Sometimes, villains aren't stylish

Ta da. Ezrek Dalt.

Jedi Ship, take two

There's more talk of a medal ceremony, and probably another parade. However, for the moment, the crew managed to escape, heading back out to look for the Jedi ship.

And they found it. Derelict in space. When they boarded, they found the signs of a lightsaber fight, along with lots of dead bodies. Reviewing the tapes, they watched Darth Maul marauding through the halls, with Dalt and the witch following behind him. They found about fifty dead Jedi, and thirty more escaped in the pods. They seemed to be headed for a planet in Hutt Space, where Onna suspected they'd have to ransom the Jedi off.

So they called General Solo. When Ree explained the situation, he said, "Let me get this straight. Darth Maul just killed fifty Jedi, and you're within two days of his location? I'd get out of there if I were you." Then he said he'd deal with it, and they'd be sending a Republic transport out to reclaim the remains.

Then they took him up on his advice, and cleared the hell out.

On to Kamino--a stormy, water-covered planet perpetually raging with storms. The Kaminoans were, as always, unfailingly polite. They were uncertain of the propriety of releasing information to the group at first, but Ree offered some convincing arguments (that had nothing at all to do with lightsabers or violence!). Essentially, she simply pointed out that the deal for the clone troopers had originally been with the Jedi Order, even if it was through the deceit of Count Dooku pretending to be a different Jedi. Accepting that, the Kaminoans informed them that the last of the genetic material for the clone troopers had been turned over to the Emperor years ago. They hadn't dealt with him since.

Well. Apparently someone has been busy. The smart money's on Dalt. So it was back to Coruscant, again, to talk with Dalt's very vociferous holocron.

It was very pleased to get attention (god, Dalt's such an attention whore), and answered most of their questions with a little coaxing. Dalt had indeed learned the foundation of his own cloning technology from the Kaminoans (in the holocron's words, "With enough work, anyone can be persuaded to talk"). But the Daltocron was disgusted at the idea that he'd been less than brilliantly inventive in coming up with his own version...and indeed, he can't entirely be faulted on that. He explained that the procedure came from an understanding of the interaction of living beings with the Force. It's simply a matter of programming their personality as the clone grows, to simulate the maturation process. In non-Force sensitives, it's not really even an issue. An average clone could be grown in perhaps four years, he said, with more time being taken for what he called "works of art."

Doing some checking, the clone troopers had indeed been grown using Dalt's technology. Consensus on their next move was to head back to Kuat and see if they could find more information on Dalt there--perhaps a hidden lab or something away from his residence, that'd give them some clues.

Alderaan for the win!

The Jedi masters got yet another "fascinating" call in the middle of the night after that little adventure. Ree wondered out loud why it was always Kyp or Luke who got her calls, and Zan pointed out that it might be wise to keep such news among a small circle.

Yet again, they were given vacation time. This time, they actually used it. Z took them to a bar not far from the Jedi temple, called "The Shattered Holocron." It's a Jedi-themed bar, with appropriate costumes and themed drinks such as the "Forced-up Yoda," the "Draught Vader," and the "Totally Mauled" (strongest drink in the house). They also had the Obi One, Two, Three, Four, Five, and Six, depending on how strong you wanted it.

While they were there, an ad for the upcoming movie about Ree premiered on the holovid, and people began discussing how she really ought to have a drink named after her, too. Poor Ree was rather embarrassed, but no one really recognized her, so that was okay.

Kedrihm'Val spent a bit of his downtime trying to figure out how to detect Sith poison. Ever since one of his companions had mentioned the idea, he'd been a bit worried about the idea of Dalt (or Darth Maul, or the witch) possibly having used the stuff on more of his people. The Jedi allowed him to read through some of the information on Sith poison they'd gotten from Komok-Da's lab, and briefly, the answer seemed to be there.

He found information about some rare spider-like creatures that could detect the poison. They came from a little planet on the Outer Rim. But when he mentioned this to his companions, they were shocked. There's no planet listed anywhere near those coordinates. Oola wanted to go investigate right away, seemingly thrilled with curiosity. Kedrihm'Val, however, kind of wanted to learn more about these spider-things first. If they were evil (as seemed quite likely, given the source material he'd found them in), he had no desire to import any of them to his planet.

So he went to talk to the Jedi librarians of the Ossus library they'd helped recover. Those fine souls said that yes, indeed, these spider-things were dark side creatures, so that nixed the idea as far as he was concerned. Faced with no immediate reason to head out to a missing planet, Ree suggested they arrange to have a probe sent out there first, to see if there was even anything worth checking on.

In the meantime, they weren't left to be bored. The Ossus librarians said they'd pinpointed the location of the Jedi ship the crew had been searching for all this time--the one that had been harrying the child-slave lanes for so long. It just so happened to be out in the same direction as Kamino...which was looking like a worthy destination, what with everything they'd been finding out about Dalt lately. So off they went.

But they didn't get far. Near the Alderaanian asteroid field, the ship picked up a distress beacon. Following an odd little argument in which Ree tried to advise caution, Drath took it to mean she was wary of going at all, and Zan just watched the two like it meant something, they flew in to investigate.

What they found was quite odd: it looked like a large meteor chunk, but scanning it showed a base buried inside, with active power. Additionally, an Imperial shuttle was fastened to the side.

Docking the Starwind, Onna stayed onboard with SAR while the others went inside. Oola was able to get access to the systems without much trouble, and they watched security tape of a group of stormtroopers along with two men whom Zan identified as Imperial Inquisitors. That meant trouble.

Oola hunted through the records to see what the place was supposed to be. The shielding was so heavy that everything was intact even after the destruction of the planet the base had been hidden in. She found, to everyone's shock, that this place was a repository of genetic material from all the biological entities of Alderaan--all the flora and fauna, along with the royal family...including Leia.

And guess which room the Inquisitors were headed for.

They commed Onna to let her know what was up, and she placed a call to the Republic. There are always a couple of ships patrolling the Alderaanian belt, after all, so they figured help shouldn't be long in coming.

After ascertaining that she couldn't do anything from this panel, Oola located the security station, from which she could get the elevators working and maybe lock the Imperials down. But the security station turned out to be guarded by four Imperials. Kedrihm distracted the two on the outside with the simple expedient of throwing something down the other way of the hall while Ree and Ja'len jumped them from behind. Meanwhile, Zan and Drath dealt with the Imperials inside the security station. One surrendered, while Zan dragged the other (who had the insignia of an Imperial guard) through the window and beheaded him.

Oola told them it'd take about an hour to get the elevators working, but that it'd take them three hours to simply walk down to where the other Imperials were.

When she had them working, the group came up with a plan to lock the Imperials in the vault they'd gotten to, and knock them out by simply removing the oxygen from the room. This worked, for the most part, except on one of the Inquisitors. Realizing that something unfortunate had happened to his people, he began pulling down vials and smashing them, then looked pointedly at the camera with a "What're you going to do about it?" gesture. After a moment of debate, Drath simply commed the man and, in his best angry Zabrakian snarl, growled, "Don't touch my samples!"

This gave the Inquisitor pause, and then Zan Force-shoved him into a wall and knocked him out.

With the coast clear, the group headed on down, reclaimed the vial of the Princess's blood, and rounded up the unconscious Imperials. Oddly, all the stormtroopers looked exactly alike. Zan commented on this, but thought they looked too young to be part of the 501st, which was the battalion that had housed most of the remaining clone troopers from the clone war. They should've been in their 50s, if that were the case, but these men looked like they were in their 30s at most.

At about this time, Onna called them to tell them about the Imperial Star Destroyer that was hailing the shuttle. Apparently, the group didn't have as much time as they'd thought. Onna set up a fake beacon from the shuttle to lure the Star Destroyer into thinking they were simply behind schedule, while the crew rounded up the slew of droids who occupied the facility and got them loading vials onto the Starwind. If things went really far south, they wanted to save as much as they could.

They managed to buy enough time to get just about all of it. Ja'len snagged the Imperial shuttle while the others piled into the Starwind just as the Star Destroyer caught on that there was a serious problem and unleashed a battalion of TIE fighters. It was very touch-and-go there for a bit (Ja'len almost didn't make it), but as they cleared the asteroid field they found not one, but TWO New Republic capital ships waiting for them. One was the flagship for the Jedi Order. They hid behind their big pals while the Star Destroyer buggered off, realizing just how much trouble it was in.

Docking with the Jedi ship, they found Kyp waiting for them in the hangar bay. "It's not that far to Coruscant," he said when they looked surprised. Then he said, "Do you know what time it is on Coruscant?! I got shaken awake in the middle of the night!" This led to: "It's a Jedi's duty to be awakened in the middle of the night." "Yeah, Ree's always being woken up by dark and ominous figures." "That's exactly what I'm talking about!" Kyp retorted. "Was your ominous figure Luke Skywalker? Then I win!"

Anyway, after he stopped ragging on them, it was a nice, quiet ride home. To massive and unprecedented adulation.

As Kyp put it, "You guys saved the Senate, the Jedi Temple, and the Chancellor's family before. You realize that's going to be nothing compared to rescuing all the plants and animals of Alderaan?"

Yeah, there was quite a crowd.

Clones and Sith Lords and Swamps, oh my!

Going through Dalt's information, they ascertained that he was trying to rebuild his cloning facilities. Exactly why, or where, were open questions. Zan commented, "We really need to learn more about Dalt."

They also found a flagged entry on Skippy the Wondersith...er, I mean, an ancient Sith Lord named Komok-Da (Dalt is Skippy the Wondersith).

Komok-Da had a place on a planet called Desevro. He'd been a master of Sith alchemy, and had supposedly left many resources there for anyone evil or foolish enough to use them. The crew definitely needed to get there before Dalt.

So, off to Desevro! Other things could wait.

