**Creekside Castle**

Well, technically it wasn't a castle, it wasn't even really considered a large house by most people's standards. In fact it was just a mass produced, prefabricated home that Kalen had ordered from the Selonian Fabrication Corporation(SFC) during his recent diplomatic mission on Arx. He had even got a great deal on the 2 storey, 2 bedroom, 1.5 bathroom plus den home. 

But to Kalen and Corra it was most certainly a castle. It was a corner property on the new ‘Creekside’ subdivision of Aliso City. The house sat on 2 acres of land right near a bend in what the locals had come to refer to as North Creek. At the back of property, they would have access to the creek itself and a large sandbar on the interior corner of the bend in the creek that resembled a 50 foot long 20 foot wide beach. Though with the planets stable orbit and lack of wobble in axis of rotation, the autumn type weather mean the water was often quite cold, though Karracca had gleefully waded in from a smile at the end of the building day to wash his fur of the grime dirt and sawdust from the day work.

The home had arrived as a kit via a large landing barge that was equipped with its own crane. The SFC VP for sales that Kalen had made the deal with at the banquet at the Flitz hotel ball room on Arx had even given Kalen free shipping and delivery to Kalen, as they had a few other deliveries to perform in the Aliso system anyway. After the kit had been dropped off the landing barge had returned to its mother shop, a large bulk freighter that SFC used to deliver material and equipment of all kinds to their various customers and clients spread across the galaxy.

The house had been put together and completed in only 2 days. Several of the tailors' friends from the Ascendant Legion who were either stationed on Aliso or lived there and had graciously helped Kalen, Karracca and D with the building project. At the end of the second day, a delivery of long timbers had arrived via landspeeder haulers, and before the day was through, the work detail of Jedi and navy men had finished building a large deck and a 12×12 shed.

There was a 20 metre by 15 metre wide gravel area in front of the westward facing house that was used for landspeeder parking. Though it should be noted at the time Kalen didn't even own a landspeeder, they were about a 20 minute walk away from downtown Aliso and only 10 minutes further to get to the Pinnacle. So it didn't really matter much, but at least he had parking for his guests. 

In addition to the lumber and the house kit, Kalen had also imported 6 Pantalomin peach trees and planted the fast growing trees in the back left corner of the property. The trees were capable of producing 4 crops each year, and the peaches were, as Corra put it ‘The best tasting fruit ever created.’

The next day Kalen and Corra would move in. And the day after that they would have a house warming party. Though Kalen had offered Karracca the spare bedroom, he didn't want to disturb the lovebirds, so he politely declined and said he would just stay in his quarters aboard the new shop they had just bought.

Ode to Canada
It's my homely native land
True north? Strong and free?

**The Wayfinders Find a Way**

Tahiri had thought that sending her 2 diplomatic Jedi-types and their fast new luxury light freighter to serve as the research and scouting vessel to assist the Wayfinder Society on a mission to study a migrating pod of Purgils was a great idea. It was a rather large migrating pod at that , over 30 full grown space whales migrating from their ancestral homes in a rogue asteroid field near the Ralltir system to some other galaxy.

What she had not known was that Kalen secretly, though understandably, had a deep and raw hatred for Purgils. And to be honest you couldn't really blame him for his hatred when you consider the fact that Purgils had killed about 96% of people Kalen had ever known. Of the 50,000 that had begun riding the wake of the whales in that far away galaxy where Kalen and 2 generations of survivors had spent the last 70 odd years.

When Kalen read the mission profile he had even considered outright rejecting the mission and telling Tahiri to find someone else to do the mission. But a sense of professionalism and the large amount of bonus pay that came attached with the mission had changed his mind. 

So with that the Corra IV hosted 4 Collegium scientists with a bunch of sensor probes and other equipment for a 4 day round trip to study the pod of whales. Kalen had asked if Karracca wouldn't mind leading the mission for the most part, and made some story about wanting to focus on his meditations. Karracca, though, knew enough of Kalen's backstory he intuited that it might have something to do with the Purgils and readily accepted.

The first 3 days had gone without incident. The scientists were studying the Purgils at one of their last feeding ground before they began their long journey across intra galactic space; they would move back away from the large pod before they departed on their long journey the next day, and study their departure from a distance. Then a knock suddenly came at Kalen's cabin door as he was reading a Jedi tome. It was a Style Ataru training manual, and was nearly 700 pages long, but it just so happened that 38 of the pages near the end of the large leather bound book were actually written by his grandfather. Zujenia of COU had been kind enough to send him a link to an antique dealer who had a copy for sale and Kalen had received the Tome only days before they left to pick up the scientists.

“Yeah, what's up?”

“Oh, Master Joss, Master Karracca begs your pardon but he would like to know if you would kike to say anything to the Purgils sir.” His protocol droid said through the door.

Kalen was a bit dumbstruck. Say something to them? The monsters that killed almost everyone he knew ...wait a second, he thought it over, and realized the implied statement in what D-3PO said was that they could actually speak to them. Kalen and his people had never been able to actually make contact with the whales, they simply jumped to hyperspace in the wake of the pod and had ridden that the whole way home. He spring out of his bed and headed to the bridge.

After several minutes of explaining his backstory to the scientist operating the translator device, Kalen finally got to what he wanted to ask the Purgils. The scientists thought for a few as to how best to word the question Kalen wanted answered. Kalen looked out the bridges large cockpit window at mid sized, presumably adolescent Purgil that was sitting face to face with the ship.

After typing on the device for a bit the Purgil made a noise in response.

“He says yes, that pod that travels through an area of space is a distant cousin of his. He said they will be meeting them at their mating grounds next winter.” The scientist said.

Kalen thought for a minute “Can you ask him if he heard about a story of 5 ships that hitched a ride with that pod about 8 months ago?”

“Sure.” The scientists typed away for a minute and the Purgil burped another response. “He said, yeah, they heard a story about that. He referred to the ships as ‘wake surfers’. They were all sorry to hear that one of the ships was destroyed sadly…”

“Wait, only 1? What happened to the other 3?” Kalen asked hurriedly, realizing he only saw his mother and fathers vessel actually destroyed. The other 3 dreadnaughts just hadn't arrived with them. This meant Kalen's cousins and roughly 35000 other people might still be alive.

The Purgil replied to the scientists once again “He says he heard that 3 of the wake surfers had fallen off on the way.”

Over the next 30 minutes the adolescent Purgil had gone and brought back his mother, the pod leader and Kalen was able to ask if they could relay a message to their cousins and have them try to rescue the ships that had ‘wiped out’ on their way back.

The scientists smiled when he read the translation “She says you seem like a good lad and she will relay the message. Though her cousins may not appreciate freeloaders trying to hitch a ride, from your story I can tell that you meant no harm. They will return to the place where they dropped you off in about a year and a half, I will ask them to drop off any surviving ships they find there for you.”

Kalen processed his thanks to the large old Purgil and then went back to his cabin, and began crying tears of joy. His people might not all be dead after all.