Tabletop Squadron Transcript, Season 1 Episode 14:
We Are Gathered Here Today

Transcript by Tyler (Twitter: @Tyler_MoonSage)

Note – Laura’s character Xianna’fan speaks in an accent. Most of her soft I’s sound like “ee,” and most of her TH’s sound like Z’s. Example: “this and that” = “zees and zat”

## Intro

NICK: Hi everyone, and welcome to Tabletop Squadron, a Star Wars: Edge of the Empire actual play podcast. I’m Nick, your game master. Every other Thursday, our story follows a thief, a bounty hunter, and a slicer as they explore the galaxy helping a mysterious benefactor and each other.

Hey… You doing okay? Last episode was kind of rough, huh? Yeah… I’ll give a plot summary when the episode starts so everyone’s on the same page if you decided to skip it, but a couple of real life things… Sabos is really gone. Our friend Steven has had some serious life things come up and he needed to focus on that. We’re still friends, we still hang out, he’s still a super cool dude. We had dinner with him last week. He just can’t commit to the recording schedule we run, and we hope the entire internet will wish him well.

On a happier note, we found a new way to track international reviews. We have one from way back in June that I missed because it’s from outside the US. Marius Konrad, thank you for your kind words and thank you for being a super awesome person. I also want to thank Interrodang for their lovely Sabos-centric review of the show. We talk to her on a pretty regular basis on Twitter and it’s always a blast.

Speaking of Twitter, I have an update on our Twitter drive! We’ve gained 25 followers. We’ve done our first NPC poll, and the NPC will be a Gungan. Also, Gungan ended up tied with Chiss, so it’ll be a blue Gungan. This is already going to be challenging for me as a GM, and I love it. Come follow us and help us decide what the mystery Gungan’s job is. Our next Twitter poll will be at 115 followers. We’re only six away.

If you’re not on Twitter, I joined it specifically to talk to podcasts I love, and we really like to talk to people. Consider it a chatroom with your favorite content creators. It’s worth following just to watch Cameron actively mess with me on Twitter over this stuff. Remember, when we hit our Twitter goal we’ll release a bonus Jedi Adventure on off weeks, and a pretty lengthy blooper reel that I’ve had stashed since we started.

Anyway, thanks for listening, and we hope you enjoy the episode.

##

NICK: Hello! Welcome to Episode 14 of Tabletop Squadron. Good to have you back to this very somber and special episode. I’m your host, Nick. We’ll go around the table real quick, have everybody introduce themselves, and if you spent any experience from the last time we played why don’t you let our listeners know what you spent it on. We’re gonna start with Cameron.

CAMERON: Hello! I’m Cameron. I am playing karma Nailo the Nautolan bounty hunter, and I bought two talents on my Assassin skill tree. I bought Jump Up, so once per round I may stand from seated or prone as an incidental, and I bought Quick Strike, so I can add a blue die per rank of Quick Strike to combat checks against targets that have not acted yet this encounter.

NICK: Great. You’re becoming more ninja-like there.

CAMERON: Yes~

NICK: Let’s move on to Hudson.

HUDSON: Hi. I’m Hudson, and I play Tink the Gigoran slicer. I used 10 experience points to raise my Deception from 0 to 1, so I can start being deceptiver.

(giggling)

LAURA: Guys… Hudson, you have 10 experience points still?

HUDSON: Yes.

LAURA: Buy a rank in Medicine, please.

CAMERON: Ooh, yeah.

HUDSON: Wait, can I do that?

NICK: Yeah.

HUDSON: Alright. I buy a rank in Medicine as well.

NICK: (laughs) Okay. While he’s doing that…

CAMERON: That’s gonna come up. (laughs)

NICK: Finally, we have Laura.

LAURA: Hi. I’m Laura.

NICK: Hi.

LAURA: I play Xianna’fan, and I used my points to purchase Natural Rogue on my talent tree which lets me re-roll one Stealth or Skulduggery check a session.

NICK: Wow. That’s pretty good. Cool.

LAURA: Yes. It’s pretty far down on the tree, so it’s special.

NICK: Nice. Well, that’s everyone, frowny face. So, moving on. (laughter, “womp” noises)

Quick recap from what’s happened most recently: You all were able to board the super star destroyer Vengeance, release some sort of experimental and scary bioweapon, destroyed the ship, but in the process of the ship being destroyed the herdship on Ithor that you were resting on got bombarded and crashed, and in the process of escaping your party member Sabos was obliterated and is no more. You were able to get to the ship, fly away, and jump to hyperspace. You did a blind jump nearby. Let’s roll for destiny. I don’t think we’re gonna use it, but…

LAURA: Two light side.

CAMERON: Two light side!

HUDSON: One dark side.

CAMERON: Aw, Hudson. Four light side, one dark side.

NICK: The lines of hyperspace shrink back to white pinpoints in the view screen of the cockpit of the Afternoon Delight. The camera is over Karma’s shoulder as she pulls the lever that takes the crew out of hyperspace. Her head tails are covered in soot, and you can see deep gouges on the back of her armor. We see Xianna, still strapped into a gunner’s chair, looking out into space. Smoke streaks her face as she looks out at the silent stars. She goes to unhook herself from the chair, and we see her flinch as she stretches her back. Tink is in the engine room. He’s holding a wrench and looking at a length of coolant tubing. His fur is singed and has streaks of blood.

The ship took a short hyperspace hop to the edge of the system. There was little prep and it strained the engines, but it was necessary to get away before the Imperial fleet recovered from the loss of the super star destroyer Vengeance. You’re out of the trade lanes and no one tracked you when you jumped. You have some time. What do you do?

LAURA: Xianna’s gonna completely unbuckle herself from the seat and sort of just flop out of it (laughs) onto the floor, sit there for a little bit, and then yell out, “Tink!”

