Beers, Cheers, and Buccaneers

Beggar's Cove Cantina - Refugee Sector: Nar Shaddaa

This is the Beggar's Cove Cantina, one of Nar Shaddaa's most unique and rowdy alehouses. In here the menu is slim, Ale and Lum and plenty of it. The prices are so cheap one might suspect the liquor would be watered down and swillish. This is far from the truth however. The Beggar's Cove trades in particularly potent spirits. Most of the patrons here appear to be the worst of sorts. Pirates and their crew are known to frequent the establishment and on any given night the bawdy songs and scantily clad dancers of the cantina entertain the cutt-throats of Nar Shaddaa. Quite often drunk patrons get a bit too intoxicated and find it entertaining to fire their blasters at the ceiling and pillars. It is also common place to find shipless crewmen and drunken captains sleeping at the cantina's tables. Barrels and wooden chairs when not in use by imbibers serve as targets for swaggering buccaneers to test their aim while inebriated. A sign reads Pirates Only! (Type: inspect pirates only)

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=> R2 Astromech Droid 

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=> Nastaran

=> Vane

Obvious exits:

ut leads to Cantina Quarter - Refugee Sector: Nar Shaddaa.

Everybody's favorite spacer, Jaspar Andromidas, wanders into the Beggar's Cove. Not being much in the way of a pirate, he's given the usual level of harassment, before being allowed to pass into the cove proper. He orders up a drink, and proceeds to settle into a seat at the bar. A few more pirate-y folks enter the bar and sit down, ordering drinks themselves. Their drinks arrive almost instantaneously, while Jaspar remains as of yet unserved. He glances around, wondering if his favorite Rattataki pirate is in town. Perhaps she can improve his 'pirate cred'.

There's one sure way to be read as 'pirate'. And that's to be Shiari Vane. If she didn't have such a reputation for ruthless brutality, she'd be a parody of herself. Long coat? Check. Bottle of unlabelled alcohol? Check. Shoulder perched monkey-lizard? Check? Singing? Check.

"Safe and sound and home again! Let the ions roar, Jack!" The Rattataki roars tunelessly, a trio of crewmen in tow echo the line, their unison lending the vague sense of being lyrical. "Long we've cruised the the spacing lanes, now we're safe ashore Jack!" she leads, call earning a response of "Don't forget your old shipmate, falee, ralee-ralee-ralee rye-eye-doe!"

Nastaran Zohreh, pirate extraordinaire, ambles into the bar. She isn't singing, and she looks like she doesn't do singing, frankly. The paymaster pauses to clap a few fellow pirates on the back and share a joke or two, then makes her way to the bar. She spies the human smuggler, Jaspar and wanders over him, lightly punching him in the arm. "Jaspar!" She grins, "Tryin' a be a pirate?" She chuckles to herself as she sits down next to him. She gestures at the barkeep and points in front of Jaspar at the bar then at herself. "On me," she grunts at the barkeep and he nods.

Jaspar sighs contentedly as he finally receives his drink, in bottle form, imbibing the liquid slowly, clearly savoring the drink as it pours out of the bottle and down his throat. He sets the now-empty bottle down, and passes it back to the barkeep. "Well, this is where all of the 'cool' folks hang out, I've noticed. Besides, I don't make such a bad pirate, do I?" He instinctively rubs his shoulder where the punch landed, and offers a grin. "...Thanks for the drink." He pauses. "What brings you here? Just get back from relieving some poor sod of his keep?" He inquires, wryly.

"Since we set out from Bon-a-dan, Four years gone are nigh, Jack! Was there ever chummies now, such as you and I Jack?" Vane continues her rauchous procession through the midline of the Cove. Though grumpy about it, a path steadily clears ahead of her and at some length, she reaches the bar. A bejeweled hand, weighed down by gold rings set with precious stones, claps heavily upon both Nastaran and Jaspar's shoulders. "Hah! I should have /known/ you two had met already..." she grins, levering them both aside and pushing her way to marry her midsection to the bar. Propping it up, you see. "...a romantic midnight tryst..." she waves across their collective vista, as if the air would shimmer and form a holovid before them in its wake. Maybe in her spice-addled brain, it does. "...your eyes meet across a smokey cantina, you're available, she's /heroically/ drunk."

Nastaran throws her head back, her long black hair shaking down her back, and lets out a throaty laugh. "Sadly, I'm not nearly heroically drunk," she sighs theatrically. "Jaspar here was stugglin' to get a drink, so I helped a fellow out," Nastaran says airily. Nastaran's beer arrives and she grabs the condensation-coated bottle loosely by the neck. She takes a swig. "Vane, we will have to do something about Jaspar not getting served here. 'Snot right a bloke can't get a drink in a bar."

"Well, I'm just a... mover of exotic things. I'm no pirate. I wouldn't expect to be treated like a regular, not right off the bat... This is a pirate bar, unless I'm mistaken? And if I need to prove myself, point me in the right direction, and I'll deal with it." The booze Jaspar imbibed seems to have finally worked its way into his system. He's not completely smashed, though, evidenced by his continuing ability to string together words into coherent sentences.

