32 BBY
It had been three years since she had completed and submitted her report on alternate security arrangements, and finally, after all that time, Tan'ya's father finally listened to her recommendations! She couldn't be more excited. At last a chance to show off her capabilities.
She didn't know exactly how it happened, but she suspected her father had seen how hard she was working as a student, and decided to finally actually read the report she submitted all those years ago. Seeing that it was carefully researched and well argued, Dooku had decided to begin implementing some of her recommendations. To get it done, he tapped his old friend Syfo to supervise her as she worked. Obviously Tan'ya didn't approve of nepotism as it stood in the way of meritocracy, but they were an autocratic monarchy after all. It would be silly to expect egalitarianism to prevail in such a system.
In the spirit of which, Tan'ya and Sifo were off to meet her aunt, Jenza. Formally, they had met before, but despite her best efforts Tan'ya had never really gotten a chance to speak with her very much. At last year's Life Day celebration Jenza had gotten Tan'ya an expensive doll set for a gift, and while it was obviously well crafted and given with good intentions, it clearly demonstrated how little attention the woman gave her nieces and nephews.
Tan'ya didn't resent her for it, she just wished for a chance to involve herself in Serenno's governance a little more. It was no surprise that Aunt Jenza was too busy for Tan'ya, when even her own father was the same way. They were busy people. Running a world was a full time job, as was trying to run a burgeoning alliance in the Outer Rim.
On paper, Serenno was ruled by her family from their palace in the mountains overlooking Illentia, the capital, but in reality the government was mainly operated out of a building called the Advisory. Being an absolute monarchy ruled continuously by one dynasty essentially since the end of the Galactic Cold War, the people of Serenno and their rulers occasionally had strained relationships which had resulted in open revolt on some occasions. The result was the Advisory, a compromise intended to prevent future revolts by giving the people of Serenno a say in how they were governed.
Though still an autocracy, the people of the world had traditionally enjoyed the right to petition by sending a representative of their town or village to advise the Count on the needs and desires of his own people. Though the membership of the Advisory wasn't democratically elected, the delegations who sat in there were at least able to speak on behalf of their local interests, resulting in a vaguely democratic system. The recommendations of the Advisory weren't technically binding, but when they spoke with one voice it could be difficult for the Count to overrule them.
At least that had been the case until Tan'ya's late grandfather, Count Gora, came to power. Among many other things that he'd done, Gora had shuttered the Advisory, replaced Serenno's military with a droid army purchased from the Trade Federation, and taken over much of the agricultural sector with droid labor as well. The man had been the very picture of a tyrannical autocrat, who had destroyed much of Serenno's economy in pursuit of his own personal enrichment. The main reason so much of the population worked in the dangerous lumber yards today was because Count Gora left them with almost no other options.
In contrast, Tan'ya didn't think her father had much interest in ruling, but he was strongly concerned with peace and justice. After ending the civil war and reforming the planet's policing to great effect, he delegated much of his leadership duties to Aunt Jenza, who immediately reopened the Advisory, and that had been the de facto seat of government ever since.
It was a very different building compared to the Palace, much older just by appearance alone. Constructed from stone rather than duracrete. The ancient carvings that covered much of its surface had been worn away in time by the planet's many storms, leaving many of them illegible. Moss grew in the cracks, and only the windows looked new with freshly polished hardwood for all the windowsills. Like many of the houses on Serenno, its roof came to a high peak so the rain would run off it, and the stone steps raised it several meters above street level to avoid flooding.
Its humble appearance may have been a deliberate snub by Tan'ya's distant ancestor, or maybe it was a grand sight when it was built more than a millennia ago; it was hard to tell.
