Interlude: Sojonit sister Wetmouth

Interlude: Sojonit sister Wetmouth GalNet Entry :Sin 4  Even long before the Union existed and during the times of the First Galactic Council, the homeworld of the Diobah, had served as a place where peace conferences and meetings between enemies took place. Because the Diobah are widely considered the most peaceful sentient species in existence.. But not all Diobah liked the fact to be visited by outsiders. When it came to the first hostilities between the then new United Stars of the Galaxy and the Second Galactic Council, Diobah was proposed as a meeting place. The Diobah refused and wanted to be left alone. The Karthanians sensing a business opportunity found a planet at near equidistance to the Shiss, the Nul, the Kermac and the Union and spend considerable resources to built a big city with spaceports. Their project was almost completed and they wanted to propose this planet as a neutral place for meetings and similar activities. Much to the misfortune to the Karthanians, Gulopa, a new wise leader of the Diobah grew old enough to become mobile and Gulopa, reversed the decision and offered their &ldquo;World of Peace&rdquo; once more as the age old place of diplomatic meetings on ground that was agreed to be neutral to all. The Karthanians abandoned the world. Much to the relieve to the indigenous species that lived on that world, as the Karthanians did not ask for permission to built their city. After the Great War ended and the Armistice between the Big Four also included the so called Freespace treaty. An agreement between the most powerful spacefaring civilizations in the known part of the M-0 Galaxy to recognize a sizeable region of space as a buffer zone, between the Big Four. A demilitarized zone that was meant to foster civilian cultural exchange and commerce. This region became known as Freespace and it became a lawless, pirate infested region where the criminals and the scum of all societies congregated. The world, the Karthanians intended to be a center of commercial, was rediscovered by pirates. With abandoned spaceports and a large city, the place was as perfect as a pirate port could have been. With pirates came others, and thus Sin 4, the most lawless Hell hole in the known galaxy. Living in deplorable conditions, abused, enslaved and massacred were the original owners of the once beautiful Gardenworld, the Stik. Today Sin 4 is controlled by four crime families, four syndicates. The Donheers, the Rillos., The Hythin and the Marooni. A fifth syndicate the Luthn is said to exist, but nothing other than the name is known. There are a number of smaller syndicates and gangs constantly fighting for control The rich and influential of all Spacefaring societies come to Sin 4, to participate in the forbidden or purchase the illegal. Nothing is illegal on Sin 4 and anything can be bought. There are four levels of Society known to exist on Sin 4. The Echelon or the top level consists of the Crime Lords, their Sub bosses and Lieutenants. The Beston are the rich who pay horrendous sums for their safety and operate the high end businesses on Sin 4 that are not directly owned by the Syndicates. The Averas are the workers, employees, enforcers and all those who hold a job either with Beston Companies or with the Crime Syndicate. The Lows are the unskilled laborers, the little street vendors and the street gangs. Finally there are the Skaakh, the lowest day laborers, old whores, escaped slaves, the homeless and the sick. Next to the uber lux provided for the rich travelers, to the Casinos and Deathfight arenas, are the unimaginable conditions of the Skaakh slums. Populated by escaped slaves, by the poorest the Skaath, live in filth, with diseases and vermin from all corners of the Universe. A life is worth nothing, the flesh of a sentient being is just another commodity. Rumors persist that there are even worse conditions below ground, in the sewers and catacombs below this now several thousand year old continent spanning city. Interlude: Sin 4 Faria sat in one of the frilly white gazebos that dotted the beautiful landscaped park like garden that surrounded the Sojonit Temple on Sojonit Island. It was a beautiful sunny day. On her lap the Book of Sojo, in it the secret history and many but not all secrets of her order. She was dressed like all Sojonit Sisters that ventured outside the Inner temple. A pink bra and over it a sheer bolero style jacket with long fluttering sleeves. She had opted for the pink mini skirt and the thigh high pink heeled boots. She also could have worn the Bikini bottom with the harem style veil pants over it. Her face was hidden behind a flesh colored face semi rigid mask that resembled a beautiful woman's face with an open mouth, and her real hair underneath a shoulder long wig in page cut also in pink. The Sojonites were considered the most expensive prostitudes in the Galaxy. They worshipped Sojo the Goddess spirit of universal Love and sexual pleasures. The Order of the Sojonit so legend had it, already existed during the First Age of Knowledge of the Saresii and that was more or less over a million years ago. The book told about a group Saresii women fleeing a terrible war against an advanced and relentless foe. The Saresii women on a quest to find a new weapon or way to defeat