"We'll soon fix that!" Vane cackles to Nastaran in a coarse voice. She slams her bottle to the bar to command service, placing an order for "Chalmun's 'Special' Reserve!". One arm wraps around Jaspar's shoulder, the monkey-lizard perched there shrieking out a mimicry of its owner's laughter as it clambers across to the smuggler. "Come, come! You shall sit at my table, drink my drink, eat from my plate..." the contents of the dark green glass flask she'd entered with sloshing noisily as she gestures in circles with it, guiding him rather forcefully toward a booth that is vacated in a hurry. "...and when we are done /nobody/ will dare deny you service in this fine establishment again!"

Nastaran rolls her eyes at Jaspar and picks up her beer. She wraps her arm around the smugglers back. "First lesson: stop being so bloody effacing. You want something: you take it!"

At that, Jaspar eyes Nastaran's beer, before his gaze shifts to Nastaran, and then back. "Noted. Next?"

"Get yourself a very fine coat!" Vane advises with an upward twist of her free arm as she disengages from Nastaran, leaving her wrapped around the smuggler with the monkey-lizard for company, grasping with sharp little pleading squeaks for the bottle of beer. "Like mine." she gestures sweepingly across herself, putting her hand in just the position it needs to be to sweep the garment aside and ease her slide into the now empty booth.

Nastaran moves herself and her beer away from Jaspar and the monkey, leaving him with the thing. Nastaran bares her teeth at it and slips into the booth next to Vane. She takes another swig of her beer and sets it down with a glassy clunk.

"I see.." Jaspar muses, glancing up at the monkey-lizard-thing perched on his head. He doesn't seem to be overly-concerned with it, instead ordering another beer and shotgunning it. "Stop being effacing, get a nice coat... what else?"

"Participate in a heist..." Vane leans across the table, supporting herself on one elbow and anchoring her position with the base of her bottle. The monkey lizard returns Nastaran's teeth-baring with a sharp, unfriendly hiss of its own and transfers sides to be further from her, even as its beady little eyes look upon her drink covetously. "...I have a job in mind, for which you are particularly suited and it pays."

Nastaran smirks and leans back, she ignores the monkey thing, and languidly lays her arm along the booth's back. She narrows her green eyes and watches Jaspar.

Up goes the smuggler's brow, curiosity piqued. "Oh? Do tell." Rarely, if ever, would he pass up the chance to work with his favorite Rattataki.

"Fifteen thousand credits." Vane leads with an offer, the pirate leaning back in mirrored stance with her officer, a wall of pirate solidarity. "Little bit of deception. Perhaps some fancy flying. If all goes to plan, no blasters at all." she folds her arms. "You in?"

"15k for a few hours' work, Jaspar," Nastaran urges him quietly. "Not bad, not bad at all." She smiles at him prettily, encouragingly.

"Fifteen thousand credits does sound like a nice offer." Jaspar agrees, nodding gently. "Though I can't say I haven't been offered more. I was offered three times as much to run a mission, some time ago. Good times."

Vane is not the most patient businesswoman. When seduction is needed, she lets Nastaran handle things. "You're going to ask me for double.." she surmises. "I'm going to laugh in your face. You're going to ask me for 50 percent extra, i'm going to get out my blaster..." she rolls her hand around her wrist as if reeling on a slow tape. "So i'll say twenty thousand standard galactic credits, final offer."

"Otherwise you can go do your other job, which we'll pretend totally exists oh yes," Nastaran says cooly, And I'll wish best o'luck to you." Nastaran isn't smiling any more.

"There's no need for blasters, dear Captain." Jaspar replies. Really, fifteen would have been just fine. He considers Vane (and crew) something of a second family, but he does have a business to run, of sorts. "Twenty will do."

An insistant tugging at the base of Nastaran's beer bottle is the result of a pair of tiny orange claws at the end of bony little arms peeking from under the table. When it doesn't at first move, there is a strained high pitched grunt of effort as feet find the bottom of the table and the creature's back engages for extra leverage.

"Ha ha! Excellent, excellent! You make some credits, we get our third man, nobody needs to get shot!" a serving droid wheels over, the unmarked bottle of liquor deposited on the table and a fistful of credit chips tossed onto the waiting tray. Such a fate for a once fine astromech. "And we even have a drink to seal our bargain!"

Nastaran sighs heavily as she notices the creature tugging on her beer. She hands the 3/4 empty beer to the monkey thing. "Vane, your pet is stealing my beer *again*," she huffs irritably. The serving droid has brought new glasses, so Nastaran grabs them and pours a shot into it. "To money!" She proposes a toast.

"To money, and the success of the mission." Jaspar responds, lifting his glass. "And many more adventures for the lot of us."

A quarter full bottle seems to inordinately please the little monkey-lizard which clambers up onto the table top. It plops down on its rump, cradling the bottle half as tall as it is between its legs and leans back, tipping the neck until a torrent of amber liquid flows from the neck and into its snapping beak, tongue joyfully lapping at the fizzy mess than pours down its chest and belly. That can /not/ be sanitary.

"Riches!" Vane firmly states her loyalty and passion, lifting not a glass but the entire bottle to join the toast. The beverage itself is probably best used for degreasing engines, and in a pinch can be used as a toxin to rob a man of his eyesight. It tastes like burning, with a delightful after-tang.

Nastaran takes her shot and immediately begins to cough and splutter. She lets out a string of curses in trader argot and wipes her mouth, eyes streaming. She shakes her head. "I am never drinkin' anythin' you've bought again," she says and rises. "Anyway I gotta go see that Rodian," she says to Vane. Nastaran glances at Jaspar. "Good to see you again," the woman says then turns and pushes her way unsteadily through the crowd.