Dark Side #9/#10: In Which Consequences Come Home To Roost For A Variety Of Parties
Dramatis Personae:
* Aurun, hotshot ship captain, ex-assassin, untrained Force user
* Aaron Selig, demagogue ship's engineer, mad gadgeteer, pessimist
* Tereez, half-Bothan senior Imperial Knight, ex-Sith infiltration specialist
* Valis, junior Imperial Knight, healing and body mod specialist
* Tsavor, also called Hissy, Barabel ex-gladiator
* Arno Lassic, Zeltron hacker and demolitions guy
and introducing (in session #10)
* a survivor from the Ishikarra's round of the Force-activation plague virus whose name I don't recall and will have to look up, Jedi-affiliated weapons specialist
plus
NPC Elon, still a traumatized Jedi survivor of the Force-activation plague virus, medic, and continually having a bad day
Once again I am way behind and trying to catch up before gaming tomorrow.
When we left our heroes we were entering a grand space battle over the Centerpoint Station clone, which we have dubbed Counterpoint. We cleared through the debris of the ship we warped in basically on top of and evaluated the situation:
Our friends were heavily embattled in a fairly even fight with a bunch of Hutt-hired mercenaries and several Sith dreadnoughts. There were boarding parties aboard. Also, the giant largely-automated ship stolen from Corellia was present, and appeared to be focused on shooting up the Sith. Our Chiss escort swept in to join the fight; we, after some discussion, split, with Elon going to help against the boarding action, and the PCs heading for the ex-Corellian superdreadnought currently being driven by Terrorist Anonymous, under the principle that hey, if they were fighting the right people, they might be amenable to a parley, and failing that, it would be really nice to not have that particular loose cannon wandering about the galaxy, even if it were preferentially shooting up horrible corporate overlords.
"I think we need to insert and negotiate. And if that turns into negotiation by lightsaber, so be it."
(We were not optimistic about the peaceful negotiations part, because Terrorist Anonymous is sort of a "the bombings will continue until morale improves" organisation.)
So we zipped over, found an entry port, and parked ourselves there, before carefully cracking the security and inserting ourselves through the convenient airlock. ("Just stealth, or not stealth. There is no try.") There was a droid there that demanded our access codes; we prevented it from alerting the rest of the infrastructure, and settled in to patch ourselves into the system and basically get ourselves authorised so all the electronic crew members would ignore us.
At which point we began to putter about the giant droid-crewed ship, and eventually set up camp in the secondary bridge, so that, if necessary, we could see if we could get the ship to believe it was in the sort of peril that would naturally swap control there. We snagged the video feeds on the bridge and spotted about a half-dozen robed figures and a bunch of apparently ordinary crew members.
Eventually we worked through a plan to make contact with the crew: moving Tsavor to some distance from the backup bridge, with Tereez as backup, and using the comms. When the contact was made, we saw the people on the bridge cut the camera feed. Not useful.
Tsavor tapped the comms feed. "Is this thing on?" (At which point in a bit of OOC hilarity, the iPhone ER was playing with announced, "I'm sorry, I'm afraid that's beyond my capabilities." Thank you for your contribution, Siri.)
(I believe right here was the bit where telepathic contact was attempted on some "ordinary" people, who resisted it, in an attempt to continue negotiation. There was discussion there about whether pushing past the resistance they presented was a bit Dark or not. WHich may be where this bit of dialogue goes: "Is this a good idea?" To which Aurun replied, "No. None of this is a good idea. Isn't it awesome!?")
There was some thought put into having Selig prepare a propaganda speech to try to contact the crew, broadcast through the ship, as well. "He has points in pontificate!" So we spent some time on that.
In any case, eventually all the half-dozen robed figures plus a squad of people from the bridge came down towards where Tsavor was lurking, and one of them screamed, "DIE SITH INVADER", and that is basically where the negotiation totally broke down, really. They also detected Tereez in the ventilation and attempted to ventilate him with rather a lot of gunfire.
Both of them broke and retreated back to the bridge, which we sealed behind them with various boobytrappage, and tried to figure out wtf to do now.
The lightsabers that started cutting through the door were not red. Their wielders, however, had a notable Dark aura.
The smoke grenade stuff we planted didn't really slow them down notably, because that sort of thing does not slow down force users notably. Well, it slowed down the goon squad.
But six dark Force-users vs. the party was a good reason to make a retreat. One of them Force-hurled the blast door they'd carved open at Tsavor, who leapt onto it and started to steer it. We all left for the far side exit we'd left unboobytrapped.
"Are we all running this way quickly?"
Tsavor: "No, I'm flying that way quickly!"
Another bunch of goonsquad carved through a bit of wall, and met a rather grisly end at an attempt to seal the wall back up, about which we felt bad but also couldn't really do better there. We bravely ran away tra la, and managed, eventually, to elude pursuit.
