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We're improving in our "what we lost this session" responses; we only lost a Star Destroyer! (And really there was nothing we could do about that, and our decisions had no part in it happening, so it's not a huge loss conceptually.)
When we left our heroes, we had been ambushed by a dreadnought and rather a lot of fighters, one of whom cheerfully greeted one of the party members with a "Hello there Tereez!"
Reminder of dramatis personae:
* Aurun'ijaro, called Aurun, captain and owner of the Vrei Ki'ala: a vivid green Twi'lek, personality type "smart Gryffindor", worked her way up from nothing, childhood background not general knowledge
* Aaron Selik, Human, former semi-famous rabble-rousing advocate of all planets remaining independent of entangling empires and alliances, current mad gadgeteer and engineer on the Vrei
* Tereez, half-Bothan senior Imperial Knight, infiltration specialist with a commando background, raised in a Sith Academy until his escape therefrom
* Valis, who has a last name I've forgotten, Human junior Imperial Knight, party healer, Jedi history nerd, and alarmingly overinterested in Yuuzhang Vong tech
* Tsavor, Barabel Jedi, kidnapped when young from his homeworld and made into a slave gladiator on, I believe, Nar Shaddaa
Significant NPC: Elon, Chiss medical specialist, Jedi, the brother of captain of the Chiss ship that is part of our convoy, all-around decent guy who is perhaps not adequately psychologically prepared for this life of violence and infamy
So. We are yanked out of hyperspace by someone's toy gravity well, and everyone scrambles into evasive maneuvers because really, there's only one reason to yank someone out of hyperspace like that. And there was a little bit of verbal fencing over the comms, which began something like:
"This is the Dreadnought Right to Rule. You have two options: you fight, and we destroy you. You surrender, and we destroy you. I suggest you fight."
Tereez muttered something about Sith needing better PR guys.
We made a play to keep them talking rather than fighting – since they had told Tereez they were there to collect him, he suggested that we make an offer to trade him over for safe passage. "Are you sure?" said our task force people. "I'm not saying actually do it, just keep them talking! The longer we keep them talking the less time before our reinforcements show." (The sucking us out of hyper broke an active communication so they knew we were in trouble.)
A new voice broke in on the communication – someone who I believe to have been the head of the Sith Academy from which Tereez escaped. "Oh, Tereez, you won't make it that easy," he said.
"If your fighting is as good as your security I'm not that worried."
"Glad to see you still have some of your spirit."
"I never lost it."
"We'll see."
And then they attacked.
We were keeping a defensive formation – the situation was such that trying to run was a good way of achieving defeat in detail. Our big ships sent out a missile barrage of nukes to basically turn the space between the capital ships into a radiation and shrapnel sensor-scrambling doomzone, and we prepared to meet the waves of incoming fighters.
Tsavor performed the battle meditation, linking the party's pilots (himself, Tereez, Aurun, Valis, and Elon) psychically. He rolled a critical success. We were very nicely synched up, which made for some amusing consequences along the line.
The party formed a strike unit of fighters (the Jedi) with an intel backup of the Vrei (Aurun and Aaron, running Aaron's enhanced sensor matrix and passing all intel we gathered over the psychic link). Aurun basically was taking easy shots at things while using most of her brain for data processing – we were hoping that an analysis of the ongoing fighting would help us pick out which fighters were piloted by Sith so that the actual combat forces could do something about that.
Or that was the intent.
In the actuality, Aurun was running the data and running the data and said, "No, I can synthesise this information better than this," and there was that sense of someone reaching to the Force for answers, and getting them, and that meant that we picked out the fighters and bombers that were successfully going through the nuke field instead of around it, hoping to get the drop on us.
And Tereez echoed in the link with, "I knew it!"
(Game mechanics explanation: I used a Luck reroll on the intelligence analysis, turning it from a near-miss skill check into a success. But you know, when you're psychically linked to a trained Force user who already suspects you're Force sensitive, the sound of a Luck reroll is pretty distinctive.)
The Force-user fighters moved to intercept, and Aurun passed on the warning to the capital ships.
And then there was a voice Tereez recognised over the comms, an old enemy from the Sith Academy, who I will call G because I don't remember his name. "Tereez!" "I thought you learned your lesson in weapons class." (The fellow was notable for attempting to murder one of their classmates and failing. And surviving his failure!) "You have betrayed your people, Tereez."
The back and forth this time ended on the "And now you will die, after I kill your friends," and the group splitting with some fighters going to dogfight the combat party and the bombers going after the Vrei.
