Chapter 156: Political Violence
Chapter 156: Political Violence
- Arkanis – 100 Days into the Clone Wars-
“…to the League, Sovereign Midoriya, and the future successes of both! May we all prosper together under them!”
The representatives of over a dozen other worlds raised their glasses to that toast, murmuring it back with wildly varied levels of enthusiasm. The representative of Andooweel, who had given the toast, was easily the most enthusiastic. Understandably so, given just how much his impoverished world was already being helped by League traffic and investment. Others around the room, such as the representative of Arkanis itself, were far less happy feeling in the Force. Though none of them, thankfully, were feeling truly resentful.
It wasn’t hard to figure out why this had been the first stop of Izuku’s political tour, nor why the representatives here were such varying degrees of enthused or not. Much of what had once been the Republic’s Arkanis Sector had already gone over to the League of Free Stars, even before the war began. A serious effort had been made to make that so, as it was one of the Sectors that lay between Tythe and what had once been Hutt Space. Converting as much of it as possible, centered around the new government on Tatooine, had been a high priority in a serious attempt to bridge the galactic gap between the seat of power that was Tythe and their Hutt Crusade conquests.
Yet, despite the fact enough unaligned, Hutt aligned, or border worlds that could shift under the old rules, had been secured to make that connection more solid, there had still been Republic holdouts. Arkanis itself had been a holdout for the fairly obvious reason that it had been the Republic’s Sector Capital. While it had never truly been the center of power and influence in a Sector that had been half Hutt controlled, it had received an unusual amount of attention from the Republic for an Outer Rim World. Specifically, of course, it had gotten that attention because of the Hutts. Both those within the Republic who wanted to keep an eye on the gangsters and those who had wanted to benefit from Hutt influence had based a lot of their efforts out of Arkanis.
Now, however, the holdouts had all crumbled. So much of not just their sector, but the surrounding Sectors as well, had gone over to the League due to the war, that none of them had deluded themselves any longer that loyalty to the Republic was the way to keep their positions and power. The minimal amount of resentment Izuku felt from those in the room that weren’t entirely pleased by that was, in fact, the work of LIS and the League Ambassadors.
Both the intelligence apparatus of the League and its Diplomatic Corps had been working on these worlds since before the Hutt Crusade even ended. For some, that work had started even before LIS properly existed, as Izuku managed and grew his business empire. All of that work had been put in to make sure every single world involved knew exactly what they stood to gain by joining. Which, in turn, meant those who were less enthused were more the type that disliked change, rather than true Republic Patriots or anything else so crass.
With the toast now over, Izuku turned to the Eklaad sitting next to him, who he’d been talking to before the offered toast interrupted. An ambassador from Sirpar, the short and squat sentient representative a relatively primitive culture that the League had been slowly helping uplift so they wouldn’t be exploited. By this point, they’d finally reached a level where they were looking for ways to contribute to the League. Something which was complicated by the fact that Sirpar had little in the way of natural resources. Given the Eklaad were extremely peaceful, they weren’t about to sign on with the League military or war effort, either. Nor did they yet have sufficient understanding of advanced technology to help with the League’s growing and highly advanced techbase.
Which didn’t mean there weren’t opportunities to be had. Sirpar was a high-gravity world, yet one which was still habitable for humans. Izuku returned to the pitch he’d been interrupted from with a smile.
“So you see, F’retalak’i, a training facility on your world would benefit the League immensely. Training in high-gravity environments is extremely advantageous, not just for the military, but also for explorers and any number of galactic sports franchises. Indeed, another interesting option that would bring some tourism and investment to your world would be high-gravity arenas, or even a high-gravity race track that would present some unique challenges for Pod Racers. I know the racing circuit has been looking to expand since the end of the Hutt Crusade and I happen to know some people who might be interested in funding such an endeavor.”
Namely, himself. Pod Racing with Zavra had been extremely fun, and Izuku was already imagining the interesting complications that could be created in a high-gravity environment. The track being personally endorsed by him, with him sponsoring a major race, would almost certainly see it swell with popularity too. Of course, that might be a bit too much for the locals. Possibly a sponsorship by Zavra instead? She was a less well-known figure inside the League, but still visible enough to draw in quite a bit of tourism if she sponsored a Pod Race.