Desevro is mainly swamp, but it's a very old planet that's been settled since pre-Republic times. The locals had stories about the swamps, notably one place where strange things and ghost stories centered. Feeling that this was their target, the crew snagged a swamp-worthy vessel and headed out that way.

They encountered an area where the Force stopped working. This was uncomfortable for the Force-users, but since this was most likely where they wanted to go, they pressed forward into the center of the phenomenon. Kedrihm'Val spotted a strange-looking stump that didn't seem quite right, and once again set Oola on it (notice the pattern here?). Oola, goddess of electronics that she is, hotwired the thing, opened a hidden entrance in a big old bole, and reset the password so that anyone else trying to enter behind them would have a hard time of it.

They descended into the darkness, with Z waiting outside to play spotter.

Down the steps into an ancient temple, the crew found...battledroids. The things had ysalamiri wired into their centers, explaining the Force-dead area. Despite this, the battledroids weren't too hard to deal with. Destroying those and going past, Oola opened up an old vault door, to find a big system rigged with ysalamiri. They seemed to be hooked up so that something could be extracted from them. Ysalamiri hormone, perhaps? How odd...

Past that they found a lab, just sitting there as if waiting for its master to return. They gathered those up, and Oola rigged the information terminal to meltdown. After that, they found a big, strange-looking device that Oola began investigating while the others (except Onna, who stayed with Oola) kept going. Beyond the room with the device, the others found a long hall, lined with ten human-sized tubes. Inside floated the corpses of Jedi, their bodies kept in condition by nutrient baths.

And beyond that, they found a room with a bier at the far end, the Sith Lord's mummified body lying atop it.

As they entered and began poking around the body, the sound of shattering glass came to them from the hall outside. Poking their heads out, the Jedi saw some of the corpses breaking their way out of their containers. Their faces fallen into shadow and their eyes glowing red, they ignited lightsabers and came after our heroes.

Kedrihm'Val stayed in the room with the corpse, working to light the thing on fire and destroy it so Dalt couldn't clone the ancient being. Meanwhile, Oola, working on the computer, detected an odd homing beacon that had started when her companions had entered the Sith Lord's burial room. She managed to shut that off, which prevented the rest of the corpses from animating. She recognized the phenomenon as spacewraiths--strange incorporeal alien beings that possess the recently dead and use their bodies. The homing beacon had apparently been calling them in.

Oh, and she realized that the computer was wired into a bomb that'd been connected to the planet's core. So she spent some time defusing that nasty little prospect.

As the Jedi finished dealing with their undead companions, Kedrihm'Val narrowly escaped being possessed by the Dark Side spirit of Komok-Da, who came flowing out of the tomb. Unable to take his body, it zapped him with Force Lightning instead. The others noticed when he came sliding out into the hall, smoking.

Ree and Zan summoned up the power of Force Light, which throws the power of the Force against dark side energy and dissipates it. They weren't sure whether they'd managed to destroy it or simply drive it off, but either way it vanished. Lydia, meanwhile, healed Kedrihm'Val, who really wasn't looking too hot by then.

In any case, a job well done. Just as the crew prepared to leave, however, the roof of the hall was torn apart. Dalt leapt down through the hole to confront them.

It was pretty clearly a robo-Dalt. He had fleschettes embedded in him from his battle with Z, who was also climbing down through the hole, and there was some crackle-singing with wires exposed.

So the Jedi moved to engage him. He was tricky, this time, fighting with a lightsaber in one hand and a dual lightsaber in the other, his hand spinning inhumanly to form a shield of deadly energy. It looked a bit unpleasant there for a few moments, but Drath ripped his arm off and used it as a weapon. Then Ree managed to pull a beautiful maneuver, chopping his head off and taking his torso apart on the backswing.

And now, it was definitely time to clear out, before anyone even more unpleasant followed.

Three robo-Dalts and four clones down, one robo-Dalt and two clones to go. We think.

Dalt's skiing!

After turning over the evil tree to the Jedi council, the crew was given a break. However, Master Roon (the Jedi who'd been assigned to represent Ree to the movie people) stopped by to let them know the movie folks wanted to have a meeting with everyone.

Much fun was had, up until the movie guys asked about the group's enemies and Drath began explaining about how Dalt had the hots for the Emperor. Really. That was an image no one needed.

I mean...really.

So the crew headed off, but on the way out of the building, a little boy stole Ree's lightsaber and ran off. They followed the kid into the undercity, where they found the child along with a whole colony of other children. He gave her lightsaber back, and explained that they needed Ree to save them from the "ogres."

Ogres are some kind of mutant humanoid species that's found on most all industrialized planets. No one knows where they come from, but there they are. They'll eat just about anything...including little kids.

After Oola fixed their fritzing holovid, the children led the crew to the place where they often ran into ogres. Oola, Z, and Lydia escorted the kids back to safety while Ree, Drath, Zan, Onna, and Kedrihm'Val tracked the monsters to the dump, where they laired.

Fight! The ogres tried to drive them off at first, by throwing things, but of course that didn't faze the Jedi too much. So the ogres ran at them--there were eight of them--and combat ensued. But when the crew got the upper hand, the ogres surrendered, kneeling to the Jedi who were wielding red lightsabers (Zan and Drath).

Ooookay. Well...knock them out and call in a transport to take them, um, someplace appropriate. Ree called the Jedi, leaving a message for Master Kyp, and he called back about thirty seconds later--just sat there for a second and stared at her, then said, "Okay. Bye." Ree asked him what the heck he was doing, and he said, "I just wanted you to know how it feels." Then he hung up.

Sure. Whatever.

While Kyp was being weird and the group waited for the transports, they poked around a bit more. It just seemed a bit odd, is all, so they looked around. Kedrihm'Val noticed something that seemed out of place. Oola got called over, and she noticed that the thing was an operation terminal for a hidden lift that was buried under the trash. Republic peoples took the ogres away while the group went down to explore this odd thing.

Inside, Kedrihm noticed something dart quickly out of sight. They went down the hallway cautiously, and paused at the intersection when he heard heavy raspy breathing from around the corner. You know...like a respirator mask.

Yeah. Kind of like that.

When they took a peek, DARTH VADER popped out from around the corner! Eyah, run away, run...wait. Um, Zan's lightsaber just went right through him... Ohhhh, it was an illusion! Whew. That looked to be nasty for a second, there. Oola disabled the hologram projectors in the walls, and then they paused for a moment to put two and two together. Ogres...red lightsabers...Vader hologram...hmmm. Looks like they've stumbled into an old Imperial installation. Definitely should be investigated further.

But before they could go any further, they got attacked by a Noghri (alien species who're really good bodyguards and assassins, honor-bound to defend Darth Vader because he "saved" their planet--they thought).

Ree put in another call to the Jedi. Kyp answered. He was very excited. Said that Luke kept getting all the good calls. "Oh...no way!" he crowed. "Come on, lay it on me. What is it this time? Clones? Evil trees? Garbage monsters?"

"I think we found Darth Vader's hidden lab under the dump," answered Ree.

Poor Kyp. "Oh, man. I'm gonna have to tell Luke... You know how he gets when people mention that name around him? He gets all creepy." Luke walked up behind him while Kyp moped a bit more, and then, getting the gist of the issue, told Ree they'd be there shortly and dragged Kyp off.

So the group poked around a little, but couldn't really figure out what the heck things were. Kyp and Luke arrived (poor Kyp looked quite frazzled, and Luke was indeed being a bit intense) and took over. After a bit, Kyp shooed the group out.

It's so nice to have some vacation.

After another couple of days in which nothing untoward happened, the Republic asked them to escort some Jedi healers to a temple on a planet called Rhinnal. Rhinnal is a lovely little alpine world, just coming out of an ice age, and there's an old Jedi healing temple there that survived because the planet was backwater and really rather liked Jedi so felt no compulsion to tear the thing down.

Zan and Onna taught people how to ski. Drath was surly and stayed in the lodge. While everyone was out playing in snow, Ree spotted--of all people--Dalt, talking to some folks who looked like investors or something.

Dalt spotted Ree spotting him, and took off. Cue downhill chase on skiis!

It was tight there, for a bit. Ree and Dalt were battling with lightsabers, flipping back and forth. Hearing Ree shout "Get back here, you bastard!", Zan came charging across the slope, but didn't get there before Drath, who'd commandeered a snowmobile and ran Dalt down with it.

Ree told him to surrender, which he wasn't averse to, considering he was pinned beneath a snowmobile, beaten to within an inch of his life, and had a lightsaber at his throat. But Kedrihm'Val heard a beeping and, recognizing it as the sound of one of Dalt's booby-trapped lightsabers, ripped the thing out of the snow telekinetically and tossed it into the air, where it exploded harmlessly.

"Awww," said Dalt. "I guess I surrender for real."

So they sedated him and left him at the Jedi temple briefly while they ransacked his ship and interrogated the people he'd been talking to. They were perfectly legitemate. Apparently Dalt had been negotiating for medical supplies...which, coincidentally (or, you know, not), could be used in cloning procedures.

Oola began digging information out of Dalt's ship. While she was busy with that, one of the security guards who'd been watching Dalt came out to ask how long they'd be at this, because the people at the temple would really be more comfortable with not having a dark Jedi slumbering in their med bay.

SAR was the only one who noticed the man making a sly-hand move for the computer panel. Before anyone could stop him, he revved up his bonesaws and charged at the guy, running him through.

Damn Dalt and his mind-hopping.

A game of chess redux

Here, have some wrong.

I have nothing to say for myself. Have fun with it, Nikki.

Why does Star Wars propogate the crack?

For the weird OOC stuff we come up with around the gaming table, see the 501 Journal, run by the player of Oola.

That is all.

