Comander Poe Dameron (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
helluva_pilot) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
driftfleet2016-09-14 11:09 pm
helluva_pilot) wrote in driftfleet2016-09-14 11:09 pm
Entry tags:
(no subject)
Who: Poe Dameron
Broadcast: Everyone
Action: Caprine
When: 9/15
[Video]
[Here’s your local hotshot flyboy, Poe Dameron. He’s got on an orange jumpsuit, probably picked it up at the last stop, because it’s his color. And he gives the camera an awkward smile.
BB-8, his droid, is with him.]
Hey everyone. So… a really wise man said I should tell my story. Tell people about where I’m from. And I was thinking he’s right. I haven’t said much just because I don’t normally have much to say, but… maybe a lot of us have more in common than we know.
My name’s Poe Dameron. Commander, if you want the rank. I’m an X-Wing pilot, designation Black Leader. That means I’m in charge of all the X-Wing squadrons for the Resistance.
[He pauses, organizing his thoughts.]
For this to make sense, I’ve got to give you some history. It’s a bit of a story. I appreciate you listening.
A long time ago, in my galaxy, there was an interstellar government called the Republic. It had been around for thousands of years. It sure as hell wasn’t perfect, and it had been in decline for a long time. There was a peacekeeping organization called the Jedi Order that acted as its protectors. There’s a lot of mystical stuff that goes on with that. Don’t ask me. I’m just a pilot.
When things started to go really wrong was when a guy named Palpatine got elected to the senate. No one knew at the time, but he was up to a lot of bad stuff behind the scenes. He started gathering power, sowing strife. He was something that’s the opposite of a Jedi, called Sith.
A group of separatist systems started a war with the Republic. At the time, the Republic army was all clones, so the conflict got called the Clone Wars. It was ugly. I've heard a lot of stories about the how and why of it, and I can't give you a straight answer because everyone's got a spin, but I've heard things about Palpatine being involved behind the scenes. And Palpatine sure used that war as a way to convince the Galactic Senate to give him unprecedented power.
When the war ended, the Republic was done. Palpatine reorganized it into the Galactic Empire. Almost all of the Jedi were killed. Palpatine claimed they were attempting a coup. My dad said he never bought that line—and I've heard a story or two passed down about Jedi getting gunned down by clone troopers. Anyway, I make it a policy to not take a guy who commits genocide and mass enslavement at his word.
And Palpatine eventually stopped playing around and disbanded the remains of the Senate. He became absolute Emperor.
The declining Republic hadn’t been great, but the Empire was… evil. Star Systems were conquered and put under military rule. Entire populations were directly enslaved or put to work in indentured servitude. Millions of regular people died, of starvation, of disease, being executed for peaceful political disagreements. Palpatine had massive war ships built, called Star Destroyers, and when that wasn’t enough, he started on the weapon to end all weapons: the Death Star.
There were people who fought against it. The group was called the Rebellion. One of the leaders was someone a lot of you might have met: General Organa, though at the time she was just Princess Leia. She was trying to get plans for the Death Star to the Rebellion when she got captured. She got tortured, but refused to give up her comrades. Then her captors threatened her home planet. Alderaan. She gave up the information, like any of us would have, for the lives of everyone on an entire planet. And the Death Star destroyed Alderaan anyway.
[Deep breath.]
Yeah. The Death Star could destroy an entire planet. Millions upon millions of people, dead in one instant of pain and fear.
It’s a pattern you’re gonna hear repeated.
Thanks to a new pilot named Luke Skywalker, the Rebellion destroyed the Death Star. That Death Star. Then it was full guerilla warfare. The Rebellion, always on the run, fighting the Empire with everything they had.
That’s where my parents come in. My dad, Kes Dameron, was a Pathfinder who served under General Solo. My mom, Shara Bey, flew an A-Wing for the Rebellion in every major battle. I was just a little kid back then. All I really remember is that one day, my parents dropped me off with my grandpa, and then I didn’t see them again for a long time. I learned later that they were out there, fighting for me. Because they wanted me to grow up in a place where people didn’t have to be scared all the time.
The details of the battles don’t matter. You buy me a drink sometime, and I can tell you stories that my dad told me, or that some of the old vets did when I became a pilot later. But it ended with another Death Star about to come on line and the Rebellion destroying it—and killing Palpatine in the process.
