A Captured Moment with Bixlo Benns
((The RP XP with MJ #53))
Welcome to the third “Captured Moment” with ((The RP XP with MJ)), my ongoing nod and /salute to the great RolePlay inspirations found throughout the living worlds of SWTOR’s awesome set pieces and NPC placement.
Keep in mind this little aside wasn’t produced, endorsed or even recognized by BioWare. It’s just me doing what every good RPer does: finding those captured moments of “realism” throughout the game and making up my own story to go with it. For the passing gamer, these are nothing more than animated space filler. For me, and maybe you, they’re somehting more. They’re little untold stories, pictures that spark the mind and give you ideas. Like this one…
CAPTURED MOMENT #3
WHAT IT IS:
A human male appears to wretch over the golden fountain trough on the lower promenade of Nar Shaddaa while a female Twi’lek looks on amused.
WHERE TO FIND IT:
(-986, 517) “Lower Promenade”, Nar Shaddaa
It’s probably one of the first humorous scenes you encountered the first time you played SWTOR: a human male throwing up into the fountain on Nar Shaddaa. Did he just have too much to drink? Did his female Twi’lek companion trigger his gag reflex by telling him the golden water was actually water passed by a Hutt? Or was it something more than that?
Bixlo was a business man. A shrewd business man.
He was famous throughout the black market networks of over six systems, a finagler whose expertise included bilking the hard earned credits out of the hands of more legitimate entrepreneurs. Bixlo Benns was known from Adumar to Tatooine as “The bahzanka jonsa yae” (The human with the Silver Tongue).
Until he met Herr.
Specifically, Herr’nika; a Twi’lek dancer and something of an entrepreneur herself. She worked the entertainment circuit from one hovering casino to another on Nar Shaddaa, never dancing on the promenade itself because that’s where she liked to unwind and spend her off-time. Alone. Herr’nika owned several of the larger residential blocks near the Slippery Slopes cantina as well as a controlling interest in the cantina itself. Most of the profits went to Sarthaa The Hutt, but her business was her own and Sarthaa never bothered to check Herr’s books. She was a generous business partner, after all. No reason to dig so deep into a partner’s pockets that you scare them off, or make them an enemy. Sarthaa was smarter than the average Yae with a bahzanka jonsa.
Herr’s specialty, and the trade with which she made her fortune, had nothing to do with her own dancing. Herr’nika designed, manufactured and sold holo units that recorded Twi’lek dancers in one club and broadcast them live in another. Revelers in the Silent Suns cantina on Coruscant were thrilled that they didn’t have to pay a cover charge to see a live projection of Mila’noko-Rah dancing for them—even if the actual flesh of her swaying lekku was several parsecs away on Nar Shaddaa. Club owners paid a small fortune for the projectors, and all Herr had to do was surreptitiously place a recording device in a club and calibrate it remotely from her ship. It only took a couple sales on Malastare and Coruscant to make enough to hire a staff to do the dirty work for her. Then all she had to do was sit back and collect.
Bixlo Benns fancied himself slightly more shrewd than the average Hutt, and heads and slimy tails above and beyond the likes of Sarthaa. He followed Herr’nika around Nar Shaddaa, listened in as she met with one of Sarthaa’s collectors, observed her tinkering with a receiver just outside the ship she had docked near the lower promenade, and traced one of the signals to Abregado-Rae where she just made a huge sale to a club owner there. After three days of close observation, he decided to make his move.
Bixlo Benns was going to get a cut of Herr’nika’s action with the oldest and most trusted technique in the book: simple extortion. He patted the pocket of his pants that held the small datapad packed with the details of Herr’s operation: frequencies, transmitter ranges, exact locations of hidden camera placements. All he had to do was loosen her up with a couple drinks.
“Hey, babe,” he smirked as he sidled up next to her in the Slippery Slopes. He nodded to the bartender and motioned to get a refill for the “lovely lekkus” next to him.
Herr’nika slid her eyes toward the human and corrected, “Lekku.”
“Huh?”
“The plural of lekku is lekku,” she said, though Bixlo smiled when she accepted her drink and threw it back. He ordered another for himself and slid closer.
“Name’s Bixlo. Bixlo Benns.” He held out a hand. The Twi’lek considered the hand for a moment, then took it, curling her long slender fingers around his. “Herr’nika.”
“I know,” Bixlo grinned. He jutted a thumb at himself. “Huge fan.”
“Really?” She downed her drink. Bixlo ordered another. Then he got another for himself, determined to match her swallow for swallow and drink her under the table. This, he thought, will be the easiest score ever.
Except that Herr’s drink of choice was water.
It was less than two hours later that a rather mush-brained Bixlo Benns decided to ply his silver tongue and entice Herr with an offer she couldn’t refuse. They strolled—rather staggered—alongside the band pit and flickering lights of the lower promenade when he stopped and turned to her. “I haff a bidness proposilinition for you, Herm.”
“I’m sure you do,” she smirked. Herr shifted her weight to one hip, amused as she started the mental countdown to Bixlo Benns’ pending failure. She started counting backward from twenty.
At “eighteen” Bixlo Benns suddenly lurched, made an “urp” sound in his throat, then lost an hour’s worth of Tatooine Sunrises into the golden fountain next to them. The next morning Bixlo would wake up at that same spot, minus his wallet, logbook, the datapad with all the extortion intel on Herr’nika… and his boots.
The lesson he learned: Find out what your mark is drinking before you start matching them swallow for swallow.
CAPTURED MOMENTS LINKS
“The Sad Tale of Arlon and Jurie”
If you have a favorite “captured moment” scene, screenshot it and send it to me (swtorliferp(at)gmail.com). If you’ve got a story to go along with it, let’s hear it; or if you want to see what I can make up, we can do that too. ((The RP XP with MJ)) appears exclusively on swtor-life.com every Friday. Contact MJ directly by writing to swtorlife(at)mail, leave a comment, or follow him on Twitter @MJswtor.
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