New Star Wars picture

I think it captures their personalities well. Zan's such a dork. :)

Link to bigger version.

Question of the day

Crap. Now they'll never know whether they've killed all the Dalts or not.

There were supposed to be six clones, four robots, and the real Dalt.

Two robots down: one on Chandrila, one on Abindosan.

Three clones down: one on the first adventure, one on the trip with the Jedi Artisan, and one in the Sith temple.

Real Dalt--his body is gone. So...did he take over a clone? Or is he secretly possessing someone else? Unless they find the Dalt-spirit, they can't tell, because his body will read as Dalt-clone whether it's really a Dalt clone, or real-Dalt in a clone.

So, do they have two clones left and real-Dalt in a clone, or three clones and a free-range real-Dalt?

How can such a cunning bastard be such a dork?

The Haunted Jungle, or, The Evil Tree.

With the Sith poison out of the way (Kedrihm'Val was tempted to ask questions like, "What the heck was that all about?" but decided to save his breath, since it's not like they'd find answers anyway), they hied off in pursuit of the phantom herdship.

Finding it didn't take too long. It cruised back and forth along a steady path between a couple of star systems. They docked, and Ree, Jal'en, Drath, Oola, and Kedrihm'Val went aboard while the others stayed with the Starwind (though Onna sent a probe droid along to keep an eye on things).

The inside of the ship, like all Ithorian herdships, was a big ol' jungle. They love their jungle. It's sacred to them, so they take it with them wherever they go (Ithorians, by the way, are those critters with a neck shaped like a saddle and a head shaped like a hammer). They got attacked by a big evil ape-thing, which they drove off, and then they found an overgrown shopfront built into the trunk of one of the trees (Ithorians go for that sort of thing).

And they found the Ithorian, who looked like he'd been dead for a couple of years and was slowly being absorbed by the jungle. But on a closer look...he was still alive. It was as if the jungle were keeping him on life support, slowly draining the lifeforce from him. Studying him, Ree could feel the jungle reaching out, trying to draw the Force from her as well.

Isn't it amazing how quickly things can go from serene to creepy?

Drath summarily killed the poor Ithorian (Dark Side point to Drath! Generally you want to investigate alternatives before employing mercy killings), and the crew rummaged around the shop for information. They found directions to an information booth (the herdships are travelling communities, jungles with towns and things built in, and arrangements are made for tourists), and headed that way to see if they could find the way to the bridge. This wasn't too hard, but on their way toward the bridge, they picked up two more evil gorillas tailing them. They came to the passage leading to the crew portion of the ship, which had been boarded up and sealed. When Drath began clearing it with his lightsaber, the gorilla things attacked. Kedrihm'Val used Plant Surge to entangle one in vines (and could feel the jungle reaching out to try and draw him in as he did so). Drath killed that, while Ree and Jal'en made good for the other one.

The jungle got very hissy and seething at this point, which made the crew nervous. As they crossed one of the walkways, Oola noticed it starting to come away from the wall. She called out a warning, and Ree and Kedrihm'Val grabbed the two non-Forcer-users and jumped down to the ground as the platform fell away beneath them. Once safe on the ground, Oola spotted an Ithorian's fresh footprints leading away from the panel that controlled the walkway's clamps. Apparently, someone was still alive in here.

At the bridge, They found a force shield preventing them from entering, but on the other side, they could see a strange contraption that didn't seem to have any part of the proper workings of the ship. Oola determined that the shield could be dropped from the security array on the ship, so off they went.

Heading toward the security area, they spotted the nearly-dead bodies of more than 50 species--the remnants of those explorers who'd come to investigate this place and never returned.

They found the security area...guarded by four computer-controlled gun turrets and four more of those tough gorilla-things. They might've been able to take three, but four would be a problem, and the gun turrets would definitely need dealing with. Spying on the place for a bit, they saw an Ithorian inside, pacing around and apparently yelling at someone on a commlink.

...Aha! Idea time! Drath and Ree decided they could rush past the turrets into the building while he was distracted. They'd keep him occupied, while Kedrihm'Val said he could deal with the ape-things, leading them off into the woods and then slipping away from them. Then Oola and Jal'en could get into the building and work their tech-magic to disable the turrets and bring down that shield.

And so it was. Ree and Drath dashed in and leapt through the windows to confront the Ithorian, who was just then yelling at someone for telling him they'd teach him to become one with the jungle and setting all this up, and then just abandoning him. He whirled to grab a stick, and when he Force-enhanced it, they realized he was some kind of Dark Side Force-adept. During the fight, Ree felt herself being choked. It wasn't the Ithorian... Spinning to the comm-screen, she saw Dalt (geez, he's everywhere!), and smashed the screen to put an end to that.

Meanwhile, Kedrihm'Val got the attention of the evil apes, which chased him into the woods. He distracted two with an illusion, and then dashed off to leave the others in the dust. Oola and Jal'en slipped in and hacked into the computers while he rejoined them. Spotting seven more of the evil apes coming out of the jungle to confront them, Oola took control of the gun turrets to deal with them...

...Just as the Ithorian leapt out of the window into the clearing, and took four gun turret blasts in his back. The apes suddenly turned and wandered off like normal animals.

Ree informed them that it had been Dalt. They made their way quickly back to the bridge to see what all the fuss had been about. There, they found a strange device, rigged to draw the Force from the jungle and pump it into a sealed coffer. Wondering what it was, the crew opened it.

Inside was a sapling that hadn't been planted. Studying it, the Force-users realized that it contained the tortured, angry spirits of all the dead souls who had once inhabited this place, as well as the ones who'd died investigating it. That was one evil tree! Kedrihm'Val realized that this tree was meant to grow crystals, like the one Ree had used to construct her lightsaber except attuned to the dark side of the Force rather than the light.

Oola rigged a beacon to warn anyone approaching the herdship that it was dangerous, hoping that'd keep people away till someone could come deal with it, and they got the pernicious plant out of there. Then they blasted back to Coruscant, sending a message to a very bemused Master Skywalker (he always gets the weird messages, much to Master Durron's disappointment) that they were bringing an evil tree back with them.

At Coruscant, they found Zan waiting for them. He had some questions about Kedrihm'Val's vision. He pointed out that there was the Jedi Masters' Council, and then the High Council of the New Republic, which also had some Jedi sitting on it. Dalt could have been talking about either one. They were also concerned that Darth Maul hadn't really seemed to care that they'd been overheard... At any rate, he said, best to get that botanical nightmare inside.

Eww, Dark Side goo.

Back in civilized lands once again, the Council gave Ree the go-ahead on whatever she felt like doing next. However, they said they were keeping Zan for something, although the crew could take Drath.

Oola came back with more infformation from her well-conneccted family.

The trade between the Hutts and the Imperial remnant is facilitated by a criminal organization called the Bloody Spiral. The Bloody Spiral is run by Tura Hutt, who's famously unstable and rumored to be addicted to Spice. What's more, the Bloody Spiral has become aware of the group! Bounties have been leveled upon various members:

Erin, Onna, and Z are wanted for 50,000 credits alive, or 25,000 dead.
Kedrihm'Val and Lydia are worth 100,000 alive, or 50,000 dead.
SARR the droid has a bounty: 275,000 credits.
Ree's bounty is 800,000 alive or 500,000 dead, and Drath is wanted for 500,000--dead only. I guess Drath's reputation has gotten around.

Z was offended when he found out he was on the lowest rung (especially when he learned the droid's price was higher). He wanted to go right after the Bloody Spiral and get his price up. Drath was a bit annoyed that his wasn't higher, as well, but apparently was mollified by the 'dead only' part. Some of the crew were impressed by the balls it must take to put out a bounty on a New Republic investigator.

Zan's and Oola's names were notably absent. Presumably, Zan has managed to keep a low profile, but the reason Oola doesn't have a bounty turns out to be that her family runs a scary criminal empire that the Spiral doesn't want to cross. Who knew? Though she's done pretty well at keeping a low profile, too; as much damage as she wreaks, most of the flashy stuff has been the doing of others.

Oola's family also told her about a strange ship that's been seen floating around the Outer Rim--an Ithorian herdship that people have taken to calling the "Haunted Jungle." No one knows anything about it; everyone who has gone to look never came back. Well, this caught the group's attention. They wanted to head for the Rim anyway to learn more about the Spiral, and Oola suggested they go to Ryloth first to modify the ship (to make it less traceable by enemies) and to get more information from her family.

On the way, Oola told them about Ryloth, the Twilek homeworld. Spice and slaves are its biggest exports. Her family is known to be big in the Spice trade, but in reality they use it as a cover for anti-slave trade activities. Her parents supported the Rebellion during the war, and still have contacts in many corners of the galaxy. No one crosses her parents and gets away with it (seriously, they don't; the GM told us their stats).

On the way to Ryloth, Ree was awakened in the middle of the night (that happens a lot, doesn't it?) with a vision of Kedrihm'Val killing her in her sleep. Kedrihm'Val was awakened with the same vision...as were Drath, Lydia, and Tia. After a few rounds of "Are you okay?" with a side order of suspicion (and a call from Zan, who had apparently gotten the same thing), Drath planted himself outside their rooms for the rest of the night.

The next morning, they explained to everyone what had happened. Nothing seemed out of place with the ship or with Kedrihm'Val, so SARR spent the day running medical tests on him. Turned out, he'd been injected with some of that Sith poison that he'd narrowly dodged at the coastal settlement on Abindosan. The witch must've done it after she captured him. SARR also removed a molecular tracker from his blood that seemed to be more of Dalt's handiwork, but he couldn't do anything about the poison. That stuff is virulent. The only thing the crew could think of to do was wait it out and hope he could fight it off. Ree didn't cheer anyone with her story of Ulic Qel-Droma, who'd gotten poisoned and couldn't be healed until he'd been severed from the Force.