HUDSON: “Yes?”

LAURA: “Um… I am quite injured. Can you help me to a bed, please?”

HUDSON: “Oh, sure.” I go over and I pick up Xianna.

NICK: One important thing to throw in there is, the ship is pretty large and you’re separated, so you’re using the com system which is great, but there’s definitely gonna be a shot of Tink climbing his way through the ship and out of the engine compartment and up into the gunnery bay, looking strong but hurt.

HUDSON: The pain isn’t just physical.

NICK: (laughs)

CAMERON: Aw…

HUDSON: “Guys, where’s Sabos?”

CAMERON: Oh fuck. (laughs)

LAURA: “Oh… Oh, I must have had the coms just for the cockpit… Oh yeah, Sabos died.”

HUDSON: “Whaaat?”

LAURA: “He is like so dead. Can you get me to a bed, please?”

CAMERON: “Yeah, he um… We can talk while we walk. Let’s get her to that room that we were using earlier.”

HUDSON: Tears start streaming down my face, and I pick up Xianna, and I get some blood on her, accidentally.

LAURA: You get some blood on you too. I am bleeding quite a bit.

HUDSON: Yeah.

CAMERON: Y’all are just sharing bodily fluids.

HUDSON: Exactly.

NICK: Yuck.

LAURA: Yay.

CAMERON: Yeah~ … Sorry. (giggles)

HUDSON: So, I carry you to the bed. “You don’t want to stop off in the shower or anything? Get all this blood off?”

LAURA: “Um… I’ll just sit here for a moment.”

HUDSON: “Alright.”

LAURA: “Can you hand me the bottle of whiskey, please? I’m just going to take that right now.”

HUDSON: I hand her the bottle of whiskey.

LAURA: I pop it open and I do start taking swigs of it.

HUDSON: “So, uh, I’ve been reading this book called Becoming Medicine written by someone who really shouldn’t be writing medical books, but I’m learning a lot and I think I can actually help fix you up a bit.”

LAURA: “I mean, at this point, go for it.”

CAMERON: “Okay, so, walk me through your initial plan. What do you think needs to be done?”

HUDSON: “First of all, basically, I don’t have the right outfit which is really one of the more important parts, so I get a pizza cutter…”

CAMERON: “Uh…”

HUDSON: “…and I detach it from the pizza cutter tool, and I put a strap on it, and I put it around my head…”

CAMERON: “Okay. Yup.”

HUDSON: “…like old school medical, and then I get some cloths and I kind of blow on them if there’s any dust, so you know, there’s not any contamination, from you know, germs. Get some straps, get some rubbing alcohol, and some Q-tips… and some eye drops just in case their eyes are dry, and then I kind of put them all into this box I have because I don’t have a handle bag yet that looks cool…”

CAMERON: “Oh, okay…”

HUDSON: “…and I bring it over to Xianna.”

CAMERON: “Alright-“

LAURA: “Wow.”

(laughter)

CAMERON: “So, the rubbing alcohol and the Q-tips, those look good. Cloths will be useful for wiping up some of the blood. You look like you have a fair amount of glass sticking out of you… We’ll probably remove that first.”

LAURA: “Oh yes.”

HUDSON: “So if you actually press down on the skin it pops out.”

CAMERON: “Nope. Doesn’t. Here, um—“

LAURA: “Oh- No…”

CAMERON: “I found some tweezers earlier.”

HUDSON: “Oh. That’s actually probably a little better.”

CAMERON: “Here. You can have a set, too. Let’s…”

HUDSON: “Oh. This reminds me of Operation as a kid. Sabos loved operation. (sobs)”

LAURA: “Um… Okay.”

CAMERON: “Y’all must’ve had a lot of conversations while me and Xianna weren’t there.”

LAURA: “Yeah.”

HUDSON: “We started to get kinda close. You know?”

CAMERON: “Yeah. Um… Kinda weird that we only knew him like a week-ish, right?”

LAURA: “Yeah, so anyways, do you want to get the glass out of me, please?”

(laughter)

HUDSON: With the tweezers, I start picking the glass out.

CAMERON: I hold two Q-tips and I use them as tweezers to pull glass out of Xianna. (laughs)

LAURA: Well, I mean, that’s how you use Q-tips, right?

CAMERON: Yeah, yeah.

HUDSON: No. They’re for your ears.

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: Except they’re not.

HUDSON: yeah, they’re not.

CAMERON: Okay. Anyway. So, do we need to make a Medicine check to…?

NICK: Yes you do!

CAMERON: Okay. Hudson, make the check, because Tink’s smarter. Can he have a blue die because I’m assisting with my own set of tweezers?

NICK: Yes you can. It’s going to be a hard check, because the Agonizing Wound critical injury is on the hard part of the chart.

HUDSON: One success.

NICK: Great. You fix the Agonizing Wound.

LAURA & CAMERON: Yay~

HUDSON: I did it.

NICK: You’re able to get the glass out without doing much more damage. There’s a worrying amount of blood, but in your book Becoming Medicine it reiterates repeatedly: “There’s going to be a lot of blood, but that’s not a big deal. Don’t worry about it.”

HUDSON: There’s actually this whole part that’s really supposed to raise your self-esteem where you keep your own little notebook of your medical journeys, so it’s called Tink’s Medical Journeys. I open it, and on the first line, my very first time, it’s gonna say: “Fixed up Xianna’s glass problem.” Smiley face on the right column. (laughter) So, if it’s bad then it’s kinda like frowny face or neutral “meh” face.

CAMERON: (grinning): Do they have like the range of smiley faces and you have to circle which one was the result, or is it just freeform? You just decided to do smiley faces?

HUDSON: I decide which smiley face to put down.

CAMERON: OH, okay.