Meanwhile the ship changed course. It was going to ram one of the Sith vessels. We set a self-destruct to make sure it stayed dead, got onto our ship, and got away before impact.
So basically we achieved a whole lot of nothing, but it was informative, once again.
In any case, various ship battles resolved in their various ways, and our side won, if feeling a bit battered by the end there. The mercenaries and Sith were driven off or destroyed, and we retained control of Counterpoint.
"No Hutts were harmed in the filming of this space battle."
We had some conversations about what we'd learned.
"Can you identify a dark force user when they're asleep?"
"Yes. They have auras."
"Can you identify them when they're dead? ... wait, you have psychometry.”
And there was some discussion about whether or not they were Sith, whether they were some other faction of deliberately Dark Jedi, or whether they were well-meaning fanatics who happened to have gone over the edge. This was filed as unknowable.
Selig went off to work on the station some more. "Do you need a bodyguard?" asked Tereez. "Karka?" "... that's fair."
The station droids were not from Karka's faction. After discussion, it became clear that he was not willing to repair the station droids, but he was willing to use their parts and the machinery to manufacture droids of his own faction. No brainwashing, but recycling. We were good with that ethical line.
We spent a bit of time working on recovering and deciding what to do next, including letting Aurun start her training in the Force with Tereez and other people who dropped in for the evening meditation and chat sessions.
Our next step: going to the obscure distant lump of rock and perdition where the rogue Vong Shaper was making gladiatorial supersoldiers. We mocked up some cover identities, found some plausible cargo, made some cosmetic modifications, and shipped out as mercenaries looking for work. "Evil is always hiring."
There was some discussion of Force-powered healing along the way, as Elon had lost a hand in the fighting on our friends' ship. "If you're not quite successful at growing a hand, what do you get, a *tentacle*?”
We scanned the planet as we went down. Large area inside a retaining wall, which was likely where the modifications were being put in. We weren't sure how to get in, so we settled in to see what the local environment was like, and sought out a dive bar, which we infiltrated in bits. Aurun was entirely fucking thrilled that Arno was dressed to be the vamp in this gambit.
The televisions were on the news.
The news said there were mysterious alien asteroids showering ... Corellia.
Just like Taris had fallen.
Though Corellia, at least, was better-equipped to shoot them down and was organising resistance. The bar, however, had a lot of "Serves the bastards right!" in it, which rather made everyone feel a bit sick.
There was a little ripple of anticipatory danger.
And then the Mandaloreans came in. And approached Aurun.
And greeted her by name. Which amused them, when she startled; they pointed out that Tsavor, as a Barabel, was pretty easily identifiable, they not being a common species, so a Twi'lek with a Barabel bodyguard was a giveaway.
There was some jousting verbally, followed by a revelation of who had hired them that Aurun understood - and which made her laugh and relax notably, in the sense of someone who had had a long-standing tension resolved. "You didn't get paid enough for this job."
"We'll see about that."
Arno hacked into the jetpack controls of one of the Mandos on the street and crashed him fatally.
"Bad move," said the Mando talking to Aurun.
"Hmmm?" she said, innocently.
At which point they cracked out the flamethrower. Which is kind of bringing something out of scale to the usual barfight.
(Aurun pulled a knife. Aurun was very, very happy. I have no idea if this creeped out the rest of the mindlinked party. But really, after a lot of zombies and evil teleporting nasties and fun-sized death stars and life-devouring planets, a personal grudgematch with a bunch of Mandaloreans is a nice change!)
(Aurun is differently sane.)
The fight was a mess. The Mandos outside peppered the bar with small missiles, which Selig caught in a timestop grenade; Tereez sneaked out and tried to take the sniper, and got into a brawl with the sniper's bodyguards, general madness ensued.
Arno did not have a lot of luck hacking into any more Mando jetpacks. ("Have you tried turning it off and then on again?") We survived the mess, and Elon and Valis puttered around working on trying to heal some of the injured once the surviving Mandos took off.
"They really can't win with these jetpacks, can they? They turn it on, they send you flying, they turn it off, they push you off a roof…"
In the wreckage, we caught our breaths.
[ In the space between sessions, we came to the conclusion that Selig's player would be retiring the character, because "resurrecting an ancient race of benevolent death droids" was so precisely what he had been spending his entire life preparing for there was no plausible way of the character actually not doing that. So there was a retcon to his presence in the bar battle (presumably someone else chucked the grenade), and he stayed on Counterpoint with Karka to continue his work there. ]
As we were dealing with the aftermath of the barfight, we spotted someone watching Valis from across the way. Eventually someone went to talk to him.
"He hands you a datapad."
"All right, I take it. I assume it does not blow up in my hand."
"It does not blow up in your hand."
"How refreshing!"
We had made a local contact. Soon enough we would see what that would be. For now we were tracking local events. "There won't be any particular news about the firefight because nobody here gives a crap." What we did find out was that there was something going on inside the wall - drones were dropping piles of crates, and groups were fighting over them. Viciously. And we developed a theory that, basically, the survival-necessary supplies that the people who were being modified required were being dropped at random locations for them to brawl over. "It's the Hunger Games in there."