Drath took to crashing outside Kedrihm's room as a precaution, which Kedrihm didn't mind at all. He was a bit shaken about the whole thing, and didn't want to hurt anyone. The next night, he had another vision. He stood in a room watching Dalt and the Force witch argue about a spy that they had in the Jedi temple. Dalt said that the spy would be a Master on the Council soon, and it was the perfect time, while the woman insisted it would be idiotic to activate the spy now. She counselled him to be patient. Dalt slapped her and said, "That's White Force talk!" She slapped him back and said, "The Dark Side is not synonymous with stupidity." Then Darth Maul, in the corner, cleared his throat and said that now indeed was not the time, and after that he walked over to Kedrihm'Val, said "Go home," and shoved him back into his body.

Which bounced off the bed and hit the floor, prompting Drath to come in and check on him. Kedrihm'Val woke up to see a Zabrak leaning over him and struck out on reflex, so they got into a bit of a fight. Luckily, Drath didn't hurt him before they could clear it up.

The next morning, they shared the story. Everyone was a bit at a loss as to what to do. Drath suggested that this was too sensitive to just send a message. Besides, the context was important, but how could they explain the details of the vision without sending a long missive? They decided to wait till they reached Oola's family and see if they could do something.

Oola's family did indeed have an idea. Her father, a tall, intimidatingly powerful Twilek man, called in a Caamasi--a member of a species that could save and communicate memories with others--who shared Kedrihm'Val's memory, took the messages the group wanted to send, and headed off to Coruscant to meet General Solo.

Well, come on. Who else would keep in touch with a whole family of anti-Imperial Twilek crime lords?

Oola's family gave their ship an overhaul while Oola gave everyone the grand tour. Kedrihm'Val spent some time at a very soothing floating rock garden, where he meditated for a while and tried to regain his equilibrium. Instead, he got another vision (which made him nauseous). This time, he found himself on a swampy planet, where he found an evil cave and a tiny little hut with some Force-strengthening herbs growing in a garden patch outside. When he came out of the trance, he vomited, and was helped out by some kind passing Twileks.

Hmmm, wonder where he landed.

Yes, yes, okay. Ree recognized it immediately. Kedrihm thought that he might be able to make a helpful medicine out of those plants, so Oola got a shuttle they could use to land on Dagobah, since the ship certainly wouldn't be able to. They headed out that way (Kedrihm'Val apparently had another "incident," but no vision), and arrived to find that Darth Maul was apparently camping out in the Dark Side cave.

Well, they wanted to avoid that anyway, and he didn't bother them while they harvested some of the plants (Kedrihm took some cuttings to grow more) and got the heck out of there. Back at Ryloth, it took a few tries (and more nausea), but he got the medicine to work and he coughed up the viscous black goo. Blech.

"I kind of figured it'd be black," said Drath.

Speaking of black, Oola's family also turned up the dirt on that black Twilek witch. Black is an unusual color for a Twilek to be, and there aren't many Force-sensitive Twileks to begin with, so it wasn't too hard. Her name is Koyi Ziveri Sinya, and she was sold as a slave while young. Must've found her way to the Dathomiri, who noticed she was Force-sensitive and trained her up. Oh, joy joy. More lightsaber-wielding bad guys! How come everyone seems to weild lightsabers these days?

Away from Abindosan!

They spent two more days on Abindosan. Zan figured out how to fix the cyborged people (why do the people in our games always get cyborged? this is a dark trend). Kedrihm'Val tallied up the dead and got them back to their families. He discovered that Force-sensitives had been targeted deliberately, and perhaps 60% of the Force-sensitives on his planet had been wiped out.

Oola and Ree dug through the computer banks of the old base that formed the outpost, looking for information on the underwater installation. It had been put there the same time as the surface base, but had supposedly been evacuated years ago. They got floor plans and security measures, and discovered that Oola couldn't cut the base loose and float it to the surface as she'd hoped, but it did have a stardrive so it could launch into space.

A Jedi starfighter hit the planet and dove into the water. It was a day too early for it to be the new Republic reinforcements they'd summoned for the Star Destroyer. Ree had a bad feeling, which was confirmed when she contacted the Jedi Temple: Dalt had possessed a padawan, destroyed his own body, and made off in a ship before anyone could stop him.

Not too long after that, one of the coastal clans reported finding a young man in a Jedi's robes who'd washed ashore. He was alive but quite comatose. They went and retrieved him, and SAR did what he could to make the lad comfortable, though he opined that the fellow wouldn't be waking up terribly soon. Dalt probably let him go after he'd possessed one of his clones to get his own body back.

That night, Ree woke up with the feeling that something evil was moving through the town. She woke Zan and the two went out to investigate, leaving a note for the others. They fought and defeated a weird parasitic Dark Side snake that had possessed a couple of people, and then a sudden deluge opened up right on top of them, nearly hiding the cyborg zombie-people who attacked them next. Meanwhile, Kedrihm'Val got attacked and knocked out by the black Twilek Force witch who had summoned the storm. Zan and Ree heard the fight, and arrived on the scene just in time to see her making off with their companion. Exciting chase ensued! The witch lost both Zan and Tia, who'd also followed, but Ree was able to use the Force to keep a bead on the witch even when the woman summoned a cloud of darkness to cover her tracks. Ree caught up with her at the beach, and got hit with Kedrihm'Val (the poor man woke up so sore the next day). The witch tried to take him back, but Ree thwarted her, and drove the witch off by deflecting the woman's Force Lightning back at her. Way to go, Ree!

Kedrihm'Val was left wondering what the heck that was all about. I mean...it was just kind of weird, wasn't it? Why draw the Jedi's attention by calling up nasty monsters and Dark Side storms while you're trying to quietly kidnap someone who's blocks away from them? Maybe the witch is crazy.

The next day, the underwater base blasted into space, followed by a silvery ship that was probably Darth Maul's Scorpion. Shortly after, the reefs started exploding, rocking the flow of the Force through the planet. The little bastard had planted mines in them! Oola was able to reset the timers on the mines and they dug the things out before even more damage could be done.

After that, the Vodne (whom Kedrihm'Val had managed to contact using an old rite) sent them a message thanking them for their help, assuring them they could take care of the reefs, and asking them to please stop helping now. General response was, "Well, I never! I didn't see them digging out any mines." But since 'thank yous' seem to be pretty rare among these discourteous fish-people, they took what they could get.

At last, the New Republic reinforcements arrived and the crew left to return to Coruscant so Ree and Zan could give their report. Jal'en came along for the trip, since he had no other way off the planet. They were able to track the space-base back toward Dathomir, where it was essentially off-limits to their resources. Someday they're going to have to deal with that place...

Back on Coruscant, the holovid people still not leaving her alone, and the Jedi Council still leaving it up to her (the jerks), Ree went and grabbed hold of some of the Jedi lawyers (who knew?) and made them start looking into contract issues for her. If they were going to insist on this monstrosity, she figured, she'd at least force them to do justice to the Jedi.

Character pictures

Onna Reulkie, the Noble.
Zan, the Jedi Master.
Lydia, the young Force Adept.
Oolan, the Tech Specialist.
Kedrihm'Val, the Force Adept.

Ree Shevan, the Jedi Knight.

To Abindosan! part 2

This left them at a loss. They were ready to deal with mutant fish people, Dalt clones, evil Dark Side devices meant to turn a planet into a sentient…evil thing. Darth Maul had them intimidated, true, but…they just weren’t prepared for a Star Destroyer.

Kedrihm’Val, realizing that the thing might be trying to send them a message, ran back to the planetary comm unit. Sure enough, the Star Destroyer was demanding that the planet surrender within the next five hours, or face surface bombardment. The clan representatives evacuated the city, leaving only themselves and the crew behind.

Onna offered to negotiate, buying them some time. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew ran through questions. They needed to find out if the ship was with Dalt or the Imperial remnant. Had Dalt called it before confronting them? What was it here for? How could they keep it from destroying the planet? Could they get up to it, or find some way of driving it off?

Frantic investigation over the next several hours turned up a lot of interesting things.

Jal’en’s stolen ship had a lot more than smuggled goods. Buried within its computer banks, Oola found the codes and coordinates for slipping into and out of the Imperial remnant. She performed spectacularly, extracting all this information and covering up her traces completely.

Darth Maul had a secret lab within the confines of the old Imperial base—much of which was abandoned by the Abindosani. It was he who’d been building those cyborgs. In the lab was also an opening to a tunnel leading to the Imperial installation that the Scorpion went down to. Whether Maul is still on the planet or not is unknown. He also had a Sith speeder stashed in one of the abandoned hangars.

With Maul’s notes, Kedrihm’Val was able to work out that the cyborgs would recover their minds by themselves. Maul had used tainted coral in the prosthetics as a crude type of mind control, and as the reefs healed, the coral (and their minds) would as well.

Onna engaged in a duel of wits with the Star Destroyer's captain, figuring out that the Star Destroyer in orbit above them was probably from the Imperial remnant and not at Dalt’s behest. This gave them an advantage, since it meant the Imperials would not likely want to start something with Republic authorities (such as Jedi) on the planet. It’s one thing to be up to no good. It’s another to offend an organization that can, if it feels the need, invade your sector of space and smash you flat.

Since they were pretty sure the Imperials wanted Jal’en’s stolen ship, they allowed the Imperials to land a squad of Stormtroopers. But first, they rigged the old bucket with enough explosives to blow a hole through the Star Destroyer’s hangar bay, just in case the Imperials tried to double-cross them. Sure enough, after a few hours, the Troopers stole the ship and made off with it, and the Star Destroyer pulled out of orbit. The crew didn’t mind, since at that point they’d gotten off everything that was worth their time. So long as that ship was gone and didn’t come back to bother them, that’s all that mattered.