HUDSON: Like, if I’m stressed about it I might put a little drop of sweat or something on the smiley face. It’s very freeform. They kind of push for that.

CAMERON: Oh, okay. Cool.

LAURA: Yeah.

NICK: (laughs)

LAURA: It’s based on your own emotions.

HUDSON: Yeah.

CAMERON: It’s your own medical journey. You need to get there however you get there.

HUDSON: Yeah.

NICK: Tink’s character arc is now just about him going to med school apparently.

(laughter)

LAURA: Making your parents proud.

HUDSON: So I start crying again.

NICK: Aw.

CAMERON: Karma’s gonna finish wiping Xianna up, use the rubbing alcohol.

LAURA: “Can you stop crying please?”

HUDSON: “You just let someone into your life, even if it’s just for a week or something, and then their gooone! (sobs)”

CAMERON: “Yeah…”

LAURA: “Yeah… Whatever. Can we decide what we are doing now?”

HUDSON: “(sobs)”

CAMERON: “Tink, have you ever lost a crew member before?”

HUDSON: “Uh… No.”

LAURA: “Well, it is best to just shove those emotions down, move on, forget about them…”

CAMERON: (laughing) Oh, that is not what I was going to say.

LAURA: “Can we have some bandages? I’m still bleeding a bit.”

CAMERON: “Oh sure.” I go and get the box of Band-Aids, and hand them to Xianna, and then turn back to Tink.

LAURA: I start putting Band-Aids, just slapping them on here and there, like, ‘eh, oh look, there’s a wound.’ Slap! Band-Aid!

NICK: They’re like the big hand-sized adhesive ones, so- A big stack of those.

LAURA: yeah. I’m just throwing them on wherever I feel like I need them, taking sips of whiskey in between. Yeah.

HUDSON: “(sobbing) Can we at least make a memorial or something?”

LAURA: “No.”

CAMERON: “Yeah… Yeah, so—“

LAURA: “What? No.” (laughs)

CAMERON: “Xianna, you don’t have to participate if you don’t feel the need to. You can stay here and finish patching yourself up. Tink, why don’t we go to Sabos’s room and see if he has anything in there that we could use in the memorial?”

LAURA: “Oh, yes!” Xianna leans over to Tink. “Tink… If he has any good stuff, give it to me~”

HUDSON: “Donate it to the memorial? You got it!”

LAURA: “No, like—“

HUDSON: We walk to the room.

LAURA: “Loot his room, please.”

(laughter)

CAMERON: It’ll be a memorial on the ship. I’m sure it’ll be fine. Things can be accessed at a later point if necessary.

HUDSON: So, we enter the room of Sabos.

CAMERON: Yup.

NICK: Okay. Sabos’s room is a pretty standard birth. It’s got a couple of bunk beds on it. It is covered in that red shag carpeting on the ceiling, floors and walls. His has a particularly large and ornate mirror on one side. There’s a little bathroom suite with the sink and a refresher kind of tucked away. It seems fairly standard. There are some of his articles. Y’all have lived on the ship for almost two weeks at this point, so it’s the kind of stuff that gets scattered around a hotel room when you’ve been there for a while. None of his expeditionary gear, because that was all on him at the time, but these would be small personal effects. So, everybody tell me one thing of Sabos’s that might be scattered around his quarters now that he’s gone.

HUDSON: There’s the weirdest looking night cap for his head tails that I guess he wears at night.

CAMERON: Oh, nice! (giggles)

LAURA: (giggles) Oh, they’re like knit, and there’s four little knitted head tails coming off of it.

HUDSON: yeah.

LAURA: Ew…

NICK: What color is it?

HUDSON: It’s like patterned.

NICK: (laughs)

LAURA: Oh. I was imagining that like speckled oatmeal color that you see in old knitted sweaters.

HUDSON: We can make that happen. Yeah. Let’s have it be that.

NICK: Okay. There’s that. It’s bigger than you would expect. You instantly recognize what it is even though you never saw him wear it, or touch it, or talk about it, but you realize how much volume goes into a head tail… and it’s off-putting and nostalgic at the same time.

CAMERON: I think it works like he pulls it up the head tails and then it hooks onto the montrals on top so it stays up. That’s how it actually hooks onto his head. So, it has the four, but also has two smaller ones on top.

NICK: Mm-hmm. Yup. So, you’ve got that. What else is in this room?

CAMERON: He’s got a bag in the corner that’s just full of nice, fresh, never been worn shirts.

NICK: Oh. Nice. Yeah. There are some shirts that look like they’re for a safari situation, some dress shirts, towards the bottom you even see some formal wear that you would wear for things… and they’re all still wrapped.

CAMERON: He just got real attached to just the vest look, but he’d packed for all weather gear, just thought the vest looked cool so he decided to keep wearing that.

HUDSON: I start crying again and talk about how we talked about going on safaris.

CAMERON: Oh-

HUDSON: There was actually safari gear?

NICK: Yeah.

HUDSON: “Aw, he was real, he was talking about real plans.”

NICK: (laughs) yeah. So, Tink crouches over the bag and is a blubbering, white, hairy mess. It’s very sad. You can see him shuttering from where you’re at. What else is in this room?

HUDSON: Are you in there with us, Xianna?

LAURA: No.

CAMERON: No, but Laura gets to add something.

NICK: No, but Laura gets to add a thing to the room.

LAURA: I can still add a thing…

HUDSON: Oh, okay.

LAURA: …I just can’t figure out what I wanna add.

NICK: Xianna doesn’t give a shit, but Laura cares about the story.

(laughter)

LAURA: Yes. I kind of imagine that Sabos just doesn’t exist until he’s in there. He’s only there when other people can see him.

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: He has no personal life. He doesn’t exist.

