Upon meeting with Saw Guerra, the Team grudgingly agree to assist him in liberating a large cache of stolen weapons from the pirates.
The team’s plan has them hitting the armory from below, cutting through the floor, then absconding with the weapons on some load lifters.
Things naturally get a bit hectic as security tries to stop them, but the Team persevere and escape on the lifters … just in time to see the chief pirate, Ral’Torak, leading his own team of speeders after them!
Player Notes:
Full house again.
This recap is very late. I took a break from working on them for NaNoWriMo 2023 and then inertia just took over…
Again, I’m intentionally trying to keep these outlines short instead of getting overly verbose like I do sometimes. There is a lot of stuff that happened during the session that I didn’t mention in the outline … see?! I’m getting overly verbose again!
Having obtained access information to the Twilight Veil, the Team plan their approach, fully expecting severe difficulty in gaining access. Apart from some manuever difficulty, however, none of the pirates seem to care.
The secret pirate base is revealed to be a mismash of old starships, welded together to create a single, bizarre entity.
Aboard the base, the Team spend some time seeking out their target, Dexar Tao’ni, culminating in a meeting in the cantina. Dexar is more than interested in getting away, but he needs the Team to help him get someone else out as well. That someone? Saw Guerra.
Player Notes:
Full house again.
This recap is very late. I took a break from working on them for NaNoWriMo 2023 and then inertia just took over…
Again, I’m intentionally trying to keep these outlines short instead of getting overly verbose like I do sometimes. There is a lot of stuff that happened during the session that I didn’t mention in the outline … see?! I’m getting overly verbose again!
Having received the information about Dexar Tao’ni, the Team travels to Alassa Major, a resort world, in order to seek out Greeva Varrin, a former Crimson Corsair.
The Team splits into two groups in order to maximize their investigative capability: one group, consisting of Luck, Nim and Tina concentrate on the underworld, while the other team of Bostco and Darrrill seek out higher end establishments. The former learns only that Varrin seems to owe a lot of people money, while the latter eventually locates the man at a casino after Darrrill loses some credits.
The Team converges upon the casino an attempts to question Varrin, but this leads to an attempt at shadowing that turns into foot chase. Unfortunately for Varrin, Nim is quite fast and Luck has a jet pack.
Varrin reveals that Tao’ni is likely hanging out in the Twilight Vale in the Stellara System. The Vale is considered very difficult to navigate and Varrin suggests the Team acquire a Crimson Corsair starship which will have a flight path preprogrammed in its navcomp.
Luckily, the Team have used the captured Corsair ship to come to Alassa Major, so upon letting Varrin go with their tanks, they return to the ship and Tina is able to slice into the computer to retrieve the coordinates. Now all that is left is to figure out a cover story…
Player Notes:
Full house again.
Bostco’s player FX Engineer had severe internet issues and ultimately wasn’t able to play; he logged in briefly but lost connectivity and was never able to regain it.
The players jokingly decided that Greeva Varrin was now a lounge singer and the GM rolled with it. We also kept joking that the old lady gambler was secretly a terrifying assassin or something, but nothing really came of that … yet.
Again, I’m intentionally trying to keep these outlines short instead of getting overly verbose like I do sometimes. There is a lot of stuff that happened during the session that I didn’t mention in the outline … see?! I’m getting overly verbose again!
The Team arrives in-system within the captured Imperial shuttle and make their approach, using the codes obtained from the ISB personnel.
Upon landing, Bostco, Luck, Tina and Kinni Dedmiit, one of Kalen Brie’s men, enter the Imperial facility, with Bostco and Tina wearing ISB uniforms while Luck and Kinni are in stormtrooper armor.
At the detention facility, Luck enters Ronan’s cell to grab him, while Bostco chats with the senior security man. Ronan whispers to Luck that “they know,” which he relates to the rest of the team by using a code word. They’re blown.
The senior Imperial officer insists that Bostco walk in front of him and panics when he does not, drawing his firearm to shoot. Bostco fast-draws his own weapon and they exchange shots; Luck reacts immediately by charging forward, engaging the security men and nearby stormtroopers.
Once the situation is secure, the Team is surprised to learn that all cameras are already off which appears to be the work of Nara Tao’ni, the investigator from earlier. They learn from the surviving security officer that there is a trap waiting for them but this kicked off earlier than planned…
With the surviving security officer as a prisoner, the Team exfiltrates as a major power outage engulfs the complex.
Back aboard the shuttle, the Team flees, pursued by a pair of TIEs, but Darrrill’s expert flying allows them to completely elude the fighters before making the jump to lightspeed…
Player Notes:
Full house again.
Felt bad for Gigermann as we inexplicably had to leave his character behind at the shuttle so he twiddled his thumbs.