Well, given the caution the Ambassador was greeting the idea with, it might not work out anyway. It was worth a try, though, and would be good for the local economy if they handled it right. One way or another, he was certain they could find something the locals were happy with, and which could help propel them to success within the League. It was just a matter of finding the right angle, in the end, and Izuku had gotten very good at doing that before the League even officially existed…
… … …
- Christophsis – 103 Days into the Clone Wars-
The throbbing of an ephemeral migraine pulsing behind Izuku’s eyes as he leaned back, trying to work through the bullshit situation on the planet of Christophsis, made him actually sympathize with the Republic bureaucracy. Something which he certainly didn’t like. The only reason the migraine remained a ghost, more a thought than a reality, was hefty use of the Force to stave off the physical pain. Yet the complex mess that was everything going on with this planet was enough to give the idea of a migraine some purchase in reality, even if the physical pain was absent.
A fascinating discovery about the nature of reality that Izuku could have lived without.
On paper, and even partially in reality, Christophsis was an ideal world to add to the League of Free Stars. The planet was a seriously profitable mining hub which processed chanlon, hfredium, quadrillium, and Nergon-14 out of the star system’s dense asteroid belts. All of those were valuable, and they even went fairly far to explain why the planet also had an advanced tech base and excellent, if modestly sized, shipyards. Profitable, producing incredibly useful materials, and with a shipyard rife for expansion to produce League ships. It was exactly the sort of star system that the League was normally happy to welcome into the fold.
The problem was that the ruling oligarchy were evil dicks.
The whole reason that the system had become profitable in the first place was that the wealthy members of that oligarchy had spent a small fortune hiring Givin mathematicians and Verpine technologists. The first to map the extremely dangerous asteroid belts of the system, the latter to develop ship technologies to best make use of the discoveries of rare and valuable deposits in those asteroids. All of that would have been well and good, a nice positive success story of sound investment strategies turning a dangerous world into a profitable haven of successful mining operations.
Then, however, human greed had entered the picture.
Unwilling to share the fruits of their discoveries, the human colony on the planet hired Vippit lawyers to disenfranchise their Givin and Verpine partners, even going so far as to rename the planet in a fit of ego during the process. The end result was why Izuku now had a thought migraine, if he could be so bold as the label the ephemeral pain the level of stupid involved was causing him.
The humans of the world were rich, arrogance, and entitled. The non-humans were destitute, second-class citizens who were little more than prisoners/slaves to the humans. Not quite literally slaves, but certainly trapped in a wage-slavery system that deliberately kept them from becoming ‘too uppity.’ Just to make things worse, the Verpine and Givin had long since been joined by a half dozen other species lured in by the Christophsian humans. Rodian, in fact, were so numerous that Rodese was actually spoken by almost as much of the population as Galactic Basic was.
All of which was made infinitively worse by the fact that Izuku had immediately realized the crystals of the world were kyber-adjacent. Enough so that the better quality crystals could absolutely be used for a lightsaber…and there was more of the crystal on the planet than there likely was kyber on Ilum. The local Verpine had even quietly figured out how to use the crystal in technology, but had hidden that fact from their evil overlords.
Now Izuku was stuck figuring out what to do with this clusterfuck.
Christophsis had applied to join the League of Free Stars right at the opening of the war, but League laws were clear. Barring something like a species with a Hive-mind, menial slavery was hideously illegal within the League, and the intentional wage-slavery system of Christophsis absolutely did fall afoul of the League definition of slavery. Which meant that it was very dubious they could even accept the ruling oligarchs as a legitimate government.
No, what needed to happen was for the various disenfranchised aliens to be given a proper vote. One that would likely remove the oligarchs from power. Then they could build an entirely new government around the results of a plebiscite run by the League. Thankfully, LIS and the Diplomatic Corps had already realized the problem and made contact with what amounted to hundreds of community groups and small scale resistance movements. Yet, both LIS as the League’s diplomats were horrifically overstrained by the number of worlds they’d suddenly been asked to process. Particularly with the many and varied problems of those worlds.
Hence Izuku’s abrupt and deeply unwanted sympathy for the Republic bureaucracy.