So now, they have to decide what to do about that underwater base, and get in touch with whatever sane Vodne are left to try to help salvage the situation with them.

To Abindosan! part 1

Well, after learning what’s actually going on with his planet, Kedrihm’Val really wanted to get back home and deal with things. Everyone else was agreeable, and Tia decided to come along. Drath stayed back, however. The Council seems unwilling to let him off the leash just yet.

Abindosan is tucked into a nearly unpopulated corner of the galaxy, somewhere near Endor and Cerea, so it was a long and very boring trip. While they were hieing their way across the galaxy, Jal’en was getting into trouble. He still had that rickety monstrosity of a freighter, and it was breaking down on him in that same sector. He had to make a landing on one of the most backwater planets in the galaxy before his ship fell apart on him.

On the way in…he narrowly missed being rammed by a “Scimitar” class ship, the likes of which he’d never seen before. It made planetfall on Abindosan too, but didn’t go anywhere near the single spaceworthy outpost. It sank straight into the ocean.

Imagine the crew’s surpise when they found Jal’en already on the landing pads! He couldn’t get his ship fixed because nobody had much in the way of spare hyperdrive parts lying around. Oola asked if he had anything useful in his cargo, but he hadn’t even checked it yet! He’d spent the last two weeks just keeping that rustbucket moving. So they went through it with him. A quarter of a ton of electrobinoculars, some Spice, star fighter parts…oh yeah, he robbed from a smuggler. And, last but most exciting…cryo-pods with sleeping children hidden in some smuggler’s panels. Cue rush for the log books, which indicated travel from the Hutt worlds to the Imperial remnant. Oooo, who did we steal from, Jal’en?

Exploration of Abindosan’s troubles was put off for a few days while they called a Republic transport to come retrieve those kids. In the meantime, Kedrihm’Val updated his people while Oola rigged up a submersible to investigate the underwater installation. Ree developed a headache from the Dark Side taint. Jal’en told them about the other ship he’d seen. Ree recognized it for The Scorpion, Darth Maul’s ship. It’d gone down in a different part of the sea, so apparently there were actually two installations down there.

Malina arrived, having gotten the call, and decided to stick around for a while. After the Republic transport came and took the children (and the Spice), they headed out to the coastal regions. Before they reached the settlement, they came across a lagoon with fresh footprints. It looked like some fishy sort of humanoids (Vodne) had walked up on land, grabbed someone, and dragged them into the ocean. Very recently. There were human bootprints, too, but very deep—as if the person were very heavy.

And they spotted someone running away along the coast, inhumanly fast. To the chase! Didn’t take long to corner him, but the guy was all weird. He was a cyborg, but the cybernetics were Dark Side tainted, and bits of coral were embedded in there. He seemed totally incoherent, snarling and angry. Kedrihm’Val tried to calm him down so they could take him quietly, but he totally blew it so the guy ended up passing out from rage. Er, oops. Anyway, they had him. They secured him and took him along to the settlement.

The coastal clan said they’d seen guys like him around lately, and told them where the most disappearances had been happening. They accepted custody of the cyborg fellow (who had until a week ago been one of them) while the crew headed back down to the coast.

While they were studying one of these spots, the ground gave out beneath them, and they all ended up sliding down into a cavern. The bus very nearly came with them, but the Force-users were able to bring it down slowly. Exploration found more Vodne tracks, along with booted humanoid feet that were probably Darth Maul’s. Following tracks through the tunnels led them back up to outside the clan settlement. After that, they went back down to the bus and the submersible and cruised out into the ocean to hunt down that installation.

Darth Maul came swimming after them to attack their sub. The bastard moved like a shark with a lightsaber. They tried to run away while Z shot him with the turbo-lasers that Oola had fitted to the submersible. Maul absorbed one blast, then took another in the face, swam to the surface and disappeared. Kedrihm’Val had a bad feeling about it.

Anyway, they reached the underwater device, which was protected by a shield grid. Oola worked to disarm that, while the others had to fend off corrupted Vodne and a robo-Dalt. They stunned the Vodne (the GM mimed them flipping over and floating to the surface, to everyone’s amusement) and brought down Dalt by, I believe, shooting him with the turbolasers. His head popped off. Definitely a robot.

After Oola disarmed the shields, they cut the device loose from its moorings and floated it to the surface, where Z enthusiastically blew it up. Zan had them fill the submersible with water and put the tainted Vodne into it. He said he thought he could help them.

And then they noticed the blood. Darth Maul had dug a trench from the village to the shore, and it was flowing with blood. They ran back to the village and found every soul dead, strung upside down from the trees with their throats slashed to spill their blood. When Kedrihm’Val tried to cut down one of the bodies, he was nearly gassed with a vicious Sith poison that taints the victim with Dark Side-induced anger. Fortunately, non-Force sensitives aren’t affected by it, so the rest of the crew got the people down. They didn’t have time to do anything with them, though, before SAR called back from the outpost. He said the city was being inundated with evil cyborg zombies.

They got back as fast as they could (somewhat faster, with the help of Malina and her starfighter), and dove into the battle. They stunned as many as they could, rather than killing them, hopeful that they could find a way to heal them. SAR, in the Starwind, and Malina weren’t so kind, zapping attackers with lasers to keep them away from the hangar bays where the townspeople were hiding.

After they subdued or killed all the cyborg zombies, they opened up the old Imperial brig and stowed the unconscious ones there. Coming out, they noticed that it was oddly dark for the time of day…

Looking up, they saw a Star Destroyer eclipsing the sun.

After these messages: cool Darth Maul pics

That look is just too cool, so I've dug up some neat Darth Maul pictures that I thought I'd share.

This is Darth Maul.

Here he is being badass as usual.

Hur hur, it's so true.

This is where he just leapt off the speeder bike to go after Qui-Gonn. Cool shot.

OMG, he's walking!

Check it out, he can look thoughtful.

Oh god, stop smiling. That makes it worse!

Darth Maul and his one-of-a-kind "Scimitar" class ship, 'The Scorpion.'

But even the mighty Darth Maul must wait for the bus.

Holy crap, mother.

Two shots of his tattoos.


That's just cool.

Even half out of costume, he's awesome.

Hee hee.

Oh god, the cute, it burns!

The happy guy behind the Maul.

And yet, he's still badass.

Galactic Maps

I didn't create any of these, but I include them here for reference purposes.

It's a picture of Ree!

Ree's player drew this. Isn't she cute? Little combat monster, she is.

After Dinner...oh no, Darth Maul clones!

After their amusing dinner with the chancellor and her family, the group had little to do for a few days. They got updates on various things they'd been looking into. Oola's family informed her that the slavery ring had effectively shut down (yay), but that the Hutts were sending huge amounts of money to the Imperial remnants--like, "build some capital ships" kind of money. The probe that General Solo had offered to send came back with a positive manswer and likely coordinates of a corruptive Dark Side doohickey living in Abindosan's oceans. The Jedi from the Ossus library were still checking into the whereabouts of the Jedi ship, but they said they had a lead.

Ree had her knighting ceremony. There, she saw the strange cloaked figure that she'd seen before, but no one else could see it. That night, waking with a sense that someone else was around, she spotted that figure on her balcony. It waved for her to follow, then jumped off the building and led her to a cantina on the seedier side of the city. She found Z there, gambling with some guy who bore a family resemblance to Raasik Sent and Dalt. Cue drunken scramble as Jedi appeared in nasty dive, and then Ree and Z dragged the now-unconscious guy off to the group's ship so they could talk to him.

Mal Graf, his name was. Turned out, his father had entrusted a whole bunch of Jedi stuff to him, which he'd been keeping in his extremely cluttered apartment for the last several years. Scraggly but surprisingly honorable, the guy turned it all over to the Jedi Council. It was a whole bunch of stuff from Obi Wan and Yoda, including boxes of personal belongings from them and Anakin, Qui-Gonn...heck, it looked like the two of them had emptied out a house full of nick-knacks they'd collected over the years and deposited it in this apartment. Old records, personal journals, family pictures, extra sets of clothes, you name it. Heh, they woke up Master Skywalker at 4 am when they called the temple to let people know. He said, "What do you do while I'm sleeping?" then told them to bring it in and he'd meet them at 8 am, the lazy bum.

The group, various historians, and random curious Jedi sat around the place for the day, just sorting through it all. The council halls looked more like a Jedi yard sale than a solemn place of deliberation. They eventually figured out it must all have some connection with the planet Yanobar, which is an extremely backwater place where a bunch of Jedi families had gotten stuck way back during the Sith Wars, and then the coordinates had been more or less lost. Over the years, they've formed their own colony and Force tradition, called Zeishon Sha. They're very independent, but not really anti-Jedi. So, off to Yanobar.

There they learned that Dalt had visited several times in the past few years. And they ran into the mysterious cloaked lady, whose name was Tia, a member of the Zeishon Sha. She helped them out, arranging meetings with informative people. The story goes that during the rise of the Empire, Yoda and Obi Wan had stopped by and dumped all that stuff into the colony's keeping, asking them to get it into friendly hands at such time as it could safely be reclaimed. But some of the Graf family were pretty seedy. They snagged all that and ran off to Coruscant, hoping to sell it to the Emperor. Two other, more decent members of the family chased after them. But while they managed to reclaim most of the stuff, they couldn't risk carting off so much Force-permeated cargo, so they ended up settling down and hiding out with it in the crummy parts of Coruscant. Meanwhile, the seedy branch of the family took the couple of items and info they had, and sold it to the Emperor who rewarded them with a noble title. Thus we have the fancy part of the family (from the despicable side), and the lowly ones (the honorable branch). The Zeishon Sha, Tia explained, had been keeping an eye on the items and the family ever since, but had waited till now to notify the Jedi because (as Tia put it) Ree was the first one who felt both honest and approachable. (When asked about Master Skywalker, the reply was, "Yeah, I'm sure he'd take it well when a mysterious black-cloaked figure just appeared in his room one night. He's had great luck with those.")