Combat continued for a bit, with a lot of back and forth, and the Vrei moving back closer to our capital ship to take advantage of her point defense and her fighter screen. G started getting a bit annoyed that his six delegated ships couldn't take out a freighter. Because clearly a souped-up freighter shouldn't be able to outwrangle three torpedo boats and their fighter screen, even with a galactically famous engineer running her decoy drones and a real hotshot on the controls.
Combat continued. Two more capital ships landed on our side, but they weren't covered by the nuke screen, so they immediately started taking heavy fire from the dreadnought while they were getting oriented. They also had no fighters, apparently.
Something from basically out of nowhere took out a friendly fighter. We were alarmed by it, and couldn't figure out where it came from.
G got increasingly cranky. Which meant that when Tsavor decided to lean on him with an emotional influence to get him even more irrational, and Valis hit him with an attempt to make him fumble his controls, and everyone shot at him, he started going completely frothing incoherent. Enough so that the Sith Academy head started scolding him on tightbeam (which we'd managed to intercept) and told him to finish his damn job.
The Vrei's shields went down. "Fix it, Aaron! I got this!" (Aurun's confidence in her capabilities is very high, even if the decoy drones were a big help.) "You sure?" "I GOT THIS FIX THE SHIELDS."
Then the bombers targetting her vanished in a puff of "Whoa, something friendly, motley, and super-competent just turned up. That was nice timing."
And there was a "So, galactically famous engineer, we've got a strike team going to try to take out the interdiction field on the dreadnought. Have you got anything that can take advantage of that?" "Yeah, give me a few minutes to work out the details...." Aurun, "I GOT THIS."
The capital ship sent out a "Someone's targetting our communication dish!" and they could not find the guy either.
The Force sensitives – including Aurun – tried to find the enemy fighter. And Aurun spotted him, in a ship with no sensors and no windows, flying totally 'blind', terrifyingly competent. Information passed to all relevant parties.
Then there was a blinding flash, sensors out all over the place. "We've lost the Falkor!" That being one of the capital ships that had come in not knowing what they were landing in, without the shield.
Valis took the moment of blindness to use the Force to target an enemy Sith and successfully destroyed that ship; the fighters rounded to occupy the blind fighter. He was occupied significantly, but entirely unharmed.
Fighters warped in on top of the enemy dreadnought. We successfully jumped the fuck out of there.
"Your friends," said Aurun over the psychic link, "do not know how to throw a good party."
"I know, that's why I left."
Fleeting images of selections of party drugs from Aurun. Discussion of the fight. The droids had done data processing and determined that the enemy ship was on the model of a Sith ship made with something called the Star Forge. Legendary stuff is very annoying.
We got to a base with allies and started reloading ordnance and decoy drones. Briefing in an hour.
She spent the hour before the briefing going all over the Vrei Ki'ala, climbing up to remote locations on the ship that are only accessible to someone who can climb like she does, removing access panels and taking things out, and stashing the items thus obtained in her quarters. She was not checking for ship damage. People were confused.
The briefing started out badly; some Moff was on a rant about Those People and This Situation in various ways, and Tsavor declared that this one does not have time for this bullshit and walked out. Valis waved Tereez aside and proceeded to bury the guy in quoted Imperial military regulations and law, determined that he was a friend of the borderline-traitorous Moff back on Taris, suggested that he would need to be brought in for intelligence questioning then, and got shut down with a cranky, "NOT THE TIME" by the CO.
Aurun made rude gestures with her lekku behind her back.
Some people came in – a human and a Wookiee – and the human gave Aurun a respectful salute, one hotshit pilot to another. We sussed out that these were the heads of Wraith Squadron and Brute Squadron, some serious hotshot problem-solving Alliance military groups.
We briefed on Taris, on the current state there, and the need to get better intel about what the hell crashed into the planet and made a giant crater in it. Thus, our team was organised to be one of a number that ventured onto the planet to have a very exciting time of it.
While sorting out who was doing what, the Wraith squadron commander commented, "The commander has forbidden any Alliance ground forces from going planetside, but technically we're a star fighter unit."
Valis accidentally put several character points into fame by teaching every local Jedi a bit about how to cure the zombie invasion virus.
Tereez had had a vision – a memory carried through the Force – a dream, or something – of the sacking of the Jedi temple many years before, and Karka, our mysterious droid friend, was there. So he and Aurun went to talk to Karka about its memories. Karka said, among other things, that it knew where it had to be, and that this was where it had to be. As they left that conversation, Aurun said, "I don't know much about this Force stuff, but... did that sound like the droid is Force sensitive?"
