Ziost - Crown of the Sith Empire

Raela sipped at a glass of wine in the commercial district, watching people pass by outside. It was busier than usual with the onset of these trials soon. Mostly a bunch of sycophants and rubberneckers waiting for someone to inevitably fall. If the alcohol wasn't so good, the thought would almost sour the taste.

At least there was one person she could appreciate present... Well, two, maybe three. The point was, one was soon to join her.

(expecting)

And joined her she did, she wore a slimming gown of black with red trim and matching purse carried by a slave in dark garb. A twi’lek male with eyes downcast as he pulled the chair out for Zash and she sat saying, “I really like their salad, but I also really love what they do with zerunian shrimp… do stop me before I end up looking like Xevious.”

“Because I will not stop if we get the shrimp.”

"Don't tempt me. We could share the shrimp," she offered with a chuckle. "Because now you have me curious... And it's been so long since I've been in a halfway civilized part of the galaxy to be able to enjoy them."

“Share… the shrimp?” she said with a laugh and then added, “Fine but if we are both here working on our third plate then I blame you.”

“If there is one thing I like about Ziost it is easy access to good seafood, Dromund Kaas can get anything but hardly is it fresh and well Korriban… let’s just say that sand gets into everything.”

She raised her hands in acquiescence, laughing a little. "I will try to cut us off at a reasonable point, and if I fail, I will accept full responsibility."

"Those big bugs taste a bit shrimp or lobsterish," she offered with a smirk.

Zash laughed lightly, “Oh dear, anything can be tasty with the right attitude.”

She took a seat and said to the waiter droid, “Wine, your best and keep it flowing. I leave the meal suggestion to my dear friend.”

"I have to try these zerunian shrimp," she added to the order before returning her attention to Zash. "Unless it's poisonous... Although I suppose it could still be tasty, just very briefly."

“There is an Alderanian delicacy that is just that… it used to be all the rage a few centuries ago, some poisonous fish that was delightful and brought euphoria. But by morning you would be dead. People would have delightful parties with this as the main course, can you imagine?” Zash replied.

"Fascinating... I wouldn't have thought the Alderaanians had it in them," she mused, eyebrows raised. "I suppose you have to acknowledge that level of commitment to hedonism."

“I always saw it as desperation… an escape to truly feel something for someone who had forgotten how,” she responded thoughtfully.

"Mm..." She considered the thought carefully. "That's probably true of some... It must have spoken to some part of people to become popular. I suspect the explanation is nuanced. I think that's part of it. There might be some groupthink and personal exceptionalism at work, as well."

“Maybe we should bring that back for Ziost, I wonder how many we could convince to try this new trend,” she joked.

She couldn't help but laugh a little at that. "I would be incredibly curious about the outcome of that particular experiment."

Her expression turned thoughtful. "... It would probably provide an interesting jumping off point..."

“Jumping off point?” Zash responded with a smile.

“What is creeping across that mind now?”

"Psychological research. Finding out the details of what brings people to do such things would be useful, no?" She replied, raising her eye ridges with a smile. "Not that I don't already have plenty of irons in the research fire. I need to be careful not to become as reclusive with it as my old master."

“It might be more useful than you realize,” she said thoughtfully.

“Take me through it, how would you conduct such a research?”

"Ideally, I could find a way to make it double-blind and randomized, but... I don't know, maybe. So I would have to choose a location that has as similar a population as I can get to the population I want to understand and use the research with," she explained. "It would be fundamentally observational - let the trend play out, randomly selected a preferably large pair of groups, trend-followers and non-trend-followers. I'd perform interviews, psych evals, all that on both groups. Ideally along with blood and genetic tests and other physical evaluations. I'd want to autopsy as many people who died from it as possible. From there, the results would inform the next information we pursue."

"Of course, I'd want to see if they did any case studies about the original incident to work from first..."

“I just love the way your beautiful mind works, maybe we can do something similar on a smaller scale. I can get us some test subjects and we can work with my dear Xal on a project that could benefit all of us… we could create a control group and a test group and you could assess their psychology and mental well-being,” she said sweetly.

She rubbed her chin thoughtfully. "Hmm... A smaller test group would make the results less accurate, but we could create some further hypotheses from what we find from that and maybe see where things go from there." She tapped the pads of her fingers rhythmically on the table. "We should have a chat with him soon, then." She looked considerably more cheerful at the thought of having a new avenue of research to pursue.

“Good I will see when we can all gather,” she said as the shrimp finally arrived.