Inside, Sifo and Tan'ya found it smelled more like an office building than anything else, with new clean carpets, and the distant sound of a holopad ringing down the hall. Past the reception, Tan'ya and Sifo found themselves in a great open hall that had been converted into office space with a series of cubicles. Busy bureaucrat's bustled between them with boxes of reports and data that were the real substance of government. Overseeing it all was what had once been the throne which the Count would sit on to look down upon his 'advisors' from above, now replaced with an office desk and a holoterminal placed in front of it. Auntie Jenza was seated there right now, working on her projects while keeping an eye on her staff.
As a firm adherent to the Chicago school of economics, Tan'ya approved of the small number of employees in the planetary government. Every person here, however hard they worked, however honestly and decently, could very easily become an obstacle to the businessmen and entrepreneurs who would bring real prosperity to Serenno and its people. All the wealth creators really needed to do their important work was security, and Tan'ya's father had provided them with that through his distant, hands off approach to governance, fearsome military reputation, and experience in law enforcement.
Sifo and Tan'ya circled around the edge of the room to approach Jenza, who was close to Dooku in age if a little younger. She had a straight backed posture, a lined face with stern narrow lips, bushy brows, and long dark hair flecked with gray. To represent her connection to the Count she wore a black cape held together at the neck with a silver chain, much like the one Tan'ya wore under her Jedi robes.
"Jedi Master Sifo Dyas, Tan'ya." She gave her younger niece a warm smile that was returned with a polite bow. "There's a lot we'll have to go over, so why don't you two take a seat."
Sifo had already asked Tan'ya to let him do most of the talking when it came to negotiating with others, but once they were alone it would be up to Tan'ya with Sifo's advice to come up with a viable plan for their military. Already Tan'ya had several ideas, and had been thinking about what could be done for a long time. Sitting there, listening to the conversation between Jenza and Sifo, she was careful to take extensive notes.
Currently, the Trade Federation offered a very cost effective protection policy to Serenno. They didn't bring a land army with them, but their rented navy came to three Munificent Class Frigates that carried between them four hundred and fifty thousand B1 battle droids and around one hundred and fifty Fighter Class Vulture droids. Realistically, it represented a decently large and cost effective force, more than capable of protecting Serenno from all but the most determined pirates.
Other regional powers inside the Republic would also struggle to find the political influence they needed to overcome the unofficial corporate party that the Federation was lynchpin of.
If it weren't for the fact that the Federation was an expansionist foreign power with wildly divergent interests from Serenno, and its own internal power structure that was completely opaque to outsiders, Tan'ya might have thought it better to stay with them. As it was, she reasoned that cost and efficiency were important factors to consider in planetary defense, but not the only factors. It would be better for Serenno in the long run to have and manage its own defense, even if it was a bit more expensive.
Right now though, no one in power quite saw the issue how Tan'ya saw it.
"I think it's an unnecessary expense when the Fed is doing a perfectly fine job as it is." Jenza explained. "But this is the decision my brother has made. Instead of looking to replace our defenses, we're going to try supplementing what we already have with a few light cruisers, a planetary militia, and at the Count's insistence, a reformed Royal Guard."
All in all it was a fairly modest step towards Serenno's independence, but better than nothing. When the time came for Tan'ya to inherit the County, she would have stepping stones already in place.
The first step towards manufacturing your own navy was developing the means to maintain your own fleet. A naval facility on Serenno's moon was a far cry from the orbital shipyards of Corellia or Kuat, but definitely movement in the right direction.
A militia wasn't a bad idea, either. Tan'ya was sure many of Serenno's young men would be grateful for the chance to find work outside the Lumber yards, but most importantly any number of soldiers would be worthless without officers to lead them. Establishing an effective training school for officers would be extremely important for creating the skeleton of a military. In her mind Tan'ya was already thinking of ways they could build it up into something bigger, more important than what Jenza intended, but she would have to run her ideas by Sifo first.
Finally there was the Serenno Royal Guard. At first glance, it was a mostly ceremonial force of around ten thousand men, whose main role would be parade duties. Royal Guards were mostly only allowed by Senate regulations to try and entice members of the Outer Rim's aristocracy to rejoin the republic at the end of the New Sith War. At the time it was thought that such a small force could only ever really serve a symbolic purpose anyway, and wouldn't have much effect on the stability of the galactic community.