Sighing, he stopped focusing on how idiotic this whole mess was, and started trying to figure out how to cut down on the complications. If the Diplomatic Corps were forced to handle this one normally, they likely wouldn’t finish for years, and the League could really use the materials and talents available on this world. As much as Izuku hated it, the solution here was fairly obvious. Use his personal wealth and League investment to buy out the oligarchs who were smart enough to read the writing on the wall and realize the League would never let them hold onto power. With any luck, that would give them enough control of the planet to just straight out overrule the rest of the idiots and begin reforming the current system, instead of having to rip it out entirely and start over…
… … …
- Rodia – 108 Days into the Clone Wars-
Rodia was actually something of a light mirror, or at least a grey one, of Trandosha. At least, that’s what Izuku had come to realize after both reading its history and visiting himself. The species, originally violent and warlike, had far more successfully adopted the idea of selling the services of their best hunters to the rest of the galaxy. Admittedly, in the early days of the planet, they’d been as often slavers as bounty hunters. But, unlike Trandosha, nearly 15,000 years of exposure to the Republic had sanded away the worst of that dark attitude. Now, Rodians were valued the most as scouts and had developed the arts to the point that Rodian Theater was considered some of the best in the galaxy.
They still had an admittedly violent core, and the Rodian species as a whole had a bit of an infamous reputation for producing criminal henchmen and such. Yet the planet itself had developed a more nuanced culture that at least managed to direct their violence in productive ways, while also supporting development of the arts and other aspects of society. They were, for example, exceptionally good at industrial workings…with admittedly something of a focus on producing weapons. Though their emigration policy and somewhat isolationist history had kept those weapons from spreading too far throughout the galaxy.
Frankly, they had a lot to offer the League, particularly as the more violent part of the population were eager to sign up for the League military. Better yet, the League had plenty the Rodians wanted in turn, such as ready access to agriworlds. With their world being a swamp they’d overhunted and somewhat poisoned, offworld food imports were in high demand. The difficulty was mostly going to be handling the Grand Protector. Though, suspiciously to Izuku, a more violently isolationist Grand Protector had recently died and been replaced with one who was more open to foreign ideas.
He was fairly certain he saw LIS’s fingers in that, though he hoped he was wrong. He might have to start paying more attention to what the League’s intelligence apparatus was up to, if they were stooping to arranging assassinations. Though at least the new Grand Protector, former Republic Senator Onaconda Farr, had an existing positive relationship with Padmé that was making this particular stop easier than the last…
… … …
- Mon Gazza – 112 Days into the Clone Wars-
Mon Gazza was a unique challenge, made all the more so by the fact that it was hosting another group of ‘representatives’ from other systems. Specifically, it was hosting the closest thing to representation that a half dozen shadowports in this area of space had. Mon Gazza at least had a proper colony, though a poverty-stricken one whose primary claim to fame was hosting the headquarters of the Galactic Spice Mining Guild. A guild which, with Kessel now being under the control of the League of Free Stars, had only fallen farther into underworld dealings.
After all, people couldn’t get their illegal spice from the Hutts any longer, and Mon Gazza had been the second largest producer of spice before Kessel was taken. At least, that had been the case, before the League rolled in at the start of the war and took issue with its existence. Mon Gazza was, notably and importantly, not a member of the Republic. In fact, it was in extremely poor favor with the Republic for having been party to the Hutt’s attempt to shut down the Corellian Run during the Crusade. As a result, the League hadn’t needed any pretense at all to simply drop a military intervention on the locals’ heads. They’d quickly ousted Groff Zugga, the gangster who had been ‘running’ the colony, and started putting their own people in place.
To much rejoicing from the locals.
Frankly, aside from the gangs who had been shut down hard, the locals were largely pleased with their change in fortune. They were finally getting decent medical care and legitimate opportunities, not to mention that many of the industries that had supported the Pod Racing that was Mon Gazza’s only other claim to fame were booming. After all, the League had taken to using the system as a Fleet Anchorage for control of their section of the Corellian Run and Llanic Spice Run. Technically, as the League was currently in talks with the Andoan Free Colonies to come over the League, they loosely controlled a world or two farther toward the Core along the Corellian Run. For all intents and purposes Mon Gazza was the best place to anchor a nodal fleet, however, as it lay at the intersection of the two hyperlanes in question.