The Empire tried to fight on, but after they got their tails handed to them at the Battle of Jakku, they signed the Galactic Concordance. The Concordance forced it to cease hostilities, stop recruiting stormtroopers, and supposedly stop torturing people. Basically took out its teeth.
Out of that wreckage, the New Republic started. My parents came home and raised me. My mom taught me the fundamentals of flying before I could even spell my name, and died when I was eight. My dad’s still alive and telling stupid jokes. And I grew up on stories of the people they’d served with, and the sacrifices so many had made to throw off a cloud of fear and reach for something more hopeful.
I joined the New Republic Starfleet as soon as I was old enough. And let me tell you. The New Republic wasn’t great. After a few decades, it wasn’t even good. Hell, it was barely adequate, with so much infighting between factions in the senate that nothing ever got done. But no one went to sleep wondering if today, their entire damn planet would get blown up. No one went to sleep wondering if tomorrow there’d be ships in the sky and they’d be coughing their lungs out in an arms factory. And for all its flaws, the New Republic pushed for peace and demilitarization, because they didn't want to repeat the mistakes of the Old Republic.
But there was some deep, black corruption in the senate. A group of people who had really liked life under the Empire, I guess, working to undermine the New Republic from within. And conflict started up on the edges of the New Republic territory. Terrorism, piracy, torture. Gross violations of the Galactic Concordance.
Senator Organa got driven out of the senate by her political enemies, her reputation smeared, because she’d been investigating the attacks and the corruption. Instead of giving up, she went underground and started really digging. Because she remembered how things had gone before, and saw the shape of history about to repeat itself. She founded the Resistance, to fight the threat that finally gave itself a name: the First Order.
That’s where I come in. I disobeyed my commander’s orders to investigate a missing freighter that everyone told me to leave alone. I found TIE Fighters—the same kind of fighters the Empire used, which the First Order use now—and some ugly implications. I was headed for a discharge for sticking my nose where it didn’t belong. General Organa offered me a job.
And I took it. Because I remembered everything my parents had ever told me, about why they’d left me to go fight. About what it had been like to live in a galaxy without hope. To live in fear. And I could feel everything they’d fought for dying in front of me.
I fly for the Resistance, and I’m proud of it. General Organa's given me and my squadrons a lot of tough missions. The hardest she sent me on was a solo flight out to Jakku. She wanted to me to meet an old friend of hers, who had information on where to find her brother—Luke Skywalker. The last Jedi.
The First Order landed on Jakku right on my heels. They executed the entire village I’d been in. Everyone. I… saw it. They captured me. They tortured me, trying to find out where my astromech had gone, because he had the information about Luke. I held out. Then someone you might now be acquainted with, Kylo Ren, tore my brain apart with some kind of mind probe.
[Long pause. BB-8 nudges him. He pats the droid and gets himself going again.]
I was headed for more torture and an execution when Finn saved my life. He got me out of there. We escaped… it’s a complicated story, but that’s the gist of it.
And the First Order, with its cover now really blown, made its big move. Under the order of General Hux, an even bigger superweapon than the Death Star, called Starkiller Base, destroyed the entire Hosnian System. That system was targeted because that’s where the new Galactic Senate met. But they didn’t just destroy the senate. They murdered every civilian, every menial, every traveler, every ship whether it was military or not. Millions, dead in an instant.
We got information that the Resistance base on D’Qar was the next target. We scrambled all our fighters to make one desperate attack to try to destroy Starkiller Base before it could be used again. We succeeded, thanks to Finn, his friend Rey, and… General Solo’s sacrifice. It’s one victory. It’s not the end. Not even close. I can’t tell you right now, if we’re gonna win or lose.
I can tell you I lost a lot of good pilots. A lot of friends.
[He straightens, determined.]
But it’s worth it. Their lives, their sacrifices, are worth it. Because fighting for hope, fighting for the lives of people weaker than yourself, is always worth it. That’s the legacy my parents gave me. That’s the reason I resist. And that’s the reason I fly.
And that’s the reason none of us will ever give up.
Thank you for listening.
Broadcast: Everyone
Action: Caprine
When: 9/15
[Video]
[Here’s your local hotshot flyboy, Poe Dameron. He’s got on an orange jumpsuit, probably picked it up at the last stop, because it’s his color. And he gives the camera an awkward smile.
BB-8, his droid, is with him.]
Hey everyone. So… a really wise man said I should tell my story. Tell people about where I’m from. And I was thinking he’s right. I haven’t said much just because I don’t normally have much to say, but… maybe a lot of us have more in common than we know.