And they got into a conversation about droids developing personality over time, and that this was why they get mindwiped regularly. Aurun finds that rather disturbing, and it likely showed.
There was also an exchange that went, "You said there are... tests, for the Force." "There are." "What do they involve?" Some people, upon hearing that other people are convinced they have the potential to wield legendary power emanating from life itself, would be excited; Aurun is convinced that it is a spot of bother and to be blamed for the disruption of her quiet and systemic life running cargo so that she can get fat and retire.
We spent a little downtime getting a nap, regrouped to sort ourselves out, and Aurun gathered all the things from her quarters and laid them out – a wide selection of concealable sharp pointy objects, other murderous sorts of gear, and poisons. (It was oddly reminiscent of the stuff we got from the genetically modified Twi'lek that we did not prevent from being murdered.) "I was trained as an assassin," she said. "I don't know how to fight Sith. What parts of this will be useful?" Unfortunately, while there was some commentary, there was not as much help as she had hoped.
"I suspect that there are Reasons you came to be our pilot," commented Tereez. Aurun replied, darkly, "I've been suspecting that for quite some time, yes."
So we got ready for insertion. Our main forces were taking a spot on the ground to serve as a base camp and a diversion while the smaller teams went in. We went in with a stormtrooper specialist escort and some droids, including Karka and Aaron's suit of power armour.
GM: "Any other prep anyone's been doing?"
Aaron: "I've been building things."
Tereez: "How's that going?"
Aaron: "We're all going to die."
Tereez: "We're not going to die. We can die next time."
Aaron: "That's my kind of optimism!"
So we went in. Tereez and Aurun as the combination best rappelling team set up ropes to descend down an elevator shaft to get closer in, and we went down. As we were making our way through we found some actual survivors having Issues with zombies. Our stormtrooper leader said the best thing we could do to help people was finish our mission; we disapproved of this and decided the better part of valor was to actually save the lives that were right there in front of us. "Who are you?" "Imperial reinforcements!" "Thank God!" We got most of them out, and up to our escape ropes, with instructions on how to get to our base camp so they could be herded over to evac units.
Then our Magical Device Of Being Invisible To Creepy Force Evil went off, and we took cover.
And one of those damn evil plaguebearing dragonets slithered out of the ceiling and started poking around trying to sense us. We watched it. It prowled around for a bit, and then it heard some other survivors and took off after them. Nothing we could do to help; we confirmed they were dead with a drone sensor and kept going deeper.
We kept prowling further on, and got to a point where we were approaching the crater. And there was a flicker of some sort of light, and Tereez felt a positive Force presense. He went to investigate. "Since it's a Force presence, someone else Force sensitive should go." So Aurun went. Feeling a little awkward, really.
There were two blue figures, translucent, looking into the crater. When they noticed us, one flickered and vanished. Tereez spoke to the other one, and the rest of the group, upon determining that it was safe enough, joined.
Tereez: "Who are you? Or, who were you?"
Force Ghost: "Skywalker."
Tereez: "Which one?"
Ghost: "The bad one."
Valis: "… which one?"
There was some discussion with the ghost about failures and what he knew about what was going on, and he commented that Solo might know something about where the ship was that had housed the zombie virus (Han has, in this version of the universe, gone "fuck this shit" and buggered off to parts unknown after his kids all died).
After the ghost vanished, one of the stormtroopers commented, "I'm surprised you didn't ask who the other one was."
And he was right, that might have been interesting. Oh well.
We peered into the crater and saw a silvery tendril that seemed to be sunk into the melted side of a building. Here and there along it, various zombies appeared to be slowly melting into it. It looked oddly reminiscent of the biomechanical evil dragonet.
We edged closer to the tendril and started investigating it. Valis failed to use his clairvoyance successfully. (He seems to have this problem a lot around zombies. Possibly he should investigate the interference of zombies with clairvoyance.) We dropped a probe onto the tendril and took readings from it as the thing dissolved it. We started constructing elaborate theories about where it came from and what it was doing.
Which wound up into spinning a theory about the Yuuzhan Vong and living planets and the possibility that this might be a baby evil living planet that was devouring the extant planet to grow itself, and what does one do about that. And Karka started quietly radiating hate.
Which is sort of remarkable, droids not usually generating emotions fit to resonate in the Force.
Tereez: "Karka, you're having... feelings."
Karka, through translation: "It's evil."
Tereez: "… yes, granted."