As for the other representatives, that’s where things got particularly interesting, as this whole region of space was a little on the lawless side. Llanic itself was another shadowport, with no official government, and the same could be said for a half dozen other worlds in the immediate area. It had taken since the start of the war, close to four months, to ‘encourage’ those worlds to form up something like an official presence. It was with the rough and tumble results of that encouragement that Izuku was meeting at Mon Gazza. In this case, he was doing something between normal diplomacy and laying down the law for the systems in question, which now all fell within League space and didn’t have Republic membership.
The group came from as far afield as Socorro, which was represented by an enterprising man named Leonidis Calrissian. That one was interesting, a talented singer for a wife and a 10-year-old kid that was already charming everyone around him. Leonidis had somehow convinced LIS to take a chance on him as a neutral ‘governor,’ to get the various nomadic groups on Socorro to work together on matters of external policy. The entire thing was held together by hopes and shoestring, but Calrissian was somehow making it not just work, but work profitably for everyone involved.
Regardless, Izuku’s talks with the various groups summoned to Mon Gazza would help solidify the currently rather porous border the League still shared with Republic. Given the terms of their new agreement with said Republic, having a solid line they could point to and say ‘alright, anything that borders these systems can be recruited’ was a must. For both sides honestly, though the Republic currently benefitted somewhat from the nebulousness of where the border actually was. As it stood, they were able to stall out negotiations over worlds that might want to leave for the League by claiming it was unclear of the Kashyyyk Accords applied to some of the worlds in question or not.
The second such meeting, this one with a smaller group after a larger initial meeting that had already happened, was set to take place in a few minutes. Which…made it a bit odd that half the attendees were missing. They might not be the most reliable of individuals, but it seemed odd that this many of them were missing. Taking a glance around at who was missing, Izuku made a connection he didn’t like. Too many of them had been Hutt adjacent, before the Hutts were torn down. A twitch of his fingers in a seemingly random, nervous gesture alerted his personal guard, who stiffened almost imperceptibly as they recognized the signal for potential trouble.
Trusting his Guard to watch those already present for trouble, Izuku tapped himself into the local Force, removing most of the filters he put in place to maintain his sanity. Frowning as he found nothing on doing so, he almost dismissed the entire sequence of thoughts as nothing but paranoia. Almost, that is…until he noticed voids moving through the local Force, converging steadily on his position. Eyes widening as his fingers twitched again, alerting the guards to start taking more active measures, Izuku tried to figure out what he was feeling…or rather wasn’t feeling.
This wasn’t Force Cloak. That particular ability, not even the improved versions the Sith used, couldn’t fool Izuku’s particular and odd connection with the Force, as Palpatine had discovered to his dismay. No, this was as if small bubbles of space had their midi-chlorians just…falling asleep...or perhaps going numb? His mind raced as he tried to find the answer, finding previously affected midi-chlorians that seemed to be fine now, but ‘remembered’ the same sort of numbness happening to them. He could trace a path backwards of where the effect had been…and it led right to the guest quarters of the palace that had previously served the gang lord and now acted as the center of governance for the colony.
He could feel more, stronger bubbles of that effect around four of the rooms, now that he was paying attention. Four of the rooms that just so happened to belong to individuals that were supposed to be at this meeting…and weren’t. Izuku pushed up out of his chair and pulled his lightsaber as the voids began to surround the conference room. He could feel the rapid response team of the Sovereign’s Guard moving rapidly, alerted by the quartet with him, but they wouldn’t reach them in time. Igniting his saber, he calmly addressed the suddenly very alarmed group of scoundrels in the room with him.
“If you have a holdout weapon, I suggest you arm yourself. Otherwise, get under the table. I believe we are about to experience an attempted assassination.”
Only one of the men, Calrissian Izuku noted, managed to move to pull a small holdout blaster before the action started. Two others managed to dive under the table at least, but the rest were caught in the crossfire as four shaped charges blew the main doors open and opened holes in three of the conference room’s walls. The groups who poured into the room were black-and-grey clad from head to toe, even their eyes covered in goggles…and Izuku couldn’t feel a single thing from them. Nor could he reach them with the Force, his telekinesis failing utterly to take hold despite the fact he could physically see them.
Thankfully, he hadn’t been taken completely off guard, or the dozen decapitation disks and the heavy disintegrator fire that followed might have successfully ended him. Whatever was screwing with his senses and telekinesis, it was failing to affect his ability to boost himself internally, and he’d had an excellent idea where the four teams were breeching from. He’d lept for one wall just before they set off the charges, placing himself right next to the group that entered from the new hole that formed there. Even most of his internal boosting failed as his lightsaber beheaded one of the three that had come through that hole, distracting him badly enough that only his phrik-weave under armor protected him from a vicious looking dagger from a second opponent.
