Somehow, the Galaxy's Edge Space Bar Returned

[Gumby]

In a remote corner of the galaxy, removed from the usual hustle and bustle of interstellar trade and activity, there is a star. A thousand thousand government registers, guild maps, and a million more journals, personal messages, and navigational reference points call it by different names.

For the small colony of disparate stellar strays, castaways, exiles, and oddballs who call the system home, it is simply called referred to by a mangled remembrance of a long-dead pidgin trade language, itself calling back to a poorly pronounced title for the star used by a long-fallen empire which simply referred to a property deed which had fallen out of registry due to inactivity. In the trade lingua of the current era, this jumble of sounds was crudely sounded out as Estelore.

An unremarkable system with the typical assortment of bodies whizzing around its stellar top. A bloated layer of gas giants in a far orbit, with a handful of rocky smaller worlds whizzing about in a tighter circulation. Of particular note, and one of the few reasons it was ever sought out other than the solitude, was a micro blackhole zipping about in a remarkably close orbit to the sun itself with a diameter of just a meter. A perfect, smugly silent singularity which gave no answers on how it came to be, or why it did not dissolve from Hawking Radiation. Thousands of years of study by thousands of races had yet to yield anything, so it was for the most left alone now. Just a strange oddity that dragged cultists, desperate or bored scientists, mystics, and general weirdos to it to pry and beg for answers not forthcoming.

Travel a layer deeper. The second planetary orbit is occupied by a distinctly uninteresting blob of rock and primitive hydrocarbons. No one cares about poor, boring Trasente.

A few people do care about its moon. A habitable rock, with a broad belt stretching across its equator. A belt with warmth, complex life, the sweet song of possibility ringing in its air.

There are miscellaneous settlements sprinkled across it. People from various species, various walks of life, seeking their own meaning and fulfillment the best they can.

On a particularly quiet peninsula, near a cliffside which juts out over the smooth sea in this land of perpetual summer, is the bar. A weatherworn sign outsign outlines the symbols 'GESB'. Patrons argue over what it used to mean, but all agree its important it stays there.

The bar is a worn, but cared of, simple log building. A few landing pads for spacecraft ring it, scarred by centuries of thrusters and repulsors. A small patio with sunbleached chairs and tables sits outside. Within, there is nothing remarkable. A wooden interior with a score and ten tables with battered chairs in various states of squeakiness and wobble. Grafitti and marks in a hundred languages are carved across every surface of the fixtures, the walls, even the floor.

In contrast, the bar itself is polished and cared for. Behind its smooth surface, a wealth of bottles spanning the galaxy, always fully stocked even though no one ever see's deliveries being made. Behind the scenes is a kitchen which is remarkably able to do a pretty good job at producing most dishes in the galaxy - not the best, but pretty good.

As far as any patrons past or present could remember, the bar had always been there. A place to laugh. To meet. To cry. To fight. To scream and rage. To smile and reminisce. To pass out drunk in the corner. To sit alone, or together. Memory and life is embedded the fibers of the ancient wood of the place, that wood which never seems to decay no matter its age. Despite its remoteness, it always manages to attract just enough people to stay interesting.

[Shenmue654]

Imperial ships as big, grand, and eerily recognizable as this particular Blade ship aren't typically able to land in a place as deliberately neutral as the Galaxy's Edge Space Bar ensures that it is. The Bartender continues to clean his glass. Yet somehow his expression has just the slightest hint of one miniscule brow furrow. That brow furrow says, "I don't care that you brought me countless delicious morsels. As long as you've made your choice, you are not welcome." But the ship's chief occupant isn't, strictly speaking, the person who knows the way. And that person is dropping off a guest instead.

Once the ship opens, its hatch opens. Two people walk out and stop in front of the ship - a young man and a middle-aged woman. They are both dressed in Imperial uniforms, although the woman's is somewhat fancier. The man himself has straw-blonde hair, freckles, and gentle hazel eyes. He's not exactly a model, but he isn't bad-looking either, and he's rather powerfully built in some ways. He's tall and broad-shouldered. You could peg him for a farm worker, if you squinted. He looks frustrated.

"I don't understand how this is even possible," he says, stiffly. "You're never allowed to leave the Dome alone. And why are you so entirely certain that he won't be able to find out this place's location from you? It's just a hraka bar!"

"Look I'm honestly as surprised as you are," she says, sighing. "But I got the uh...call... and it was for you, buddy, so you're just going to have to go ahead. I'll probably be able to pick you up whenever it's done with you. Or whatever. And nobody will even know what happened. Happy trails, Dekket." She waves and turns to go.

"How did you even get them to drive the ship here?!" demands the Yeerk - Dekket Eight-Five-Eight - gesturing at her hopelessly. But with that, the hatch closes. Dekket is left standing outside. Within about five to six minutes, wind blows in Dekket's face, nearly knocking him over, as the enormous vessel takes off into the night.