We got a message from our team, saying that we were going to be getting a weapons specialist from the Jedi, because we could use someone with ordnance skills. And we sort of collectively said "... Jedi... weapons specialist?" but, well. We got the contact from him, we arranged the meet.
"I don't think any of us look like... us."
"Except Tsavor."
"He doesn't look like a *Jedi*, he just looks like..."
"Tsavor."
So we met the guy. He was "the one in black" which we found highly unspecific in a planet composed entirely of shady, criminal-infested bars, but we did eventually sort it out. "I hear there's an opportunity here to kill several birds with big guns," he said, once the contact was made and confirmed. And after some discussion, he thanked us for saving his life - as he was one of the people being transferred on the Ishikarra.
"Human former special ops guy."
"With a poor choice in vacation destinations."
A bit of plausible discussion later, we expressed that Things Get Weird around us, and he was at "I've seen weird..." and Aurun sort of laughed. And there was some discussion of basically the team as a Black Ops group, and so on, and we eventually set out to meet up with the mysterious contact, leaving our shiny new sniper to get into a sniper position at the location since, hey, he was new and thus not on the guy's intel, and we're paranoid like that.
So we went to the meet location, which contained basically a webcam and nothing else. We investigated and waved at the webcam and hung out for a bit, and then mysterious guy showed.
He was an escapee from the Hunger Games, and he wanted our help getting "him and a few of his closest friends" off planet. By which he meant all approximately twelve thousand of them.
That will not fit in my ship.
We got a lot of information out of him, including that all of the contestants on the bioengineered modifications are right have cortical bombs. His was disabled. We asked if he'd like it removed. He said, "... if you can do that safely." So Valis took it out, because Force healing powers.
And we discussed what we could do with a cortex bomb, including getting information about where the cortex bomb controller was so we could shut it down and liberate the populace. "We want to turn it on somewhere we don't mind it blowing up ten minutes later." "Oh, I'm sure that'll be hard to find on this planet."
We got his information, we said we'd find out what we could do, and we settled back to discuss how to infiltrate, how to go on from there, and what to do about twelve thousand traumatised supersoldiers. Which was complicated by a vision of what the Vong was hoping would happen - specifically that these people would fucksnap when released and go rampage across the galaxy destabilising everything and causing mass chaos and carnage. She had a bunch of shiny new warships just waiting for the crews to be winnowed down to claim.
We built up a plan, which required getting back to the Vrei.
So we started on that.
Then:
Arno: Would a big diversion help?
Rest of party: Yes. What'd you have in mind?
Arno: Space invasion?
RoP: How're you thinking of pulling that off?
Arno: ... well, one just showed up.
So various forces were clearly there to blow up the Vong, and if we were going to rescue anyone we needed to get our asses in gear. "There's not a very good history of orbital nuking actually getting the one person you're after...." may be true, but the collateral damage is immense.
Of course, with a space invasion incoming the port was locked down. Of course, that's easy enough to solve.
"You don't need to stop us from getting into our ship."
"... we don't need to stop you from getting into your ship."
We pelted for the ship, and as we opened her up, we hear, "When you get in here, don't shoot me." So we all drew weapons, because what the hell.
It was Tereez's Bothan Intelligence contact, who was on the run. There was a little verbal jousting about how the fuck she was there, she pointed out she had relevant skills for finding people and infiltrating spaceships and the like, and finally it went:
Tereez: "As you can tell we're in a warzone and in a bit of a hurry, so to speed things along, do you consent to mindreading?"
Contact: "Yes."
Aurun: "OKAY GO TO. WHEELS UP."
And we launched to bop over to the Hunger Games fortress, where we bluffed our way in with a combination of Jedi mind tricks and "Seriously, we're just dropping supplies, you don't need to know why we're coming in, SHEESH."
And then it was figuring out how to get to the explosions control.
"We've got a lot of hacking in this party, so it's okay."
"... I hack people."
"I don't hack."
"YOU HAVE A LIGHTSABER."
"Actually I have a vibro-axe...."
We got stalled out at a group of guards, went around them, cut through a wall to get closer to where we wanted to be, and stalled out on figuring otu how to take out the people inside before they could get off an alarm. "We have seven people to their twelve." "So clearly we have them outnumbered."
The eventual plan involved knockout gas, sniping through careful holes in the wall, and a lot of overwhelming force, which included Tereez's contact and our new friend using their enhancements obtained in this facility. We shut things down, and figured out where the labs were.
And when we got to the labs, it was clear that they were trying to pretend to the Vong that everything was normal. So we said we were bringing in a new subject. People said "really?" and we said, "Look, if we want to make it like everything's normal..." and they nodded and let us in.
The plan: pincer attack, open with sniper and Force lightning. Deal with the chaos.
