Fwurg

[Arapadh Malikar]

((OOC: This meeting is private between Arapadh Malikar and Tarina. Evesdropping is not really possible, but seeing that they are meeting is very possible: the meeting is in a restaurant on the senate square.))

Just before arriving Arapadh Malikar looked outside, through the one-way blinded window of the car they rode in. His wife sat beside him, and his bodyguard sat opposite of him. Outside, he saw an armoured vehicle clearly displaying the senate security emblem, the vehicle was stationed very obviously on the senate square, and a squad of security officers was making sure that not a single illegal act would be perpetrated on the square.

The hovercar came to a full stop in front of the restaurant his wife had selected a few days earlier. As a traditional crime lord, Malikar felt that to meet a possible partner in crime, the setting had to be great. So he had his second in command reserve the whole restaurant, to make sure they could speak with eavesdroppers. Of course, his second in command reserved a few other restaurants in Unity City as well -- to make sure that possible eavesdroppers had to guess.

While holding out his hand to help his wife out of the car, he spotted a few of his men standing guard near the entrance to the restaurant. They weren't soldiers, and they didn't stand at attention, but he was sure they were paying attention to whomever approached the restaurant.

He and his wife went inside, and after hanging their coats in the garderobe, he let himself be guided to the right table by his wife.

"Honey, I don't like this idea of letting senate security do the security work. Next time we will meet somewhere where I can take my blaster.", he said to his wife.

"Don't worry dear. I have taken the liberty of arranging a little backup, should Tarina or some other party decide to ruin our lunch.", she replied.

"Next time, tell me beforehand whether you are going to invite yourself.", he replied in a joking tone. "Let's order a drink while we wait for Tarina to show up."

The couple ordered a drink, and waited for the teprogrenaian.

[Tarina]

A car looking like an expensive taxi stopped in front of the restaurant. Two men stepped out and looked around. Upon seeing the unmissable Armoured security vehicle, one man said something over an ear phone. Then they walked towards the entrance of the restaurant. There they walked towards the men outside guarding the restaurant. They exchanged some words, showed something and said again something over the ear phone. The two men from the taxi-car took place at the other side and waited. Shortly after another expensive taxi-car stopped in front of the restaurant. One guy stepped outside to open the door. Tarina and a man stepped outside and both walked straight towards the restaurant.

Tarina was wearing her outfit with some teprogrenaian life suit elements. The human man was had leather pants, a white shirt with a leather vest and some belts with one empty blaster holster. Basically the typical outfit you can expect from an entrepreneur who takes the law more as guidelines.

"Greetings, Arapadh Malikar." Tarina greeted the Veolian man in the bar. "I like what you have done with the place. I should really hire your architect sometimes.

Let me introduce you to my friend, Thalen. Thalen Voidhound."

After which Thalen said: "A pleasure to meet you."

If Arapadh Malikar was aware of the underworld around Dhiahamara and Unity, he might recognize the name Voidhound as the one from a smuggler.

[Arapadh Malikar]

"Tarina, how nice of you to drop by.", the veolian man replied. "Unfortunately, my exterior decorator has had a run in with a group of Jedi. I'm afraid that she won't be available for further work for a while."

"Thalen Voidhound. I have heard that name", he continues. "Aren't you the one with the ship that made the Dhiahamara-Unity run in under twelve parsecs?", he joked lightly, knowing full well that parsecs are a measure of distance, and not of time.

"Please, let me introduce my wife, Hatyārā.", he motioned to the veolian woman that sat at a table overlooking the restaurant. She wore a modest but form fitting dress made of dark leather, and was toying with an empty glass.

As she was mentioned, she stood up and walked over.

"Honey", she addressed her husband, "You didn't tell me she would bring such interesting company." "Tarina, Thalen, it is a pleasure to meet you"

"Shall we sit?", Malikar gestured to the now empty table, and pulled out a chair for his wife.

[Tarina]

"That is a shame, good people are so hard to come by these days," Tarina said when she heard of the fate of the 'decorator'.

Voidhound replied lightly to the parsec comment: "I did, if you do not count the distance travelled through hyperspace that is."

"Hatyara," Tarina said with an accent as she was not experienced with the Veolian tongue, "it is a pleasure to meet. Please, let's indeed take a seat. Doing business while standing can be so needlessly tiring."

After they took a seat, which Tarina checked first discretely on fart-pillows and poisonous needles Tarina completely introduced her invitee.

"As you probably already know, Thalen is a smuggler. He and his friends specialise in getting goods to wherever they want it to. He has proven more than once to be quite capable of delivering spice under tight situations."

[Arapadh Malikar]

After hearing the only slightly more informative introduction, Malikar replied cooly.

"I have taken note of mister Voidhound's capabilities. I am sure that knowing him might allow some future endavours to be more profitable. But I do not think that our current business would require a smuggler of his status. I was thinking about something a little more continuous than an incidental delivery."

