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The game of Bragging Rights is simple. Someone shouts out, “I’ll bet some of you think you have mando’karla,” and the room cheers. Some brave soul goes first, knowing that they won’t have the best story there, but wanting to brag all the same. It’s just a simple headline of their best story since their last game, given that they can only brag about a thing once.
“I killed a rancor to capture my bounty!”
Cheers follow, and other verd’e shout out their own great deeds; all of these early offers just a warmup to the real fun. Those with the good stories- including the one who started the game, because a Mando’ad doesn’t start it if they can’t follow through- stand up and swear on the ka’ra that their story is true, and if their premise is interesting enough, the room will hear the story told in epic style like the Mando’ade of old; with those who think they have the best, most courageous tale each trying to go last. If the previous story is better than whatever you have, save it for the next game and better time your challenge. The point isn’t even to win, but to entertain, and a lucky audience might get several good stories out of it.
This is the third good story tonight and a definite winner, Elis is sure of it. Kelwin and Zi’gyth are on the edge of their seats in the booth beside him, just as enthralled as he is. They can only hope their little group will have stories like this one day. And now with the Empire gone and the New Republic struggling to get on its feet, the galaxy is practically wild space, full of adventures just waiting for stubborn and reckless young verd’e like them.
“-but I got through! Not a second to spare. And the pirates and Imperials both round the asteroid after me- Right into each other! Enormous fireball right on my shebs! And I sail out of there with my target safely lashed to his seat.”
“Oya!” the crowd cheers; the bar is packed with verd’e tonight, and several of the storyteller’s drinks are paid for by his audience. Elis cheers too; that has to be the end of the game. He and his friends haven’t been out on their own for very long, but he’d been in bounty hunters’ bars like this at his buir’s side since he was five and knows a final story when he hears one.
But then Fett stands up.
The room gasps and some cheer while others whisper excitedly; how anyone could beat that last story is beyond Elis, but Fett never makes a challenge that he can’t back up. And his stories are always the best, a legend in his own right.
“Mando’ade!” Fett salutes.
“Oya!” the crowd roars back.
“I tell you now on the Clans, Dha’kad, and ka’ra! That this-” he gestures down at a verd who’s been sitting silently at his side, still wearing their buy’ce, their entire beskar’gam is unpainted, with the telltale sheen of pure beskar, and Elis is certain he isn’t the only one who’s been eyeing them all night, “glor-”
The verd grabs a fistful of Fett’s cape and yanks him down.
Verd’e rush forward and there’s a rowdy struggle of at least ten bodies. Ki’gyth snorts a laugh, and Kelwin is grinning like a madman at the scene; a good fight is its own entertainment.
Finally, Fett stumbles to his feet, his companion held tightly in their chair by a whole host of others. He grins in triumph at his friend, in that way verd’e do when they know they’ll have to pay for this later, and continues.
“That this glorious son of a gundark…” His grin grows even sharper. “Farkled. Vader’s. Son.”
The room erupts. Kelwin and Ki’gyth are banging their vambraces on the table and screaming, and Elis himself is gaping. Fett’s friend must have balls of beskar! The crowd is yelling for the story and the previous storyteller yields with his hands up, clearly outshone. This may well be the game to win them all.
“So there we were…” Fett begins with the traditional intro and a wave of his hand, repeated by untold generations of Mando’ade in questionable establishments across the galaxy.
“We had just finished a job for the rebellion; taking out an Imperial supplier who thought his credits could protect him.” The crowd chuckles in dark amusement. “We’re at the Rebel base, collecting payment, and I notice that my friend’s eyes aren’t on the princess thanking us, but on the twink behind her.”
His audience laughs and cheers with delight, and Elis smirks at his friends. Kelwin shoots him a particularly sharp don’t you dare look. The beauty of having an entire visor’s worth of screen space was that there was plenty of room for another’s view, which led to some great evidence-backed stories. Elis sends a quick thank you to the ka’ra that he gets to hear one from Fett firsthand. Fett not only has their rapt attention with the headline, but he also gestures with his hands to great effect, and Elis wonders how he’d developed a talent for storytelling.
“Golden blonde hair!”
“Oya!”
“Big blue eyes!”
“Oya!”
“A goddamned lightsaber on his hip!”
“Oya!!”