We cracked the doors. The sniper shot her in the eye. She fell over. Force lightning was deployed.
THe Vong, of course, was not dead; when Valis approached her, she shot acid out of her remaining eye at him, which proceeded to start melting his helmet. She was wearing some sort of protective symbiote that was sufficiently tough to survive a headshot from a trained sniper (though she lost the eye under it, I believe).
Aurun had one of her hardcore incapacitating poisons (she had given some ot the sniper as well, in case he had a use for it), and threw a knife at the Vong, because really, might as well try, who knows, it might work. And the symbiote freaked out and started trying to leave, which the Vong found sufficiently distracting that we could roll her into a stasis capsule and capture her with a bit of a comedy of errors.
Her current victims were healed and cared for, and we gathered things up, and prepared to leave again.
The trip out was interrupted with a "What happened to your helmet?" at Valis. "SHE SPITS ACID WHEN SHE'S ANGRY!" he exclaimed. "... yeah. Poor Bobby..." said the guard, and let us pass.
We made it back to the ship, and broadcast the information to the denizens of the Hunger Games that there was safety on the ships, which were programmed to send them to a safe rendezvous, that anyone who joined up with the war effort or civilian infrastructure work would have good work, sufficient food and care, and the opportunity to make a good life for themselves.
We had discussed setting a self-destruct in case people tried to divert the ships from that rendezvous, and decided that setting an example of trust would be superior.
"Therapy in the Star Wars universe has got to be better than therapy in the Harry Potter universe!"
"... was there therapy in the...?"
"No! This is a bar so low it's a line painted on the sidewalk...."
So of course the five ships full of PTSD-laden supersoldiers didn't show up at the rendezvous. For a crisis we need to poke at at some point, maybe.
There was a more immediate crisis, of course. It involved Corellia.
"If you had to start a war, Corellians would be... third on the list?"
"Who's above them? Hutts and..."
"Sith!"
"I don't think Sith count as a *nation*."
"Are you sure, they have dreadnoughts."
"They're more of a well-supplied terrorist organisation...."
The powers that be in Corellia had decided, in their infinite wisdom, that they were going to power up Centerpoint and use it to take out Taris, under the principle that that would potentially stop the attack on Corellia. Which was... not advisable, as running that thing without Force actives tends to produce disaster, and they didn't know how to drive it, and various other things.
And we were told, "I can't ask you to do this... officially... but it would be good if someone minimised the damage here."
So we packed up for Corellia.
Aurun was a bundle of angry tension about this. But it was deemed unwise to leave her on the ship; she would deal with Corellians in person. Fortunately, none of them were the specific one she was concerned about.
What we had was a bad case of imperious asshole who wanted to make a Show Of Force and destroy a planet, because that always works in Star Wars. He eventually allowed us to assist, and Tereez and Valis settled in to do the thing, focusing all their skills and their Force-bending powers on making the strike as precise as possible...
... in significant part because the Jedi remaining on the planet were still searching for survivors, and were unwilling to leave. And that would be, well. Some collateral damage is more logistically complicated than others, if nothing else.
They opened the wormhole precisely over the location of the burrowed planet-seed.
The gravitic beam neatly lanced through it - and the planet - leaving the remainder of the planet as unharmed as possible when it's had a hole burned through it.
There was an overwhelming psychic scream of rage.
And the Corellian leader was very angry too. Because we had been as precise as we could be, which was MINDBOGGLINGLY PRECISE.
There was an overwhelming presence, a mind, a power far larger than our comprehension. Our puny Jedi worked on shielding the crew, as best they could, against the raging fury of a living planet whose only child had just been killed; it was a terrible, crushing weight. Aurun extended herself - barely begun training, but her Force signature is naturally *quiet* - and focused on hushing everyone down, and the hostile mind suddenly lost its grip on most of the people on the bridge, latched onto the Corellian head of state, and let go.
Aurun very "I did what how huh?" but it was useful.
The head of state was furious. We had not destroyed the planet! He wanted the planet destroyed! We pointed out we had destroyed the infestation.
Then the enemy ships started to warp in, and the dragonets and worms started phasing into Centerpoint, attacking it.
We covered a retreat, getting people to their ships, taking out worms that tried to hit Corellian officials, but realised that if the enemy was successful at blowing Centerpoint, it woudl likely fatally irradiate five inhabited worlds. So we buckled down with some of the techs, opened a wormhole, and plunked it in empty space before setting the self destruct and running like hell.
Meanwhile, the ship containing the Corellian head of state was swarmed by enemy ships and forcibly jumped out of system where, presumably, he was going to meet a dreadful fate at the hands of the living world he had mortally offended.
"All exploding alien tech is preceded by a wave of tachyons!"
We got to a good solid distance, and watched the explosion.
Valis: "Thank you. You've saved several billion lives! That's something to tell your grandchildren!"
Tech: "....! ....! ....!"