Overriding his screaming instincts that something was wrong, wrong, wrong, Izuku leaned into the older and dirtier fighting style he’d learned at Miruko’s armored foot. A punch still packed with plenty of oomph despite the lack of Force boosting staggered the second attacker, while the third died to a sweep of his lightsaber. Instincts that had nothing to do with the Force had him pulling the staggered assassin between him and the far wall…just in time for the man to eat two bursts of disintegrator fire coming the other way.
His guards hadn’t been idle, and neither had Calrissian, all five having sprung into action the moment the charges went off. The largest group of half a dozen assassins at the main doors had been cut down by his Guard, while Calrissian’s surprisingly powerful holdout blaster had dropped one of three that had come through the back wall. The other two from that direction had him pinned, and two of Izuku’s four Guards had fallen to crossfire. Though their own phrik armor meant that they were merely badly wounded by what should have been instantly lethal disintegrator fire.
Izuku was regretting the fact he didn’t carry a blaster himself when he was out of his armor, even as he tossed away the mostly-destroyed body of the assassin he’d used to shield himself at the enemy across the way. Still, even without the Force, he was strong, fast, and skilled. A twist and a toss had his lightsaber spinning toward the trio who’d shot their own man, causing them to duck. Which bought Izuku an instant to arm himself with one of the dead assassin’s disintegrators. He was already diving as he fired, taking one of the remaining enemy in the chest, ending him, even as his dive forced the return shots to miss him by centimeters. The remaining two Sovereign’s Guard on their feet emptied heavy blaster fire into the remaining pair…even as one of the downed guards managed to fire a holdout weapon at one of the two pinning down Calrissian.
A handful more shots, one of which came dangerously close to Izuku’s left ear, and the last of the assassins were down…only for the first one Izuku killed to start smoking. Instincts screaming, Izuku threw himself out of the room, putting the remnants of a wall between him and that assassin. Then he knew no more for a time, as explosions ripped through the room and he hit his head on something considerably harder than his skull was.
… … …
“Maladian Assassins. A full sixteen of them, two teams of eight according to what little we know of them.”
Izuku was sitting in a medical bed aboard the Miruko, despite already knowing he was fine, awaiting the medics deciding to agree with that verdict. Thankfully, even if they were being overly cautious with the health of their Sovereign, the medics hadn’t stopped Colonel Averin Trizt from reporting to him regarding what the initial investigation had turned up. Trizt was a veteran of the very first recruits into the Sovereign’s Guard, one who’d been a Major, the leader of Akul Platoon, back during the Crusade. Now she was the overall leader of the Guard and was currently stewing over an assassination attempt managing to get this close to him.
“They are some of the best of the best, but it looks an awful lot like they had outside help, too. That weird effect we all felt in the Force, seeming to cut us off from it? They injected the highly-altered blood of something called a Ysalamiri to achieve that effect. We wouldn’t even know that much, except we found three of the lizards alive and in carefully controlled enviro-tanks in the guest quarters. They appear to require a lot of effort to keep alive outside their native environment, which a search through Jedi records we’ve…gained access to over the years…”
Izuku snorted at that. Aayla and Shaak Ti had both ‘liberated’ considerable chunks of the Jedi Archives at various times. Primarily, that had been done to update the Library of Ossus. But the basic information was also available to Izuku and the Sovereign’s Guard. All of his personal Guard were Force Sensitive, after all, and thus benefitted from having the knowledge to study. The resources didn’t include anything super secret from the Jedi Order, but anything a regular Knight could fight out was available.
“…revealed is a planet called Myrkr. The Jedi have known about the place for thousands of years, and even named the Makashi lightsaber form after the creatures. They don’t advertise the effects Ysalamiri have on Force users for rather obvious reasons, though. A quick check of what we have also doesn’t indicate anyone has ever used their blood to get a similar effect. We’re not sure how they did that, but we seriously doubt that it was natural, given that we found sigils carved into the hides of the reptiles.”
Izuku frowned, putting together the pieces of his Guard commander’s suspicions easily enough.