NICK: We can work with that. There could be, like, besides these couple of things the room is actually very empty and doesn’t look lived in at all.

CAMERON: There’s just a ton of IDs and they all have different names on them, but it’s all his picture. (laughs)

HUDSON: I was just thinking about that.

LAURA: Oh! Yeah. So, there’s not much else in the room, but on a little table in the corner he had stuff to make fake IDs, but it’s all the cheapest equipment he could get and a lot of it looks repurposed from other crafting hobbies. He’s pretty much just coloring in with crayons and then laminating with just large pieces of tape. (laughs) That level.

NICK: It’s like he got a scrapbooking kit, and then went: ‘Now I can forge things.’

LAURA: Yeah. I think one of them literally says Scrapbooking for Beginners, and there’s a bunch of different IDs and everything’s spelled wrong, like his own planet name is spelled differently on every single one. We’re still not sure which is the correct way to spell Osaron.

NICK: Great.

CAMERON: All of the names are something like Sabos, but the Bs are changed to other letters, so it’s like super not clear.

LAURA: There’s a Savos.

CAMERON: There’s a Sados.

LAURA: A Safos.

CAMERON: yeah. It’s just real strange. A Sagos.

LAURA: A Tabos. The B is there, but the S is different.

CAMERON: Yeah. So he may have had a Sako one as well at some point. Who knows? (laughs)

NICK: Maybe~ So, that’s the room. Like Laura said, besides those few items scattered around this room looks very sparse, like very not lived in. the bed is made immaculately, but you know Sabos probably wouldn’t be someone to do that. It’s like he never really used it. This is what is left of your friend, compatriot, co-worker, depending on what you think your relationship is with them. so, now what?

CAMERON: Alright.

HUDSON: “What do we do about the memorial?”

CAMERON: “Well, so we have this head tail thing… I think if we can find something to kind of just set this on, that could kind of be the centerpiece of the memorial. Um… Have you seen any like Styrofoam heads anywhere on the ship? (laughing) I don’t think I’ve seen any. Oh! There’s some empty alcohol bottles. We could use one of those to just kind of hold it up.”

HUDSON: “One for each head tail.”

CAMERON: “Yup. We need six actually, because we need one for each head tail and then one for each montral to actually hold it up.” So I grab some—

HUDSON: Oh, we have six empties.

CAMERON: Yeah. Well, it’s mostly empty at this point. Xianna’s gotten to most of it, and they weren’t super full to begin with. She’s finished quite a few bottles. We grab that and come back in, and we kind of set it up so where the head tail thing is upright and they’re kind of draped across. We’re just setting up a little alcove in this bedroom. (laughs) “We can scatter the cards around?”

HUDSON: “Yeah. That feels right.”

CAMERON: “I don’t know if we need to include the shirts. There’s kind of a lot of them. we can just add them to our costume closet and then it’s like Sabos is always with us.”

HUDSON: “Yeah, or if we ever somehow come across a new companion who needs a safari outfit.”

CAMERON: (laughing) “That’s true. That’s very true.”

HUDSON: “I’m really stuck on the safari thing. I was real excited about that. Just…”

CAMERON: “Yup. Well… Do you know where you were gonna go on safari? Did you have a planet picked out?”

HUDSON: “Yeah… We had plans to go to Lothal to go on some exciting adventures and explorations and see some loth animals.”

CAMERON: “Aww. Well, I don’t know exactly what our travel itinerary is, but we can try and make sure a safari happens? I know it won’t be quite the same, but I think Sabos would want you to go.”

HUDSON: “Yeah. That sounds nice.”

CAMERON: ‘Have you been to many other planets before? Because you sounded real excited about that, and Lothal’s cool, but I don’t know…”

HUDSON: “You’re saying there’s a better planet than Lothal to go on a safari on?”

CAMERON: “I mean, I’m sure we could come up with one, but…”

HUDSON: ‘No…”

CAMERON: “If you want to see loth animals, Lothal is the place to go.”

HUDSON: “I wanna see loth animals.”

CAMERON: “Okay, then yeah, Lothal is the best place to go to safari.”

HUDSON: “I’m about that. Alright.”

CAMERON: “It was just you seemed very excited about this adventuring in particular, so…”

HUDSON: “He just really talked it up. I don’t know. Just the way his head tails would just stiffen when he would talk about it, it just really brought excitement to everyone around.”

CAMERON: (snickers, laughing) Karma’s trying real hard to be supportive mom, and is just struggling more and more as we keep talking about head tails.

LAURA: Right about now, Xianna walks in, kinda leans against the door, and is holding a different bottle of alcohol in one hand and a package of instant noodles. “Is anyone hungry? I’m going to make noodles.”

HUDSON: “Oh no. she’s out of it. You can’t make noodles with alcohol as the liquid that boils.”

LAURA: “I mean… You can…”

CAMERON: “I think technically-“

LAURA: “…it just doesn’t work well. I’m going to use water.”

HUDSON: “Oh. You were holding both, so I just assumed.”

LAURA: “No. I’m just going to consume both.”

HUDSON: “Oh. Okay. I’d like some noodles.”

LAURA: “Okay. Tink’s getting noodles. Karma, you want noodles?”

CAMERON: “Yes please.”

LAURA: “I think there is some sort of spicy one. You want spicy or regular?”

HUDSON: “Spicy. I’m no wimp.”

LAURA: “Okay. Two spicy. What about you?”

CAMERON: “I’ll take regular.”

LAURA: “Okay. Two spicy, one regular.”

CAMERON: “I am a wimp. (laughs)”

LAURA: She turns around. There’s like a little bit of blood still on the door from where she leaned.

CAMERON: (smiling) She’s doing a lot better.

LAURA: You hear the microwave start beeping.

CAMERON: (laughs)

NICK: Real quick, Tink, what does your Becoming Medicine book say about people drinking with massive blood loss?

