon the ship is landed and secured in the hangar bay! The pilots relax and power down the ship safely.

"Gather your things," Korth says. "We're disembarking."