At which point Aurun commented that we'd talked about Force-present droids before. And Karka managed to explain that this had happened before, and it had fought it before, and everyone who fought it died, and everyone who didn't fight it died, and only it was left, and we wondered if Karka – and this thing – had come intergalactically, with the Vong, and there was a lot of rattling around and it led to us carbon-dating Karka and coming up with "On the order of magnitude of fifty thousand years old."
GM: "Make a roll."
Mike (Aaron's player): "Against what?"
GM: "Roll your highest science bullshit skill."
Anyway, we collected a great deal of data. Valis genescanned the thing and got some partial familiarity with it. We got a probe into the tube and it got a ways down before it dissolved, collecting more information. And in the discussion over extragalactic planets and so on, combined with the conversation with the ghost, we realised that the difference in Dark auras this stuff appears to have is somewhat similar to the ways in which some Force users eschew cybernetics because of the flavor-alteration in their Force when they happen.
Which led Valis – who has a systemic cyber-rejection syndrome and knows it – started speculating on whether or not he could graft his own disorder onto the thing in order to basically give it an autoimmune disease rejecting its own parts. This is a topic for further research!
Our ongoing discussion of potential galactic apocalypses lead one of the stormtroopers to start muttering, "I did not sign up for this, I did not sign up for this, I did not sign up for this." Aurun, who has more charisma than reassurance sometimes, replied brightly, "Neither did I! Don't worry about it, you'll get used to it!"
Then we got a bad feeling about this, and took cover, and saw five robed figures come wandering through to investigate. Because just what this party needed was more Sith.
A sixth arrived. And it felt... familiar.
There was no viewplate on his helmet.
And he called for Tereez.
We quietly debated whether we wanted to fight or run; the stormtroopers voted for run, and came up with a plausible plan to do it with. We were dithering, but one of them – who did not sign up for this – pointed out, "That guy with the mask? Don't you people watch MOVIES? I'm not fighting a BLIND SWORDSMAN."
We blocked off the wall where we were hiding – which of course attracted attention – and planted, first a stasis grenade, then some bombs, as we did a blocking and trapping retreat, with a few false leads towards ways we weren't going. We informed home base that we were exeunt pursued by a half-dozen Sith.
Wraith Squadron informed us that they had our backs. Boy were we glad to hear that. We got redirected to a new elevator shaft with new climbing ropes in it, booked it up trapping the shaft on the way, and we could tell we managed to take out one of the Sith with the traps, too. Much escaping. Also a round of 'got clear of an elevator shaft just before the huge razor-edged slab of metal blasted up behind us and lodged in the ceiling.
Exeunt pursued by annoyed Sith...
Wraith Squadron asked if we were clear of the shaft, gave us some directions, and blew the entire building behind us. That slowed down the pursuit, at least, and we worked on returning to base.
Wraith Squadron leader: "Okay, you're almost to u—ah, SHIT."
Valis: "MORE DATA ON THAT SHIT?"
WS leader: "It was nice knowing you guys."
We hurried up, on the principle that Wraith Squadron had saved our asses and it would be good to return the favour. And found a warehouse in which they were holed up, which also contained about twenty Sith. Including Sith Academy leader guy.
Tereez offered to give himself up if the guy let the rest of us go. There was the beginning of a villain monologue, which was punctured and punctuated by a red lightsaber blade through the lungs that were powering it.
"You told me that a Sith is expected to kill his master when there is nothing left to learn. I have nothing more to learn from you. You are empty, you have nothing left to teach me," said the woman wielding the blade, as she force-choked the last of the life out of the guy and tossed him aside. "Nobody asks questions. Like, 'Why are we here? What is this supposed to accomplish?'"
"It's for the Council!" said one of the junior Sith.
"What Council? Have you ever seen the Council?"
"Hello, Serena," said Tereez.
It turned out that Tereez's rival for Sith valedictorian – the person G had attempted to kill previously – had noticed that they were serving as expendable pawns for some nameless force that did not seem to want to use her for ends that served her personal power and ambition, and she was not inclined to be eaten by the planet-dissolving monster or otherwise used. And she was willing to do an "Everyone walks away except for the people who challenge my obvious authority in this situation" arrangement with Tereez. With an "Until next time, may next time be a long time from now, we both have bigger fish to fry, don't we?" sort of discussion.
As we got Wraith Squadron and the rest of our people the hell out of there, we heard her say:
"You can address me as 'Darth'. I haven't chosen a name yet but that will do."
Tereez called back, "Please send me a postcard when you've chosen a name!"
After a few moments of wondering if there was any way we could make it seem like she was having her authority challenged in a plausible way, we decided not to poke the bear so that we could exit without any further pursuit.
"Let me guess," said Aurun. "Two of you were trying to be top of the class?"
