Star Wars (7ABY; FoL, D1 - D2): Sea Raid on Spira
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Ganen, Ness, Morrigan, and Garth / [XP: 12]
Preston had prior plans, Ruth did not play, and Robert might be out for a while due to family issues.
Festival of Life; Day 1 (Continued)
The submersible which the PCs rented was a LuxSub Barracuda-class transport, just like the one they’d borrowed back on Baralou. After an hour of searching; they’d scanned less than 0.1% of the Shinkai Abyss and seen nothing but water, rock, and the 15’-long Camray Eels which called the latter home.
They did, however, pick up a distress beacon a little after midnight; which led them to another sub from the same rental company. Sitting on a small ledge of the wall of the trench; its hull appeared to be intact and it had power, but its drive propeller and one of its stabilizers were severely banged up. It also had several enormous eels sliding around its hull; seeming to be trying to find a way in.
Morrigan tried the radio and was answered by a loud and large-sounding man who stated that he was the only one on board and would be grateful for any assistance. Ganen, Ness, Garth, and Jacinta then all disembarked while Morrigan cross-wired some extra power to the sonar emitter.
The four eels surrounding the damaged submarine initially ignored the arrival of the second one; but as soon as they smelled fresh meat in the water, they began slithering right towards the PCs. They were also joined by three or four more which emerged from holes and crevices in the rock.
Morrigan unleashed a high-powered sonar ping which slightly staggered the other PCs and damaged the emitter, but also drove off all of the eels apart from one particularly tenacious and hungry one. Garth still had an underwater-modified blaster pistol which he’d retained from Baralou and he fired the first shot; wounding the eel but also pissing it off and getting its attention.
Moving with surprising speed, the eel darted forward as it pronated its head and then chomped down on the skinny bounty hunter; damn near biting him in half. Stabbing and slicing with melee weapons, the other PCs were able to force it to open its mouth; and a second shot from a badly-wounded Garth finally drove it off.
The occupant of the other submersible had disembarked by this time, and everyone got back on board the PCs’ sub. The large and muscular man introduced himself as Tiberius Tagge and offered a couple of stim packs to Garth as token of appreciation for the assistance. He confirmed when Morrigan asked that he was in fact related to Baroness Domina Tagge, but (in his words) “not closely enough to really matter”.
In the time since they’d picked her up on Endor, Jacinta had hardly ever spoken to Garth and had certainly never initiated a conversation with him. But as they made their way back to Atoria Island, she apologized to him and stated that she’d tried to get in front of him but that the eel had been too fast. “What was it like?”, she asked in the tone that a child might ask what a roller coaster that they didn’t get to ride was like. “Literally hanging in the jaws of death?” Seeing that the child was clearly despondent, Garth tried to cheer her up by assuring her that there would be plenty of opportunities for her to get chewed on by sea monsters in the future.
After dropping Mr. Tagge off at the Aspre Plunge, the PCs resumed their search; but soon realized that the trench was too big and they were looking for a needle (that might not even exist) in a haystack. After some discussion, they decided to turn their attention to finding and monitoring Clev Barrant.
Morrigan wasn’t able to find out where he was staying, but she discovered that Barrant & Jaskar Skyservice was actually sponsoring one of the boats in the Regatta. It was called the ‘Sunstroke’ and had finished the first day right in the middle of the pack.
The PCs took Garth’s speeder out to the floating dock where the first day of the race had ended and the second day would begin. As it was 04:00 in the morning by that time, the place was pretty dead; though there was still a night watchman guarding each of the two big sets of slips. While Garth and Ness kept the guard on the side they needed distracted, the others snuck aboard the obnoxious golden boat with the big stylized ‘BJ’ emblazed on the sail.
A search of the cabin turned up nothing apart from an image of Barrant with a young woman; likely either a girlfriend or perhaps the younger sister whom he’d mentioned to Garth. Things got a little more interesting, however, when they checked the computer system.
Installed in the console was an after-market red button with a flip-up safety cap over it. Best as Morrigan could tell, it was set up to send a single command to the impellers; though she was unsure as to exactly what that command did.
She also wasn’t sure what was up with the impellers themselves; but when she looked one over very closely, she could tell that there was more to it than met the eye. While it would likely look completely normal to a race inspector, some kind of very complex and bleeding-edge device was distributed throughout it; though Morrigan couldn’t even speculate as to what it did.
After some discussion, the PCs came up with a plan. Ganen would tether himself to the underside of the boat and wait underwater until morning. Once the boat got out of sight of the docks, he would sabotage it and force it to stop.
They would then wait until the rest of the Regatta (including the small swarm of camera droids following them) got out of sight; and as soon as they were clear, they would swoop in and attack. Since Morrigan was the better pilot but Specter was more high-profile and had fewer exits, Garth entrusted the Chiss to fly his Gale 11.