My name’s Poe Dameron. Commander, if you want the rank. I’m an X-Wing pilot, designation Black Leader. That means I’m in charge of all the X-Wing squadrons for the Resistance.
[He pauses, organizing his thoughts.]
For this to make sense, I’ve got to give you some history. It’s a bit of a story. I appreciate you listening.
A long time ago, in my galaxy, there was an interstellar government called the Republic. It had been around for thousands of years. It sure as hell wasn’t perfect, and it had been in decline for a long time. There was a peacekeeping organization called the Jedi Order that acted as its protectors. There’s a lot of mystical stuff that goes on with that. Don’t ask me. I’m just a pilot.
When things started to go really wrong was when a guy named Palpatine got elected to the senate. No one knew at the time, but he was up to a lot of bad stuff behind the scenes. He started gathering power, sowing strife. He was something that’s the opposite of a Jedi, called Sith.
A group of separatist systems started a war with the Republic. At the time, the Republic army was all clones, so the conflict got called the Clone Wars. It was ugly. I've heard a lot of stories about the how and why of it, and I can't give you a straight answer because everyone's got a spin, but I've heard things about Palpatine being involved behind the scenes. And Palpatine sure used that war as a way to convince the Galactic Senate to give him unprecedented power.
When the war ended, the Republic was done. Palpatine reorganized it into the Galactic Empire. Almost all of the Jedi were killed. Palpatine claimed they were attempting a coup. My dad said he never bought that line—and I've heard a story or two passed down about Jedi getting gunned down by clone troopers. Anyway, I make it a policy to not take a guy who commits genocide and mass enslavement at his word.
And Palpatine eventually stopped playing around and disbanded the remains of the Senate. He became absolute Emperor.
The declining Republic hadn’t been great, but the Empire was… evil. Star Systems were conquered and put under military rule. Entire populations were directly enslaved or put to work in indentured servitude. Millions of regular people died, of starvation, of disease, being executed for peaceful political disagreements. Palpatine had massive war ships built, called Star Destroyers, and when that wasn’t enough, he started on the weapon to end all weapons: the Death Star.
There were people who fought against it. The group was called the Rebellion. One of the leaders was someone a lot of you might have met: General Organa, though at the time she was just Princess Leia. She was trying to get plans for the Death Star to the Rebellion when she got captured. She got tortured, but refused to give up her comrades. Then her captors threatened her home planet. Alderaan. She gave up the information, like any of us would have, for the lives of everyone on an entire planet. And the Death Star destroyed Alderaan anyway.
[Deep breath.]
Yeah. The Death Star could destroy an entire planet. Millions upon millions of people, dead in one instant of pain and fear.
It’s a pattern you’re gonna hear repeated.
Thanks to a new pilot named Luke Skywalker, the Rebellion destroyed the Death Star. That Death Star. Then it was full guerilla warfare. The Rebellion, always on the run, fighting the Empire with everything they had.
That’s where my parents come in. My dad, Kes Dameron, was a Pathfinder who served under General Solo. My mom, Shara Bey, flew an A-Wing for the Rebellion in every major battle. I was just a little kid back then. All I really remember is that one day, my parents dropped me off with my grandpa, and then I didn’t see them again for a long time. I learned later that they were out there, fighting for me. Because they wanted me to grow up in a place where people didn’t have to be scared all the time.
The details of the battles don’t matter. You buy me a drink sometime, and I can tell you stories that my dad told me, or that some of the old vets did when I became a pilot later. But it ended with another Death Star about to come on line and the Rebellion destroying it—and killing Palpatine in the process.
The Empire tried to fight on, but after they got their tails handed to them at the Battle of Jakku, they signed the Galactic Concordance. The Concordance forced it to cease hostilities, stop recruiting stormtroopers, and supposedly stop torturing people. Basically took out its teeth.
Out of that wreckage, the New Republic started. My parents came home and raised me. My mom taught me the fundamentals of flying before I could even spell my name, and died when I was eight. My dad’s still alive and telling stupid jokes. And I grew up on stories of the people they’d served with, and the sacrifices so many had made to throw off a cloud of fear and reach for something more hopeful.