Tan'ya thought it seemed like a reasonable compromise, and it wasn't like the rich and powerful didn't have a legitimate fear of being assassinated.
Of course, there was nothing preventing Tan'ya from setting an extremely high bar of entry to the Royal Guard, and personally overseeing their training to prepare them for the realities of battle. It was only natural that the Royal Guard would be an elite force with the best equipment and tactics.
After that, the meeting turned to the issue of budgeting and recruitment, and Tan'ya spoke up for the first time.
"Can we inspect the lumber yards?" She asked.
Both adults looked at her in surprise, and Jenza almost seemed like she'd forgotten Tan'ya was there.
"The yards are a very dangerous place." Jenza said, carefully. "I don't think it's a good idea for you to go there."
"Master Sifo Dyas will be with me." Tan'ya said.
"We do need to inspect our potential recruits." Sifo added. "I was thinking it may be a good idea to get Tan'ya out of the Palace, anyway."
"She's not even ten years old."
"And very mature for her age. Besides, it's not like I'm taking her to a warzone." Sifo smiled at her reassuringly. "If you want to, we can call Dooku and see what he thinks."
At the mention of the Count's name, Jenza looked reluctant. Eventually after a long pause, she conceded. "We can arrange something."
The speeder zoomed over the vast jungles of Serenno, its plasma engine humming and warbling electronically as it did. It was a wet day, pouring with rain that threatened to spill over the river banks and flood the forest floor. Tan'a looked out the backseat window of the speeder at the passing sea of leafy green tree tops and fast flowing rivers, that eventually hit a line drawn in the earth by vibrosaws and hoverdollies as they came to a vast field of barren mud.
"Forest here's already cleared." The speeder driver explained. "Stumps burned, too. Probably be sold pretty soon for someone a' try and turn into their farm."
His name was Hewno Bask, and he spoke Galactic Standard with an odd accent. Tan'ya suspected it wasn't his first language. His clothes were safety gear, with bands of interlinked durasteel sewn into it for protection, and chainmail gloves tucked into his belt. He was a little chubby, but he had huge, calloused hands and broad shoulders with meaty upper arms. Sifo and the man were about the same height, but the Jedi Master seemed almost slender compared to him.
Hewno wasn't a lumberjack, but instead a foreman, one of the few paths of social mobility open to the lower classes of Serenno who were serfs in all but name. Tan'ya noticed that among the equipment he prepared for his workday was a shockstick and a blaster, so hopefully that meant they would be seeing a real lumberyard and not some kind of Potemkin version of one. No doubt Hewno was a ruthless man when he had to be, or he wouldn't be able to afford his own speeder.
"Don't be too scared now, Princess." Hewno said to Tan'ya, watching her face in the rear view mirror. "Be sure to keep around me and Mister Sifo here, don't wander."
No doubt he didn't want to anger Tan'ya's father should she become injured. There had to be many men like him on Serenno, a few years younger and a little thinner. Excellent material to turn into NCOs.
The speeder tilted forward, and Tan'ya smiled as she felt the momentum push her stomach up. Even as a passenger she enjoyed flying. She had yet to be able to persuade her father to give her a speeder of her own, but her piloting lessons had been good fun so far. Apparently it was easy to be mistaken as a prodigy when you had a good amount of experience flying in a past life.
Eventually the speeder landed, and Tan'ya unbuckled herself from the back seat and threw open the door just as Hewno was reaching to open it for her.
The first thing that hit Tan'ya was the smell. Mud, and unwashed flesh, and something rotten almost like old vegetation. A reasonable distance from the landing site was what looked like a row of latrine pits, and she watched as a man came out of one and walked away with nowhere to wash his hands.
The next thing Tan'ya noticed was the sound. There was a distant, constant, electronic buzz that seemed completely unnatural in a forest. It took her a moment to realize that was the distant whine of countless vibro-saws, and she couldn't help but suspect being closer to the source of the noise would set her ears ringing. Reaching into her pocket she took out a pair of ear plugs she was given earlier, and stuffed them in.
Serenno was a large verdant world with a population of almost twenty billion that had been inhabited for at least fifty thousand years. Of course it had a wide variety of different ethnicities and cultures, but broadly it could be divided into three groups: the paler skinned men closest to the northern and southern poles, the darker skinned men of the plains and deserts, and those who sat somewhere in the middle who mostly inhabited the forests and mountains. These different racial groups weren't strictly geographically bound, there were plenty of tribes of plains dwellers who had conquered a forest or tundra, or vice versa, but that was an approximate division.
This lumberyard had representation from all three groups, though in different quantities. A little more than half of the people here were from the forests, about a third of them were from the plains, and the remainder were from the poles. There were no women present in the yard that Tan'ya could see, and if there were they were doing their best to blend in. Transportation came in the form of a large speedercoach, with room to transport two hundred men.
Seeing it, Tan'ya asked Hewno about the vehicle.
"I own it. Most of them men can't bring themselves from their village to here, so I got a transport. Take it out of their pay anyway, it's not a problem for me." He explained. "They want to keep more of their pay, they can just sleep on site." He pointed to a small set of temporary structures that even from this distance Tan'ya suspected were dirty and cramped.
The lumberjacks were to a man filthy; covered in grease from their tools, mud from the environment, and speckled with saw dust from cutting timber. Many of them were hunchbacked or sported a limp, or a missing limb without any kind of bionic replacement, and speckled among them were what looked like the occasional emaciated teenager carrying tools or water for the men. It was hot and humid, so most of them worked without shirts, stripped down to the waist with their only clothes being plastoid helmets, and the sleeves of chainmail-like safety mesh to protect them from the teeth of a misplaced vibro-saw.
As Tan'ya watched, an agile, long limbed man in a climbing harness scaled a massive black tree with great agility, using a smaller vibro-saw to remove its massive limbs without even glancing down to make sure no one was near the base of the tree. As he was doing so, teams of young men were coming forward to cut the branches into a size that they could be dragged away, fearfully glancing up on occasion to make sure a large branch wasn't going to come crashing down on them. Eventually the climber came to the bushy top of the tree, where he started taking off smaller hand sized branches, one of which landed directly on the shoulder of one of the workers below who hadn't moved away in time. The worker clapped a hand to his shoulder and winced, but kept cutting up the larger branch he was working on rather than concern himself with a bruise.
It only illustrated to Tan'ya how dangerous this work could be.
"Why don't they stay clear of the base of the tree while the limbs are coming down?" Tan'ya asked.
"Some of the climbers do. Each one is in charge of their own team and tree, so I let them organize it how they like. The teams get paid for each ton of timber they bring in, not by the hour though. If they want they can wait for all the limbs to come down. Damn waste of time, though."
Sifo looked rather disgusted by the man's complete disregard for the lives and well being of his employees, but Tan'ya thought it was immediately useful to know. On Serreno, the unskilled laborers had almost no bargaining power. They didn't own the land that was being cleared, and didn't own the tools that were used to do it. All of that belonged to the yard owners, who were themselves under heavy pressure to keep up pace with the many similar operations across the galaxy. In the end if the working lumberjacks pushed operating costs too high, they would simply be replaced with droids.
The same thing had already happened once with Serenno's agricultural sector.
As Sifo and Tany'a were shown around the yard, a man approached Hewno and began speaking to him in Outer Rim Basic.
"Who's this?" He asked Hewno, looking past him at the Jedi and the princess.
"That's the Count's daughter, man, so keep your grubby eyes to yourself. I'm getting a nice little bonus to show her around my yard."
The man's eyes widened and he stood up straight. "Well, we were about to cut into that great black stinker in the gully. We shall wait until they're gone."