Festival of Life; Day 2
Other than getting bored to the point of counting fish, Ganen made it through the rest of the night without incident. But after the sun came up and he heard people boarding the boat, an octopus-like droid swam up and wrapped its flexible tentacles around the boat’s main vertical fin.
Apart from its octopus-like shape, it had little resemblance to the aqua-droids which had attacked the Citadel on Scarif. It was smaller, far more angular and less organic, and was not covered in the same sensor-damping black material.
It either didn’t see Ganen or didn’t care, but it got close enough for him to see that it was carrying some tools (including a cutting torch) and some vials of liquid; and for a moment Ganen thought that it had been sent by a competitor to damage the boat. But instead, it just kinda snuggled up to the fin and went inert.
The droid continued to do nothing as the ship raced across the water with Ganen awkwardly dragging underwater behind it. After an hour went by, he want to work.
His original plan had been to use the cutting torch that he’d borrowed from Morrigan to cut a hole in the bottom of the hull, but it turned out that it was actually a hydrofoil which raised the hull well above the waterline when it got up to speed. Instead, he started cutting the main vertical fin to which the droid was attached.
The droid seemed to take no notice of this, and boat soon started to awkwardly fishtail as the fin began to bend. When it finally snapped, the hull slammed down into the water; giving Ganen a good knock on the head but not causing any serious harm. As the boat came to a stop, the droid suddenly sprang back to life; and Ganen just let himself sink back to the length of his tether as the droid inspected the damage to the fin.
The sky above the Regatta was buzzing with speeder; most full of racing enthusiasts and a few manned by local police trying to keep said enthusiasts from getting too close to the boats. That being the case, the PCs didn’t stand out at all; and when the crowd moved on and the PCs lingered behind over the disabled boat, nobody seemed to take any notice
The PCs would have ideally liked to have waited until the rest of the boats were further away; but not terribly long after the B&J boat came to a stop, Tosh Hedak (their Mon Calamari engineer) dove into the water. Unlike the seemingly obtuse droid, he noticed that there was a tether hanging from the bottom of the boat; and when he spotted Ganen at the end of it, Ganen was forced to accelerate their plans.
Ganen fired a shot and severely wounded Hedak, who then ordered the droid to attack. Gently squeezing one of the vials that it was carrying until it cracked slightly, the droid rapidly spun it around to shake it up and then cocked its tentacle back as though it was about to throw it towards Ganen. Not wanting to stick around to see what happened, the Mandalore rocketed up out of the water; signaling to the other PCs that he had engaged the enemy.
Morrigan dove town towards the ocean; deliberately slamming into and shattering the lone camera droid which had remained behind to film the disabled boat. The PCs then saw a bubble from a sizeable underwater explosion erupt from the waves only moments after Ganen flew out of the water. After Morrigan pulled the speeder into an abrupt halt above the boat, the other PCs jumped out.
Garth face-planted right onto the front windshield of the boat with Barrant and Jaskar staring wide-eyed in surprise back at him. Having made such a favorable impression beforehand, however, they just assumed that he was there to help with whatever was going on; and they asked him to help manually uncouple the impeller lines (as Morrigan had previously disabled their manual release).
Ness meanwhile had made a much more graceful landing on the roof, while Jacinta had attempted to Errol Flynn her way down the sail. Unfortunately, it was thicker than she thought and at much to shallow an angle; so she just kinda flopped down onto it with her knife stuck through it.
As Ganen joined Ness on the roof, Garth made a show of trying to uncouple the impeller lines but then signaled that he needed help. As Jaskar exited from one side and Barrant from the other, Ness began stabbing at the former while Jacinta dove off of the sail and tackled the latter into the water. A little too late, the Hedak emerged from the water to shout a warning that the PCs were attacking.
Garth finished off Hedak with a blaster shot as Ganen called for Morrigan to look for the droid and then engaged a heavily-armed Quarren who emerged from the boat. After ramming the droid (doing a little more damage to Garth’s speeder than the camera droid had), Morrigan finished off the Quarren after Ganen wounded him (side-swiping the boat and doing a lot more damage than the camera droid had).
Ness disarmed Jaskar who then pulled her into the water; but with an assist from Garth, she was able to finish him off. Well after the fight had finished, Jacinta finally emerged from the water with the drowned corpse of Barrant.
Despite its damage, the boat could still move at a decent speed; and Morrigan, Ganen, and Jacinta took it due south away from the racecourse (after disabling its beacon) as Garth and Ness raced back to the Revenant. Rendezvousing well away from the attack site, the PCs hauled the impeller pods into the lower cargo bay and then scuttled the rest of the boat.
By the time they made it back to Atoria Island, they still had plenty of time before the rest of the Regatta passed by.