At which point we dashed off a message to Selig and the garrison there of "MOVE COUNTERPOINT NOW."
* Aurun, hotshot ship captain, ex-assassin, untrained Force user
* Aaron Selig, demagogue ship's engineer, mad gadgeteer, pessimist
* Tereez, half-Bothan senior Imperial Knight, ex-Sith infiltration specialist
* Valis, junior Imperial Knight, healing and body mod specialist
* Tsavor, also called Hissy, Barabel ex-gladiator
* Arno Lassic, Zeltron hacker and demolitions guy
and introducing (in session #10)
* a survivor from the Ishikarra's round of the Force-activation plague virus whose name I don't recall and will have to look up, Jedi-affiliated weapons specialist
plus
NPC Elon, still a traumatized Jedi survivor of the Force-activation plague virus, medic, and continually having a bad day
Once again I am way behind and trying to catch up before gaming tomorrow.
When we left our heroes we were entering a grand space battle over the Centerpoint Station clone, which we have dubbed Counterpoint. We cleared through the debris of the ship we warped in basically on top of and evaluated the situation:
Our friends were heavily embattled in a fairly even fight with a bunch of Hutt-hired mercenaries and several Sith dreadnoughts. There were boarding parties aboard. Also, the giant largely-automated ship stolen from Corellia was present, and appeared to be focused on shooting up the Sith. Our Chiss escort swept in to join the fight; we, after some discussion, split, with Elon going to help against the boarding action, and the PCs heading for the ex-Corellian superdreadnought currently being driven by Terrorist Anonymous, under the principle that hey, if they were fighting the right people, they might be amenable to a parley, and failing that, it would be really nice to not have that particular loose cannon wandering about the galaxy, even if it were preferentially shooting up horrible corporate overlords.
"I think we need to insert and negotiate. And if that turns into negotiation by lightsaber, so be it."
(We were not optimistic about the peaceful negotiations part, because Terrorist Anonymous is sort of a "the bombings will continue until morale improves" organisation.)
So we zipped over, found an entry port, and parked ourselves there, before carefully cracking the security and inserting ourselves through the convenient airlock. ("Just stealth, or not stealth. There is no try.") There was a droid there that demanded our access codes; we prevented it from alerting the rest of the infrastructure, and settled in to patch ourselves into the system and basically get ourselves authorised so all the electronic crew members would ignore us.
At which point we began to putter about the giant droid-crewed ship, and eventually set up camp in the secondary bridge, so that, if necessary, we could see if we could get the ship to believe it was in the sort of peril that would naturally swap control there. We snagged the video feeds on the bridge and spotted about a half-dozen robed figures and a bunch of apparently ordinary crew members.
Eventually we worked through a plan to make contact with the crew: moving Tsavor to some distance from the backup bridge, with Tereez as backup, and using the comms. When the contact was made, we saw the people on the bridge cut the camera feed. Not useful.
Tsavor tapped the comms feed. "Is this thing on?" (At which point in a bit of OOC hilarity, the iPhone ER was playing with announced, "I'm sorry, I'm afraid that's beyond my capabilities." Thank you for your contribution, Siri.)
(I believe right here was the bit where telepathic contact was attempted on some "ordinary" people, who resisted it, in an attempt to continue negotiation. There was discussion there about whether pushing past the resistance they presented was a bit Dark or not. WHich may be where this bit of dialogue goes: "Is this a good idea?" To which Aurun replied, "No. None of this is a good idea. Isn't it awesome!?")
There was some thought put into having Selig prepare a propaganda speech to try to contact the crew, broadcast through the ship, as well. "He has points in pontificate!" So we spent some time on that.
In any case, eventually all the half-dozen robed figures plus a squad of people from the bridge came down towards where Tsavor was lurking, and one of them screamed, "DIE SITH INVADER", and that is basically where the negotiation totally broke down, really. They also detected Tereez in the ventilation and attempted to ventilate him with rather a lot of gunfire.
Both of them broke and retreated back to the bridge, which we sealed behind them with various boobytrappage, and tried to figure out wtf to do now.
The lightsabers that started cutting through the door were not red. Their wielders, however, had a notable Dark aura.
The smoke grenade stuff we planted didn't really slow them down notably, because that sort of thing does not slow down force users notably. Well, it slowed down the goon squad.
But six dark Force-users vs. the party was a good reason to make a retreat. One of them Force-hurled the blast door they'd carved open at Tsavor, who leapt onto it and started to steer it. We all left for the far side exit we'd left unboobytrapped.
"Are we all running this way quickly?"
Tsavor: "No, I'm flying that way quickly!"
Another bunch of goonsquad carved through a bit of wall, and met a rather grisly end at an attempt to seal the wall back up, about which we felt bad but also couldn't really do better there. We bravely ran away tra la, and managed, eventually, to elude pursuit.
Meanwhile the ship changed course. It was going to ram one of the Sith vessels. We set a self-destruct to make sure it stayed dead, got onto our ship, and got away before impact.
