Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Oh no, pirates! Whew, now we're safe on Tatooine.

On their way to Tatooine on their shiny new ship, the...er, Starwind (I think), the crew came upon a transport that had been hijacked by pirates. It was some rough work for a bit, but with the help of two people from the transport, the pirates were thwarted and captured.

In this adventure, they met Jal'en, the ship-jacker. They know he's a ship-jacker because he got on board the pirates' ship and 'jacked it while the pirates were 'jacking the transport. Among the booty was several tons of porn vids, and rather anomalously, another Jedi holocron. Jal'en turned it over to Ree after she promised that the Council would pay him well for it.

With that out of the way, they successfully reached Tatooine.

Shortly after arriving, Oola and Ree crossed paths with a retarded Rodian who’d been hired by the Imperials to keep an eye on people asking uncomfortable questions. The Rodian attacked them, called in some Stormtroopers to get into a fight, and when Ree tried to capture him, he tried to escape in a speeder that Oola rigged to flip over on top of him. They sent the Rodian off on a transport that went to someplace halfway across the galaxy, to get him out of their hair.

From there they located a hangar bay whose owner worked with the Imperials. When the next ship docked, they broke in and rescued the children—who were not Force-sensitive. Pulling an information raid on the Imperials told them that the non-sensitive people were being sold into slavery on Tatooine. A gang called the Bantha’s Hoof was heading this up in the area. ...And then they started a gang war. Didn't take much: the characters knocked out a bunch of thugs, jacked their ride, and went to vandalize the HQ of the gang in question. There, they beat up a few people, graffitied the place, stole the cargo the children were hidden in, and then ran off, screaming, "Bantha’s Hoof SUCKS!"

Hey, it worked.

A Kel Dorr Jedi Investigator and his human padawan showed up, and Erin resurfaced with a lead regarding an Imperial base out in the desert. But where, exactly? They decided to go talk to some of the settlers who lived out that way.

Sure enough, they had little trouble finding a family of moisture farmers who were happy to tell them—at great length—about the Imperial base hidden ‘round those parts…and about how the Imperials liked to come steal stuff from their farms, and never brought back their tools, and upset their animals, etc. The farmers didn’t mind the group waiting at their house until some Stormtroopers came by to hassle them.

Sure enough, some troopers came by before the end of the day. The Jedi leapt off the roof to confront them while Oola herded the family to safety.

A stormtrooper threw a thermal detonator at the Jedi Investigator’s padawan, who cut it in half with his lightsaber. “Is that the best you’ve got?” he taunted.

“Uh…yeah, actually it is,” replied the Stormtrooper, who sat down and waited placidly for the fight to end.

While they tied up the Stormtroopers and stole their armor for use in infiltrating the base, the troopers defiantly taunted, “You’ll never learn anything from us!” Except for the one guy who’d thrown the thermal detonator. He told them everything. And I mean everything. That guy seriously spilled his guts, and he really didn't give a damn even when the other Stormtroopers tried to tell him to shut up. "Oh, if you want to infiltrate the base, you'll need these codes," he said, and then just rambled on from there, eliciting from the other Troopers the quickly-immortalized phrase, "Goddamnit, Zan!"

Anyway, they stole the Troopers' uniforms and used them to sneak in the base, where they saved more kids, found a whole swarm of ysalamiri (which can block the Force in an area), and a Dathomir Force witch (there's a tradition of Force-using sorceresses on Dathomir who're fairly badass and often evil). Here, Kedrihm'val blew it. He accidentally bumped into the Force witch, who said, "Goddamnit, Zan- ...Zan, you're feeling awfully Force-sensitive today," and then Z knocked her out from behind and they all ran for it.

After getting safely away and calling the authorities (galactic authorities, not Tatooine; that place is more corrupt than six-month old milk), they put some things together and figured the Imperial remnant must be working with the Force witches to put together some kind of Force-sensitive army...or something. Okay, they were reaching a bit, but it did seem to be going in that direction.

After this adventure, everybody got called before the Jedi Council (which they found a bit odd). Ree was given praise and no one gave her a straight answer to her question, "I'm a Padawan, why are you having me roam around by myself like this?!" Drath was sent off for...um, discretionary training. He’s a bit too happy with the mind-control and the violence, so they put him under the watch of Kyp Durron, who knows all about the mind-control and the violence. Er, discouraging the mind-control and violence. You know.

The others were paid nicely, except for Kedrihm'val, who gave his story. He was from a very backwater planet called Abindosan that barely even had technology. Back during the Empire's reign, the Emperor had gone and done something to his planet. The whole world was cursed, tainted with Dark Side energy, and it was starting to really mess up his people. He wanted the Jedi to help him figure out what was going wrong, and maybe find a way to fix it. They said they'd look into it if he'd keep helping out with uncovering this child slavery ring.

No comments: