Seated within the Glorious Jewel of the Hutts, the Winter Palace is situated on a remote island near the planet’s equator. Although blanketed with the pollution from Hutt industry, its location makes the climate hot and humid. Surrounded with trees and vines, it could be considered to be a paradise, even among the barren wasteland of Nal Hutta. Outside of the Winter Palace, a network of sewer pipes transfer the waste from the palace to wherever seems far enough to dump into the oceans surrounding the island. Flora and fauna that have adapted to the Hutt’s environmental changes thrive in the polluted forests surrounding the Winter Palace.

Stepping through its gilded gates, the lavish interior serves as the main audience chamber. Once belonging to the wealth of Jiliac Desilijic Tiron, the gleaming stone of the main aisle leads up to a Hutt’s dais lined with an expensive carpet. Beautiful tapestries line the high walls, telling of the sordid histories of those who woven them, awaiting execution in Jiliac’s dungeons.

Finally, the antechamber to the "throne" room is illuminated from above with high-skylighted ceilings. Constructed from lightly colored stone, the antechamber might have been where the late Hutt entertained his guests before an audience with spice and exotic dancers. In the hands of the Hutt Kajidics, however, these traditions have continued as the Winter Palace now serves as a front for criminal and business ventures that come and go.

The smell was absolutely revolting.

Lontra Boglach, former CorSec and farm boy, was used to disgusting scenes. Back on the farm, it wasn’t uncommon for Whoop-hogs facing a food shortage to pile on the runt of the litter and literally squish their sibling to death so they could cannibalize it afterwards. The view was detestable but manageable to an iron stomach. However, if you came upon that scene when the remaining carcass had hours to rot in the heat of the pig barn under the cooking rays of a summer sun, the stench was so abhorrent you could be forgiven to think all that was sinister in the galaxy had congregated in that barn.

Unfortunately for Lontra, he was all too familiar with that scent working the impoverished estates of his uncle. And yet it was here, as another wet, explosive flatulence echoed out from the rim of the refresher, that Lontra’s stomach began to turn. Holding his breath turned out to be as futile as breathing through his robes, no matter his attempts Lontra’s eyes watered from the assault on his senses.

Taking a moment to catch his breath, Lontra stuck his head out the entrance and confirmed once again that they were alone. Outside the heinous three-stalled refresher, the palace itself was opulent. It featured a grand main chamber with an expensive carpet lining the floor made of a gleaming stone kept highly polished, as if the room was always ready to hold a grand ball. From what Lontra could see from his spot, the antechamber to the throne room boasted high-skylighted ceilings and was constructed from lightly colored stone, while the walls were adorned with beautiful tapestries that Lontra knew had a sinister background, having been woven by prisoners awaiting execution in palace’s dungeons.

In another life, Lontra had spent years researching the most dangerous of the galaxy’s cartels and Nal Hutta’s Winter Palace was often involved as an ongoing hot potato that passed between the Hutt cartels. Set against the backdrop of the planet's swampy and heavily polluted environment, the Winter Palace stood in stark contrast by embodying the wealth and, more importantly, power of the Hutts. Power that was often centralized in the criminal underworld and the filth that attempted to profit from it.

Growing increasingly nauseous with his surroundings, Lontra heard a long drawn out expulsion of gas that trumpetted out of the middle stall of the refresher. Having kicked a wooden wedge under the back of the closed door and ensuring the lock was latched, Lontra made his way back into the refresher and stood before the middle stall.

“Hurry up, bud! I need to talk to you.” Lontra stated firmly before carefully listening for a response.

“Piss off, creep!” The man’s response carried a justified sense of annoyance in tone. “There’s no show for you in here.”

“Not here for a show, Tork. Just here for you to tell me where Xod is.” Lontra braced himself. His own heartbeat rang through his eardrums as the seconds slowed down, but then the sound of panicked movement from the stall drowned out the silence.

A heavy, chest high stomp from the Jedi smashed into the stall door and popped the lock. The door swung in and rattled off the forehead of a man desperate to pull his trousers up. A string of curses sounded from the enraged being, but they lacked a coherent thought. Instead, Tork immediately pulled the retreating door back inside the stall and threw his left arm around it to present a black clad armguard with a growing flame on its end.

Despite being several metres away, Lontra felt like his hand was already on the wrist of the man as he concentrated on the threat. Throwing his own hand to the sky, Lontra smirked as the man’s arm flung like a puppet in sequence upwards. Flames bellowed out of the armguard across the ceiling for several intense moments before an alarm deafened the room and a cold stream of water erupted from the palace’s fire suppression systems.

Raising his voice over the alarm and sprinkler systems, Lontra proceeded to shout and spat out mouthfuls of water between sentences.

“Let’s not make this any worse, Tork. Tell me where the hutt is!”