Curiosity pricked, Tan'ya called towards them. "What is a 'great black stinker?'"
Hewno looked surprised that she spoke Outer Rim Basic as well as Galactic Standard. He quickly mumbled an apology in Standard, "I'm sorry, Princess. I didn't mean no offense."
"It's fine." Tan'ya dismissed. "I'm just curious, what do you mean by a 'great black stinker'?
"Called a reeksap tree in Standard. Very large, dense wood. Awful smell, stinks for miles around. Resistant to heat and rot. Once cured the smell dissipates. Wood's useful for all kinds of things. Was gonna wait until you left here before cutting it, no offense."
"That doesn't sound pleasant." Sifo looked at Tan'ya. "Was there anything else you wanted to see here or should we go?"
"I'm satisfied." Tan'ya replied. "Before we head back to the capital, I did want to see one of the villages, though."
At the mention of one the villages, Hewno immediately looked worried. "Not safe for decent folk, Princess."
"Why aren't they safe?" Tan'ya asked, curiosity piqued.
Hewno looked like he was at a loss for words, and looked to Sifo for help. "Mister Jedi, they don't like us out there in the rurals. Definitely hate offworlders like yourself. Might just disappear you into the jungle. Princess never found again."
"Lies!" The man who had been speaking with Hewno in Basic suddenly spoke up in somewhat poor, thickly accented Standard. He sounded genuinely offended. "You shame us!"
Hewno turned to the man, looking angry. He spoke in rapid Basic, "You inbred cur. We can't send the Count's daughter out to one of the villages, they'll take her hostage! Or worse!"
"We are loyal to the Rider Count! He brings peace, and drives out the alien! His child would never come to harm."
"I'm sorry, what was your name?" Tan'ya interjected.
"I'm honored to tell you. Phlelen, son of Am'Phlelen." He bowed low. "If the Rider Count's daughter wishes to see how my family and I live, it would shame me to deny her."
Tan'ya looked at Hewno, smiling. "Then I suppose we can borrow your speeder?"
Various emotions warred across his face, before he finally accepted surrender. He turned to Pellen. "Go tell Werso that his team is on the Stink Tree, then get back here. We'll all go together."
Phlelen ran off to follow his instructions, while Hewno muttered to himself angrily and stomped around to the back of his speeder. From the trunk he took out his blaster and shock stick, strapping each to his waist, before pulling on an extra layer of safety with a chainmail mesh in a jacket shape.
"Why did you want to see one of their villages so badly?" Sifo bent down to ask Tan'ya in a murmur.
"Official surveys only convey so much." Tan'ya answered. "Nothing beats doing your own field research."
"You say that like you have experience in the issue." Sifo replied, before standing back up straight.
For a moment, Tan'ya's mind raced. Had Sifo realized she wasn't just a child? The excuses she came up with died on her lips when she saw the amused smile on her Master's face. He thought that she was only pretending to know what she was talking about.
"It's true, though." She defended. "Time and time again, throughout history, the general who understands his soldiers and local terrain better triumphs over superior numbers, again and again."
He gave her a nod, and didn't say anything further.
Tan'ya was relieved that he accepted her hastily thought up excuse. The truth was that she wanted to visit a village for an entirely different reason to what she'd told her master, one that if he knew he would never allow her to go. In the remote corners of Serenno, away from the spaceports and the cities, a particularly special weapon was rumored to exist.
One that she knew a Jedi Master would never approve of.
After Phlelen's return they finally all got back into the speeder car to fly to his home village.
On the way there, Tan'ya asked Phlelen, "What do the villagers speak?"
"Hlelus." He replied, and at her confused look he added. "Almost every region of the planet speaks its own unique language or dialect. Men who speak Basic are considered well educated."
"What do the men in the yard speak?"
He searched for the right word for a moment, then shrugged. "It's not a language. There's a few words and phrases in Basic that every man remembers, and a few words and phrases from each village get blended in there."