"Let me get straight to business. Because both of our worlds are not part of the Union, trade has become much easier. I think it is time for our kind of business to expand as well, and to cross borders that were previously closed.

It has come to my attention that the Teprogrenaian Consensus has a very relaxed approach with regard cybernetic implants, and certain other tradable goods. In contrast, these goods are highly regulated in the Veolian Commonwealth while others, such as certain biological compounds, are nearly unrestricted in the Commonwealth, but highly restricted to medical applications in the Consensus.

Next to that, there are some other intricacies in our respective laws that my lawyers have discovered. But before we discuss such things, I would like to know your opinion about stepping up to intergalactic scale."

[Tarina]

Tarina clearly took offence the way Malikar dismissed Thalen, but she decided to let it slide. The topic would arise soon enough to explain the Veolian Crime lord the capabilities of Voidhound.

"Straight to business, I like that, I am indeed looking into options for expanding to intergalactic scale. The chaos that will follow when the Mandalorians will attack will be especially useful to us to cover our growth. I am working to set several smaller activities in place to be able to grab the chance when the time comes."

"I believe the acquisition of weapons is in the Veolian Commonwealth a lot easier than it is in the Teprogrenaian Consensus as well. There has to lie some opportunities."

[Arapadh Malikar]

"In a way, weapons are easily acquired. But they are still regulated. All noble families have passed laws to limit the calibre and destructive capacity of the weapons. Of course, as you might have heard in the news, this hasn't stopped most illegal weapons dealers. Unfortunately, they are selling their weapons to certain groups of twi'lek, which is not very conductive for a profitable environment."

From Malikar's tone it could easily be deduced that he had no love for the twi'lek groups he talked about.

His wife smoothly took over the conversation.

"It seems we agree on the fact that we should expand to a larger scale. Maybe we should discuss the services our respective organisations offer and their scope, so we have a better understanding of our options?", she asked.

[Tarina]

"Very well, My organisation has access to great supplies of advanced cybernetics, we have cyborg hit squads and we can expand your market. Occasionally we are even capable of acquiring state of the art Teprogrenaian military weaponry, the stuff you don't find easily on the market.

We can ensure large supplies of cheap construction materials with no questions asked, might you ever want to build a new space station or building complexes.

My delivery service is capable of delivering anything anywhere any time."

After which Thalen quickly added: "Within the boundaries of the laws of nature of course."

[Arapadh Malikar]

"That's a very nice", Malikar tone of voice did not really agree with his statment, "marketing speech, especially the thing about 'expand your market'. But you haven't really said anything about the actual scale of your organisation. 'great supplies' is nice, but how much per week are we talking about?"

[Tarina]

"The available cyborg hit squads differ from time to time depending on what other activities there are in progress at the moment and where they are, but think of a hundred squads of ten to fifteen cyborgs ready for action any moment and three thousand squads for large operations when we have the time to prepare.

We can provide for roughly 100 000 people per turn cybernetics. Construction materials are available of around 0.1 per turn at any moment, and ten times more when you grant us the time to negotiate and make the necessary arrangements. Larger amounts will have to go via more official routes but we can still arrange that no questions are asked.

The military weapons are on suppliers base only and differ to much to provide any estimation. Sometimes it is 1 per turn and sometimes we can acquire a package of thousands of weapons at the same time.

And we can expend the market of drugs with a few million to hundreds of millions, depending on the type of drug. Spices are always a good market but especially certain hallucinogenic herbs for in tea are pretty popular within certain layers of the Teprogrenaian Population.

The smugglers have shipping space of 0.1 and we can arrange permanent smuggling routes over the normal trade routes outside our trade own trade capacity.

What does your organisation has to offer?"

((OOC: I mentioned everything in turns as I think that IC weeks and IC turns might not be exactly the same, and the turn is the economical time scale.))

[Arapadh Malikar]

"We can transport roughly 5 to any world within the Union. We can transport significantly more to worlds with which the Veolian Commonwealth has trade agreements.

We can provide about 10 000 000 doses of hard spices and chemically augmented spices. Hallucinogenic herbs and fungi are not immediately available, thought given time, we could easily produce roughly 300 million doses per . Of course, we can do designer herbs and fungi as well, so if you can give us a profile of the most wanted effects, we should be able to tailor a batch or production line.

We can offer civilian weapons. I have to point out here that my lawyers have discovered that weapons are much less restricted in the Veolian Commonwealth than in the Teprogrenaian Consensus, so what we call 'civilian' weapons might include a lot of illegal weaponry on your world. We are talking bulk produced blasters, snipers, vibroblades and such.

We should also look into the possibility of slave trade. Thought it is most likely that anything you can offer on that front might only be usable as 'fodder', so to speak. Usually such things go by request though, so if you have some bounty hunters in emply that don't ask questions, we might be able to work something out there. We usually get between 2 and 4 requests per month."

He glanced at his wife, who gave a small nod.