this ruthless unstoppable enemy travelled the galaxy in a long and aimless odyssey, that lasted centuries. At least according to the vague and fairy tale style story unfolding in the book upon her lap. At the end of that quest they found a secret, mystical place called -The Palace of Sojo-. The resting place of a real goddess, revealing to the Saresii women that there was another way to conquer evil and male aggression, which was of course the source of all evil and misery in the Universe. The other way was lust and the power of desire for carnal pleasure. Some of the Saresiii returned to their hoime world and swept away all male dominance, and laying the foundation to the Second Age of Knowledge for the Saresii society and the all female oriented society it has become. Several of the women however remained with the goddess and founded the Sojonit order.Worshipping the godess and in return gain the secrets of the mating habits and carnal pleasures to every sentient species in the Universe and a mystical power to provide it. Of course this story had been retold over many ages and its language and details transformed into the same vague and poetic language, found in virtually every religious text and lore throughout the history of religions, but the secret power and the described knowledge was quite real. Fully trained Sojonits gained the ability to shape shift, to transform into any being and with it also gain the knowledge how to provide carnal pleasure. How this power was obtained or how it exactly worked was not yet revealed to Wetmouth. She was still at the very beginning of her training and first had to learn and study all the many ways her own species did those things. Atr the final stage of her path of training, she and other apprentice sisters were taken to the Palace of Sojo, where they received their final training and received that secret power. The Sojonites also retained much of the technological advances, the Saresii achieved during the First Age of Knowledge, technology far advanced and long lost by the Saresii of today. The order maintained temples all over the galaxy and in places not known to the dominant societies of the Upward sector. The Sojonits traveled the Galaxy offering their skills to the richest customers who gladly pay the high sums that were charged for a night with a Sojonit. All Sojonit all dressed and looked alike, thanks to their masks. The masks prime reason were to erase all individuality, and so no one would fall in love with a particular sister but with their brand and service instead. Faria looked up and remembered how she came to this island. Back then she was seven or maybe eight years old, her mother a Skaakh, living in a trash bag plastic tent in the Slums around the city of Sin 4. She remembered her mother to be almost as thin as a Stik, the true natives of this world. Faria did not know how her mother ended up in the slums. Maybe she had been born there, or had escaped the the meat markets, where humans and other sentients were not sold as slaves, but as lifestock headed for Togr. Skaakh had no rights, no future and struggled daily to stay alive, by begging, stealing, scavenging and competing against the vermin of a thousand world brought to this world on purpose or by accident, for morsels of anything consumable. Skaakh had no allegiance, no had no quarrels steal from each other. kill and eat others if they had a chance. Shea remembered it all too well, the long restless nights huddling in a crevice hoping nothing big or scary would find them. The days spent by digging through the trash to find something to eat or to sell. Finding a bone with remnants of meat considered great fortune, Being a Skaakh meant to be tired,afraid and hungry and nothing else. Her mother then got sick and started to wither away and one night her mother said she would not survive another day and told her daughter to take the little row boat she had stolen and head to the Sojonit Island. She told her if she would make it she would become a high priced, well feed whore, what better life could there be? Mother had given her floating crate a last shove and the little makeshift boat was pulled out, away from the shore by a rolling surge. She cried and wanted to return, wanted her mother to come along. Her mother waved her as a last farewell when her legs gave out and what ever disease ravished her thin body, finally won over her mother&rsquo;s iron will to stay alive long enough to see her daghter escape. In many nightmares and painful memories the sight of her mother&rsquo;s body being torn appart. Heghoor scavengers had smelled her and the nightmarish terrors fought like demons with each other for evey bloody morsel. She remembered little of the days that followed,when her boat that was just a plastic shipping crate, bobbed and drifted in the ocean. The wooden plank she used as a paddle did little more than wear her out. Almost dead, to thirsty to feel any other pain or the gnawing hunger. She remembered a Flyer in the colors of the Donheer clan swooping down. With a gang of drunken men opening fire on her, She remembered little else and explained her survival only withe fact that the men were drunk. Her boat however did not survive the attack of these cowards. She hoped to drown and end all misery. She had no recollection how