Tia took them to meet the members of the Graf family who still lived on Yanobar. These guys were very cooperative but didn't remember a thing. A bit of checking revealed that Dalt had screwed with their memories. Lydia and Oola located his underground lab on the property (family member #1 said, "How the hell did he do that without anyone noticing?!"), which contained three exciting things:

First, copious notes on Kedrihm'val's planet. Dalt, the little scumbag, had followed the experiment eagerly. According to his notes, it was really all about the underwater fish people, called the Vodne, who guard some kind of sentient Force-sensitive coral reefs (news to Kedrihm, but then his people aren't great with the pinpoint-accurate history). These coral reefs form a collective consciousness which can remember everything that has ever passed upon that planet. The purpose this serves is not clear, but Dalt figured that if he could corrupt the Vodne guardians, then he could corrupt the reefs, and he'd end up with a whole sentient Sith planet. Wahoo. Kedrihm not a happy camper.

Second, a full-grown but quiescent clonee of Darth Maul. Oh, yeah, baby. Here's what I'm talkin' about. Zan put his lightsaber through the clone's skull, and damn the Dark Side Point.

Third, documentation on a second and active clone of Darth Maul, who's currently hanging out on Tatooine and dealing with the Hutts. Oh boy. The crazy thing is, Dalt didn't steal this technology. He invented his own cloning process, presumably figuring that since Palpatine wouldn't take him as apprentice, he'd just grow his own Sith master. As he grew the Darth Maul clone, he actually reprogrammed the...er, man's entire history and personality back into his head. So it's a real Darth Maul, not just a physical copy. Speculation led toward horrid thoughts of digging up some genetic material from the various Skywalkers who used to live out that way.

Ree's new lightsaber. And dinner.

Finally, Ree built her lightsaber. Her uncle gave her the parts for a masterwork handle, and she found some great crystals to build the blade with. Turned out to be a snazzy silver weapon with a dual-phase stun blade, increased crit range, and a hidden compartment in the handle.

The others went with her. Some of them were curious as to this whole lightsaber-building schtick, and others just wanted to get away from the craziness for a little while. She spent about a week at it, and things were fairly quiet.

Since they had nothing better to do, Kedrihm'val told them what he'd turned up with research in the last few weeks. He'd found out that an old legend about his planet was true, about fish people who lived in the oceans and supposedly carried off people--sort of like fairy stories. They were actually another sentient race that lived in the oceans of the planet, and all of them were Force-sensitive. The Emperor had apparently believed that the land-dwellers were merely a second, incidental branch off the species, and had been very interested in the fish people. Dalt had hinted that one of his Dark Side weapons might've been planted in the ocean there from the Chimaera, tested by Grand Admiral Thrawn and Darth Vader.

That prompted an explanation about his planet and his people. Abindosan is an uncultivated, forested world; one of the most backwater places in the galaxy. People live in clan settlements, and mostly hunt and gather for food, though they practice very limited agriculture to supplement their foraging. Clan elders are in charge, and the world's Force tradition, called Ailhan (of which he was one, and that's what those tattoos are), act as mediators, advisors and protectors of the people. Force-sensitives (the planet produces an unusual number of Force-sensitives) get kicked out of their clan when they're discovered and taken on by an Ailhan as an apprentice, because they're supposed to use their abilities for all their people without bias. There's one "city" on the planet, which is basically a large interclan settlement stashed in the remnants of the old Imperial base. It's where clanmembers go to learn how to use technology, and each clan has a representative there as the rough sketch of a diplomatic station. The Abindosani are quite basic and shy of technology. They didn't really have any until about thirty years ago, when the Empire showed up on their doorstep. Since then, they've adopted it cautiously, using only what they truly needed and appointing individuals among each clan as the main operators and caretakers of equipment. It's because of their (what passes for a religion).

The Abindosani believe that everything has a spirit, and that light and darkness exist in everything. The natural tendency of the light is to spread, while the natural tendency of the dark is to gather. So when someone does something good, that positive energy is shared, enriching everyone. When they do something evil, then evil flows into them from those they harm, tainting the individual more. But technology, they've found, really doesn't have a spirit, and so it blocks an individual's ability to reach out to others. So when someone uses it to help others, the benefit is decreased because their positive energy can't flow out and be shared. When you use technology to perform evil, however, the darkness in those you harm can still come to you. This makes the Abindosani wary of technology, and unwilling to become reliant on or abuse it.

So, Ree finished her lightsaber. The group got back and, except for Zan (who gloated about how he was a spy and it'd blow his cover), everyone was embarrassed by the medal ceremony and fancy parade--courtesy of Han Solo, who apparently wanted this new batch of do-gooders to be as embarrassed as he had been, way back when. He's an evil, evil man.

Afterward, they had dinner with the Solos and friends. Solo put his boots on the table and quickly dispelled any ideas of this being a formal and proper dinner. Han asked Ree "So, you're a Jedi, right? What do you think Luke should cultivate: the 'creepy, black-cloaked master of the Force' image or the 'farmboy turned hero' image?" She said "I think Master Luke should portray himself however he wishes." Which Han scoffed at as the "typical Jedi answer." Kyp thought that was funny.

They discussed the goings-on that the crew was involved with. Han offered to send a probe to scope out Kedrihm'val's planet, and shared some information about the Hutts, who they believed were having dealings with the Imperial Remnant. Ree found out that the holovid star, Karina Sevv, really wanted to make a movie about her. She was quite horrified, but the Jedi at the table seemed to think it might be a good idea--which horrified her even more. Luke discussed the apparent infestation of Dark Side-users...and also moisture-farming, when Kedrihm'Val asked him what that was. Eyes across the room glazed over (except for Oola and Kedrihm'val). SAR stage-whispered death threats to C-3P0, whom he took a loathing to as "that poncy droid." And he said that R2D2 was a potty-mouth. There was a lot of ragging Luke (mostly not from the crew, but Kyp picked on him a lot).

Ree goes home.

Everyone got back, everyone was fine, everything got straightened out. The Powers That Be were exceedingly happy with the crew's performance, to the tune of commendations and a parade.

But a couple of nights later, she woke up from a dark vision of a Force witch crawling around her planet in the midst of a neverending storm. After she tried to call her family and couldn't get a message through, she felt unsettled enough to head home and check on things. Her master told her to go ahead. She had a couple of weeks before the commendation ceremony, and it'd been ages since she'd seen her family. Everyone else was pretty much on enforced vacation ("Take some time off, dammit!"), and some of them decided they'd like to see where Ree came from.

The holovid star came along. She'd decided that Ree was the perfect person to learn from. Drove Ree crazy talking about how she'd play her in a movie.

They got to Ree's planet, and found out that the whole place is basically Kansas. Flat flat flat praerie land. A great deal of homestead farming, and very little else. There's one city on the whole planet, and the world is essentially owned by a few families who rent land to the other colonists.

On the landing pads, they ran into the ship-jacker, Jal'en. He had a rusty bucket of a YT-1300 (like the Millenium Falcon, but not working as well) that he needed some work done on. After everyone got over the fact that the starport charged as much as the ports on Coruscant, and the fact that there was a leaving fee (you have to pay to take off?!), Ree hooked him up with her uncle, who runs a repair shop in the city. He was happy to see her home, but realized she was there for more than a visit. He told her it'd been storming for a couple of months. The cattle were acting weird and belligerent, and the crops were failing. The storms had been making it tricky to get messages off the planet. He also told Ree about how she was a local hero, and there'd probably be a party for her when they realized she was there.

Lydia complained that the rain tasted foul. She licked Kedrihm'Val and said, "Like him."

Anyway, they headed out to Ree's home. On the way, they got chased by a few cattle. At her homestead, they found her family waiting for her. It was a large, boisterous, and sweet family reunion, with her mother insisting on feeding everyone till they burst. Not wanting to worry anyone, Ree didn't tell them why they were actually there. She just said she wanted to see everybody.

All the Force-users realized that the rain was tainted, and it was getting to the crops and the animals, but they couldn't figure out how it'd happened. They stayed overnight, and the next day, Ree's uncle phoned to let the family know there was going to be a meeting on the new water purification system that'd been installed a few months back. Most of the group headed back, except for Kedrihm'Val, Z, and Zan.

Kedrihm'Val poked around a bit, discovering that the water table was tainted and seemed to be stirring up the storms, while the cattle were trying to fight against the taint. He spoke with Zan about what he found. They both had a feeling that the water purification system sounded fishy, so they headed back into town after the others.

They found Ree and companions sitting in on a town meeting, listening to farmers rant. The ruling families announced they were raising taxes to pay for the water system. When Zan came in wearing his Jedi robes (which he really hates, insisting they're not comfortable, but sometimes they're effectively intimidating), they acted a bit unsettled and then tried to kiss up to the Jedi.

After the meeting, Ree and Zan wanted a tour of the water filtration facilities. Oola realized that the plans they were being shown of the facility didn't match up with what they were actually seeing. She figured out there was a secret door. Ree distracted the tour guides with some small talk while Oola got the door open. Door opens - Hey! Imperials everywhere!

Cue the fight! Erin announced that they were all under arrest. Techs in the secret room fled frantically while the Imperial officers in the hidden room tried to retreat in an orderly fashion, blasters blazing. The Force-users spotted a Force witch trying to hide herself. Ree took her on. Kedrihm'val used a nerve pinch to knock out the highest-ranking officer and take him captive, but then Oola was able to gas the rest of them, so that was a non-issue.