Elis’ breath catches in his throat; if the Empire caught you with a lightsaber you were karked. To have been openly wearing one, that kid had to be the real deal. The verd’e around him murmur excitedly at the possibility of a living Jedi; all the bad blood between their people had been put to rest when the Sith glassed Manda’yaim. Maybe if their people and the Jedi Order had been united, the Empire would have never risen to power. It was a lesson the Children of Mandalore would never forget.
“They get themselves alone. And I stand there. Listening to the most Awkward flirting I have ever heard in my damned life!”
The room laughs loudly again and there’s more banging of vambraces. This time, Elis and Kelwin both turn to Ki’gyth who’s already giving them the gaan’takisit.
“But by the grace of the ka’ra, they go to the kid’s room. But Mando forgot-”
“-to turn their camera off!” the crowd sing-songed and burst into laughter. It was both the lifeline and bane of any Mando’ad with friends or family.
Elis tilts his head at Fett’s wordage, Mando. He glances back over Fett’s friend, who looks resigned to his fate though still clearly glaring daggers up at him. They must be Creedbound, then.
“They walk through the base, everyone sees them. Everyone looks! This skinny blonde candy dish is a hero to them!”
“They get to the room- A private room,” Fett stresses, and the room ‘oohs’ accordingly, “and there’s even worse flirting. Vod’e An! When you Remember me, remember how I suffered that day!”
The room is roaring; more than one verd is on the floor, and Elis hopes that Fett’s friend won’t actually kill him later.
“‘You seem… popular,’ says Mando,” Fett deadpans.
Groans join the uproar and another two bodies fall out of their seats, clutching their middles.
“Candy Boy stops. He sighs daintily. ‘It’s only fair that you know…’” Fett even does a soft higher-pitched voice, making Vader’s son sound like a noble princess from a cheesy fantasy holo. “‘I am the son of Darth Vader. I’m here with the rebellion to put a stop to my father and the Emperor and restore liberty to the galaxy.’”
The audience coos and Mando’s head thunks back onto their chairback as if they’re praying.
“Long moments pass. I check my friend’s vitals because I think they’ve died. Then says our Mando, ‘Vader has a son?’”
Scattered sounds of agreement rumble through the room, and Elis takes a careful sip of his drink, his brows already drawn together in thought. It seems like the sort of thing the Empire would have played up, using the kid in a propaganda campaign to give itself a family-friendly image. But then, Vader was the fear-factor. The Empire probably wanted to keep him as dark and mysterious as possible.
“‘He does!’ laughs the blonde. But then he grows serious. ‘My father knows that I’m out here,’” Fett stares out into space, his face serious, an actor on his stage, “‘and rebels get captured. We know he’s demanding news of me. It’s only right that I warn you.’”
Interested murmurs this time. To have given a warning shows good character that Elis wouldn’t have expected from Vader’s ad.
Fett ‘s grin returns, and he raises his fist. “And Mando…!”
“Oya!” the room cheers.
Elis sits up straighter. Here comes the best part.
“Child of Mandalore…!”
“Oya!”
“Looked Death in its big blue eyes…”
Fett and the whole room roars, “And Found! It! Worthy!”
Elis’s booth jumps to their feet, three small parts of the cacophony of cheering and banging of vambraces on every available surface. The din must echo out on the street, but they don’t need to worry about nosy law enforcement. They’re just one of the many celebrations that keep spontaneously breaking out since the Empire’s fall. Fett and his friend will probably drink for free for the rest of the night.
Fett laughs as he retakes his seat. “We ran like Hel, though, the next few weeks!”
The crowd laughs and there’s more banging on tables in agreement; every good Mando knows when to hit the thrusters, as they say.
The room begins to settle, and Ki’gyth calls out, wickedness audible in her voice. “Does that mean Vader was blonde?”
Several verd’e choke on their drinks, and denials and debates break out across the room.
“There are though, like, Mean Blondes- oh!” The verd talking breaks themself off with a deep cringe. “No- no- that doesn’t work!”
The crowd laughs and groans, and lively conversation settles over the room; theories on the hero Son of Vader and his evil father’s desperate search for the child who looks so much like his beautiful and beloved late wife.
Elis relaxes in his booth, feeling good things that there’s some justice in this world. That Vader was taken down at least partially by his own kid; a beautiful young wizard with a righteous heart, who was even now somewhere out there in the galaxy.
And that there’s a Mando’ad who’d fripped him.