Star Wars: Legacies; Session Five Write Up

Session Five Write-Up

Dramatis Personae

Tahluta – Anzat Force Wizard

Luro Clan Voltan – Mandalorian Forward Scout

Jacob – Human Force Sensitive Warrior

R66-Y – Droid

 

The morning dawns on the planet Rikosh, and the party finds themselves in one of the garages that one of the local city gangs uses as a base. For whatever reason, they’ve found themselves forced into hiding on this planet and forced into the service of one of the local gang bosses. They stand in front of one of their direct superiors who has a very bewildered looking ASP Series Labor Droid standing next to him. They are told they need to deliver the droid to a contact on the other side of the city, where he will have some necessary data retrieved from his memory core. Unfortunately, the droid has some “issues” as their superior terms it with its internal systems. If the droid is jostled too much, the memory core might be disrupted and the data contained within lost. For that reason, they need to walk the droid across town instead of taking an air or landspeeder. With that, he leaves the party with the droid, who finally seems to notice them, and asks them a question they will come to hate really quickly.

 

“What do you require of me?”

 

Jacob answers “Nothing right now. Just sit there.” The droid then proceeds to sit down on the floor as the rest of the PCs look on dumbfounded, and beginning to have a growing sense of dread for the walk across town.

 

The walk was fairly uneventful, the droid getting distracted numerous times by various people and places outside. At one point, Tahluta snaps her fingers at the droid and yells at him to focus. At this the droid turns his gaze to her and zooms in with his photoreceptors, following it up with “What do you require of me?”

 

The party crossed into an area that was heavily contested between several of the gangs in the city, and eventually found themselves in a rival’s territory, that of the Stars by the looks of the tags on the wall. Eyes and ears perked for danger, they moved slowly, knowing they were only blocks away from their destination. Suddenly Jacob, Luro, and R66-Y turned around, hearing footsteps coming up behind them. They saw a motley collection of individuals moving towards them, three Duros, two Humans, and an Aqualish. The Aqualish stepped forward and demanded the party hand over the droid, which they outright refused. The Aqualish responded “Then we’ll just take it from you,” and the enemy pulled blasters and vibrodaggers. The Aqualish surged ahead and took a shot at Luro, who had ducked behind several garbage cans, which stopped the blaster shot. The three Duros moved forward next, the two with blades moving towards the party and the one with the pistol grabbed some cover and took another shot at Luro.

 

Tahluta grabbed the labor droids hand and ran around the corner, finding a small warehouse to hide in. As she was messing with the door controls, the droid looked at her and the following exchange happened.

 

Droid: What do you require of me.

Tahluta: Just be quiet!

*The droid looks at Tahluta as if he has something more to say*

Tahluta: *sighing* Fine. Speak.

Droid: It is imperative that I am not damaged in any way.

Tahluta: I’m well aware of that.

Droid: No. You do not fully understand.

 

At this point, the droid opens up a previously hidden hatch before leading to some amount of internal storage. Tahluta’s eyes grow wide as she realizes the droid is stuffed with enough high grade explosive to level half a city block.  The quickly moves the droid into the warehouse, blocks the other entrance with heavy shipping crates, and then proceeds to cover the other door, her hand in the folds of her robe clutching her lightsaber.

 

Meanwhile, the battle raged outside. Jacob and R66-Y surged forward to engage their opponents in melee, Jacob clutching a spear and R66-Y a stun baton. Luro meanwhile stuck behind cover and took some shots with his own heavy blaster pistol, putting some serious hurt downrange and wound up dropping four of the five enemies that weren’t able to run away. The Aqualish didn’t go down without a fight though, dropping Jacob, who was already battered from carbine fire from several of the enemy toughs. In the end though, the Aqualish wasn’t able to withstand a critical hit from Luro’s hand cannon.