<I almost feel bad for you. Almost.>

<Shut up Andrew! ...None of this makes any sense. What the scorch...How does this moon thing even have a woods on it?! Or a bar?!>

<Look, in the news business, sometimes you just have to go with the flow, okay? Whatever's going on here isn't normal. Some kind of space-time distortion, probably. Okay? Besides...Weren't you just talking about how sometimes it'd be good to kick back and relax? We never get to do that. It's just battles all the way down.>

Dekket taps his temple, feeling a headache coming on. But nonetheless heads up the path going towards the bar. It looks bafflingly old-fashioned and decrepit, improbably made out of aging wood on a moon in the middle of nowhere. It even has old swinging saloon doors. A sign with half the paint scraped off reads, "Galaxy's Edge Space Bar," as if that manages to explain anything at all. Dekket pushes the saloon doors in.

<The ****...>

Dekket again hears Andrew Whittaker's voice in his head, and for a second the distortion of this entire series of events seems more prominent. Wasn't he...supposed to have a different host...? Didn't Andrew belong to someone else...? But try as he might, the Yeerk can't grasp hold of it. He's stuck here, for better or worse. 

[Count F]

With her perceptions in a mix down twenty lightyears through the sticks, Pluck turned toward the only thing that grabbed her attention: the sign with an unfamiliar but still legible text on it. Much like with Sylvan, she knew not hew she understood what the sign read, but her mind effortlessly knew what the four letters were. Whatever "GESB" was supposed to mean, though, was a mystery to her, as well as how she found herself at the edge of a forest with nothing else in view but this sign and building. She tried to re-trace her steps, but the last thing she remembered was falling asleep in Pahkidoo, and this certainly didn't look like Pahkidoo.

"Indigo?" Pluck didn't quite know why she called Indigo's name. There was no good reason Indigo would be here,, but she figured that if there was anyone that could explain what was happening, it would be them. Of course, there was no response from Indigo, nor from anybody else. The silence made Pluck uncomfortable, so she hurried toward the only point of interest, that being the building with the sign in front of it. The ground made an odd sound under her claws as she walked quickly toward the building, and it certainly didn't feel like normal earth.

The closer she got to the building, the more it looked like the tavern she visited in Spinarum. It probably looked like most other taverns, in fact, but the Kenku had a rather small frame of reference. She steps inside, probably being the shortest patron the GESB had seen in quite a long time. She scans the taproom, which is empty except for the ever-present bartender. Her claws tapped across the wooden floor as she made her way toward the bar and climbed onto a stool, her feet dangling quite some distance from the ground.

For a moment, she wasn't sure what to do. Should she ask where she is? Would that make her look foolish, for being in a place without even knowing where it is? Pluck felt a little foolish, if only because that kept happening to her, and she didn't know why. Self-consciously, she adjusted her hat, giving the bleached feather sticking out of it a reassuring stroke. She didn't want anyone to think of her as a fool, so she kept that thought to herself.

Eventually, she decided that she should just order a drink. That is, after all, what is done in taverns. But then she realized that she didn't know what to ask for. The blackberry wine she tried in Spinarum was good, but it was strong, or at least, it was for Pluck, and Norren had told her not to have any more. Norren had also said that she can maybe try some again another night, but he wasn't here, and the headache Pluck had the day after drinking the wine told her that it would be a good idea to wait until he was around again.

However, the blackberry wine gave Pluck an idea. She made eye contact with the bartender, who was already expectantly looking at her. "Excuse me," she started, her voice voice soft and melodious, "do you have blackberry juice?" The bartender nodded, and Pluck was satisfied with her decision a minute later when he handed her a glass of her drink. Her legs swung absentmindedly underneath her as she occasionally dipped her beak in the glass, clearly enjoying the drink, until a noise outside grabbed her attention. She swung around and saw... something fly off into the sky outside the tavern. It was like nothing she had ever seen before, at least, that she could remember. All but forgetting her drink, she hopped up from her seat and hurried toward the door to get a better look, bumping into the waist of human that was entering the building.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" she said. Andrew was face-to-face with what appeared to be a crow-person - or, he would be face-to-face, if she wasn't shorter than four feet tall. She wore an ostentatious purple outfit, complete with a feathered hat, and a rapier sheathed at her side. "Did you see that outside? What was that!?"

[Shenmue654]

Dekket takes in the bizarre sight for close to three minutes without saying a word. One minute he's walking through the saloon doors, and the next minute a bird person the size of a child is shoving past him. The resemblance is uncanny, almost as if Andrew's eyes were taking in a character from that old Disney Robin Hood cartoon. The crow's words are feminine and apologetic, and it seems curious about something.

"Um, see what?" he asks, haltingly, finally regaining his composure. "I...just got here, myself. Not long ago. First time."

He looks over the crow's doublet and rapier.

<It's like I got too drunk at the last Ren Fair before the invasion and now I'm seeing things. Is that a freaking tiny feathered hat on a feathered bird? Is - is that like wearing your own -> Andrew's thoughts mumbled, bewildered.

<Probably not,> notes Dekket.

"Is it your first time too?" he asks. He had no idea what the clientele at a bar on a space moon was like. For all he knew, tiny crow women showed up all the time.