Not sure about the plan the Imps had here. I think if I was GMing this, there would have been a bunch of stormtroopers hiding in the other cells and, at a signal, they all spring out to ambush us.
Still struggling with the Spacecraft ship combat rules. I’m thinking there needs to be some sort of cheat sheet for it to simplify some things.
The Team come up with a plan: rather than ambush the Imperial shuttle in Phantine, they’ll hit them in a different system along the hyper-route.
With Bostco, Darrrill, Tina in the Aggressive ReConnaissance-170 starfighter, and Nim and Luck in the captured Crimson Corsair craft, the team jumps to Kalinda … and quickly ambush the shuttle. The fight is over almost before it begins, with Darrrill hitting with both of the ion torpedoes.
Luck boards the shuttle, quickly dropping the sole intact stormtrooper. This allows the rest of the team to approach and board as well.
The surviving ISB officers are captured and interrogated (thanks to Bostco’s drugs), which provides the team appropriately access codes. Rather than simply execute the prisoners, the team reaches out to their contact Kalen Brie who is quite interested in taking the prisoners. He links up with the team and sends a pair of additional soldiers who can pose as stormtroopers alongsie Luck.
To maximize the cover, the team leaves the Crimson Corsairs’ captured starfighter after having shot it up a little bit.
The shuttle makes the jump to lightspeed, heading back to Phantine…
Player Notes:
Full house again.
We really messed up the ion torpedoes. The GM misidentified how much damage they did and just one of them would have flat-out destroyed the shuttle. So the GM hand-waved it away, and then realized his mistake afterward.
Since Darrrill and Nim are non-humans, we got the two NPCs to act as stand-ins for Gigermann and Nosh next week. We expect at least one of them will probably die in the inevitable firefight.
Back in Minerva City, the Team begin seeking information on the streets about the detention facility and the prisoner. While this is happening, Tina manages to repair the lightsaber using the crystal she obtained earlier.
The streetwise investigation results in Nim making contact with someone who claims to have information. With Luck providing sniper overwatch, Bostco and Nim arrange at the clandestine meeting only to learn that it is the investigator, Nara Tao’ni. She recognizes Bostco and, after much back and forth, agrees to not turn them in as long as they assist her in extracting someone she is close to from the Crimson Corsairs.
From her, they also learn that the Imperial Security Bureau is sending a team to take prisoner out. This leads the team to make the decision to use their new gear to disable the shuttle, then use it to pretend to be the ISB agents.
Boiled down, it doesn’t seem like we accomplished a lot. We handled Job Rolls at the beginning, then had a bunch of roleplaying and a whole bunch of researching and repairing.
We’ve already determined that, if the two ion torps don’t disable the shuttle, then we’re on to simply destroying it.
With a roar, the beast attacks and the Team springs into action, with Luck using his jetpack to get into position atop the creature to attack with his vibroknife, while Nim darts between its legs to use his grapple line to tangle its legs and Darrrill unexpectedly engages it in melee combat even as Bostco and Tina distract it with blaster shots.
Darrrill ends up engaging in an unexpected … testicular grapple (words I never expected to type in a GURPS recap) with the creature which, naturally distracted it rather significantly so Nim could further tangle it up and Luck could jam the armed grenade into the hole he’d cut on the creature’s back. The result was rather sticky.
Afterwards, the Team had monster steak, Tina got permission to keep the (currently) non-functional lightaber, and Luck discovered that Loophole had a bunch of deactivated battle droids and weapons which the other clone intends to use against the Empire at some point.
Following their meal, Loophole takes the lot of them to a place with a lot of scrap and points out two functional, if admittedly old and in need of work, vessels from the Grand Army of the Republic: an Aggressive ReConnaissance-170 starfighter and a Low Altitude Assault Transport (LAAT). The arsenal of the Team is increasing…
Player Notes:
Full house again. Also a really short episode because Ronnke, the GM, was struggling with a brutal headache so he went back to bed after we ended; he almost canceled early it was that bad.
I think absolutely none of us expected to be in a GURPS game where a player grappled a monster … by the testicles. It left us in stitches.
Back in Minerva City, the Team has learned that the official story for Pallas has changed: according to Imperial propaganda, insurgents caused the deaths of people trying to decontaminate the city-state.
Bostco learns that an investigator is looking into the events and has consulted his family; he arranges a meeting with her, hoping to redirect her attention elsewhere and is (over)confidently convinced that he succeeded.
Tina experiences some strange dreams connected to the Kyber crystal she discovered, then ultimately ends up cornering Luck about her mother. The former clonetrooper then tells her about the day Order 66 was executed and how his previously damaged inhibitor chip allowed him to not take the shot at her mother…
The Team depart Minerva City and travel to the plateau where those events happened, following a ‘hunch’ of Tina’s. There, in the desolate wreckage, they encounter another former clonetrooper, Loophole, who has been eking out a life in this barren wilderness.