 

After the battle, Luro took a quick look at the bodies and noticed the insignia patch on their shoulders. It was that of the Vipers, another of the five gangs in the contest for control of the city, and not the Stars. What the Viper’s were doing in another gang’s territory was anyone’s guess, but it was more disturbing that they knew about and wanted the droid bad enough to die for it. Jacob stirred and got groggily to his feet, and with the aid of the other two, moved to find Tahluta and the droid. They were immediately informed of the droid’s “information” and they immediately struck off to find their contact, who they found looking about worriedly after the gunfire he had just heard. They mentioned that they had just been attacked by members of the Vipers. Their contact guessed that there was probably a mole in their own gang. He would have to be exposed, and it would have to be “ascertained” who he was working for. He told them that he would leave the course of their investigation up to them while he finished what he needed with the droid.

 

They launched their investigation, and despite Jacob nearly blowing it open right away, they managed to follow a Viper back to his base of operations where they noticed Habukh, a new member of their gang heading into the building. It wasn’t hard to figure out that he must be the mole and so they put together a quick plan to get him outside and into their custody. R66-Y approached the guards at the door, doing his best impression of a courier droid and told them he had a message to be delivered to Habukh. One of the guards called him out. Jacob used the Force to create a small noise to distract the guards and planted a small suggestion that they should go and check it out, at which point Luro sneaked up behind Habukh and knocked him out with a blow from a stun baton. They quickly dragged the body into the alleyway and found an unused warehouse where they could interrogate him. They quickly secured him to a chair and woke him up. Without any preamble, Tahluta straddled him, put her face close to his, and snaked her proboscis up his nostrils and began feeding on his soup, adding the underlying threat that there would be more of this to come if he didn’t cooperate. R66-Y tried to make him spill the beans on what he knew, but he flat out refused to talk. Jacob tapped into his darker emotions and used the power of the Force to wrack Habukh with pains while Luro kept a lookout. Taluhta and R66-Y finally broke him and he spilled the information. He wasn’t working directly for the Vipers. But he didn’t really know who he was working for. He was hired and the jobs given to him by an intermediary. One further complication: He didn’t know this person’s name either. He just knew that he went by Red Eye.

 

So, their investigation now took on the focus of finding out who Red Eye was and finding out who he worked for. Jacob stopped into a local cantina and poked around for information, asking the bartender if he had ever heard of him, sliding him a few credits for any information. The bartender leaned in close and said that he was a fairly common sight around the loading docks. When asked what he looked like, the bartended responded that he was a big, bulky specimen of a Duros.

 

They headed down to the docks, and saw him taking a walk around the area. Luro tailed him as he took the walk through the docks and all the way back to the government district, where he went into a building, pushed a button on one of the directories, and was let in remotely. Luro brought the rest of the party to the building. Tahluta tried to peer through the door and see which button he had pressed, but the typeface was just too small. So, R66-Y put on his best bewildered droid impression and wandered into the lobby and took a look at the door. He drew the attention of the guards, but was able to deflect attention by wandering around the lobby, stopping awkwardly at several other places, and leaving. He noticed that the label on the button Red Eye had pressed was for the Office of Mr. Tsun. As Jacob tried in vain to recall the name and what he was in the grand scheme of the government of the city, several large figures approached them; two Gamorreans and an incredibly built Human. They walked directly up to the party and said:

 

Enforcer: Mr. Tsun knows you’ve been asking some questions. For your own well-being, you’d best stop.

Tahluka: *waving her hand* We are not causing any problems here. You have the wrong people.

Enforcer: *binking* I guess you guys are alright. I must have you pegged wrong.

 

With that, he barked an order to the Gamorreans and the three of them left. The party gathered themselves when Luro’s comlink crackled to life. It was the voice of their boss, demanding to know what had come of their investigation. They told him all they had found out. There was a brief moment of silence before their boss told them that Mr. Tsun’s full name was Corell Tsun, a low level financial bureaucrat with connections to the bigger mobs. If he was getting involved in the goings on of the gangs in the city, it could only mean that the larger syndicates were making moves to take power over the smaller areas. He ordered them back to the base so that the situation could be assessed.