I joined the New Republic Starfleet as soon as I was old enough. And let me tell you. The New Republic wasn’t great. After a few decades, it wasn’t even good. Hell, it was barely adequate, with so much infighting between factions in the senate that nothing ever got done. But no one went to sleep wondering if today, their entire damn planet would get blown up. No one went to sleep wondering if tomorrow there’d be ships in the sky and they’d be coughing their lungs out in an arms factory. And for all its flaws, the New Republic pushed for peace and demilitarization, because they didn't want to repeat the mistakes of the Old Republic.
But there was some deep, black corruption in the senate. A group of people who had really liked life under the Empire, I guess, working to undermine the New Republic from within. And conflict started up on the edges of the New Republic territory. Terrorism, piracy, torture. Gross violations of the Galactic Concordance.
Senator Organa got driven out of the senate by her political enemies, her reputation smeared, because she’d been investigating the attacks and the corruption. Instead of giving up, she went underground and started really digging. Because she remembered how things had gone before, and saw the shape of history about to repeat itself. She founded the Resistance, to fight the threat that finally gave itself a name: the First Order.
That’s where I come in. I disobeyed my commander’s orders to investigate a missing freighter that everyone told me to leave alone. I found TIE Fighters—the same kind of fighters the Empire used, which the First Order use now—and some ugly implications. I was headed for a discharge for sticking my nose where it didn’t belong. General Organa offered me a job.
And I took it. Because I remembered everything my parents had ever told me, about why they’d left me to go fight. About what it had been like to live in a galaxy without hope. To live in fear. And I could feel everything they’d fought for dying in front of me.
I fly for the Resistance, and I’m proud of it. General Organa's given me and my squadrons a lot of tough missions. The hardest she sent me on was a solo flight out to Jakku. She wanted to me to meet an old friend of hers, who had information on where to find her brother—Luke Skywalker. The last Jedi.
The First Order landed on Jakku right on my heels. They executed the entire village I’d been in. Everyone. I… saw it. They captured me. They tortured me, trying to find out where my astromech had gone, because he had the information about Luke. I held out. Then someone you might now be acquainted with, Kylo Ren, tore my brain apart with some kind of mind probe.
[Long pause. BB-8 nudges him. He pats the droid and gets himself going again.]
I was headed for more torture and an execution when Finn saved my life. He got me out of there. We escaped… it’s a complicated story, but that’s the gist of it.
And the First Order, with its cover now really blown, made its big move. Under the order of General Hux, an even bigger superweapon than the Death Star, called Starkiller Base, destroyed the entire Hosnian System. That system was targeted because that’s where the new Galactic Senate met. But they didn’t just destroy the senate. They murdered every civilian, every menial, every traveler, every ship whether it was military or not. Millions, dead in an instant.
We got information that the Resistance base on D’Qar was the next target. We scrambled all our fighters to make one desperate attack to try to destroy Starkiller Base before it could be used again. We succeeded, thanks to Finn, his friend Rey, and… General Solo’s sacrifice. It’s one victory. It’s not the end. Not even close. I can’t tell you right now, if we’re gonna win or lose.
I can tell you I lost a lot of good pilots. A lot of friends.
[He straightens, determined.]
But it’s worth it. Their lives, their sacrifices, are worth it. Because fighting for hope, fighting for the lives of people weaker than yourself, is always worth it. That’s the legacy my parents gave me. That’s the reason I resist. And that’s the reason I fly.
And that’s the reason none of us will ever give up.
Thank you for listening.
[text; private]
got more stories about your dad, if you want to hear them over drinks. Leia and Luke, too.
[text; private]
I'd really like that, sir. I'll even buy the first round.
[text; private]
hell, if you want, you can even bring Finn along and I'll tell you both about Luke and the tauntaun on Hoth.
[text; private]
[text; private]
video, open to all
You can take the girl out of the Jedi, but you can't take the Jedi out of the girl, it seems. Ironically, the more time she spends away from the Order, the more Jedi-like she seems to become.]
... Thank you, Commander Dameron. For sharing all that. ... And for your service.
I'd like to add, if you or anyone else has any questions about the Jedi, or the Clone Wars, or about the decline of the Republic-- the Old Republic, I suppose-- I'd be happy to fill in the gaps as a representative from that era.
video
So I have a lot of questions. Or hell, more like I don't know where to start asking, half the time. I'd love to hear about how things really were.
video
You have to understand... something as big as the Chancellor being a Sith Lord, it wasn't-- it wasn't obvious. None of us found out about it until we got here, and somebody from further ahead in the timeline told us. Anakin struggled with that one most of all. Chancellor Palpatine's always been something of a... I don't know. Like a kindly grandfather to him. To most of the Republic, really. That's how people see him.