she made it but she was told by older sisters of the order that she had been found by the Mother Superior herself at the South shore of their exclusive island. More dead than alive. Mother Superior was very kind to her,nursed her back to health and allowed her to learn and study. She had learned much of the techniques and the secret knowledge. She gazed across the waves and wondered who or what had intervened and saved her life. The she brushed across the book to reveal another page. It was then she noticed someone approaching he gazebo and she looked up. Wearing a dark red dress, the only one of such color upon the island, she recognized the figure approaching to be the Mother Superior herself. She was the only one who did not wear pink and her dress was opaque and much less revealing, the mouth of her mask was closed. Faria got up from the bench and immediately knelt down as it was proper and awaited the approach. Once a person became a member of the Sojonites, a new name was chosen. The name was associated with the mask. The names were passed on through the ages and there had never been very many Sojont sisters. Not that there was any shortage of applicants, Females from all over the galaxy flocked to the Sojo temples in great numbers every year. Some with the genine wish to serve the goddess Sojo. Others driven by nothing else but and the promise to become the best prostitues, hoping to uncover the secret that made the Sojo so successful. Of course there were spies and infiltrators trying the same for gangs, syndicates and even entire societies. She was told not a year went by without the Kermac trying to uncover Sojo secrets. That the brand of services the Sojo provided were also a powerful tool of control, did not stay un noticed by the paperfaces of Kermac Prime. There was another much less advertised aspect of the Sojonites. They guarded their secrets and their brand with unequaled jealousy. There were many who tried to use Sojonite symbols and trademarks for their own gain. But never for long. Impostors were found dead. Abusers and those who killed or hurt Sojonites found out that there really was no place to hide and that the Sojonites never forgot. Faria&rsquo;s and the masks of all the other Sojonites were much more than a face cover to provide anonymity. When she looked up inside the eye slits of her mask she was able to activate eye switches and by doing so having access and control over a wide range of features. Her mask instantly recognized another mask and tell her the Sisters name and if the mask was indeed genuine. The mask could be sealed, and recycle breathing air for about an hour. fill her mask lips with poison for a last and final kiss. Or fire the tiny but quite powerful Forced Energy Needler hidden in the masks nose, good for two or three silent energy pulses. The readout projected onto her retina told her immediately that this was the genuine Mother Superior. The leader and high priest of the order had now reached this somewhat isolated gazebo, and Farias favorite sport. Mother superior motioned to her."Please return to your seat. I came because I wanted to talk to you and this your preferred hiding place seems a very good place for that.&rdquo; The red dressed woman sat down while Wetmouth returned to her seat, wondering with more than just curiosity but fear what this was all about. Mother Superior began. &ldquo;No need to anticipate bad things my child. Wetmouth you have been gifted with a very bright mind. I lack the proper tools to determine just how gifted you are, I know you are beyond anyone on Sin 4&rdquo; " I am humbled by your assessment Mother Superior, but if the tests I devised and administered, I don&rsquo;t exceed level seven on the Kermac Intellect Assessment scale.&rdquo; &ldquo;Child, that is about the same as an IQ of 400 on the Saresii scale,which is accepted by the fabled Union.. These are but numbers and semantics, fact is that you are smart. I would commit a crime against nature and you if I would allow you to become a working Sojo.&rdquo; &ldquo;Mother Superior have I failed in my studies or service?&rdquo; Mother Superior put her hand on Wetmouth&rsquo;s knee. &ldquo;No of course not, I am very pleased in all you do, but you must explore and use your real gift. I will therefore grant you the right to wear the Veil of Abstinence. It will prohibit you offering Sojo services. I will also send you to Alvor&rsquo;s Cove. SIster Morninglory who is at our temple there will take you to Union space and help you to become a Union citizen Here on Sin 4 they speak derogatory about the United Stars of the Galaxy, but you can trust me,only there can you fully develop your gift. They will recognize your gift very fast and open doors to Universities and the lofty Science council. Wetmouth knew about the Veil of Abstinence it was very rarely given to Sisters who received special tasks where the Love making would interfere. Her Intellect understood very well the opportunity and the reasons why the Mother Superior said all this, but on an emotional level she was afraid to leave. &ldquo;I will obey your will, Mother Superior.&rdquo; &ldquo;I know change can be frightening but this world can offer you nothing. It would anger the Spirit of the goddess Sojo herself If I permitted to waste such incredible intellect."