#pips altdeer

[previousjane]

🖊 🖊 Pips

There's a shiny patch of hull next to the hatch of the Lady, worn smooth by the repetition of many hands. Her father lifted her to rub it before boarding when she was too small to reach it herself. She does it without a thought and the rest of her newfound crew follows her lead without having to be told.

That first day on Odessen, she stares at it for a solid minute before entering. That first night on Odessen, Corso places his palm flat on the metal and has trouble pulling it away. Pips hoists the squirming baby in her arms and lifts his tiny hand to the hull.

For luck.

[previousjane]

🍆

I’ve blathered on about the crew’s breakfast before but it really is an essential ritual.

None of them expect a cooked meal, they’ve all spent plenty of time with convenience meals of various quality. They do even then - every meal aside from breakfast is something with a maximum preparation level of “peel top, heat.”

Breakfast is something, though. They structure their shifts around it; someone’s always just woken up and someone’s about to head to bed after watch but they both show up at the table on time. New crew don’t get a choice, when Pips tells Guss “breakfast is at 0700″ that’s not an advisement, it’s an instruction.

(Technically, they all have a slot on the rotation, but only Corso and Akaavi can cook and Akaavi’s willing to cede her role so he ends up trading refresher cleaning with everyone for breakfast duty. The eggs must flow.)

It’s the center of so many things. The morning after Pips and Corso got privately hitched in the cockpit, the extremely hungover morning after that morning because the rest of the crew found out and were more than a bit miffed to be left out of the proceedings. The first morning on Odessen, years later, when they were all together again. Others come and go; most don’t even recognize the honor of the invitation for what it is.

Whenever they’re together, though, wherever together is, there’s breakfast.

[previousjane]

@commanderlurker

How do timezones work in space? Can you join a holo-zoom call? Does helping your parents smuggle contraband count as credit towards you business class?

As to the first, I bet it’s on Wookiepedia but after my ‘birth control in the SW universe’ deep dive I don’t have the energy anymore.

Asynchronous learning is probably the majority of it for most spacers. Maybe a set rotation of teachers who cover shifts, based on the provider; you have to pay more for the kind of service that offers that personalization but it’s worth it. At that price point it’s cohort-based as well, so you may never see your classmates in person but at least you may know them by name and connect over the holonet.

They rarely stay on Dantooine for more than a few weeks to a month a couple times a year, so I genuinely don’t know if they bother with grounded learning. As they get older, all the other children are in school for the day, so it would be quite lonely and boring otherwise. (Maybe they make an arrangement with the village school and just stay remote with them the whole time, as awkward as it is.)

It’s not perfect in any permutation but for Pips it just matters that they’re being schooled. Her father never bothered.

[previousjane]

00: Ord Mantell

The only reason Pips ever lands on Ord Mantell is someone else’s good fortune.

(Only tangentially related: Smuggling is a very broad term. Most independent cargo pilots dabble - it’s pretty hard not to. The ordinary ship operates on razor thin margins and the fact that all Republic member worlds have their own customs laws means dealing with a patchwork of regulations and paperwork that very few can manage profitably on their own. Even the most boring, steady mom’n’pop operation usually moves a few crates that aren’t entirely legal in a given jurisdiction every so often.)

Ships are expensive. You can cut corners, of course, and she has. She doesn’t have a water recycling system, just sonics, and she’s down to all but the minimum in potable tanks; the rest is more cargo storage. She does all her own repairs and half the ship is held together with magtape. She lives on protein bars. The Lady is one hell of a ship and Pips is one hell of a pilot, but that doesn’t mean she’s always a score ahead.

Dash Coper is a regular on Ord Mantell, one of Viidu’s most reliable contacts. He’s all lined up for the blaster job but at the last minute gets a proposition. The kind that could make your name forever, the kind you don’t turn down. He’s not an idiot, though, so he knows that a trustworthy replacement will keep him in Viidu’s good graces. Pips, maybe, he saw her on Port Nowhere a month ago and knows she needs the work bad. Barely making fueling fees.

This job is going to turn a profit. She’s got a good feeling about this.

[previousjane]

@honeybee592:

Au where Corso kept the lady and when he and Risha reunite with Pips, there's a pinup painting of Pips in a metal bikini across from the entrance hatch.

Actually, I take it back, there’s something worse than the implication that Corso and Risha sold the Smugger’s ship.

[previousjane]

The Lady’s full name is The Lady Fleuribella and she was named after an extremely popular singer whose time in the spotlight was decades ago.

(This is also Pips’ actual name, a fact very, very few know and none would dare to call her by. She furiously insists she was named after the ship, not the entertainer.)

Before Pips stole it and did a bit of interior work, it prominently featured an airbrushed mural of the holostar in question. Right across from the entry hatch. Metal bikini. Extremely classy.

[previousjane]

Pips: 4, 12, 27?

4. Has your character ever witnessed something that fundamentally changed them? If so, does anyone else know?

Pips grew up idolizing her father. He was in and out of her life when she was younger, foisting her off on various ex-lovers and sympathetic acquaintances. When she was a little older, she was a novelty more than anything. His foul-mouthed, trick shot little kid. But she was a child and all she could see was the much-craved affection, the adventure.

She’s 15 when she figures out that the job is about to go very bad and he’s set her up to take the fall with the Hutts. He took care of her, sure, he did a bit more than the bare minimum to keep a child alive, but in the end she was worth less than credits and his own hide.

She steals his ship, frames him so thoroughly he has to fake his own death to escape the bounty on his head, and never looks back.

Corso doesn’t get it. Risha does.

12. In what situation was your character the most calm they’ve ever been?

Valkorian spends five years (usually feels like far less, sometimes feels like far more) trying his best to convince her that the only way out is to give up. She doesn’t give him the time of day.

Not that there are any days there.

The other woman, the Sith, he shows her to her sometimes. Tries to pit them against each other. Says she’s taken the power, that she’ll be free and Pips will be stuck there forever. Too bad for him she’s been in enough interrogations to know exactly how much that’s worth.

27. How does your character normally deal with confrontation?

Fastest draw in the Outer Rim, she brags. Corso watched her drill Skavak between the eyes before he’d even made a twitch towards his blaster, so he won’t argue the point, but it’s her silver tongue and everyone who’s ever crossed paths with her knows it.

She got that from her father She grew that by herself.

[previousjane]

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