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childermass

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Childermass walks in, not displeased to see the place.

His appearance is much the same as usual except that when his coat swings aside, there's a wand in his belt.

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"Where do you get your food?" Galen asks. "And your coffee."

"From my employer's kitchens, when I am at home - though coffee, only in coffee houses should I be in a city. If I am away, at roadside inns."

"What do you travel for?" Galen asks.

"Business. My employer's, for the most part."

"Yes, I used to do that, too," Galen says. "For years, my family and I followed the work, rather than working in places we liked."

"What was your line of work?" he asks with mild interest.

"Energy research, originally," Galen says. "I started out as a scientist and then sort of slid the slippery slope into engineering."

"Are they not different fields?"

Though science in his time is only just out of its infancy.

"They are," Galen says. "But I ended up applying what I had researched."

"Ah." He nods. "Building something related to... energy?"

"First I was led to believe it was for a civilian energy project, but it turned out to be a enormous weapon that killed millions," Galen says, grimly.

Childermass eyes him.

"And they somehow concealed this from you?"

"At first," Galen says. "When I found out, I ran. Then they caught me, killed my wife and forced me."

"What did they have over your head", he asks, "that would force you into such a thing?"

His wife was already dead, after all, so it wasn't threatening her.

"My daughter," Galen says, "still at liberty, but with their eye on her."

"They had proof that they knew her whereabouts?"

"Credible enough," Galen says. "And at first, it was true."

He nods. "Strange, then, that they didn't keep her in their custody."

"Later, they made me believe they had her," Galen says, "after I had contacted the rebellion and let them have the plans for the monster so they could destroy it."

[[OOC: This is AU Galen who survived his canon, but only Bodhi survived from the Rogue One crew in the version we are doing.]]

"But by then, it would have been too late to go back."

"So I could only go forward," Galen says, helping to break the weapon, and then helping to break the next one, and now the Empire is beaten, if not finished, and I am free."

"And your daughter?" he asks, watching the man's face.

"Dead for four years," Galen says, suddenly very dark. "I only heard for certain yesterday. Some sort of yesterday, owing to space lag and all that. The entire galaxy changed in that day."

His face is sober, perhaps even a touch sympathetic.

"How old was she?"

"Twenty-two," Galen says. "She died stealing the plans from the Empire so the rebellion could destroy the weapon."