 

 

This session went really, really well. I had a ball playing the droid up and I think the party enjoyed his antics. The fight proved to be challenging, which is what I wanted (it was a CL 2 level fight, utilizing 3 Thugs from the Core Rulebook, 2 Brutes from Threats of the Galaxy, and a Scoundrel 1/Soldier 2 build for the Aqualish). Luro’s player was on fire, taking out four of the five enemies that were killed (the last thug ran away in the third round of combat, shouting that he wasn’t paid enough for this. And his critical hit to end the combat did well over 30 points of damage. This also feels like it was the session where the entire group “got” skill challenges, and was, in my opinion, the best one I have run yet. I even managed to run a smaller skill challenge inside of a larger one with the interrogation scene. I’m looking forward to next week’s session when I add in a new player to replace the one that dropped the game for personal reasons. I’ve gamed with this guy before, but he moved away when he joined the military a few years back and just moved back into the area. He hasn’t gotten a chance to play Saga Edition yet, so I’m looking forward to teaching him the ropes.

 

Star Wars: Legacies; Session Three Write-Up

This was a smaller session, which saw the introduction of a new skill challenge mechanic that I introduced to model the assault on the fortress. Article and rules found here

Reaching the fortress, the wasted no time. They quickly breached the outer wall, punching their speeder through the front gate and ducking behind it to use it as cover from the weapon emplacements. Hurrgh leapt over the speeder and jumped onto the remains of a gun turret and threw his head back, letting out a great bellow, attempting to draw as much of the enemy’s attention as he could. Meanwhile, Biro studied the fortress, noting the various emplacements while Tiss tried to stealthily move to get the main door unlocked and opened. Unfortunately, he was spotted by several enemy soldiers and very nearly gunned down. Raz jumped up on top of the speeder, calling out to the enemy soldiers, using her intense presence and personality to force them to back down and let Tiss open the door. Hurrgh leapt from his position and charged into the now open main hallway, only to receive a bullet in the arm for his troubles. Biro and Carthis moved forward, laying down covering fire for the Wookiee down the hall, and allowing the rest of the party to enter into the fortress. Carthis and Tiss moved towards the garage, attempting to hotwire a downed speeder to be able to use it to blow open the doors to the rest of the complex after Hurrgh failed to force them open. Raz meanwhile took a different path, using a nearby computer terminal to hack into the security systems of the complex and open the cell doors containing the Xerxes forces that were taken prisoner. After that, the fortress was quickly taken back and the enemy dispatched.

Dain requested that the party take up position out back in order to defend against a possible reprisal attack while the rest of his forces finished securing the fortress and getting all the systems back online. Carthis and Tiss jumped into the speeder that they had gotten functioning, Tiss behind the main controls and Carthis standing behind the large caliber machine gun mounted to the back of it. Biro jetted up to the top of the fortress wall in order to take advantage of one of the functioning grenade launchers as well as giving him a better vantage point. Hurrgh climbed in behind the controls of a large gun battery while Raz took a position where she could see an approaching enemy and try to maintain tactical command of the battlefield.

It wasn’t long before two large figures were seen moving towards the base. It was two large, vaguely catlike creatures with eight legs, riders sitting atop them, charging the base. The battle was fierce, Tiss and Carthis engaging one of the beasts, keeping it away from the rest of the party and peppering it with gunfire. However, the speeder was eventually wrecked as the beast rolled it, spilling them onto the ground. While this was going on, concentrated fire from Hurrgh and Biro managed to kill the rider of the other beast, leaving it trying to figure out if the continued fight was worth it. Carthis and Tiss managed to dispatch the other rider with combined small arms fire. Raz meanwhile stepped into the center of the animals, and drawing on deep reserves of heroics, and attempted to catch the attentions of both beasts. Unfortunately for her, one got close enough and ravaged her, leaving her barely clinging to life. The rest of the group brought one of the beasts down through combined fire, and drove the other one off. Biro used his jetpack to get to Raz, pulling out a medpac from his pack as he did, and set about the task of providing a small amount of battlefield first aid, enough to get her inside, where she could rest.