The characters outside the secret room had a fight on their hands, too. The two members of the ruling families who'd been giving them the tour hid in the corner. Lydia kept watch over them. But some of the techs out there were armed too, and started it up. Once the crew got the Imperials subdued, they went out to help Lydia and Oola. The techs started to run when they saw lightsabers, but Kedrihm'val got the outer door closed, so they were trapped. They surrendered after that.

Meanwhile, Ree paused in her fight with the Force witch long enough to ask her, "Why did you choose this planet?" The Force witch, quite confused, said it was out of the way, and they figured no one would ever notice them there. Then Ree cut her in half.

With all the bad guys taken care of, all that remained was for Zan and Oola to disarm the bombs they found in the installation. After that, they took a look around. The Imperials had been using the facility to build starship engines, but there was something weird about the engines. Lookig it over, they realized that there was Sith alchemy incorporated into the design. The pollutants created from building the engines were being run off into the water table, which was what had been creating the taint. The interplanetary comm interference was simply a jammer built into the installation. They turned that off and notified the Republic of the goings-on.

Then Zan and Ree marched into the town council hall and dealt with the rest of the ruling families, reaming them out and placing them in custody. They had basically sold out their planet to the Imperials because the price was good. Ree was shocked.

Master Durron showed up a couple of days later and was shocked when the port operator tried to charge him a leaving fee. Republic officials rounded up all the guys the crew had captured, and took the planet in hand to clean it up and deal with the abominable land situation.

Kyp asked Ree if she had any questions for him. She was puzzled. He prompted, "Any questions like why the Council's had a padawan traipsing across the galaxy on her own all this time..." She said "I figured the council knew what they were doing and you'd tell me when you were ready." He teased her about that, so she pointed out that that was precisely what had happened since he was, in fact, on the council, and was, in fact, telling her what they were up to. "Oh. Right," said he.

So he explained that she and Drath had been something of an experiment. Basically, the Council was aware that the old Jedi Order hadn't always made the smartest choices, so they were in the process of testing out different ways of training and teaching to see what worked the best--especially given how short they currently were on teachers compared to the number of students. They wanted to see if fostering more independence among the apprentices would be helpful, and how much training a Jedi actually needed before they were able to handle themselves. In Ree's case, it seemed to have gone swimmingly, though Drath was a bit worrisome. Kyp seemed to think it was rather clever, but Ree wasn't terribly amused. Still, when he asked her for any comments, she was too flustered to say anything.

Kyp then suggested that Ree build her lightsaber soon ("What better place to build it than at home?"), and indicated she'd be needing it as she'd soon be recognized as a Knight.

Off to save the Chancellor! Er, the Jedi! Er, the Senate! Er, the Chancellor's daughter?!

They landed on Coruscant to find that the majority of the Jedi order had taken off for the Chancellor's ship, along with Rogue Squadron and most of the other badasses on the planet. Some Jedi had remained behind with the apprentices and children, but when they tried to get in touch with them, there was no response.

Problems at the temple, perchance? Oh yes!

The temple's communications had been cut off, but Oola was able to ascertain that the Jedi students were supposed to be in the library. The crew went in to try to find people, but the doors to the library had been torn open. Blast doors. Torn open. This seriously did not bode well. And the library was in a shambles. They fought an assassin droid, ran into a holovid star who was dressed as a Jedi padawan (she said she'd been visiting the temple to do research for a movie role), and brought her along as they followed the trail of the apparently retreating Jedi. Along the way, they ran into one of those mutant Dark Side wookies. They tried to hide from it, but a Zabrak with two lightsabers and red robes came screaming out of nowhere to leap on the thing, and then they figured they'd better go help Drath before he got himself killed.

The freaking thing was practically indestructible. In the end, Drath tore out its spine with the Force.

He led them back to the security station, where the Jedi had barricaded themselves, and the crew helped them get a message out. They explained to Drath what was going on, and then the station got attacked by another evil Wookie. A second evil Wookie shambled by, carrying the Emperor's holocron they'd recovered from the Sith temple. Well, they couldn't let them have that, so out to fight more Wookies! Kedrihm'Val got the holocron away from the wookie, and then after a stiff fight, Drath used Force Grip to crush the 'nads of the stubborn Wookie that wouldn't die.

Really enthusiastic.

Well, that seemed to get things back under control... Wait. What's going on at the Senate building? The newsfeed announced that one of the aides to the Miraluka had been found dead. The crew had their suspicions, so they headed over to have a look. Some of them were authorized and the others snuck in by pretending to be journalists. They spotted Seo Roon, the Jedi Investigator, and Ree saw someone who looked an awful lot like Dalt...but wasn't. She asked after him, and someone said he was the junior representative for Coruscant--Raasik Sent, a young noble.

Weird. Well, everything seemed to be in hand there, so back to finding Dalt. They hunted down his ship, and Oola got the security feeds. They saw a tape of Dalt talking to an Imperial officer, and then Oola managed to hack through a scramble to see a recording of Dalt arguing with the Miraluka ambassador, who slapped him and told him to "stay the hell away." Dalt seemed amused.

So they went to the hangar to see if they could stop him. First they watched for a while. They saw Dalt loading a kid-sized box onto his ship. He had four evil Wookies standing guard. Kedrihm'Val suspected that the Wookies were actually possessed with Dark Side spirits, so he asked Zan if he could pull a trick like one he'd used on the Dark Side moon, when he'd pushed away some evil spirits with the Force. Zan said he thought he could. While they were distracting Dalt and the Wookies, Oola could sneak on board and take control of the ship.

And so it went down. Zan took a bit to get the Force light going, but it was enough to disorient the Wookies. Kedrihm'Val, Drath, and Z took them on, while Ree faced Dalt. In the end, Ree was able to stun Dalt into unconsciousness, while Oola got the "cargo" offloaded. And then they found out it was Jaina Solo.

Wasn't she supposed to be with the Chancellor? Well, whatever. They needed to get her to safety. Erin called in the authorities to give them a guard, and they took Dalt and an unconscious Jaina back to the Jedi temple. But it wasn't that easy, oh no. A Miraluka kept trying to kill Dalt. She actually cut their hovercar apart at one point. But they prevailed, and got back safely.

And then found out that Dalt wasn't really Dalt. He was another of the Miraluka aides. She'd been using some weird compound that temporarily changed her into a perfect copy of someone else (in this case, Dalt).

But if this was the aide, then who was with the Miraluka ambassador? Maybe Dalt had actually been trying to kill her to cover his tracks.

So back to the Senate building. They caught up with the Miraluka embassy and placed them in protective custody. But the one they were looking for was missing. Ree heard a lightsaber turn on down the hall, so they pelted down to Raasik Sent's office, where they found him being menaced by the "aide." She was trying to take a distinctive pendant that Sent was wearing.

Ah, hadn't mentioned that before. Dalt had a pendant that protected him to some extent from the Force being used against him. The fake Dalt they had in custody had been wearing it, and now he was after this very similar one that Sent was wearing. The aide dropped it when they attacked. When Ree bent to pick it, it began glowing. She put it back down, but it floated in air, pulsed with light a few times, and turned into a holocron.

The "aide" leapt out the window to escape, but Drath followed, catching her in midair. Erin shot a grappling cord to catch them both before they fell to their deaths. This led to the very noticeable spectacle of Drath and one of the Miraluka tangled up, hanging out a window and beating on each other.

And then, as the concoction wore off, the aide turned into the ambassador. What the-?

Cue another lightsaber turning on back down the hallway. Part of the group ran that way, while others hauled Drath and the ambassador back in. They found Dalt, who'd until recently been disguised as the ambassador. He was in the process of killing everyone in the room when they got in. Ree confronted him when he tried to make a break for it, and knocked him out with the stun setting on her lightsaber. FINALLY.

They dragged him back to the Jedi Temple, where he was put into custody. Jaina was up and around by then, a bit alarmed but no worse for wear. They figured out that this sort of switch must've been pulled on Jaina to get her away from her family. The Chancellor's ship returned not too much later. They were all fine, and the imposter had been found and dealt with quickly (really, try to impersonate the twin of a Force-senstive with Skywalker blood).

Once Dalt woke, he was fairly forthcoming. He verified what his holocron had told them. They learned he'd made six clones of himself, and four droid versions of himself (three clones and one droid had been dealt with up to that point). They found out that the missing Dark Side device was installed on Dathomir, another was installed on one of the four Star Destroyers that Dalt had command of, and a third was planted on Kedrihm'Val's planet (turns out the one on the Sith moon had been an additional one that the Emperor had constructed himself). Dalt said he had the smaller doohickies in various places, but most of them were stowed with his Star Destroyers. Didn't faze him, he said, as he could always build more. He chortled a bit over the idea of using them to corrupt Force-sensitive infants, the creep.

He informed them that he'd implanted self-destruct mechanisms in his clones and droids, and was happy to give them the codes (he didn't want them running around loose when he was stuck here, apparently).

Researching Raasik Sent, they learned that he and Dalt were indeed brothers. Dalt had been taken hostage as a child, as part of the Emperor's plan to keep the noble families in line. Dalt knew, but Sent did not. And both their pendants were in fact hidden holocrons--of Obi Wan Kenobi and Yoda. Those got turned over to Luke. But, try as they might, they couldn't figure out how that family had gotten hold of those holocrons. In fact, before the Empire's rise, there was no record of that family at all. Time for more investigation.

Raasik Sent, by the way, was a very nice, if slightly stuck-up, fellow who was intent on using his position to better the lives of his people. He was roughed up, but okay.

Also, the crew made a note to look into the Miraluka some more.

Doomsday weapons = Geonosis!

Since they'd found this evil Dark Side doomsday weapon, the natural place to go was Geonosis--the planet renowned for whipping up most of the Emperor's destructive monstrosities.