"Something like that," said Tereez.
We got the hell out of there.
When we left our heroes, we had been ambushed by a dreadnought and rather a lot of fighters, one of whom cheerfully greeted one of the party members with a "Hello there Tereez!"
Reminder of dramatis personae:
* Aurun'ijaro, called Aurun, captain and owner of the Vrei Ki'ala: a vivid green Twi'lek, personality type "smart Gryffindor", worked her way up from nothing, childhood background not general knowledge
* Aaron Selik, Human, former semi-famous rabble-rousing advocate of all planets remaining independent of entangling empires and alliances, current mad gadgeteer and engineer on the Vrei
* Tereez, half-Bothan senior Imperial Knight, infiltration specialist with a commando background, raised in a Sith Academy until his escape therefrom
* Valis, who has a last name I've forgotten, Human junior Imperial Knight, party healer, Jedi history nerd, and alarmingly overinterested in Yuuzhang Vong tech
* Tsavor, Barabel Jedi, kidnapped when young from his homeworld and made into a slave gladiator on, I believe, Nar Shaddaa
Significant NPC: Elon, Chiss medical specialist, Jedi, the brother of captain of the Chiss ship that is part of our convoy, all-around decent guy who is perhaps not adequately psychologically prepared for this life of violence and infamy
So. We are yanked out of hyperspace by someone's toy gravity well, and everyone scrambles into evasive maneuvers because really, there's only one reason to yank someone out of hyperspace like that. And there was a little bit of verbal fencing over the comms, which began something like:
"This is the Dreadnought Right to Rule. You have two options: you fight, and we destroy you. You surrender, and we destroy you. I suggest you fight."
Tereez muttered something about Sith needing better PR guys.
We made a play to keep them talking rather than fighting – since they had told Tereez they were there to collect him, he suggested that we make an offer to trade him over for safe passage. "Are you sure?" said our task force people. "I'm not saying actually do it, just keep them talking! The longer we keep them talking the less time before our reinforcements show." (The sucking us out of hyper broke an active communication so they knew we were in trouble.)
A new voice broke in on the communication – someone who I believe to have been the head of the Sith Academy from which Tereez escaped. "Oh, Tereez, you won't make it that easy," he said.
"If your fighting is as good as your security I'm not that worried."
"Glad to see you still have some of your spirit."
"I never lost it."
"We'll see."
And then they attacked.
We were keeping a defensive formation – the situation was such that trying to run was a good way of achieving defeat in detail. Our big ships sent out a missile barrage of nukes to basically turn the space between the capital ships into a radiation and shrapnel sensor-scrambling doomzone, and we prepared to meet the waves of incoming fighters.
Tsavor performed the battle meditation, linking the party's pilots (himself, Tereez, Aurun, Valis, and Elon) psychically. He rolled a critical success. We were very nicely synched up, which made for some amusing consequences along the line.
The party formed a strike unit of fighters (the Jedi) with an intel backup of the Vrei (Aurun and Aaron, running Aaron's enhanced sensor matrix and passing all intel we gathered over the psychic link). Aurun basically was taking easy shots at things while using most of her brain for data processing – we were hoping that an analysis of the ongoing fighting would help us pick out which fighters were piloted by Sith so that the actual combat forces could do something about that.
Or that was the intent.
In the actuality, Aurun was running the data and running the data and said, "No, I can synthesise this information better than this," and there was that sense of someone reaching to the Force for answers, and getting them, and that meant that we picked out the fighters and bombers that were successfully going through the nuke field instead of around it, hoping to get the drop on us.
And Tereez echoed in the link with, "I knew it!"
(Game mechanics explanation: I used a Luck reroll on the intelligence analysis, turning it from a near-miss skill check into a success. But you know, when you're psychically linked to a trained Force user who already suspects you're Force sensitive, the sound of a Luck reroll is pretty distinctive.)
The Force-user fighters moved to intercept, and Aurun passed on the warning to the capital ships.
And then there was a voice Tereez recognised over the comms, an old enemy from the Sith Academy, who I will call G because I don't remember his name. "Tereez!" "I thought you learned your lesson in weapons class." (The fellow was notable for attempting to murder one of their classmates and failing. And surviving his failure!) "You have betrayed your people, Tereez."
The back and forth this time ended on the "And now you will die, after I kill your friends," and the group splitting with some fighters going to dogfight the combat party and the bombers going after the Vrei.