Ganen, Ness, Morrigan, and Garth / [XP: 12]
Preston had prior plans, Ruth did not play, and Robert might be out for a while due to family issues.
Festival of Life; Day 1 (Continued)
The submersible which the PCs rented was a LuxSub Barracuda-class transport, just like the one they’d borrowed back on Baralou. After an hour of searching; they’d scanned less than 0.1% of the Shinkai Abyss and seen nothing but water, rock, and the 15’-long Camray Eels which called the latter home.
They did, however, pick up a distress beacon a little after midnight; which led them to another sub from the same rental company. Sitting on a small ledge of the wall of the trench; its hull appeared to be intact and it had power, but its drive propeller and one of its stabilizers were severely banged up. It also had several enormous eels sliding around its hull; seeming to be trying to find a way in.
Morrigan tried the radio and was answered by a loud and large-sounding man who stated that he was the only one on board and would be grateful for any assistance. Ganen, Ness, Garth, and Jacinta then all disembarked while Morrigan cross-wired some extra power to the sonar emitter.
The four eels surrounding the damaged submarine initially ignored the arrival of the second one; but as soon as they smelled fresh meat in the water, they began slithering right towards the PCs. They were also joined by three or four more which emerged from holes and crevices in the rock.
Morrigan unleashed a high-powered sonar ping which slightly staggered the other PCs and damaged the emitter, but also drove off all of the eels apart from one particularly tenacious and hungry one. Garth still had an underwater-modified blaster pistol which he’d retained from Baralou and he fired the first shot; wounding the eel but also pissing it off and getting its attention.
Moving with surprising speed, the eel darted forward as it pronated its head and then chomped down on the skinny bounty hunter; damn near biting him in half. Stabbing and slicing with melee weapons, the other PCs were able to force it to open its mouth; and a second shot from a badly-wounded Garth finally drove it off.
The occupant of the other submersible had disembarked by this time, and everyone got back on board the PCs’ sub. The large and muscular man introduced himself as Tiberius Tagge and offered a couple of stim packs to Garth as token of appreciation for the assistance. He confirmed when Morrigan asked that he was in fact related to Baroness Domina Tagge, but (in his words) “not closely enough to really matter”.
In the time since they’d picked her up on Endor, Jacinta had hardly ever spoken to Garth and had certainly never initiated a conversation with him. But as they made their way back to Atoria Island, she apologized to him and stated that she’d tried to get in front of him but that the eel had been too fast. “What was it like?”, she asked in the tone that a child might ask what a roller coaster that they didn’t get to ride was like. “Literally hanging in the jaws of death?” Seeing that the child was clearly despondent, Garth tried to cheer her up by assuring her that there would be plenty of opportunities for her to get chewed on by sea monsters in the future.
After dropping Mr. Tagge off at the Aspre Plunge, the PCs resumed their search; but soon realized that the trench was too big and they were looking for a needle (that might not even exist) in a haystack. After some discussion, they decided to turn their attention to finding and monitoring Clev Barrant.
Morrigan wasn’t able to find out where he was staying, but she discovered that Barrant & Jaskar Skyservice was actually sponsoring one of the boats in the Regatta. It was called the ‘Sunstroke’ and had finished the first day right in the middle of the pack.
The PCs took Garth’s speeder out to the floating dock where the first day of the race had ended and the second day would begin. As it was 04:00 in the morning by that time, the place was pretty dead; though there was still a night watchman guarding each of the two big sets of slips. While Garth and Ness kept the guard on the side they needed distracted, the others snuck aboard the obnoxious golden boat with the big stylized ‘BJ’ emblazed on the sail.
A search of the cabin turned up nothing apart from an image of Barrant with a young woman; likely either a girlfriend or perhaps the younger sister whom he’d mentioned to Garth. Things got a little more interesting, however, when they checked the computer system.
Installed in the console was an after-market red button with a flip-up safety cap over it. Best as Morrigan could tell, it was set up to send a single command to the impellers; though she was unsure as to exactly what that command did.
She also wasn’t sure what was up with the impellers themselves; but when she looked one over very closely, she could tell that there was more to it than met the eye. While it would likely look completely normal to a race inspector, some kind of very complex and bleeding-edge device was distributed throughout it; though Morrigan couldn’t even speculate as to what it did.
After some discussion, the PCs came up with a plan. Ganen would tether himself to the underside of the boat and wait underwater until morning. Once the boat got out of sight of the docks, he would sabotage it and force it to stop.
They would then wait until the rest of the Regatta (including the small swarm of camera droids following them) got out of sight; and as soon as they were clear, they would swoop in and attack. Since Morrigan was the better pilot but Specter was more high-profile and had fewer exits, Garth entrusted the Chiss to fly his Gale 11.