So basically we achieved a whole lot of nothing, but it was informative, once again.
In any case, various ship battles resolved in their various ways, and our side won, if feeling a bit battered by the end there. The mercenaries and Sith were driven off or destroyed, and we retained control of Counterpoint.
"No Hutts were harmed in the filming of this space battle."
We had some conversations about what we'd learned.
"Can you identify a dark force user when they're asleep?"
"Yes. They have auras."
"Can you identify them when they're dead? ... wait, you have psychometry.”
And there was some discussion about whether or not they were Sith, whether they were some other faction of deliberately Dark Jedi, or whether they were well-meaning fanatics who happened to have gone over the edge. This was filed as unknowable.
Selig went off to work on the station some more. "Do you need a bodyguard?" asked Tereez. "Karka?" "... that's fair."
The station droids were not from Karka's faction. After discussion, it became clear that he was not willing to repair the station droids, but he was willing to use their parts and the machinery to manufacture droids of his own faction. No brainwashing, but recycling. We were good with that ethical line.
We spent a bit of time working on recovering and deciding what to do next, including letting Aurun start her training in the Force with Tereez and other people who dropped in for the evening meditation and chat sessions.
Our next step: going to the obscure distant lump of rock and perdition where the rogue Vong Shaper was making gladiatorial supersoldiers. We mocked up some cover identities, found some plausible cargo, made some cosmetic modifications, and shipped out as mercenaries looking for work. "Evil is always hiring."
There was some discussion of Force-powered healing along the way, as Elon had lost a hand in the fighting on our friends' ship. "If you're not quite successful at growing a hand, what do you get, a *tentacle*?”
We scanned the planet as we went down. Large area inside a retaining wall, which was likely where the modifications were being put in. We weren't sure how to get in, so we settled in to see what the local environment was like, and sought out a dive bar, which we infiltrated in bits. Aurun was entirely fucking thrilled that Arno was dressed to be the vamp in this gambit.
The televisions were on the news.
The news said there were mysterious alien asteroids showering ... Corellia.
Just like Taris had fallen.
Though Corellia, at least, was better-equipped to shoot them down and was organising resistance. The bar, however, had a lot of "Serves the bastards right!" in it, which rather made everyone feel a bit sick.
There was a little ripple of anticipatory danger.
And then the Mandaloreans came in. And approached Aurun.
And greeted her by name. Which amused them, when she startled; they pointed out that Tsavor, as a Barabel, was pretty easily identifiable, they not being a common species, so a Twi'lek with a Barabel bodyguard was a giveaway.
There was some jousting verbally, followed by a revelation of who had hired them that Aurun understood - and which made her laugh and relax notably, in the sense of someone who had had a long-standing tension resolved. "You didn't get paid enough for this job."
"We'll see about that."
Arno hacked into the jetpack controls of one of the Mandos on the street and crashed him fatally.
"Bad move," said the Mando talking to Aurun.
"Hmmm?" she said, innocently.
At which point they cracked out the flamethrower. Which is kind of bringing something out of scale to the usual barfight.
(Aurun pulled a knife. Aurun was very, very happy. I have no idea if this creeped out the rest of the mindlinked party. But really, after a lot of zombies and evil teleporting nasties and fun-sized death stars and life-devouring planets, a personal grudgematch with a bunch of Mandaloreans is a nice change!)
(Aurun is differently sane.)
The fight was a mess. The Mandos outside peppered the bar with small missiles, which Selig caught in a timestop grenade; Tereez sneaked out and tried to take the sniper, and got into a brawl with the sniper's bodyguards, general madness ensued.
Arno did not have a lot of luck hacking into any more Mando jetpacks. ("Have you tried turning it off and then on again?") We survived the mess, and Elon and Valis puttered around working on trying to heal some of the injured once the surviving Mandos took off.
"They really can't win with these jetpacks, can they? They turn it on, they send you flying, they turn it off, they push you off a roof…"
In the wreckage, we caught our breaths.
[ In the space between sessions, we came to the conclusion that Selig's player would be retiring the character, because "resurrecting an ancient race of benevolent death droids" was so precisely what he had been spending his entire life preparing for there was no plausible way of the character actually not doing that. So there was a retcon to his presence in the bar battle (presumably someone else chucked the grenade), and he stayed on Counterpoint with Karka to continue his work there. ]
As we were dealing with the aftermath of the barfight, we spotted someone watching Valis from across the way. Eventually someone went to talk to him.
"He hands you a datapad."
"All right, I take it. I assume it does not blow up in my hand."
"It does not blow up in your hand."
"How refreshing!"
We had made a local contact. Soon enough we would see what that would be. For now we were tracking local events. "There won't be any particular news about the firefight because nobody here gives a crap." What we did find out was that there was something going on inside the wall - drones were dropping piles of crates, and groups were fighting over them. Viciously. And we developed a theory that, basically, the survival-necessary supplies that the people who were being modified required were being dropped at random locations for them to brawl over. "It's the Hunger Games in there."