While at Loophole’s home inside the remnants of the destroyed Republic headquarters, the team hear the roar of an approaching great beast and rush to meet it…
Player Notes:
Full house again.
Again, I’m intentionally trying to keep these outlines short instead of getting overly verbose like I do sometimes. There is a lot of stuff that happened during the session that I didn’t mention in the outline … see?! I’m getting overly verbose again!
Darrrill moves against the comm array to ensure that the Imperials cannot summon help. He accomplishes this easily enough and rejoins the rest of the Team.
Leaving the locals outside the mine, the Team enters the facility. They quickly engage a pair of troopers in a long hallway, continue on toward a lab where they take on two more, and then finally reach the control center where a trio are standing watch with an officer. Despite the troopers sealing off the control center, Nim is able to hotwire the door to open it and Luck hurls an armed thermal detonator inside. The officer might have been able to escape through another door, but the three troopers are vaporized…
The Team continues on to the lab proper, a converted storage facility. Here, they capture several scientists and learn the Empire has been experimenting with injecting various materials into the locals which is causing mutation. Luck wants to just blow this entire place, but the locals resist, insisting that they can rescue the hideously mutated people who are their friends and family. In the end, Luck decides that the team can do no more and he won’t risk them when the Empire inevitably returns, so the team withdraws, taking their scientist prisoners and the captured walker (which they intend to stash somewhere until they can figure out how to smuggle it into the city.) The prisoners they intend to turn over to their contact, Kalen Brie, who will no doubt want to thoroughly interrogate them…
Later, they will learn that the Empire did show back up and, exactly like Luck expected, they came back in force.
Player Notes:
Full house for a change.
Several short firefights. We also sort of decided that thermal detonators have a weird blast radius of 5 yards but do mininuke (UT156) damage which is an insane 6dx200 cr ex with linked damage of 4dx200 burn ex rad sur. So yeah, those troopers were vaporized.
At the end, we had a string of mediocre or outright bad social engineering checks, resulting in the locals demanding we not just blow up the facility … so the team bailed, knowing these idiots were all going to be wiped out when the Empire returned. And yup!
Haven’t figure out where we’re going to store the walker – it’s currently hidden somewhere in the badlands, so isn’t easily accessible. Clearly, we need to obtain a decent-sized freighter that we can store that puppy in! LOL.
Having identified the probable location of the Imperial basecamp, the Team considers their options and decide that they need to capture or neutralize the AT-ST they passed during the speeder chase before it can get clear of the radio interference and alert the base of their presence.
Thanks to Tina’s sense of absolute direction, they are able to quickly locate the walker, then stake out locations ahead of it. When it passes, Luck uses his jet pack to spring down on the roof; the Team’s new ally, Ronan, decides to make a mad jump to join him, nearly going over the side. Ronan yanks the hatch open and with two well-placed stun shots, Luck neutralizes the pilot and gunner.
The two are extracted and interrogated, though not a great deal is really learned. After heavily sedating the two and ensuring they are both bound and their rebreathers are topped off, the Team leaves them behind and then moves forward to observe the camp again. Ronan returns to his people to bring Darrrill and any reinforcements that want to assist. In that time, Tina’s droid, H4X-R, is able to insert into the facilty and secure images, including that of the hideous experiments going on in the biolabs.
Upon arrival, the Wookie is dispatched to take out the comm array, while Luck and Bostco lead a ground team, augmented by the AT-ST, piloted by Nim and gunned by Tina.
Attempts to stealth forward are foiled by a single alert stormtrooper, and a fierce firefight ensues. Two of the troopers are dropped by regular shots, and a third surrenders when the walker blows up the gun emplacement on the roof and then vaporizes the fourth trooper who is locked in a deadly exchange with Luck. Ronan is grievously injured during the exchange, but not killed.
The Team look in the direction of the comm array which Darrrill should be reaching at any moment…
Player Notes:
Still down Nosh for this session as he went on vacation, though he’s coming back next week, just in time for Darrrill’s thrilling heroics.
Thanks to Return of the Jedi, we know hijacking an AT-ST is ridiculously easy. So we did it! Gigermann joked that, since we ended Episode 1 with having “obtained” the pirate starship, and now we’ve taken this AT-ST, we should end every chapter with us having stolen another vehicle of some sort. I’m looking forward to the AT-AT!
Tina’s last shot at the poor stormtrooper was brutal. Three hits. Before calculating DR reduction, damage was 200, 200 and 250. Stormtrooper armor on the torso is DR 60, but the weapon was (5), so only 12 protects, which means he took 188, 188, and 238. That’s 614 points of damage! Ronnke said it was like -50x his base HP and -10x is essentially disintegrated. I think that’s the most damage I’ve ever seen done with a non-starship weapon.
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