HUDSON: Well, conventionally you’re not supposed to, but in reality if it makes you feel good that’s what really gets the blood flowing.

NICK: (smiling) That’s… Okay. This is a good medical textbook.

HUDSON: (laughs)

LAURA: Yup.

NICK: I am so glad this has become a part of the ship. This is great.

HUDSON: This is banned on six planets!

NICK: (laughs)

LAURA: Who was it written by?!

HUDSON: The books were written by Dr. Evazan, but on the first page they say something about how the word doctor has to be in quotes due to a law suit, so it says “Doctor,” quote-quote, Dr. Evazan.

NICK: (laughing) This is good. I like this a lot. Okay. Noodles are getting made. You all have made a small shrine to Sabos.

CAMERON: I find some candles.

NICK: Find some candles.

CAMERON: They’re the electronic ones though, so I can just flip a switch and they’re there, so we don’t have to worry about it burning up all the oxygen in the ship.

NICK: Alright. You put some votives under, get them running… What else?

CAMERON: I’m gonna take the bag of shirts and go and add them to our cosplay closet.

NICK: Okay. I’ll make a note that there are more shirts in the closet of costume change.

CAMERON: I lovingly stroke the Imperial cloak as I close the door. (laughs)

NICK: That one was a favorite, and it somehow avoided getting damaged at all, because it was on the ship during the whole escape, so you didn’t have to deal with not getting that anymore.

HUDSON: “Guys, were we Sabos’s emergency contact for anyone, like his family? Are we gonna get a call from Mr. and Ms. Sabos, like, the parents?”

CAMERON: “I think it would probably be Mr. and Mrs. Niks. That was his last name.”

HUDSON: “Oh. Yeah.”

CAMERON: “Yeah. Uh… Honestly, I have no idea. I think what we have to go on is that he was from a colony called Osaron. It sounded like he may have gotten kicked off of Shili and made to go to the colony, so I don’t know if it was a full family thing or if that happened once he was an adult. So, it’s a very good question, but I honestly have no clue.”

HUDSON: “Hmm.”

LAURA: “Karma!”

CAMERON: “Yes?”

LAURA: “Your noodles are ready~”

CAMERON: “Oh thank you!”

LAURA: “Tink! Yours will be ready in a moment. The spicy ones take longer to cook for some reason.”

HUDSON: “I have patience.”

CAMERON: ‘Okay. let’s head into the dining room, (laughs) and we can keep talking while we eat.”

NICK: Ooh. We haven’t described the dining room for your overly nice ship yet.

LAURA: Oh, are we in a separate dining room? I imagined I was in the little kitchenette area at the table.

CAMERON: Well yeah, but then you have to take your microwaved noodles to the dining room to eat.

NICK: There’s definitely a durasteel table with a finish on it that makes it look like nice wood, and it just comes out of the ground. It’s not bolted to the ground, the hull of the ship is formed into this nice table. There’s high back chairs. It sits about ten people in this. All of it is tucked into a doorway that looks like it goes into part of the freight storage area, like there’s a niche there, but it’s this small door that you haven’t really looked at before and then when you walk in there’s paintings on the wall and it’s very nice and it’s lit by a hanging candelabra type thing with electronic candles in it.

LAURA: Xianna’s there at one of the seats and has three things of noodles in front of her, and no longer a bottle of alcohol but a very large coffee mug. There’s probably some coffee in it…

HUDSON: (laughs)

LAURA: A pot of coffee was made—or a pot of caf…

NICK: Ooh.

LAURA: …was made in the little kitchenette area, so yeah.

CAMERON: Karma’s gonna pour herself some caf on her way in. it’s been a long day already.

NICK: Yeah.

LAURA: There’s probably a bottle of alcohol next to the caf. (laughs)

CAMERON: I leave that there, and I just take the caf.

HUDSON: Is Kenobi’s Irish Cream a thing?

NICK: It is now. (laughs)

LAURA: Oh yeah. It’s definitely like a Corellian coffee.

HUDSON: Oh, I getcha.

LAURA: Just like coffee, whiskey, and maybe… yeah, space Bailey’s.

NICK: Yeah. Space Bailey’s is now officially called Kenobi’s Irish Cream.

(laughter)

LAURA: Kenobi’s Irish Cream.

NICK: Nobody knows what the Irish part means.

HUDSON: (laughs) Yeah. What is that?

NICK: (smiling) Doesn’t matter. Yeah. So, you all are seated around the table with your space ramen and coffee, and other beverages.

LAURA: “So, any plans for where we go after this?”

HUDSON: “I’m grieving too much. Someone else make a decision.”

CAMERON: ‘I was kind of figuring that Sentinel would reach back out to us. That last part of the job didn’t go… well, I would say.”

LAURA: “Yeah. You think?”

CAMERON: “Yeah, you know the whole getting the herdship destroyed anyway kind of seems like it was probably not the plan, and we probably should have been given some more information about what we were dealing with.”

HUDSON: “So it’s really not our fault.”

LAURA: “No. it is not our fault. So, yeah, are we going to keep working for Sentinel? Because my vote for that is no.”

HUDSON: “Mmm… Let’s see what he has to say.”

CAMERON: (contemplative) “Yeah… I’m—Hmm.”

LAURA: “Hmm…”

CAMERON: “I’m heavily leaning in the ‘no longer trusting of this person’ camp, but they also haven’t paid us yet.”

HUDSON: “We gotta get that far.”

CAMERON: “Yup.”

LAURA: “So, we get him to pay us, then we shoot him, and then we go work for someone else. Yeah.”

HUDSON: “That won’t have any repercussions.”

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: “No. None at all.”

HUDSON: “That was sarcasm I am not good at doing. That will have repercussions.”