The Geonosans were reluctant to talk. First, they pointed out that Jedi were not official representatives of the Republic. Ree pointed out Erin, who was not a Jedi, but a New Republic investigator. Then they tried to weasel out on a technicality--something about only being able to discuss a contract with the contractor. If the Empire had signed the contract, then the Republic would be considered the inheritor of the contract, but if the Emperor was the contractor, then... So the comeback was that if the Empire had signed the contract, then it'd be standard dealings with a military organization, but if the Emperor had signed it, then it'd be considered supplying arms to an individual, and thus the Geonosans would be up for complicity in war crimes...

Yeah, they turned over the information.

The Geonosans had helped build three of these gizmos, under the auspices of a fellow named Ezrek Dalt, who worked out of Kuat. Aha! A new lead. And even better...he was still there. According to the information.

The crew suspected that the Geonosans had called ahead to warn him, so they went as quickly as they could. But by the time they got there, he'd already split. Still, they were able to get a track on his personal ship--which was heading to Coruscant. Before they went after it, though, they decided to check out his place. They found a Dalt holocron which was quite willing to share a whole lot of information. It came with them as they launched back to Coruscant on the bastard's tail.

Talking to the holocron, they found out all sorts of things about Dalt. The Emperor had snagged him at a young age, about 15, and Dalt quickly showed an impressive ability with engineering. He'd grown up dreaming of becoming a Sith, but obviously the Emperor and Vader weren't really accepting applications. Once the Emperor bought the farm, Dalt was free to scrape together all the knowledge he could find and try to teach himself. He'd learned a lot about being an evil Force-user, but Sith lord he was not.

Dalt had worked on a lot of the Emperor's doomsday weapons, apparently brainstorming the likes of the Death Star and Sun Crusher. Of the three large Dark Side devices he'd helped build, one had been on the moon, one had been mounted on a Star Destroyer as a prototype for testing (Kedrihm'Val later found out that this was the Chimaera, Grand Admiral Thrawn's ship, and Vader had indeed tested it on his planet), and one...was missing.

But Dalt had also built a number of smaller versions for his own personal use--about ten--which, the holocron informed them, could be used rather like incubators. Plant a baby in there, drench it with the Dark Side...whee.

And one of those devices was installed on the Chancellor's new ship, which was currently on its maiden tour, cruising around the galaxy with her, her family, and a number of Senators and friends.

A momentary pause. "Isn't the Chancellor Luke Skywalker's sister?" asked Kedrihm'Val. "Oh shit!" said everyone. Ree placed a hasty call to the Jedi Council. "Oh shit!" said Kyp Durron, who ran off yelling for Luke to get his butt in gear and go save his sister.

They didn't even get to tell him about the rest of it.

Ewww, Ysalamiri goo.

They helped the new arrivals get settled in, left Lydia (a Sith temple is noplace for a little girl, no matter how capable), and tried to get more information out of Zan.
The Jedi told them about this temple. It was built on a Dark Side well, which naturally generated evil energy that had flooded the moon with its taint long ago. When opened, the temple stayed that way for 24 hours.

The temple had been sealed before, but when they got there this time, it was wide open. Looked like the crew had been right about their guesses regarding Dalt.

They entered, and soon stumbled across some still-operational Sith alchemy labs. Dude, are those Vader clones? Oh, we are so bombing those. There were also notes about three books that the Emperor had written, that told a person all about how to become a Sith. Definitely need to get those out of enemy hands. Also, they worked out that some device had been built to cap the well and channel its power into things in the temple. It seemed to be providing power to the lab, and perhaps to something else as well--some other device located deep within the temple that probably needed to be shut down.

At about this point, they decided that this building would need to be destroyed. But it was made of materials resistant even to bombardment from starships. Z had the solution. He carries an awful lot of explosive, and started planting them along the hallways. Blowing it up from outside? Not doable. Blowing it up from inside? Oh so very doable.

Then they split into two groups. The first group found...hey, that says this is Zan's room! Man, this guy gets around way more than we thought. Scoping that out, they found a closet full of different uniforms, along with ident cards for, oh, about fifteen different people...all of whom looked like Zan. Well, well. Our Zan is quite the spy. My, don't we have questions.

They tried to keep this under wraps, but that didn't work out when people started getting attacked in the hallway. They killed three droids, each of which had a human organ hidden within it. Not so coincidentally, the Emperor's chambers, which the other group located at just about the same time, had little holes for various organs. Looked like he was using them as a key, the psychopath.

Since the cat was out of the bag, they confronted Zan about the thing. He calmly answered that he was a Bothan spy. "You don't look like a Bothan," said Ree. "Okay, not a Bothan spy, but I mean I worked with them during the Rebellion." Right. Well...it's not like it could hurt, so Kedrihm'Val gave him back his ident cards. Zan was very happy. He said he'd put a lot of work into those.

Okay, so , *glop glop glop* they got his rooms open. Z waited outside to keep lookout while the others went in. But as they stepped into the antechamber, the front door closed, trapping Z outside, and a divider came down, leaving Oola, Ree, and Zan in the main chambers while Kedrihm'Val, Erin, and Onna got boxed in. The outer chamber began moving, apparently circling around the inner rooms in disorienting fashion, and then a passageway opened up with stairs. Nothing else to do but head down, I guess.

Meanwhile, the others walked on in to the Emperor's private chambers. And what should they find but Dalt, sitting on the throne that the Emperor had (rather obsessively in my opinion) had installed into his bedroom.

(Insert various jokes here about thrones and flush buttons. I mean, really, the guy was seriously geriatric! *flush* Vader: "Oh. Aw, come on, not while I'm standing talking to you! Man...")

Aaaanyway. There was Dalt, sitting cheerfully on the Emperor's throne. "Feels pretty good," he says. Then he asked the group if they'd found the Emperor's books yet. He'd been looking all over for the things. He thought they had to be in a secret chamber here someplace, but not a sign so far (cut to other people walking down stairs). They admitted they hadn't found a thing, and then the fighting started.

It was a good fight. Ree confronted Dalt, with Zan and Oola backing her up. The latter two dropped a desk on him at one point, but then Ree faltered and nearly got nailed by Dalt's Force Lightning...which Zan intercepted with his own lightsaber. Okay, Zan's a Jedi?

Aha. AHA! Jedi Master in disguise! Yes!

Meanwhile, the others found their way to a secret chamber downstairs, with a small library and a desk with a robe draped over it. There were two books in a drawer, an evil holocron, and a third book, lying open with a pen beside it. Kedrihm'Val and the others were a little freaked out about how it all looked like he'd just stepped out for a moment and would be coming back any second...but anyway, figuring they'd found what they were looking for, they carefully dropped those books into a pack while Kedrihm'Val stowed the holocron in a pouch on his belt (following the 'don't put your eggs in one basket' adage). They started back upstairs.

While the Jedi fought, Oola was trying to figure out how to get the others back out. Eventually she worked it out, and got the moving chambers moved back to where they'd started. When the new arrivals emerged, Dalt telekinetically pulled the holocron from Kedrihm'Val's belt. He'd finally got what he'd come for. He paused for just a second to gloat, and then as he moved to leave, Ree shot the holocron, shattering it.

While he was frozen in shock, Z took him out from the doorway.

They gathered up the broken pieces, and moved on.

Deep within the Sith temple, they came across the device they'd been looking for. There was a living brain hooked up to the gizmo--apparently the remnant of an ancient Sith lord--which kept the temple running. They dealt with that, then went past to find a deep, featureless shaft. Looking upward, they saw wiring and piping, along with maintenance robots moving along it, along with a cap, waaaay far up at the top. It all seemed to be equipment to channel the well's energy into a beam. None of it was within reach. Looking down, they saw...nothing. Just a seemingly bottomless pit.

Oola tested the drop with a bit of metal, and counted about 60 feet. It was just very dark. After contemplating it for a bit, Kedrihm'Val finally jumped down, only to land on a hidden mobile platform just a few feet below them. It carried them to the bottom, where they found a computer chamber. Several really horrid-looking mutated evil Wookies resided in stasis in capsules in the room. The crew decided it'd be best to leave those alone. This seemed to be the bottom, and yet no power source was visible.

Oola found a secret panel. Sliding into the tunnel and down, they wound up in a simple cave, with two rock slabs lying on the ground like grave covers. It turned out, there were two powerful ancient Dark Side spirits--the spirits of ancient Sith who'd been buried here--captured in little bottles. They were powering everything. But what was the purpose? Study of everything revealed that the Emperor had apparently blended Sith alchemy with modern technology to create a massive, planet-sized Dark Side weapon. He could have zapped a world with this thing and tainted it all.

Time to put that sucker out of commission. They ruined the mechanics, and took the flasks with the trapped Dark Side spirits, and then ran away from the evil mutant Wookies that came after them. Escaping the temple in two Sith fighters that were hidden outside the cave, Z bombed the whole monstrosity to kingdom come.

Z carries an awful lot of explosives.

"Good riddance to that thing," said Zan. "I think there's at least one more," replied Kedrihm'Val, who had a feeling they'd just found the cause of what had been done to his planet.

Locking the spirits away inside the ship's vault, and stowing the books and holocron bits safely away, they headed back to Coruscant. None of the Force-sensitives got a decent sleep for the first night, until Zan peevishly brought a container out of his belongings, took out the flasks, and dumped them into the container of bluish goo. Suddenly, an oppressive presence seemed to vanish from the ship.

"What is that?" asked Kedrihm'Val.

"Ysalamiri pheromone," replied Zan. "How do you think I was able to work so close to Vader for all those years without him ever noticing? I used to inject this stuff."

They just stared.

Back at the Jedi Temple, none of the Masters really wanted to touch the goop. "Yuck," said Kyp, opening the box. "What is this, lizard pee?" The look on Zan's face was priceless.