We got a message from our team, saying that we were going to be getting a weapons specialist from the Jedi, because we could use someone with ordnance skills. And we sort of collectively said "... Jedi... weapons specialist?" but, well. We got the contact from him, we arranged the meet.
"I don't think any of us look like... us."
"Except Tsavor."
"He doesn't look like a *Jedi*, he just looks like..."
"Tsavor."
So we met the guy. He was "the one in black" which we found highly unspecific in a planet composed entirely of shady, criminal-infested bars, but we did eventually sort it out. "I hear there's an opportunity here to kill several birds with big guns," he said, once the contact was made and confirmed. And after some discussion, he thanked us for saving his life - as he was one of the people being transferred on the Ishikarra.
"Human former special ops guy."
"With a poor choice in vacation destinations."
A bit of plausible discussion later, we expressed that Things Get Weird around us, and he was at "I've seen weird..." and Aurun sort of laughed. And there was some discussion of basically the team as a Black Ops group, and so on, and we eventually set out to meet up with the mysterious contact, leaving our shiny new sniper to get into a sniper position at the location since, hey, he was new and thus not on the guy's intel, and we're paranoid like that.
So we went to the meet location, which contained basically a webcam and nothing else. We investigated and waved at the webcam and hung out for a bit, and then mysterious guy showed.
He was an escapee from the Hunger Games, and he wanted our help getting "him and a few of his closest friends" off planet. By which he meant all approximately twelve thousand of them.
That will not fit in my ship.
We got a lot of information out of him, including that all of the contestants on the bioengineered modifications are right have cortical bombs. His was disabled. We asked if he'd like it removed. He said, "... if you can do that safely." So Valis took it out, because Force healing powers.
And we discussed what we could do with a cortex bomb, including getting information about where the cortex bomb controller was so we could shut it down and liberate the populace. "We want to turn it on somewhere we don't mind it blowing up ten minutes later." "Oh, I'm sure that'll be hard to find on this planet."
We got his information, we said we'd find out what we could do, and we settled back to discuss how to infiltrate, how to go on from there, and what to do about twelve thousand traumatised supersoldiers. Which was complicated by a vision of what the Vong was hoping would happen - specifically that these people would fucksnap when released and go rampage across the galaxy destabilising everything and causing mass chaos and carnage. She had a bunch of shiny new warships just waiting for the crews to be winnowed down to claim.
We built up a plan, which required getting back to the Vrei.
So we started on that.
Then:
Arno: Would a big diversion help?
Rest of party: Yes. What'd you have in mind?
Arno: Space invasion?
RoP: How're you thinking of pulling that off?
Arno: ... well, one just showed up.
So various forces were clearly there to blow up the Vong, and if we were going to rescue anyone we needed to get our asses in gear. "There's not a very good history of orbital nuking actually getting the one person you're after...." may be true, but the collateral damage is immense.
Of course, with a space invasion incoming the port was locked down. Of course, that's easy enough to solve.
"You don't need to stop us from getting into our ship."
"... we don't need to stop you from getting into your ship."
We pelted for the ship, and as we opened her up, we hear, "When you get in here, don't shoot me." So we all drew weapons, because what the hell.
It was Tereez's Bothan Intelligence contact, who was on the run. There was a little verbal jousting about how the fuck she was there, she pointed out she had relevant skills for finding people and infiltrating spaceships and the like, and finally it went:
Tereez: "As you can tell we're in a warzone and in a bit of a hurry, so to speed things along, do you consent to mindreading?"
Contact: "Yes."
Aurun: "OKAY GO TO. WHEELS UP."
And we launched to bop over to the Hunger Games fortress, where we bluffed our way in with a combination of Jedi mind tricks and "Seriously, we're just dropping supplies, you don't need to know why we're coming in, SHEESH."
And then it was figuring out how to get to the explosions control.
"We've got a lot of hacking in this party, so it's okay."
"... I hack people."
"I don't hack."
"YOU HAVE A LIGHTSABER."
"Actually I have a vibro-axe...."
We got stalled out at a group of guards, went around them, cut through a wall to get closer to where we wanted to be, and stalled out on figuring otu how to take out the people inside before they could get off an alarm. "We have seven people to their twelve." "So clearly we have them outnumbered."
The eventual plan involved knockout gas, sniping through careful holes in the wall, and a lot of overwhelming force, which included Tereez's contact and our new friend using their enhancements obtained in this facility. We shut things down, and figured out where the labs were.
And when we got to the labs, it was clear that they were trying to pretend to the Vong that everything was normal. So we said we were bringing in a new subject. People said "really?" and we said, "Look, if we want to make it like everything's normal..." and they nodded and let us in.
The plan: pincer attack, open with sniper and Force lightning. Deal with the chaos.
We cracked the doors. The sniper shot her in the eye. She fell over. Force lightning was deployed.
