Royce's Random Thoughts

Habebti led the vixen back to her office. There were three couches, one sized for Habebti, the others for smaller guests. Abstract tapestries hung from the walls, and thick carpeting softened the marble floor. The lighting was warm, encouraging intimate discussions. Habebti lay herself across her couch, while Leesa stood in the center of the room, keeping as much distance between herself and the tall wazagan as her leash permitted.

“Why are you here?” Habebti repreated.

“I told you…” Leesa started to say, then yelped as Hebebti flicked the leash once, making the cord around the vixen’s throat jiggle.

“You’re stalling,” Habebti said coolly. “You know what you want, but you’re afraid to say it aloud. You’re ashamed.”

“Yes…” Leesa whispered, eyes downcast.

Description: A middle-aged, statuesque wazagan female, 8’2” tall, 300 lbs. with dark blue scales, green eyes, and thick curly hair dyed green. Usually wearing flowing white dresses and heavy gold and emerald jewelry.

Background: Mistress Hebebti arrived on Darktail station some thirty years ago, and proceeded to set up Hebebti’s Sophistications, a remarkably elegant, clean, and discreet “personal entertainment” business. Holding court in Sophistication’s marble paneled and flower bedecked greeting chamber, Hebebti provides visitors with physical pleasures of all types. From massages both relaxing and erotic; to the heightening of the senses with food, drink, scent; and yes, pleasures of the flesh, Sophistications has something for all genders and species. Privacy and discretion are guaranteed.

That’s the public face of Sophistcations. Even more private and discreet is its use as a front for Mistress Habebti’s other career as an information broker. She has feelers not only throughout Darktail Station, but in several nearby solar systems, taking disparate threads of data and coming up with a remarkable picture of the political, social and financial landscapes. Even more remarkable is the fact that she does so without using her Sophistications employees as spies, taking notes when their clients are most vulnerable. Everything is on the entertainment side of things is kept clean and separate, the better not to put her “boys and girls” at risk.

Personality: In person, Habebti charming, sophisticated (ahem), and always happy to listen to someone’s troubles. Her habit of lounging draped across a couch tends to minimize her massive height advantage over non-wazagans. When she does stand up and make her presence known, however, people notice.

For someone with such a prominent reputation on Darktail Station, however, Madame Habebti is remarkably reticent about her past. Why she left Wazaga Prime remains a secret she isn’t selling, and there are clients who have offered a high price for it. What is known is that she very rarely leaves the station, or Sophistications, at all, even as rundown as it became in the days prior to House Darktail’s purchase.

Of course, the one remarkable thing about Habebti running a place like Sophistications is her complete disinterest in sex as the mammalian and Gliten species practice it. Which is why her business runs offers a wide variety of pleasures to be found aside from physical. Habebti greatly appreciates pleasure in general, in all of its forms. On occasion, she’ll even provide erotic services to valued clients personally, taking pleasure herself in how much pleasure she is able to provide for them. 

That aside, Habebti takes motherly interest in keeping her employees happy, figuring that the happier her boys and girls are in their line of work, they happier they’ll make Sophistications’ patrons. Which is one reason why they were so rarely harassed back in the days that Darktail Station was a pirate trading post. Pirates who entered Habebti’s establishment to harass or hurt her employees were rapidly removed. Pirates captains who made a fuss about this tended to have quite unexpected, coincidental, and usually fatal encounters with their rival pirates or the Stellar Patrol.

Campaign Use: Habebti is set up to be both a valuable resource for GM’s wanting to give their players hints, and a minor mystery herself. Why did she leave Wazaga Prime? Why doesn’t she ever leave the station? What information could she have possibly had on the likes of Bloody Margo that even that monstrous pirate would leave her alone? Taking a good look at Habebti’s skill list should clue the GM in that the madame’s information gathering skills may have come from professional training. It’s not just coincidence that she’s bought off the wazagan Easy to Read disadvantage… 

Skills-wise, Habebti is a charisma monster. Any PC attempting to charm her is in for an intense, if remarkable polite, battle. She’s unlikely to be persuaded to give anything up for just money. Providing her with equally valuable information in trade for what is being requested will open many doors however.

Attributes: ST 14 [36] (-10% for Size +1), DX 12 [40], IQ 12 [40], HT 13 [30]

Damage: Thrust 1d6, Swing: 2d6

Secondary Attributes: Size +1, HP 14 [0], Will 13 [5]. PER 13 [5], FP 13 [0], Basic Speed: 6 [5]. Basic Move: 7 [5].

Social: Beautiful Appearance [12], Comfortable Wealth [10], Fashion Sense [5], TL 9 [0], Culture: Wazagan [0], Human [1], Kinis [1]. Reputation: Smart Businesswoman (Darktail Station residents, all the time) +3 [5]. 

Languages: Arabic (native) [0], English (accented) [2], Galactic Basic (accented) [2], Kinis (accented) [2], Southern Wazini (native) [4]. 

Advantages: Acute Hearing/2 [4], Acute Vision/2 [4], Charisma/2 [10], Contacts (various, Skill 15) x3 [6], Double Jointed [15], DR 2 (tough skin) -40% [6], Empathy [15], Language Talent [10], Night Vision/2 [2], Peripheral Vision [15], Sharp Claws [5], Sharp Teeth [1], Voice [10].

Perks: Deep Sleeper [1], Penetrating Voice [1].

