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.