Combat continued for a bit, with a lot of back and forth, and the Vrei moving back closer to our capital ship to take advantage of her point defense and her fighter screen. G started getting a bit annoyed that his six delegated ships couldn't take out a freighter. Because clearly a souped-up freighter shouldn't be able to outwrangle three torpedo boats and their fighter screen, even with a galactically famous engineer running her decoy drones and a real hotshot on the controls.
Combat continued. Two more capital ships landed on our side, but they weren't covered by the nuke screen, so they immediately started taking heavy fire from the dreadnought while they were getting oriented. They also had no fighters, apparently.
Something from basically out of nowhere took out a friendly fighter. We were alarmed by it, and couldn't figure out where it came from.
G got increasingly cranky. Which meant that when Tsavor decided to lean on him with an emotional influence to get him even more irrational, and Valis hit him with an attempt to make him fumble his controls, and everyone shot at him, he started going completely frothing incoherent. Enough so that the Sith Academy head started scolding him on tightbeam (which we'd managed to intercept) and told him to finish his damn job.
The Vrei's shields went down. "Fix it, Aaron! I got this!" (Aurun's confidence in her capabilities is very high, even if the decoy drones were a big help.) "You sure?" "I GOT THIS FIX THE SHIELDS."
Then the bombers targetting her vanished in a puff of "Whoa, something friendly, motley, and super-competent just turned up. That was nice timing."
And there was a "So, galactically famous engineer, we've got a strike team going to try to take out the interdiction field on the dreadnought. Have you got anything that can take advantage of that?" "Yeah, give me a few minutes to work out the details...." Aurun, "I GOT THIS."
The capital ship sent out a "Someone's targetting our communication dish!" and they could not find the guy either.
The Force sensitives – including Aurun – tried to find the enemy fighter. And Aurun spotted him, in a ship with no sensors and no windows, flying totally 'blind', terrifyingly competent. Information passed to all relevant parties.
Then there was a blinding flash, sensors out all over the place. "We've lost the Falkor!" That being one of the capital ships that had come in not knowing what they were landing in, without the shield.
Valis took the moment of blindness to use the Force to target an enemy Sith and successfully destroyed that ship; the fighters rounded to occupy the blind fighter. He was occupied significantly, but entirely unharmed.
Fighters warped in on top of the enemy dreadnought. We successfully jumped the fuck out of there.
"Your friends," said Aurun over the psychic link, "do not know how to throw a good party."
"I know, that's why I left."
Fleeting images of selections of party drugs from Aurun. Discussion of the fight. The droids had done data processing and determined that the enemy ship was on the model of a Sith ship made with something called the Star Forge. Legendary stuff is very annoying.
We got to a base with allies and started reloading ordnance and decoy drones. Briefing in an hour.
She spent the hour before the briefing going all over the Vrei Ki'ala, climbing up to remote locations on the ship that are only accessible to someone who can climb like she does, removing access panels and taking things out, and stashing the items thus obtained in her quarters. She was not checking for ship damage. People were confused.
The briefing started out badly; some Moff was on a rant about Those People and This Situation in various ways, and Tsavor declared that this one does not have time for this bullshit and walked out. Valis waved Tereez aside and proceeded to bury the guy in quoted Imperial military regulations and law, determined that he was a friend of the borderline-traitorous Moff back on Taris, suggested that he would need to be brought in for intelligence questioning then, and got shut down with a cranky, "NOT THE TIME" by the CO.
Aurun made rude gestures with her lekku behind her back.
Some people came in – a human and a Wookiee – and the human gave Aurun a respectful salute, one hotshit pilot to another. We sussed out that these were the heads of Wraith Squadron and Brute Squadron, some serious hotshot problem-solving Alliance military groups.
We briefed on Taris, on the current state there, and the need to get better intel about what the hell crashed into the planet and made a giant crater in it. Thus, our team was organised to be one of a number that ventured onto the planet to have a very exciting time of it.
While sorting out who was doing what, the Wraith squadron commander commented, "The commander has forbidden any Alliance ground forces from going planetside, but technically we're a star fighter unit."
Valis accidentally put several character points into fame by teaching every local Jedi a bit about how to cure the zombie invasion virus.
Tereez had had a vision – a memory carried through the Force – a dream, or something – of the sacking of the Jedi temple many years before, and Karka, our mysterious droid friend, was there. So he and Aurun went to talk to Karka about its memories. Karka said, among other things, that it knew where it had to be, and that this was where it had to be. As they left that conversation, Aurun said, "I don't know much about this Force stuff, but... did that sound like the droid is Force sensitive?"
And they got into a conversation about droids developing personality over time, and that this was why they get mindwiped regularly. Aurun finds that rather disturbing, and it likely showed.