NICK: (laughs)

LAURA: “I mean, maybe, but we just go to a different planet, change our names, go from there.”

HUDSON: “Ah, I need to think of a new name… This is where it gets fun, so I mean I guess I’m okay with this plan right now.”

LAURA: “Yeah.”

CAMERON: “I’m really against the whole having to change my name thing.”

HUDSON: “Really?”

CAMERON: “Yeah.”

LAURA: “It’s pretty easy.”

HUDSON: “You have all these nametags to choose between from when Sabos had different identities. You can pick one of those.”

CAMERON: “Yeah, but none of them are good.” (laughs)

LAURA: “Oh no. do not use Sabos’s fake ID cards. I can get us much better ones.”

HUDSON: “You got it.”

CAMERON: “Yeah, see, as a bounty hunter reputation is kind of a big thing, so if I just change my name I kind of lose all of that.”

LAURA: “Oh, well yeah, you would have to stop being a bounty hunter. Just become a smuggler or something.”

CAMERON: “Yeah, but I’m really good at that.”

HUDSON: “What if I am a male Gigoran model named Ricky Smooth, and that’s my new identity?”

CAMERON: (grinning) “I support you, Tink, whatever you want.”

LAURA: “I mean, I’m not sure there is a huge market for Gigoran models, but…”

HUDSON: “That’s the thing. It would blend in so seamlessly because it’s kind of rare.”

LAURA: “No. No, you want the opposite. You want generic so that no one notices you, so you can just walk away and no one has to remember your name or anything like that.”

HUDSON: “But, I thought I was unforgettable… but you know, only when I’m having a really good hair day.”

CAMERON: “I mean, you will have, probably, if we were trying to disappear you probably would have a more difficult time than Xianna or I because you are a Gigoran and there tend to be a lot more Nautolans and Twi’leks wandering around the galaxy in general.”

HUDSON: “True.”

LAURA: “We can dye your hair. Pretend you are a Wookie.”

HUDSON: “I can’t do the noise.”

CAMERON: (snickers)

NICK: (laughs)

HUDSON: “I can’t speak their language.”

CAMERON: (laughs) “Oh. You don’t speak Wookie? Okay.”

HUDSON: “Yeah. Either one.”

CAMERON: “I know it sounds like a noise, but they are actually words. It is a language. It’s not just noises.”

HUDSON: “It’s all noise to me.”

CAMERON: “Oh, okay—“

HUDSON: “But I understand that it’s there language. It’s like (slobbery growling noises).”

LAURA: “Is Gigoran really dissimilar from Shyriiwook? I would assume they are similar.”

HUDSON: “Okay. Just because it sounds similar, I don’t really appreciate the fact that you’re kind of grouping us together there. They’re very, very different cultures.”

LAURA: “I mean…”

CAMERON: “How does Gigoran sound, actually? I have no idea. You always wear the translator.”

HUDSON: ‘It’s kind of become a part of me now, so I don’t know if I can take it off.”

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: “Well, I mean, you can, I have seen you do it.”

HUDSON: ‘Yeah, but only when I really- I don’t like how Gigorans sound. I’m a little ashamed of my people.”

CAMERON: “Aww.”

HUDSON: “I kind of wish I wasn’t Gigoran sometimes.”

CAMERON: “Well, why?”

HUDSON: “Because no one understands me, and I’m just a big, hairy mess.”

LAURA: “I mean, yes, but…”

CAMERON: “You’re a mess right now, but you also just escaped an exploding herdship. So like… We all need showers at this point, but-“

HUDSON: “We do.”

CAMERON: “Yeah. I’m gonna be finishing my noodles first, but that’s high on my priority list at the moment, is a shower.”

HUDSON: “Yeah. I guess my self-esteem is just kind of low.”

CAMERON: “Okay. So, I know you were super drunk when we went to the casino and were playing Sabacc with Kettle, but do you remember how impressed she was with your slicing skills?”

HUDSON: “I guess that was kind of impressive, but I kind of thought there were some people after me at the time so I was real focused on that.”

CAMERON: “Okay. well yeah, so she was very impressed and said you did a fantastic job on the security cylinder, so you have a lot to be proud of. Don’t be too hard on yourself. You’re pretty great.”

HUDSON: “Aw, thanks. I think a good shower would wash some of this shame away for me.”

LAURA: “Do you think some drugs would help?”

HUDSON: “Uh…”

LAURA: “I have some glitterstim if you want that.”

CAMERON: “Ooh. No…”

HUDSON: “You know…? I don’t know. I’m really not into that kind of treatment, but thank you.”

LAURA: “Okie. More for me.”

HUDSON: “More for you.”

LAURA: “Yes.”

CAMERON: “Back to an earlier conversation topic… Tink, do you have any emergency contact people?”

HUDSON: “Oh man. I would just make up numbers when I’d fill out those forms.”

LAURA: “I thought you had loving parents who live on Mandalor.”

CAMERON: “Yeah. We’re not filling out forms right now. This is for if something happens to you and Xianna and I need to get in touch with your friends or family, anyone for you to tell us, so we’re not dealing with… the awkwardness of not really knowing for Sabos.”

LAURA: “Because I actually like you, so if you were to die I would probably care.”

HUDSON: “Aw. Thanks. Actually, yeah, I have my folks’ contact info. I’ll leave it out with you guys.”

CAMERON: “Cool. Just ping it to us just so that we have it, and we’ll save it as like Tink’s Parents.”

HUDSON: “Okay. Just, I mean…”

LAURA: “They are still on Mandalor, right?”

HUDSON: “yeah, they are.”

LAURA: “Okie.”

NICK: So, you all kind of disperse—

CAMERON: Shower.

NICK: –to the refreshers, get cleaned off, get patched together. Xianna takes a shower. Her Band-Aids fall off and she needs to put new ones on. While everyone’s cleaning up… What happens next?

