Danthis O'dar #1

[Danthis]

In this adventure you will take the part of Danthis O’dar, a struggling, down-on-his-luck swoop mechanic in the settlement of Bant Station on the planet of Ord Mantell.

 

The posts will be numbered sequentially. This first post will be background information with no choice at the end; however, at the end of following posts you will be given a choice. Based on that choice you will be directed to read a specific entry in the next post. Read only the indicated entry, not the entire post. The choices you make will determine the course of your story.

 

 

What you will need:

 

> A pencil or pen and paper to keep track of Danthis’ successes and failures as you progress through the story

 

> A 6 sided die

 

Here we go...

 

___________________________________________

 

For several years you have been fixing and modifying swoop bikes for the local swoop racers on Ord Mantell. You have always been very talented mechanically. Your father was the first to notice your natural ability with machines when you were a boy. Your earliest memories involve wandering the warehouse where he worked, helping him repair and maintain droids for the local authorities on Ord Mantell.

 

You never knew your mother and your father never once spoke of her.

 

When you were twelve years old your father died in a droid repair accident. You never understood the whole story, but the accident report stated a welder droid, being used for salvage at the time, turned on the repair crew your father supervised. The droid killed your father and three of his workers. Although an investigation was promised, there was never an investigation.

 

A local swoop bike racer and friend of your father’s named Lan Daristol took you on as a junior member of his race team. He fed you, let you live in his quarters on the lower side of Bant Station, and taught you how to ride. You learned techniques in speeder and swoop repair from the senior members of Lan's crew and grew rapidly into the best mechanic on Ord Mantell.

 

At the age of 16 you opened your own shop. Such a young swoop mechanic going out on his own shocked many people, but you didn’t care. The novelty generated extra customers and more work. As business ramped up and the shop became known, you hired on talented people, mostly friends, from the swoop race circuit

 

Those were the good years. Business was plentiful. The racers came to your shop for custom modifications to their bikes. They paid quite well for your personal attention and you were happy to see to their needs. Some of the racers wanted additional gravitational dampeners to improve handling or extra layers of duronium plating on the chassis to protect their bikes from the constant nicks and collisions endured on the circuit. The more adventurous pilots wanted outlandish propulsion systems. No problem. If you could get a hold of the right parts – and you always did - you were the one to go to and everyone knew it. Among the swoop racer community you became known as, “Fixxer.”

 

Using the profits accumulated from the bike shop, you acquired a personal repair droid named X7-3. You outfitted X7-3 with the latest array of repair tools and modification equipment packages. You also bought a large, very comfortable personal landspeeder. You altered the speeder by adjusting the strength of the accelerator beyond the legal limits prescribed by the Ord Mantell Vehicle Authority - not that anyone listened to those guys.

 

At night after work you would drink too much Corellian ale and spend lavish amounts of credits on off-world dancers. The nightlife of Ord Mantell enticed you with a thousand varied pleasures from the far corners of the outer rim. Times were good. But that was then and this is…

 

Now. Now you could kick yourself.

 

Every night you fall asleep wondering why you didn’t save up credits when you could.

 

About two years ago business started to dry up. After a high ranking Republic official was charged with paying a Rodian racer named Leedro Yans to murder another racer to ensure a winning bet, the swoop scene had no choice but to accept some heavy handed regulations from the O.M.V.A., backed up by the Republic. The swoop circuit had to clean up its act or it would be forced to shut down. The offending official was charged and convicted with the crime and sent to a Republic detention facility. Leedro Yans left the circuit and quietly disappeared into the Outer Rim.

 

After the incident, interest in the races declined. It wasn’t that people stopped going to the races or stopped cheering for their favorite racers, but the swoop inspired mania that fueled your business took a serious hit. As the business slowed you were forced to remove friends you had known since childhood from the pay roster of the shop and even though you made an excellent profit off the racers, you still had to borrow heavily to acquire the latest upgrades from the top Mag-Lev companies. Now you owe them all: Mantell Motors, the Corellian Swoop Consortium, Duros Suspension Drive Yards, among others.

 

In retrospect you realize your business grew too quickly. The shop’s supernova like expansion brought in a lot of fast credits, but when the race scene calmed down, it you left you over-extended.

 

About six months ago a concerned group of your creditors came to Ord Mantell to have a look at your current business profile.

 

The unpleasant evening ended with you giving vague assurances that business would get better, that you would pay down the loans shortly. They weren’t pleased, and they weren't interested in what you were selling.