Disadvantages: Charitable [-15], Code of Honor: Madame (Never cheat or abuse customers or employees, maintain a safe and comfortable working environment) [-5], Dependent Group: Employees (friends, 25% of base, appear 12-) [-10], Extra Sleep/2 [-4], Pacifism (self-defense only) [-15], Phobia: Open Spaces [-10], Slow Riser [-5].

Quirks: Careful [-1], Prays daily [-1], Prefers to lounge, not sit [-1], Won’t speak of her past [-1].

Skills: Acting 14 [4]*, Administration 13 [4], Autohypnosis 12 [2], Carousing 15 [2]*, Connoisseur (tea) 11 [2], Connoisseur (singing) 11 [2], Current Affairs (business) 12 [2], Current Affairs (regional) 13 [4], Diplomacy 14 [8]* **, Erotic Art 18 [4]@, Escape 16 [2]@, Fast Talk 15 [2]* **, Flail/Cat o’ Nine Tails 12 [4], Hypnotism 11 [2], Intelligence Analysis 12 [4], Interrogation 13 [4], Intimidation 15 [2]* #, Knot Tying 14 [4], Leadership 15 [2]** %, Merchant 12 [2], Observation 14 [4], Performance 16 [4]* **, Professional Skill (Madame IQ/A) 14 [8], Savoir Faire (high society) 15 [4]%, Savoir Faire (mafia) 15 [4]%, Sex Appeal 20 [4]* **, Singing 15 [2]**, Streetwise 14 [2]*, Teaching 13 [4], Theology (the Faith) 12 [4], Whip 13 [4], Wrestling 12 [2].

* +1 for Smooth Operator, ** +2 for Voice, @ +5 for Double Jointed, # +1 for Size, % +2 for Charisma.

Point Total: 350

She was only a hundred and ten years old when she'd lost Salli. Sallivera, only five years older, but never having indulged in cellular regeneration, and having suffered more than her fair share of serious injuries, died from tripping over the edge of a carpet of all things. The fall resulted in a broken rib. The subsequent lung infection from her restricted breathing brought on a battle with pneumonia that Salli had no chance to recover from. After a brief three day coma, she died, never regaining consciousness to say goodbye.

So for forty years, Alinadar went on without her. Not unhappily. Their children and grandchildren kept her distracted from the empty hole in her heart. She even took on a lover, scandalously fifty years younger than herself, who brought her joy she'd never expected to feel again. They lived together for ten years, parted amicably, and moved on with their lives. After that, there was no one else. 

Ali, never happy unless she was occupied with a task, kept to her post as Adjunct to the Governor of Greenholme until her 140th birthday, when her health began to decline and even she was forced to finally retire. She died in bed, after wishing the grandchild she was visiting goodnight, a blood vessel bursting in her brain an hour after falling asleep. She would have been embarrassed, and more than a little confused, by the sheer number of mourners at her funeral.

After a period of time without real meaning, she awoke again, naked, in the snowy, Cold and Dark plain of the Mother Goddess' Hell.

"Ah!" Ali called out, pushing herself up out of the snow. There was something heavy, hard, and freezing cold hanging off her right ankle. She looked down, to find a heavy shackle welded there, an anchoring chain a hundred times as long as her tail, the metal of the links each a good two centimeters thick, hanging off it. Blood dripped from the chain, staining the white snow a deep red, and hanging from the chain were knives, pistols, rifles. All the tools of Ali's old trade, all likewise covered in blood. Her Chain of Sin, marking all of the unanswered offences Alinadar had committed against the teachings of the Mother Goddess in her mortal life.

She blinked drifting snow out of her eyes. In the distance, barely visible, was a light in a cave. Waiting there, she knew from dimly remembered teachings, would be the Mother Goddess, waiting to free her from her chain and guide her to the Fields of Green. Ali pressed her free foot into the snow, trying to push herself towards it, only to collapse, panting, having not budged a centimeter.

Are you honestly surprised? she thought to herself. She'd known her likely fate the day she committed her first murder as Bloody Margo's slave. Ali sighed, laying down in the cold snow, feeling it begin to rise above her. Soon she would feel nothing save oblivion, the fate of all whose chain was too heavy to reach the Mother Goddess' warm den.

"Ali? You mustn't sleep, Ali," a familiar voice called gently. "The Mother Goddess waits for you." A warm, gentle paw brushed the snow off her face, and Ali looked up to see Sallivera looking down on her, a smile on her wife's face.

"Salli, what are you doing here?" Ali asked, sitting up as Salli gathered her into her arms. She was as naked as Ali, her own Chain of Sin a light anklet around her leg.

"Waiting for you, of course," Salli answered.

"But you should be in the Fields of Green," Ali protested. She waved towards the light in the distance. "The Mother Goddess' den is right over there. You could reach it easily."

"I could have, yes. But that would have meant being separated from you," Salli said. "I knew your own Chain would be horribly heavy. So I waited for you to arrive, to help carry it for you."

She blinked, feeling warm tears run down her face, soaking and freezing to icicles in her fur. "But it's too heavy," she cried out. "Even with you lifting it, I'll never be able to move."

"I know," her wife replied. "That's why I brought help."

From the darkness and snow several figures emerged. Two she knew, her brother Lu and her Aunt Razi, both dying two decades ago. Three she recognized somehow, though her mortal memories did not. Her mother. Her father. Her grandmother. All murdered by the same pirates that had kidnapped Ali at the age of six, to be made their warrior and slave.

"Hello, my darling," her mother said. "We've been waiting for you."

"Time to come home," her brother Lu added. Together, all six of her most beloved family lifted the heavy chain, as Ali rose to her feet. Together, they began to move forward, towards the warm light.