“You believe this is a Sith plot then. Sith Alchemy to modify the Ysalamiri to produce blood that can be used to temporarily pass on their effects to a person. Making a particularly deadly assassin to be used against Force Sensitives. With the more regular skills of the Maladians and simple treachery by invited guests doing the rest to bypass more mundane safety nets.”
Colonel Trizt nodded sharply.
“Frankly, boss? Yes. I’d like to send what we found, including a sample of the blood, to Zavra. She’s by far and away the greatest living expert outside the modern Sith on that sort of thing. Personally, I’m placing my bet that this was Palpatine. Dooku is possible too, but I doubt it. He doesn’t have the same very personal motivation to see you specifically dead, where Palatine does. I…”
Trizt grimaced, clearly not liking what she was about to say.
“…I think we might need to pull Zavra back from the front. To be blunt, there is a lot of disturbing shit that we just aren’t knowledgeable enough to counter. Having someone who played the Sith assassin game better than almost anyone from her own time, when such people were around in the thousands, might be the only way to stay ahead of this sort of plot. The Jedi tend to only win against the Sith by weight of numbers, rather than being able to directly counter the horrifying crap the Sith can and did come up with. At least if I’ve read between the lines right in the history holos.”
Izuku sighed, leaning back on the bed as he considered that Averin might have a point. The Jedi had never really possessed an equivalent to Sith Alchemy. They’d mostly needed to either brute force or out clever Sith when they came up with the latest warped abomination intended to kill fellow Force users. Though…there might be another option as well.
“Zavra will be near me anyway, when I head forward for the Sullust operation in a week. We have another resource I think we might want to tap, though. Quite a few of the Dathomiri witches decided to learn at Ossus, and most of them have some experience with Nightsister Sorcery. Quite of few of them got stuck off world when the CIS enfolded Dathomir…which might be something we need to act on, if the Sith are starting to do things like this, come to think of it. Whatever the status of Dathomir itself, we might want to see if any of the Nightsisters have the temperament to join the Guard. At least as a subject expert, if not as an actual member with the full training.”
Colonel Trizt hummed in thought at that, then slowly nodded.
“You might be onto something with that idea, boss. Most of them…I wouldn’t trust to protect you. They’ve got those hang-ups about men being lesser still. But I’ve met a few of them that, with exposure to Ossus and new ideas, have shifted away from that. If any of them have the right talent and temperament, it might not be a bad idea at all. I’ll look into it personally.”
Izuku nodded acknowledgement of that, before frowning as another thought occurred to him.
“We should also send a priority message to the Jedi, I think. Barriss Offee and Luminara Unduli might be on Palpatine’s personal revenge hit list too. They might not be as…prominent…of a target as me, but they are also likely more vulnerable than I was. A heads up might save them from an assassin similarly equipped. Or even just a more normal attempt, if they weren’t expecting it.”
The head of his guard winced at that, obviously connecting the dots. It was Izuku and Barriss, far more than anyone else, who had outted and ousted Palpatine. If he was like most Sith and engaged in petty revenge as a past time, the chances that he’d take a potshot at the recently minted Jedi Knight or her old master were entirely too high.
“Right. I’ll get right on that. We should easily be able to pass that warning on through Master Ti.”
Anything else would have to wait, as a healer swept in with a determined expression on her face a moment later. Hopefully, once he submitted to the tender mercies of an exam, Izuku would be free to go. There was still a lot to do, particularly given that there were now several systems whose representatives had been arrested in relation to the assassination attempt…or had died in the crossfire of the same. Kriff, what a mess!
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A/N 1: So, the Maladian Assassins are a group that very nearly managed to killed Hego Demask/Darth Plagueis. Something Palpatine is aware of. They, thus, made for a logical choice for him to attempt to sic on Izuku. Particularly after delving into some of his old Master's research into Sith Alchemy to make something that gave them an edge. He miiiigggghhttt be a little salty with Izuku for outting him...
A/N 2: Since I consider Legends content to override Disney in 99% of cases, Lando isn't old enough yet to be a leader. Instead, I made it his father that pull something Lando would totally have done. The planet in question IS Lando's canon homeworld, so I felt it fit. We don't actually know his parents names or occupations, but we do know that his mother apparently had a nice singing voice, according to a comment or thought by Lando himself in a single book. A tiny tidbit I turned into a piece of their background here.