There was also an exchange that went, "You said there are... tests, for the Force." "There are." "What do they involve?" Some people, upon hearing that other people are convinced they have the potential to wield legendary power emanating from life itself, would be excited; Aurun is convinced that it is a spot of bother and to be blamed for the disruption of her quiet and systemic life running cargo so that she can get fat and retire.
We spent a little downtime getting a nap, regrouped to sort ourselves out, and Aurun gathered all the things from her quarters and laid them out – a wide selection of concealable sharp pointy objects, other murderous sorts of gear, and poisons. (It was oddly reminiscent of the stuff we got from the genetically modified Twi'lek that we did not prevent from being murdered.) "I was trained as an assassin," she said. "I don't know how to fight Sith. What parts of this will be useful?" Unfortunately, while there was some commentary, there was not as much help as she had hoped.
"I suspect that there are Reasons you came to be our pilot," commented Tereez. Aurun replied, darkly, "I've been suspecting that for quite some time, yes."
So we got ready for insertion. Our main forces were taking a spot on the ground to serve as a base camp and a diversion while the smaller teams went in. We went in with a stormtrooper specialist escort and some droids, including Karka and Aaron's suit of power armour.
GM: "Any other prep anyone's been doing?"
Aaron: "I've been building things."
Tereez: "How's that going?"
Aaron: "We're all going to die."
Tereez: "We're not going to die. We can die next time."
Aaron: "That's my kind of optimism!"
So we went in. Tereez and Aurun as the combination best rappelling team set up ropes to descend down an elevator shaft to get closer in, and we went down. As we were making our way through we found some actual survivors having Issues with zombies. Our stormtrooper leader said the best thing we could do to help people was finish our mission; we disapproved of this and decided the better part of valor was to actually save the lives that were right there in front of us. "Who are you?" "Imperial reinforcements!" "Thank God!" We got most of them out, and up to our escape ropes, with instructions on how to get to our base camp so they could be herded over to evac units.
Then our Magical Device Of Being Invisible To Creepy Force Evil went off, and we took cover.
And one of those damn evil plaguebearing dragonets slithered out of the ceiling and started poking around trying to sense us. We watched it. It prowled around for a bit, and then it heard some other survivors and took off after them. Nothing we could do to help; we confirmed they were dead with a drone sensor and kept going deeper.
We kept prowling further on, and got to a point where we were approaching the crater. And there was a flicker of some sort of light, and Tereez felt a positive Force presense. He went to investigate. "Since it's a Force presence, someone else Force sensitive should go." So Aurun went. Feeling a little awkward, really.
There were two blue figures, translucent, looking into the crater. When they noticed us, one flickered and vanished. Tereez spoke to the other one, and the rest of the group, upon determining that it was safe enough, joined.
Tereez: "Who are you? Or, who were you?"
Force Ghost: "Skywalker."
Tereez: "Which one?"
Ghost: "The bad one."
Valis: "… which one?"
There was some discussion with the ghost about failures and what he knew about what was going on, and he commented that Solo might know something about where the ship was that had housed the zombie virus (Han has, in this version of the universe, gone "fuck this shit" and buggered off to parts unknown after his kids all died).
After the ghost vanished, one of the stormtroopers commented, "I'm surprised you didn't ask who the other one was."
And he was right, that might have been interesting. Oh well.
We peered into the crater and saw a silvery tendril that seemed to be sunk into the melted side of a building. Here and there along it, various zombies appeared to be slowly melting into it. It looked oddly reminiscent of the biomechanical evil dragonet.
We edged closer to the tendril and started investigating it. Valis failed to use his clairvoyance successfully. (He seems to have this problem a lot around zombies. Possibly he should investigate the interference of zombies with clairvoyance.) We dropped a probe onto the tendril and took readings from it as the thing dissolved it. We started constructing elaborate theories about where it came from and what it was doing.
Which wound up into spinning a theory about the Yuuzhan Vong and living planets and the possibility that this might be a baby evil living planet that was devouring the extant planet to grow itself, and what does one do about that. And Karka started quietly radiating hate.
Which is sort of remarkable, droids not usually generating emotions fit to resonate in the Force.
Tereez: "Karka, you're having... feelings."
Karka, through translation: "It's evil."
Tereez: "… yes, granted."
At which point Aurun commented that we'd talked about Force-present droids before. And Karka managed to explain that this had happened before, and it had fought it before, and everyone who fought it died, and everyone who didn't fight it died, and only it was left, and we wondered if Karka – and this thing – had come intergalactically, with the Vong, and there was a lot of rattling around and it led to us carbon-dating Karka and coming up with "On the order of magnitude of fifty thousand years old."
