Dandoran: Fields of Promiscuity Livestock Holding

The engineers at Kalevala Spaceworks would pale in despair at seeing one of their renowned luxury yachts packed full of filthy livestock, but Py'zah the Hutt demands he be served only the freshest ingredients, and the simplest way to ensure the quality of his meals is by slaughtering his food on-site. The Fields of Promiscuity has facilities to hold both predator and prey, catering to any taste, however mundane or exotic.

The livestock holding deck of the yacht has been separated into two areas, in order to keep the more bloodthirsty of Py'zah's meals away from their natural prey. The herbivore stock are kept in tidy rows of individual stalls, much like speeders in a parking lot covered with manure slurry, separated only by durasteel rails and troughs full of water and sedative-laced slop—all the better to keep the various breeds of animal from getting too rowdy and attempting to stampede. Meanwhile, on the opposite end of the deck, restless predators are left to stew in durasteel-floored cages, with the scent of the prey livestock pumped through the air to keep them on the edge of a feeding frenzy. Some of these cages are unoccupied, doors left open so they can more easily be sprayed down by the ship's crew.

The "processing area"—a kind name for the bloody business of butchering meat—takes up the middle quarter of the holding deck. Py'zah insists that the cuts of meat are prepared by the traditional method of "carving it up with an enormous knife", claiming that more technologically-advanced methods create a noticeable difference in taste. Thus, butcher droids (reprogrammed protocol units, rather than combat models) go about their work at massive steel tables in the midst of conveyor belts to carry the choicest cuts to the kitchen, and bins full of "waste" cuts given to the predators as meals.

Manually added by Master Dacien Victae

The object before you is a rough-hewn obsidian cylinder, forty centimetres long and five centimetres in diameter, that seems to have been knapped from a larger piece of material with primitive hand tools. Strangely, the cylinder is always frigid to the touch, regardless of the surrounding temperature. Small, blocky glyphs in ancient Sith have been inscribed in a mesh pattern around the cylinder, giving it the appearance of being wrapped in fine chains. When light strikes the cylinder just right, the rough-carved surface creates reflections that look uncannily like the Human faces. Researchers who have come into close contact with the artifact report that after spending extended periods in close proximity to it, they begin to have auditory hallucinations that resemble jingling chains and crying children.

The translation of the glyphs inscribed on the cylinder is given below.

For sorc'rors with the will to mould their fate
who find before them many threats arrayed,
an incantation fuelled by ancient hate
and deepest darkness will see them unmade.

This cylinder obsidian contains
energies drawn from vilest sacrifice
of children draped, by royal whim, in chains
and thrown into a sea entombed in ice.

A cunning sorc'ror who ignites a fire
and into it, this cylinder, extend
will summon these tormented spirits' ire
and bring enemies to a ghastly end.

And thus, if you face a superior foe,
this ritual cast, and bring upon them woe!

(The "inscription" was written as an English sonnet in iambic pentameter, rhyming scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. Because I can. :P)

Placeholder, and uploading so I can show my work. The distance between the Shadow Academy and the Dark Ascent is based on the Wiki entry for Arx listing its diameter as 13,000km and the diagonal measurement of the map of Arx (which I assume is the circumference of the planet) being 2203 px, converting to 18.54km/pixel. The distance between the centres of the two icons was 375.6px, or 6963.624km. Note: I don't expect this to have any impact whatsoever on judging, but since I put the work in to figure all this out, I was damn well going to share it. :P