The Worst Kind of Surprise Party

[all_too_familiar]

There is a man. He's meditating, and floating several inches off of the ground. This is fairly normal for him - at least he's not floating various furniture this time. Just himself. He doesn't feel like exerting himself any further. It's been a long day.

He realizes it's going to be a lot longer when he's no longer in his room.

"I hate surprises," he sighs, and he opens his eyes to look at his new surroundings. He's still floating, and surprisingly calm.

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[all_too_familiar]

Soon enough, everything that needs to be set on fire is in the fire pit. Revan goes and prunes several trees with his lightsaber for tinder, piles the wood on the corpses (and throne, and fur robe), and then carefully sets it all on fire with the same lightsaber. The lightsaber - a jedi's weapon. A weapon for a more civilized age. Also very useful for practical purposes. Like burning corpses. He's got a lot of practice with this sort of thing. Soon he has a roaring bonfire.

He'll probably have to repeat this 'burn the corpses' process again later, it's not like corpses are easy to burn. But he thinks that this is good enough for tonight.

"Hey," says Revan, poking his head through the door. "You have first dibs on the refresher, I can get the rest of the floor if you want to clean up."

[unmarred]

"Thanks. You're a treasure," he says.

Off to figure out thousand-year-old plumbing!

He manages it with minimal disaster, and rinses the blood out of his clothes, and steals clean underwear and trousers from the dead cultists' dormitory rather than put the wet things back on.

[all_too_familiar]

Revan dutifully finishes cleaning the floor, and then one Mark's done getting clean, it's his turn.

One plumbing adventure later and he too is clean. Clothes, too, though he's carefully dried off his underwear and trousers by holding his lightsaber close (but not touching) to the clothes so they dry off. Look, if a jedi isn't using their lightsaber for everything they are doing it wrong, okay? Revan thinks every jedi should use their lightsaber like he uses his. It's an amazing tool.

(That can and has set his clothes on fire. Look it was one time, he's learned from his mistakes, and his robes are fire resistant now.)

And then he hangs up the rest of his robes to dry and heads off to meditate and heal some more from his recent stab wound.

... He is unbothered by floating in the throne room shirtless. Is Mark going to be bothered by Revan floating in the throne room shirtless?

[unmarred]

Bothered is not exactly the word, no.

[all_too_familiar]

Well, while he's sitting and floating and motionless, this is a pretty good opportunity to oogle, if Mark would like to.

He's got an interesting network of scars.

[unmarred]

Positively fascinating. The stories they could tell...

[all_too_familiar]

"I don't actually remember how I got all of them," says Revan, idly. "The scars, I mean. I've had some... Very unique memory problems."

[unmarred]

"Pity, I would've loved to hear about 'em."

[all_too_familiar]

"I do have some of them," he offers. Still with his eyes closed, he points to a circular burn near his shoulder. "That was a gang member on Taris. He was a bit of a bastard. Threw a fit when I beat his best swoop racer in a race, and turned the entire place into a killzone in revenge. I won, and saved the person I'd come there to save, despite what she would tell you about 'saving herself' - bullshit, by the way - and then we stole the ship out from under a crime lord to get off the planet."

[unmarred]

"Nice. Well done."

[all_too_familiar]

"Thank you." He points at a long cut on his left arm. "That one was a sith that ambushed me while I was exploring an underwater base filled with selkath that had been driven mad. I had just handled the giant seabeast that was responsible, and he showed up to monologue at me about how he was going to kill me and earn favor from his master. It did not work out as he planned. Don't even know how he got down there, I had to work my ass off to get a sub, and he just shows up out of nowhere to kill me."

[unmarred]

"Typical," Mark snorts.

[all_too_familiar]

"It really is." He points to the... rather large bite mark on his torso. "And that was a rancor on Rakata. Just a little one. It found my aftertaste disagreed with it." Revan sparks, just a bit.

[unmarred]

[all_too_familiar]

Revan smirks.

[unmarred]

"Personally, of course, I expect you to be delicious."

[all_too_familiar]

"Aw, you say the nicest things."

[unmarred]

Mark giggles.

[all_too_familiar]

"Do you have any interesting stories? I would assume so, with the -" handwave, "obvious training and observation skills."

[unmarred]

"Mm. D'you want the seven-century version or the two-decade version?"

[all_too_familiar]

"History lesson, why not. Seven-century version."

[unmarred]

"Right, so. After humanity discovered wormhole jump technology, we started colonizing every half-habitable rock in sight. Well and good. Then, with one of those half-habitable rocks half-colonized - a planet called Barrayar - we discovered that wormholes sometimes spontaneously collapse. Barrayar was cut off. The fifty thousand initial colonists had to make do with a partially terraformed planet and a haphazard collection of technology that they soon lost the infrastructure to maintain. Over the next six hundred years, they scraped together a more or less functional society. Then somebody found a new wormhole route to Barrayar, from a planet called Komarr. Among Komarr's other connections was the eight-planet Cetagandan Empire, which liked the look of Barrayar for a ninth. They bribed the Komarrans to let their warships through, and conquered Barrayar. Occupied them for a good twenty years before the Barrayarans threw them out with a combination of galactic aid and sheer stubbornness, whereupon the Barrayarans immediately conquered Komarr because what else are you going to fucking do."

[all_too_familiar]

Revan raises an eyebrow.

"... Barrayar doesn't sound like it had any useful infrastructure. The only planet it connected to was Komarr. I doubt it had any useful resources - why would they even want it?"

[unmarred]

"They weren't interested in explaining themselves. The official excuse was inappropriately ambitious generals. Inappropriate ambition did play a part, I think - you conquer the territory, maybe you get a piece, and Barrayar looked like easy pickings."

[all_too_familiar]

Someone looks unimpressed.

"Good for Barrayar for tossing them out. And conquering Komarr was a smart move, I approve."