Once inside, Dain told them that the preparations were nearly finished, and they would be able to strike out towards the capital city at first light. He directed the party towards the officers quarters and suggested they all get some sleep to recover from the battle.

Legacies: Session Two Write-Up

I’ve had these on my back burner for a while. These following three sessions were run in the weeks after the first one, but I just had not gotten around to finishing the write-ups for them. I’m just not getting that accomplished, and will have them posted in the next couple of days, as a way to ring in the new year of posting on this blog as well as a way to gear myself up for the campaign starting again in a week or so. And so, without further ado, the write-up for session two:

The last session left the group in the midst of the rapidly constructed forward outpost of the Grand Army of the Republic on the ground of Saleucami. A second shuttle brought a Clone Commander along with another detachment to troops, and took the PCs up to their next post aboard the Republic ship, Singularity, a top of the line, fresh off the assembly line, Venator-class Destroyer (book stats with the Advanced template).

Once they got aboard, they were told the nature of their new mission: they were to make a microjump just out of system and aid another embattled destroyer with several enemy starships, who were using their tractor beams to grab asteroids from a nearby belt and hurl them down at the surface as impromptu weapons in order to make landing difficult/harm other forces already on the ground, or just try and catch a ship on its way down. Two of the enemy ships were heavily battle damaged already, and the third one, the flag-ship of the group had apparently just joined the battle. Asteroids were all over, most of them small enough to not do any real damage, but several large enough to do some serious damage if they were to impact the surface of the planet.

Biro and Hurrgh slid into the controls of two of the crafts heavy turbolaser cannon batteries while Tiss scampered down to engineering. Carthis slid behind the helm while Raz took her customary place on the bridge to give and relay orders.

The battle was fairly intense, but short lived, with the heavy turbolasers cutting one of the damaged enemy ships to shreds. The other one fell to the turbolaser fire of the other Venator, who then began turning their cannons on the asteroids while the Singularity moved to engage the enemy flagship. Eventually, the flag ship turned and made the jump to hyperspace. Seconds later, comm traffic came through and the acting admiral of the Republic forces ordered the Singularity to follow them, telling them the jump vector was taking them towards the Hoth system. Afraid that they may have a secret base there, the Singularity was ordered to jump into the system, do a quick scan and report back. Several other ships too badly damaged to continue the fight above the planet were jumping in to help clear the asteroids.

Carthis punches the coordinates into the navicomputer and jumped the ship into hyperspace. Tiss watched as a large spark shot out of the hyperdrive. The ship jerked violently and then the stars turned into lines, shoving the ship into hyperspace.

Carthiss tried to pull the ship back into realspace and found that he couldn’t. Meanwhile, Tiss and the engineers tried in vain to get the hyperdrive to shut down, even going so far as to yank the hyperdrive out of its installation. Nothing worked though. For some reason, the ship remained in hyperspace for several weeks.

The ship finally reverted back to real space in the middle of a battleground, but one unlike they were in before. There was a large, intense firefight going on above the surface of a planet. The ships were antiquated in design, and using absolutely archaic weapons, firing magnetically propelled slugs instead of turbolasers or blaster cannons. The Singularity was hailed by two contacts. Carthis opened up the lines of communication. The first hail wound up being from a group identifying themselves as the Eternal Empire. They demanded the Singularity turn around or risk attack from their forces, which considering the state of the ship’s hyperdrive, they weren’t in any position to do. The second hail came from a group calling themselves the Planetary Defense Force of Xerxes, begging them for help, claiming that they were fighting off an invasion. And indeed, as they watched out the forward viewports, it appeared that the PDF was on the losing end of this conflict. Heavily armored cruisers with strange, claw like fronts would collide with the the larger ships of the PDF, and then destroy themselves, apparently causing their reactors to go critical in a kamikaze attempt to take as much of the larger ship with them.

However, they weren’t able to watch for long. Mere seconds after their warning was ignored, several of these claw ships turned towards the Singularity. The captain ordered the guns to open fire on them, and they quickly found these ships were so antiquated by their designs, that the ships cannons shredded them with ease. Not a single one of the enemy claw ships got close enough to threaten harm towards the ship.