CAMERON: Okay. Karma finishes her shower, doesn’t put her armor back on, just like leaves on… I guess her armor pants and her tank top that she was wearing previously, and goes into the cockpit and sits in the co-pilot seat again. She takes out her data pad and starts flipping through HuntersOnly.com…

NICK & LAURA: Yeah.

CAMERON: (laughs) Yeah. She logs into her HuntersOnly account which she doesn’t do very frequently, and opens up her friends list and starts scrolling through and stopping on people occasionally who have died on past missions with her.

NICK: Okay. So like, what are some of those?

CAMERON: The first one she stops on is a blue Duros male. The name is Arisi Starkos. She thinks back to the bar fight that he got in where he got shot and she had to leave him there. That was kind of sad. The next one is a Rodian female named Kayda Bayonate, and her mark had exotic pets. Karma wasn’t on that one, but still a friend who died. The next one’s a male Falleen, Hestramiel, who was chasing a bounty and fell into a chasm because there were no handrails on the catwalk, because that’s how you die in Star Wars.

(very quiet giggling)

The last one she stops at is Braun Brecht, the Davronian female, who got food poisoning.

NICK: So, is Karma sad about this? Nostalgic? What does looking through these dead compatriots do for her?

CAMERON: Combo of the sad and nostalgic?

NICK: Okay.

CAMERON: A lot of them happened a long time ago back when she was first bounty hunting before she started taking Jet and Juke out with her, because she started taking less dangerous bounties once the boys started going with her, so that there was less of a chance of something happening to them.

She wasn’t super close with Sabos but she was starting to like him, and kind of get over some of the initial issues they had with him not actually being the person who was supposed to be on the mission, and some of his weird personality traits, and is genuinely sad? That they couldn’t save him. She’s feeling slightly more depressed now that Tink brought up that we don’t have any emergency contact information, so we can’t even let people know besides just going to Osaron, if we know where that is even, and just going to the town square and announcing that Sabos is dead.

So, she starts thinking about the emergency contacts and then flips over and starts looking at Jet and Juke’s Facebook pages.

NICK: Okay. What kind of statuses do you think they may have going on?

CAMERON: (laughs) Like status updates?

NICK: Yeah.

(laughter)

CAMERON: Uh… Juke probably has a lot of selfies of him flexing, like drinking protein shakes.

NICK: ‘You mean THIS situation?’

CAMERON: Yeah. There’s probably a fair number of selfies that he’s taken of him and Jet where he’s got Jet in a headlock, but they’re both smiling and laughing, and it’s cute. Then Jet’s is mostly like, not pictures of them but pictures of new technologies he’s been working on, and short videos of upgrading shock gloves and stuff, and there’s videos of Juke punching something and it just shoots across the room. It’s a lot of technical nerdy stuff.

NICK: Cool. Yeah. One thing you see from their statuses is neither of them have been online in probably three weeks. They went dark. You know they do that for missions sometimes, that’s not a super worrying thing, but you haven’t seen anything from them recently.

CAMERON: Yeah. I go through and I Like all of the posts that I missed, because that’s what moms do when they get on Facebook.

(laughter)

NICK: ‘Mooom!’

LAURA: Every single one is Liked, and then if you can leave comments you leave like a little smiley face or a little heart emoji.

CAMERON: ‘Love you guys~!’

LAURA: Nothing else, just ‘so cute!’ Smiley face! (laughs)

CAMERON: There’s probably a couple on Jet’s, on some of his invention ones, where she leaves an actual comment that gets technical and is asking about a specific function of this technology.

HUDSON: And ends it with ‘my boy is so smart!’

CAMERON: (giggles) ‘You’re so smart!’

LAURA: ‘I love my boys!’

NICK: heart, heart, kissy face.

CAMERON: yeah.

LAURA: Smooches!

NICK: There’s definitely one picture of Juke in a bar wearing a different outfit than you’re used to seeing, and he’s really close in the physical space of a Falleen woman, and Karma puts a comment like: ‘Hey, who’s that?!’

CAMERON: (grinning) Mm-hmm. Yup. Just all of the mom Facebookings.

NICK: Yup. Is there anything else you wanted to take care of?

CAMERON: And then Karma’s going to call them.

NICK: Ohh.

CAMERON: HuntersOnly didn’t remind her, but she got on it, as she was going through notifications and stuff it says that the twins’ birthday is today.

NICK: Ooh.

CAMERON: And like, she knew that, but a lot of stuff has happened and it kind of slipped her mind, so she’s gonna call them.

NICK: Okay. So, you com their ship?

CAMERON: Yeah. I just com the Gemini, probably from the Afternoon Delight.

NICK: Yeah. Well, you have to use ship-to-ship communication.

CAMERON: Yup, because that’s how that works.

NICK: If you’re sitting in the middle of space you can’t just use your cellphone.

CAMERON: Yup.

NICK: Star Wars, the 70s.

LAURA: Star Wars tech!

CAMERON: I just do voice, though. I don’t do a holo.

NICK: Okay. The com rings for a while, and they don’t answer, and you get a voicemail.

(begin segment recorded by others)

{JET}: Hello! You’ve reached the Nailo Brothers, Bounty Hunters Extraordinaire. If you’d like to leave a message, please press 1—

{JUKE}: Hey. Hey! Are you recording the new message? … Hey, you said I could be in this one.

{JET}: Juke, we’re trying to get this done professionally, so I thought—

{JUKE}: No, but… but mom said you have to let me be part of the marketing.

{JET}: Look, how about you just keep punching the heavy bag? … Okay. Fine, Juke. Come over here.

{JUKE}: Oh—Okay… Tell me when to start.

{JET}: No. It started already.