THe Vong, of course, was not dead; when Valis approached her, she shot acid out of her remaining eye at him, which proceeded to start melting his helmet. She was wearing some sort of protective symbiote that was sufficiently tough to survive a headshot from a trained sniper (though she lost the eye under it, I believe).
Aurun had one of her hardcore incapacitating poisons (she had given some ot the sniper as well, in case he had a use for it), and threw a knife at the Vong, because really, might as well try, who knows, it might work. And the symbiote freaked out and started trying to leave, which the Vong found sufficiently distracting that we could roll her into a stasis capsule and capture her with a bit of a comedy of errors.
Her current victims were healed and cared for, and we gathered things up, and prepared to leave again.
The trip out was interrupted with a "What happened to your helmet?" at Valis. "SHE SPITS ACID WHEN SHE'S ANGRY!" he exclaimed. "... yeah. Poor Bobby..." said the guard, and let us pass.
We made it back to the ship, and broadcast the information to the denizens of the Hunger Games that there was safety on the ships, which were programmed to send them to a safe rendezvous, that anyone who joined up with the war effort or civilian infrastructure work would have good work, sufficient food and care, and the opportunity to make a good life for themselves.
We had discussed setting a self-destruct in case people tried to divert the ships from that rendezvous, and decided that setting an example of trust would be superior.
"Therapy in the Star Wars universe has got to be better than therapy in the Harry Potter universe!"
"... was there therapy in the...?"
"No! This is a bar so low it's a line painted on the sidewalk...."
So of course the five ships full of PTSD-laden supersoldiers didn't show up at the rendezvous. For a crisis we need to poke at at some point, maybe.
There was a more immediate crisis, of course. It involved Corellia.
"If you had to start a war, Corellians would be... third on the list?"
"Who's above them? Hutts and..."
"Sith!"
"I don't think Sith count as a *nation*."
"Are you sure, they have dreadnoughts."
"They're more of a well-supplied terrorist organisation...."
The powers that be in Corellia had decided, in their infinite wisdom, that they were going to power up Centerpoint and use it to take out Taris, under the principle that that would potentially stop the attack on Corellia. Which was... not advisable, as running that thing without Force actives tends to produce disaster, and they didn't know how to drive it, and various other things.
And we were told, "I can't ask you to do this... officially... but it would be good if someone minimised the damage here."
So we packed up for Corellia.
Aurun was a bundle of angry tension about this. But it was deemed unwise to leave her on the ship; she would deal with Corellians in person. Fortunately, none of them were the specific one she was concerned about.
What we had was a bad case of imperious asshole who wanted to make a Show Of Force and destroy a planet, because that always works in Star Wars. He eventually allowed us to assist, and Tereez and Valis settled in to do the thing, focusing all their skills and their Force-bending powers on making the strike as precise as possible...
... in significant part because the Jedi remaining on the planet were still searching for survivors, and were unwilling to leave. And that would be, well. Some collateral damage is more logistically complicated than others, if nothing else.
They opened the wormhole precisely over the location of the burrowed planet-seed.
The gravitic beam neatly lanced through it - and the planet - leaving the remainder of the planet as unharmed as possible when it's had a hole burned through it.
There was an overwhelming psychic scream of rage.
And the Corellian leader was very angry too. Because we had been as precise as we could be, which was MINDBOGGLINGLY PRECISE.
There was an overwhelming presence, a mind, a power far larger than our comprehension. Our puny Jedi worked on shielding the crew, as best they could, against the raging fury of a living planet whose only child had just been killed; it was a terrible, crushing weight. Aurun extended herself - barely begun training, but her Force signature is naturally *quiet* - and focused on hushing everyone down, and the hostile mind suddenly lost its grip on most of the people on the bridge, latched onto the Corellian head of state, and let go.
Aurun very "I did what how huh?" but it was useful.
The head of state was furious. We had not destroyed the planet! He wanted the planet destroyed! We pointed out we had destroyed the infestation.
Then the enemy ships started to warp in, and the dragonets and worms started phasing into Centerpoint, attacking it.
We covered a retreat, getting people to their ships, taking out worms that tried to hit Corellian officials, but realised that if the enemy was successful at blowing Centerpoint, it woudl likely fatally irradiate five inhabited worlds. So we buckled down with some of the techs, opened a wormhole, and plunked it in empty space before setting the self destruct and running like hell.
Meanwhile, the ship containing the Corellian head of state was swarmed by enemy ships and forcibly jumped out of system where, presumably, he was going to meet a dreadful fate at the hands of the living world he had mortally offended.
"All exploding alien tech is preceded by a wave of tachyons!"
We got to a good solid distance, and watched the explosion.
Valis: "Thank you. You've saved several billion lives! That's something to tell your grandchildren!"
Tech: "....! ....! ....!"
At which point we dashed off a message to Selig and the garrison there of "MOVE COUNTERPOINT NOW."