"We are interested in the Construction materials, the cybernetics and all the military-grade weapons you can offer. We are also interested in cheap untracable hovercars and jets, and can easily move 5000 per .

We would also like to make use of your hit-squads, and propose an equal exchange. We have a few teams of high-level operatives ourselves, though we focus less on immediate violence and more on infiltration and assassination. I am sure we can reach an agreement where we can call on each others troops when outside intervention might be beneficial.

There is a catch. With the upcoming war with the Mandalorians we might suddenly be subjected to unreasonable cost increases for our transportation and our supply of weapons might drop. I propose that we make sure to stay out of the way of the war."

((OOC: 1 is equal to 1 week. Though this makes some things a bit weird, it helps to smooth over discussion, as actual date can be used IC without issues.))

[Tarina]

"We can use several kinds of spices and are very interested in the designer herbs and fungi. The civilian weapons are welcome as well, as those are indeed hard to come by in the Teprogrenaian Consensus. There are a lot of small defensive weapons in production, like stun guns and tear gas, and large weapons like mounted guns, artillery and RPG systems, but the area in between is scarce.

Slave trade sounds interesting indeed, but what we can deliver is most of time only good for manual labour. Every once in a while a delivery is sent to the Hutt families as they are in need of new labour since the slave rebellion rose. Slaves are hold in high esteem in the Veolian Commonwealth isn't it? If you need skilled individuals as price slaves, there are always a few individuals who need protection. It isn't that hard to talk them into Veolian slavery where they believe they receive protection and lodgement. As long as they are desperate enough.

The delivery of the vehicles shouldn't be a problem. As for the hit squads, that sounds as an excellent trade proposal.

I will let my chemists make a list of requirements and a profile for the fungi and herbs, do you need test subjects as well to test the drugs? Because we can deliver those as well.

About the upcoming war, the military production of the Consensus rises significantly. We believe they will send more to other factions, which provides us with more opportunities to obtain and deliver military goods. Tell me, in the hypothetical situation that we are able to let a cruiser get delivered in your hands instead of in the hands of the Veolian military, would you be interested in buying one or two?"

[Arapadh Malikar]

"Slaves that are only usable for manual labour are of no use to us. Skilled individuals are nice, but as I said, we usually work by request due to the sensitive nature of these deals."

He took a swig of his drink.

"Well... Though having a cruiser would do wonders for negotiations with small-time smuggling rings it would draw too much attention to me. However, presuming that you can deliver anywhere in the Union, I might know one or two clients that might be interested in the acquisition of their own private 'enforcement platform'. Especially if they are made to veolian design. It will take time though, the fencing of such vessels requires some subtlety lest one of the great houses take an interest."

"All in all, I foresee a profitable future for our work together. I will have my people contact yours to set up the necessary channels and to negotiate the exact details of our deal."

After his last statement Hatyārā, his wife, spoke up.

"Tarina, you say that it won't be hard to talk someone needing protection into becoming a slave. How long would it take for you to find a human female, no younger than 20 and no older than 30, that needs protection? My previous slave didn't turn out I had hoped, and now I find myself in need of a new one. See it as a thoughtful gift to start of our new business relationship."

[Tarina]

Tarina had to think a moment over Hatyārā her request: "Human females are scarce in Teprogrenaian Territory, so it will take quite some time to find and persuade a decent subject. I estimate it would take a month. If you have certain desires for the slave, like long term obedience, no questions or certain set of skills, it will take longer, I think half a year.

All in all I foresee a profitable future as well."

Thalen Voidhound turned to Arapadh Malikar: "About the cruisers, delivering to the Veolian Commonwealth is relative easy. The hardest part is making the ships disappear from the grid. To the Veolian Commonwealth the ship components are delivered via the Praetorian Empire. Convincing them that certain parts need to be delivered elsewhere in the Veolian Commonwealth is not that hard. Getting them delivered to factions who do not receive any kinds of shipment from the Consensus is very difficult. Any other case depends on the situation. Just keep in mind that we're talking about highly regulated goods, so it is never truly easy and often a case just present itself in a small window of opportunity after we have to react quickly."

Tarina said: "If we have such an opportunity, you will be the first to know."

[Arapadh Malikar]

"Very well then. We'll see when an opportunity arises."

He emptied his glass.

"Tarina, Voidhound, it was a pleasure meeting you", he said after he got up. "I am sure that we shall meet again in the future, hopefully without the need for an exterior decorator."

His wife also got up, and added "I would be interested to see how you will arrange long-term obedience... I hope to hear from you soon, Tarina."

With that, the pair left the restaurant. Tarina and Voidhound could see a large car pull up to take both veolians away.

((OOC: That was cool. We'll see when we post some news.))

[Tarina]

An appropriate amount later, Tarina and Thalen stood up as well. Two expensive looking taxi cars stopped in front of the restaurant, taking the Teprogrenaian delegation away. The guards in front of the restaurant in the first car, Tarina and Voidhound in the second car.