A kind of pidgin language then. Not a true dialect, with a culture and history behind it, but a kind of working hybrid that just barely allows people who don't share a tongue to get by. No wonder all of the teams seemed racially segregated. Having people you couldn't communicate with easily on the same team would be potentially dangerous.
"How many people can read and write?"
"Hewno is the only man here who can do that."
Tan'ya glanced over at Hewno in the driver seat, and found him looking back at her in the rear view mirror, a slightly worried expression on his face. Perhaps he was worried she was going to disrupt his business?
"How did you learn Standard and Basic, Hewno?" Tan'ya asked him.
"...Mother was from the forests, but she married a man from Illentia. Father made sure I was educated offworld, so I grew up speaking Basic, and picked up Standard in boarding school. He died in the war, I've taken his yards." Obviously it wasn't a happy topic, but it was useful to know.
It seemed that the villages and the cities weren't completely insulated from each other. There was at least enough communication between the two for a man like Hewno to exist. To be able to manage the lumber yards, Tan'ya assumed every owner would need to grasp a few languages.
When they came to the village Tan'ya was sure someone from Coruscant would be shocked by how primitive it was, but she had already mostly been forewarned. Most of the buildings were constructed from a bamboo like plant, and perched on stilts to escape flooding. Almost all the roofs were thatched with leaves and grass to avoid the rain, with the exception being just two made from duracrete and stacked river stones with tiled roofs - the holocom terminal and the power station. There were no speeders in sight, just small canoes strapped to the side of each house in case of flooding, and the occasional goatlike pack animal.
The entire town was shocked by the sight of a speeder, looking up to watch it come and land at the edge of the village. A few mothers protectively shuffled their curious children behind them, with worried looks on their faces.
Phlelen explained. "For people here, the only speeders they've ever seen are the coach to pick the men up in the morning, and Abyssinian pirates on a slave raid, and this isn't the coach."
He stepped away from the speeder to speak in a raised voice to the people of the village.
Tan'ya stepped out of the speeder, and a wave of gasps ran through the crowd at the sight of her. The chain of office and cape she wore instantly marked out who she was, even this far out into the middle of nowhere. They didn't bow, but they did lower their gazes in difference, murmuring among themselves in their language.
Tan'ya didn't understand a word of it. It had to be completely unrelated to Galactic Standard and Outer Rim Basic.
Hewno stepped out of the car next, which drew some unsurprisingly dark looks. The man nervously adjusted his holster, but didn't put his hand on the blaster. It made sense that the villagers would resent the one they thought was so obviously exploiting them.
What Tan'ya didn't expect was the reaction to Sifo. If Hewno was treated coldly, the hateful anger directed at Sifo seemed almost ready to boil over into violence. A word ran through the crowd, repeated with spittle and a snarl. Each utterance had venom to it, a kind of burning resentment that was reserved only for a slur.
"What does that word mean?" Tan'ya asked Hewno, who was standing close.
"'Twurna.' Means alien."
Tan'ya was surprised. "But he's human."
"Doesn't matter." Hewno replied. "They can see that he's an offworlder, just from the cut of his clothes and the shape of his face."
For a moment, Tan'ya was so surprised she wasn't sure how to respond. Near the back of the crowd, some young men were beginning to push themselves to the front with long, whining vibro blades in hand and scared, but excited faces. It took Tan'ya a moment to recognise them as modified vibrosaws, likely stolen from a lumberyard somewhere. The shape of the handle had been changed, and the oil feed removed, but in the end it was a razor sharp sword with just an odd bulk in the middle.
Hewno muttered a curse and unclipped the strap on his blaster's holster.
Tan'ya was afraid things were about to become violent, until Phlelen barked something out loudly. The armed men all looked embarrassed, and turned off their vibro swords, resheathing them in what looked like bamboo casings.
With the situation finally calming down, a slightly older woman came forward and spoke with Phlelen. Tan'ya noticed that all of the armed men in the village actually seemed very young, none of them older than their teens, with long lanky limbs.
