Outside, the large plume of sand-filled dust stirred up by the ship's landing begins to sprinkle back down to the planet's arid surface. Overhead, near their zenith, both of the planet's twin suns, Tatoo I and II according to the navigation computer, can be seen through the cockpit window with squinted eyes. The two stars are practically overlapping and blend together into one eye-searing blob of intense light.

Dex and Jarren power down the ship's systems with the exception of auxilary power and climate control, thinking it might be wise to keep the ship cool after seeing the heat shimmers on the plateau.

Back in the cargo bay, Ian looks over the container in front of him. Like the other two accessable to the right of it, is approximately 3 meters in length, 1 meter deep, and 1 meter tall. All three dull grey containers are fastened to the floor by rotatable keylocks on each corner.

The holo cards themselves have sloshed to the right side of the box where they've spilled out onto the floor due to the abnormally rough landing. Ian, who imagined he was wearing cargo pants, and as luck would have it, he is, quickly pockets one of the spilt holos, his toothy smile beaming out from under his grimy mustache and ration bespeckled beard. Standing up amidst all of the food wrappers, he again peers into the large container. A smaller container, flat green in color and about one meter in length, is now visible within since the sloshed holo cards have left the left side barren.

As Ian bends down to examine the contents of the container, Ears gets his attention by grabbing his beard and tugging hard enough to be slightly painful but not hard enough to rip any hair out. Ian looks up and sees Dex and Jarren leaving the bridge and coming back into the cargo area. Ears lets out a frightened squeal and jumps into the cargo container at the sight of the human with the green stripe of hair, scattering some of the loose holo cards. It peeks over the edge of the container, watching the Dex and Jarren approach. As they get closer, it grabs hold of Ian's nearby pant leg, and refuses to let go.

Somewhere in the middle of the cargo bay and off to the side, the singsong voice of the protocol droid says, "See A-18, I TOLD you we'd make it!"

A canned, emotionless "Affirmative" follows in reply from A-18, the ASP droid. It then adds a few more comments in the binary language that all droids can speak to one another.

"Well don't just stand there, help me out of this nettin.. In.. In.. Ing!" scolds the metallic maroon protocol droid, as it's head twitches in time with some internal malfuncion. A-18 immediately complies by lifting the netting a few inches as the 3P0 unit tries to limp it's way out..

Jarren and Dex are witnessing this as they are walking toward Ian and the little monkey-lizard in the back. Looking at the protocol droid, it's immediately obvious that all is not well with the droid. It's once human-like leg has been replaced with a bar of tubular plasteel from the knee joint down, giving the resemblance of a high-tech peg leg. It's arm has likewise been replaced. A jointed shaft with a small boring face made for mining now sits in place of it's previous arm. The arm appears to be non-functional at the moment. To make matters worse, a huge streak from a welding torch traces a canyon in the droids covering from near it's shoulder, up it's neck, to the side of it's head where an ear would be if it had one.

Jarren and Dex continue on to the rear, seeing the open cargo container's contents for the first time. Dex can't seem to believe his luck, finding what must be about 2,000 explicit holo cards. In fact, looking over the pile, they all seem to be the same holo - "Secrets of Twi'light." This must be worth at least 1500 credits he thinks to himself, although he is slightly disappointed that none of the holos feature humans. Of course he doesn't show his disappointment to the other two ex-prisoners.

To the startlement of a scrambling Ears, Jarren digs into the open cargo container, extricating the green box and popping it open on the floor without waiting. Each of the curious ex-prisoners lean over to look in the box. Their survey reveals a stash of a few blaster pistols, an ion gun, and several bottles of highly illegal spice-laced alcohol - a smugglers trove. Ingenious the three think; who would ever think to check under pornographic holographs for contraband?

Setting the cache aside momentarly, overcome by curiosity, the humanoids open the next large grey cargo container. Twisting the fastening hasps elicits a reluctant hiss from the container as the lid opens and the pressure equalizes. Nobody is quite sure what to make of the contents at first. It looks to be some form of furniture in disassembled form. There is a large piece covered in a white, felt-like cloth with a holo projector in the center that seems to be the main surface. Stripe and Ian, who is still being restrained by Ears' grip on his pant leg, come to the realization silmultaneously that it's a disassembled casino gaming table, although they are unsure what particular game it would be used for. Jarren is clueless. He stands there with a quizical expression on his face, trying to remember what something like this would be used for.

The next container yeilds a similar structure. This gaming table has a circular top, however, that is disassembled into two halves along with the supporting assembly. The top has concentric rings of black and white, each about 10 cm wide. The center ring is red. Stripe recognizes it as a "Bullseye" table, know to be popular for extremely high risk games.

A datapad found in this final container displays the manifest for all three containers, minus the contents of the green box. The supposed recipient of the cargo is apparently one Tee'Kal Klahn, Mos Espa, Tatooine.

Jarren is befuddled. He feels like he should know what these items are, but can't seem to get his mind to pull up the information. One thing he does remember, however, is that the maroon droid knew his name, and might know more about his past. Hoping that the droid can help crack the barrier in his uncoopertive mind, he asks the battered droid, " So tin man what do you know about me? What can you tell me?"

"I beg your pardon sir! I am certainly not made out of tin. My body is composed of bronzium with an anti-corrosion coating, not tin!" Looking at A-18, he continues, "Tin he says, can you believe that? Why, I'd mel.. Melt at the first encounter with a large dose of radiation. Who would build a droid out of tin? That's unheard of! I am neither tin, nor a man! I just don't understand."

Seemingly confused, A-18 says in it's monotone voice, "Negative. Affirmative."

The protocol droid turns and faces Jarren, cocking it's head before saying, "You'll have to excuse A-18, Master Jarren, his processor is a little slow."

"As to your query sir, I'm afraid I don't have much information for you regarding your origins. When you were brought aboard on Bothanawui, one of them said - as the droid continues, it says in the alien Bothan language "Nexal a neegal derjn de'degah Jarren Geist, te". Returing to Basic, the droid says, "Roughly translated, that means, 'Yes, that's the Omwati excrement, Jarren Geist. The bounty will be quite good."

"I'm afraid that's all I know sir. Please don't send me back to that dreadful safehouse."

Still clinging to Ian, the Kowakian says "excrement" and cackles.

[OOC: Please add a Comliness score from 1-18 to the description portion of your character sheets. This will be your physical attractiveness. Feel free to roll it or set it yourself, just keep in mind how it will play together with your charisma.]