Festival of Life; Day 2
Other than getting bored to the point of counting fish, Ganen made it through the rest of the night without incident. But after the sun came up and he heard people boarding the boat, an octopus-like droid swam up and wrapped its flexible tentacles around the boat’s main vertical fin.
Apart from its octopus-like shape, it had little resemblance to the aqua-droids which had attacked the Citadel on Scarif. It was smaller, far more angular and less organic, and was not covered in the same sensor-damping black material.
It either didn’t see Ganen or didn’t care, but it got close enough for him to see that it was carrying some tools (including a cutting torch) and some vials of liquid; and for a moment Ganen thought that it had been sent by a competitor to damage the boat. But instead, it just kinda snuggled up to the fin and went inert.
The droid continued to do nothing as the ship raced across the water with Ganen awkwardly dragging underwater behind it. After an hour went by, he want to work.
His original plan had been to use the cutting torch that he’d borrowed from Morrigan to cut a hole in the bottom of the hull, but it turned out that it was actually a hydrofoil which raised the hull well above the waterline when it got up to speed. Instead, he started cutting the main vertical fin to which the droid was attached.
The droid seemed to take no notice of this, and boat soon started to awkwardly fishtail as the fin began to bend. When it finally snapped, the hull slammed down into the water; giving Ganen a good knock on the head but not causing any serious harm. As the boat came to a stop, the droid suddenly sprang back to life; and Ganen just let himself sink back to the length of his tether as the droid inspected the damage to the fin.
The sky above the Regatta was buzzing with speeder; most full of racing enthusiasts and a few manned by local police trying to keep said enthusiasts from getting too close to the boats. That being the case, the PCs didn’t stand out at all; and when the crowd moved on and the PCs lingered behind over the disabled boat, nobody seemed to take any notice
The PCs would have ideally liked to have waited until the rest of the boats were further away; but not terribly long after the B&J boat came to a stop, Tosh Hedak (their Mon Calamari engineer) dove into the water. Unlike the seemingly obtuse droid, he noticed that there was a tether hanging from the bottom of the boat; and when he spotted Ganen at the end of it, Ganen was forced to accelerate their plans.
Ganen fired a shot and severely wounded Hedak, who then ordered the droid to attack. Gently squeezing one of the vials that it was carrying until it cracked slightly, the droid rapidly spun it around to shake it up and then cocked its tentacle back as though it was about to throw it towards Ganen. Not wanting to stick around to see what happened, the Mandalore rocketed up out of the water; signaling to the other PCs that he had engaged the enemy.
Morrigan dove town towards the ocean; deliberately slamming into and shattering the lone camera droid which had remained behind to film the disabled boat. The PCs then saw a bubble from a sizeable underwater explosion erupt from the waves only moments after Ganen flew out of the water. After Morrigan pulled the speeder into an abrupt halt above the boat, the other PCs jumped out.
Garth face-planted right onto the front windshield of the boat with Barrant and Jaskar staring wide-eyed in surprise back at him. Having made such a favorable impression beforehand, however, they just assumed that he was there to help with whatever was going on; and they asked him to help manually uncouple the impeller lines (as Morrigan had previously disabled their manual release).
Ness meanwhile had made a much more graceful landing on the roof, while Jacinta had attempted to Errol Flynn her way down the sail. Unfortunately, it was thicker than she thought and at much to shallow an angle; so she just kinda flopped down onto it with her knife stuck through it.
As Ganen joined Ness on the roof, Garth made a show of trying to uncouple the impeller lines but then signaled that he needed help. As Jaskar exited from one side and Barrant from the other, Ness began stabbing at the former while Jacinta dove off of the sail and tackled the latter into the water. A little too late, the Hedak emerged from the water to shout a warning that the PCs were attacking.
Garth finished off Hedak with a blaster shot as Ganen called for Morrigan to look for the droid and then engaged a heavily-armed Quarren who emerged from the boat. After ramming the droid (doing a little more damage to Garth’s speeder than the camera droid had), Morrigan finished off the Quarren after Ganen wounded him (side-swiping the boat and doing a lot more damage than the camera droid had).
Ness disarmed Jaskar who then pulled her into the water; but with an assist from Garth, she was able to finish him off. Well after the fight had finished, Jacinta finally emerged from the water with the drowned corpse of Barrant.
Despite its damage, the boat could still move at a decent speed; and Morrigan, Ganen, and Jacinta took it due south away from the racecourse (after disabling its beacon) as Garth and Ness raced back to the Revenant. Rendezvousing well away from the attack site, the PCs hauled the impeller pods into the lower cargo bay and then scuttled the rest of the boat.
By the time they made it back to Atoria Island, they still had plenty of time before the rest of the Regatta passed by.