GM: "Make a roll."
Mike (Aaron's player): "Against what?"
GM: "Roll your highest science bullshit skill."
Anyway, we collected a great deal of data. Valis genescanned the thing and got some partial familiarity with it. We got a probe into the tube and it got a ways down before it dissolved, collecting more information. And in the discussion over extragalactic planets and so on, combined with the conversation with the ghost, we realised that the difference in Dark auras this stuff appears to have is somewhat similar to the ways in which some Force users eschew cybernetics because of the flavor-alteration in their Force when they happen.
Which led Valis – who has a systemic cyber-rejection syndrome and knows it – started speculating on whether or not he could graft his own disorder onto the thing in order to basically give it an autoimmune disease rejecting its own parts. This is a topic for further research!
Our ongoing discussion of potential galactic apocalypses lead one of the stormtroopers to start muttering, "I did not sign up for this, I did not sign up for this, I did not sign up for this." Aurun, who has more charisma than reassurance sometimes, replied brightly, "Neither did I! Don't worry about it, you'll get used to it!"
Then we got a bad feeling about this, and took cover, and saw five robed figures come wandering through to investigate. Because just what this party needed was more Sith.
A sixth arrived. And it felt... familiar.
There was no viewplate on his helmet.
And he called for Tereez.
We quietly debated whether we wanted to fight or run; the stormtroopers voted for run, and came up with a plausible plan to do it with. We were dithering, but one of them – who did not sign up for this – pointed out, "That guy with the mask? Don't you people watch MOVIES? I'm not fighting a BLIND SWORDSMAN."
We blocked off the wall where we were hiding – which of course attracted attention – and planted, first a stasis grenade, then some bombs, as we did a blocking and trapping retreat, with a few false leads towards ways we weren't going. We informed home base that we were exeunt pursued by a half-dozen Sith.
Wraith Squadron informed us that they had our backs. Boy were we glad to hear that. We got redirected to a new elevator shaft with new climbing ropes in it, booked it up trapping the shaft on the way, and we could tell we managed to take out one of the Sith with the traps, too. Much escaping. Also a round of 'got clear of an elevator shaft just before the huge razor-edged slab of metal blasted up behind us and lodged in the ceiling.
Exeunt pursued by annoyed Sith...
Wraith Squadron asked if we were clear of the shaft, gave us some directions, and blew the entire building behind us. That slowed down the pursuit, at least, and we worked on returning to base.
Wraith Squadron leader: "Okay, you're almost to u—ah, SHIT."
Valis: "MORE DATA ON THAT SHIT?"
WS leader: "It was nice knowing you guys."
We hurried up, on the principle that Wraith Squadron had saved our asses and it would be good to return the favour. And found a warehouse in which they were holed up, which also contained about twenty Sith. Including Sith Academy leader guy.
Tereez offered to give himself up if the guy let the rest of us go. There was the beginning of a villain monologue, which was punctured and punctuated by a red lightsaber blade through the lungs that were powering it.
"You told me that a Sith is expected to kill his master when there is nothing left to learn. I have nothing more to learn from you. You are empty, you have nothing left to teach me," said the woman wielding the blade, as she force-choked the last of the life out of the guy and tossed him aside. "Nobody asks questions. Like, 'Why are we here? What is this supposed to accomplish?'"
"It's for the Council!" said one of the junior Sith.
"What Council? Have you ever seen the Council?"
"Hello, Serena," said Tereez.
It turned out that Tereez's rival for Sith valedictorian – the person G had attempted to kill previously – had noticed that they were serving as expendable pawns for some nameless force that did not seem to want to use her for ends that served her personal power and ambition, and she was not inclined to be eaten by the planet-dissolving monster or otherwise used. And she was willing to do an "Everyone walks away except for the people who challenge my obvious authority in this situation" arrangement with Tereez. With an "Until next time, may next time be a long time from now, we both have bigger fish to fry, don't we?" sort of discussion.
As we got Wraith Squadron and the rest of our people the hell out of there, we heard her say:
"You can address me as 'Darth'. I haven't chosen a name yet but that will do."
Tereez called back, "Please send me a postcard when you've chosen a name!"
After a few moments of wondering if there was any way we could make it seem like she was having her authority challenged in a plausible way, we decided not to poke the bear so that we could exit without any further pursuit.
"Let me guess," said Aurun. "Two of you were trying to be top of the class?"
"Something like that," said Tereez.
We got the hell out of there.