No doubt all the adult men were out working in the yards.
Phlelen came over to speak with Tan'ya. "Come. I can show you the village now."
It was an educational experience in the end. The village had a population of not even a thousand, no house being bigger than a single large room, with maybe a rain shelter out front for those who could afford it. Much like in the city, every roof came to a peak, and many didn't even have doors, just waterproof plant fronds that hung in the doorway.
Many children ran about completely naked, even ones close to Tan'ya in age. The only source of electricity was the pathetic solar power station in the center of town, which on a rainy day would produce no electricity at all. The only thing it was ever used for was to charge batteries, that mostly went to the town's vibrosword armed defenders and the sole holoterminal, for if messages had to be sent over a distance.
Some of the young men practiced fighting with their powered down, makeshift vibroswords, practicing a kind of martial art Tan'ya had never seen before.
"Are these your only defenses?" Tan'ya asked.
"No, we used to need much more. During Ramil's reign, men were needed here to defend the village from bandits and pirates, so almost no one was out working. We often depended on hunting parties and what could be found in the forests to survive. Now the Rider Count has restored order, so all the men work. The yards are difficult, and dangerous, but no one goes hungry anymore."
"Are the vibroswords your only weapons?"
Phlelen shook his head, and led Tan'ya to the town's armory. Inside a number of clay pots, were other improvised vibroswords sheathed in those bamboo-like stalks. From one sealed pot in the corner, Phlelen withdrew a scarred, short barreled rifle with a battered wooden stock.
"A slug thrower." Sifo hummed to himself.
From another pot, Phlelen withdrew a small wrapped bundle that looked like a little flimsi bag attached to the front of a small battery. Phlelen loosened the string on the flimsi, exposing what looked like metal shavings inside, then he sealed the bag back up.
"Those are zero point two plasma cartridges." Hewno muttered with a shake of his head. "I knew I was going through a lot of them."
Stepping outside the armory, Phlelen took the plasma cartridge with the small bag attached, and opened up a breach in his weapon before neatly slotting the ammunition inside. He cocked back a hammer just above the breach, before pointing it at a nearby tree and squeezing the trigger.
There was a crack like a blaster being fired, and the tree was littered with countless small holes.
"That's not a slugthrower." Sifo's eyes narrowed. "That's a scattergun."
Behind them, grinning to herself wickedly, Tan'ya could not have been more pleased. This had been exactly what she was looking for.
Scatterguns were illegal in the modern Republic, due to their reputation for being a jedi killing weapon. The spray of high velocity ammunition was impossible to block or reflect with a lightsaber, so theoretically it could be an effective weapon against an unprepared jedi, but in reality it didn't work very well when a rogue carrying one would have their ill intentions in the front of their mind and detected by a Jedi from a mile away. Mostly, it only ever occasionally caught overconfident Padawan off guard when they mistook the firearm in their foes thoughts for a common blaster.
The Jedi saw it as a distasteful weapon that's only real purpose was to kill teenagers, which explained the disgusted look on Sifo's face.
Tan'ya saw it differently, though. The rules for Royal Guards were subtly different from the rest of the Galaxy's armed forces. Serving a traditional role, Royal Guards were allowed to purchase and own equipment and weapons that weren't allowed usually, for the simple reason that they were considered an important part of that planet's military tradition. The Shadow Guard of Mystril for example were allowed to use shock whips, as they were part of that world's martial tradition. Other Royal Guard units in the Outer Rim even employed weapons as distasteful as agonizers and disintegrators.
This scattergun was certainly not the only one of its kind, and would serve as an important piece of evidence of Serenno's martial traditions when Tan'ya submitted their permission requests to Coruscant. A scattergun might not be a very effective weapon for killing jedi, but for ship boarding and anti-piracy operations in the tight confines and narrow corridors of a starship, Tan'ya could imagine no better choice.