It was only obvious in retrospect. Once we had the missing pieces of the puzzle. Little things that had never made sense before... suddenly did.
video
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video; broadcast to all
[Hux is really honestly tired of the atrocities the Republic and the Rebellion also committed being swept under the rug as if it didn't matter. They didn't get to claim any moral high ground in his view.]
You're leaving out bits of the story, however, that I believe are important to tell as well.
So for anyone who is listening, I am the one and same General Hux who approved his execution order. I ordered the destruction of the New Republic and the Senate once and for all.
Why did I do it? Well, the pilot did such a lovely job of covering a basic run down of galactic history though a very biased one. He didn't live through the days of the Empire, however, he didn't see what happened when the New Republic did when they came to power. But, for now, I will ignore the atrocities the Rebellion committed, the genocide they justified for the sole reason of 'the Empire did it first' but it's never forgotten.
What I will mention is a Republic forcing the Imperial fleet to disarm while at the same time funneling funds to Organa and her Resistance so she could relive her glory days of fighting a so called noble cause. I will mention Republic forces targeting non-military Imperial targets. Attacking planets and star systems which refused to bow to the Republic.
How do I know this? I admit that subject is a little personal since one of the planets the New Republic attacked was my home planet.
I watched as the Republic attacked a planet content to remain peacefully under Imperial rule. I watched as they attacked an academy of young officers training to serve a cause they believed in, to protect their galaxy.
And now what did we have? Chaos. Warlords seizing power and destroying trade and commerce routes. Senators invested in their own interests at the expense of the star systems the Republic could not or would not protect.
So yes, I destroyed the festering rot before it infected the galaxy and I am proud of it. The Republic is gone once and for all.
video; broadcast to all
You know what? I ain't gonna argue with you, Hux. You indict yourself better than I ever could.
[He'd rather just go have his drink with General Solo than roll around in the dirt with Hux.]
video; broadcast to all
You can't honestly believe the Republic and the Resistance haven't sunk to some fairly low levels, despite what the Empire and First Order have done.
truly
[And that's what angers Hux. He doesn't have to lie about some of these things but even if the Resistance and the Republic won't take responsibility he will make sure to speak out.
He knows what he's done. He knows a lot of what Palpatine and the Empire did and much of it he won't even deny.]
video; broadcast to all
video
But she finally gives in. She won't comment on the politics of it all, but the thing that really gets her goat is the way Hux justifies it to himself.]
Okay. So. Let me get this straight.
According to your logic here, if I punch you and you cut my hand off to defend yourself, it's then perfectly acceptable for me to then go and kill you, and also your family, and also your friends, and a few random people on the street you chatted to once. You know. Just to be sure.
video
At least this time you're not threatening to, oh what was it you said before, make my life miserable because I won't let you determine what I do here.
[Yeah, how is that going, Ahsoka?
He's still curious though, he wants to know what she disagreed with the Jedi about so much that she would leave the Order.]
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DISCONNECT
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Maintenance around here certainly is poor.]
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[video; ota welp]
Han Solo. Technically, I ain't a General anymore, I resigned my commission a while back. [Yes, he's being nitpicky here.] Anyway, if any of you have a question about the Rebellion, the Empire, or the Republic--the new one, I was too young for the old one--I've got an answer.
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[ dramatic history lesson - meet anakin's absolute avoidance of the future ]
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How was the maneuvering capability on those things?
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video » private
steve sighs. this all connects to the anonymous message he has gotten. the first order, a man named hux. ]
Commander Dameron, I'm Captain Steve Rogers. I'd love to have a word with you, if you have the time.
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Yes, sir. What's on your mind?
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You okay?
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Why would he share something like this openly, almost as an announcement? Why would he single out this General Organa- or, Princess Leia- as the sole survivor of instantaneous genocide, and go into details of her personal life.
Unless...
Robin rises, makes her way through the ship. Of course, if she'd bothered listening to the comments left after the video she'd have her answer, but that thought didn't occur to her. As it is, she finds Poe quickly, and if he's behind a closed door, knocks politely. As soon as she sees him in person, she blurts out without pretext or formality.]
They're here, aren't they? Your enemies.
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Yeah. The guy who signed my execution order and had me tortured. And... the guy who ripped through my mind. They're both here.
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[ More guts than he has to tell his own, that's for sure. ]
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