The commander called the PCs and asked them to take a shuttle down to the planet’s surface and find out just what was happening. If they were ever going to be able to take the time and find out what had happened to their hyperdrive or even where they were, they needed to get whatever situation was going on down there under control. He ordered the Singularity to get as close to the planet as possible and then sent them down in a small shuttle.

After agreeing to land the shuttle away from any large population center to avoid being easy prey for any sort of anti-aircraft fire. After setting down, they pulled the command speeder out of the ships bay and headed towards the nearest population center. Along the way, they encountered a small firefight. Several small squads of troops were pinned down by a larger force who wore the same emblem that they had seen on the starships of the Eternal Empire. They spilled out of the speeder in order to come to the aid of the indigent forces, hoping that they would be able to answer some questions.

The battle that followed was short, but intense. The enemy commander used his tactical mind to keep his troops constantly moving, keeping them in positions to deny the enemy free access to his position or to keep his troops out of harm’s way. However, even that couldn’t match the power disparity between the party’s blaster technology and his own troops’ reliance on slugthrowers. Hurrgh moved up to enter combat with two members of the enemy squad who were melee fighters, one who was, like the wookiee, unarmed and the other wielding a vibro-ax. The rest of the group moved into support positions, Biro using his jetpack to quickly move around the battlefield. Carthis began at range, moving in to finish several of the enemy troops in melee combat. Tiss and Roz brought their new droids to bear in combat, Tiss throwing fire down towards the enemy commander while Roz used her natural oratory skills to confuse the enemy and make them question themselves for wanting to attack her, letting her droid and then Biro, take the enemy down for her. Hurrgh got pounded on pretty good, knocked to the ground early on and forced to lay there lest he be hurt even worse. However, the enemy was eventually routed, though the group found it worrisome that they fought to the very last man instead of scattering once their commander and most of their number had already fallen.

After the fight, they were approached by the surviving members of the indigent forces. The commander introduced himself as Dain. The party began speaking to him, getting a feel for the situation and trying to get information about where they were. Dain confirmed that they were indeed on the planet Xerxes, and that they were currently fighting off an invasion from the Eternal Empire. The entire system was ostensibly under their rule, but most of the planets, including Xerxes had been left to their own devices, with a governor from the Empire in charge of the major decisions of the planet. However, the people of Xerxes had finally had enough of their governor, who had a long history of brutalizing the people of Xerxes and rose up against him and deposed him, declaring themselves independent. This of course, drew more than a little bit of ire from the Empire, who responded by sending an occupation fleet. They managed to scramble their PDF, but not before the Empire had managed to land their forces on the ground. The cities fell quickly and the indigent forces found themselves in a fighting retreat early on. The battle above the planet had been going poorly for them as well, and they had just been about to call them back and accept their losses when the Singularity had showed up and helped to turn the tide of the battle.

The PCs then began asking a few questions about repairing their hyperdrive, to which they got nothing but blank stares. Apparently, the system they had entered had not yet mastered faster than light travel. That also explained why most of the troops were shying away from Hurrgh and Tiss, the obvious aliens of the group. They also seemed unfamiliar with droids, and several were looking at the two of them with a combination of fear and interest. Dain hadn’t heard of anything, but he reasoned, he was a soldier, not a scientist. It was possible that there were people researching these things and keeping records of it as he lived and breathed. Odds were good that if there was any sort of information on this research, it would be kept in the capital city, which of course, was under enemy occupation.

However, Dain reasoned that a small force could get inside the city walls more easily than a large army. The enemy supreme commander had to still be there. If he could be located and defeated, it might take the fight out of the Empire’s forces. He asked the PCs for their help in this promising them any sort of aid he could provide them. Not seeing themselves presented any other option, they agreed.

Dain told them of a small fortress that had fallen recently. A small number of their forces were being kept prisoner. With them, as well as the supplies and vehicles from the fortress, they could put together a large enough diversionary force to assault the front of the city and give the PCs the advantage they needed to slip in unnoticed.

They set off towards the fortress…