(beep)

(end recorded segment)

CAMERON: Alright, so it beeps and she goes, “Oh, hey boys! (giggling) Wow, that was a very professional voicemail message. (laughs) Um… Y’all sound so adult. Happy birthday! It looks like y’all are real busy right now, but hopefully you have a chance to listen to this soon so I’m not late. I’m very proud of all y’all have accomplished in the past year. Y’all are taking over all of my old stomping grounds. That’s pretty cool.

Um… Here’s an update on my life, I guess. I got recruited for a job. I’m not really sure why yet. It’s kind of a huge mess. The crew I’m working with is… interesting, and smaller than we were this morning. It’s been a rough day already. You know, just helplessly watching people die. I really hope y’all don’t have to experience that. Anyway! There’s a brilliant slicer that you’d love, Jet, and there’s a smuggler who you’d find… interesting? Juke. Actually, come to think of it, I think I’d rather y’all didn’t meet. Anyway. Keep each other safe, boys, and I love you. Bye.”

NICK: Beep! Let’s cut over to Tink and Xianna. What are you two up to?

LAURA: Okay. Xianna is sitting on the floor in front of the costume closet, as we have now dubbed it, and I’m sure Tink’s there and has put Sabos’s extra unworn shirts on a shelf in there, but Xianna is on the floor with a pile of shoes around her and she’s looking at all of them and holding them up to a boot that is half smooshed and demolished and has a hole in the front and is all sorts of bloodied up. She’s like comparing shoes from the closet to the old boot to see if any of them are the same size or how similar they are, because she needs new shoes. (laughs)

NICK: That boot at one point on the third comparison, a drop of blood drips off of it. It’s soaked.

CAMERON: Ew.

LAURA: Yeah.

HUDSON: I walk over and I say, “Oh. Are you comparing shoes to see which is superior to other shoes?”

LAURA: “I mean… I’m just looking for a new pair of shoes, seeing which ones will fit me, which ones are similar to my old shoes, because as you can see my old boot will no longer work.”

HUDSON: “I mean, it would work—Well, not really, I guess.”

LAURA: “Yeah.”

HUDSON: “Well… Good luck with that!”

LAURA: “Thank you?”

HUDSON: “So on a scale of like Sniffle to Sob, how sad are you that Sabos is gone?”

LAURA: “Uh, none?”

HUDSON: “Don’t you have a heart…?”

LAURA: “I mean, I guess, but like I knew him for like a week? That is not really enough time to… care.”

HUDSON: “We’ve had some adventures together, though. It’s been a very action-packed week.”

LAURA: “It has been a week.”

HUDSON: “Time is just a construct.”

LAURA: “I mean, but is it though?”

HUDSON: “Gah. My head hurts now.”

LAURA: “I mean, I really do not have the energy to care for someone who I’ve only known a week who I did not really even like that much to begin with.”

HUDSON: “But… but… all the fun times together…”

LAURA: “Yeah… SO you see, I do not even remember my father, I was three years old when he was taken and captured and enslaved, never saw him again. When I was 15 my sister and I hid in the cabinets at our house as stormtroopers busted into the kitchen and took my mother away, never saw her again. Most of the other people I knew growing up on Ryloth were at some point killed, enslaved, or arrested. So, sorry if I do not have the energy to care for someone I knew for a week and a half.”

HUDSON: “I mean, this was different though, because he was blown to bits, not taken or arrested or none of those things.”

LAURA: “I mean, yeah, he was pretty much blown to bits, but I don’t think you understand. I grew up seeing people shot in the streets in front of me as a child. You kind of get used to that after a certain point, so one Togruta that I did not like dies… Eh.”

HUDSON: “I still believe there’s a heart in there.”

LAURA: “I mean, technically yes. There is one, but I only have so much time and emotional capacity, so I’m just going to drink and find a new pair of boots.”

HUDSON: “Let’s see if we can just, you know, increase that emotional capacity just a little by little over time.”

LAURA: “No…”

NICK: (laughs)

CAMERON: “What does your medical textbook say about increasing emotional capacity?”

HUDSON: “Well, so they actually want you to buy this other book called Becoming Emotions for the emotional track of the medicine, so like that’s a whole other thing I need to save up money for, but the sneak preview kind of says that emotions are just a construct and that’s all it says. That’s how I had that line from earlier.”

CAMERON: (laughs) “Great.”

LAURA: “Got it… Oh, so yeah, while we are speaking on emergency contacts, I do have a sister, somewhere on Ryloth, I think. I don’t really talk directly to her. I have a family friend that I send money to to give to her, but I do not actually speak to her. So I guess you would want to contact Jerr. He will then contact my sister, wherever she is.”

HUDSON: “Cher?”

LAURA: “Jerr.”

HUDSON: “Chair?”

LAURA: “Jerr, with a J. J-E-R-R.”

HUDSON: “Oh… Jeer.”

LAURA: “… Jerr.

HUDSON: “Jerr.”

LAURA: “Yeah!”

HUDSON: “Jeh… JEHR~!”

LAURA: “That is close enough. Yes.”

HUDSON: “Alright. I can contact that person.”

NICK: Tink’s translator is like smoking a little bit.

(laughter)

HUDSON: Yeah.

NICK: Okay. Around this point the camera zooms in to the cockpit of the Afternoon Delight and onto a little vid screen that’s embedded in the dashboard, and you get a com with no video. It says Incoming Message, and you hear: “This is Sentinel. You’ve done… better than I hoped. It’s time for us to meet in person. I’m sending you the coordinates now.”

CAMERON: As soon as I saw it I flipped the full coms on so that everyone on the ship heard it.

NICK: Yeah. That voice rattles through the ship, and that’s where we’re gonna end the episode.

ALL: Ba-naaa~!

CAMERON: (hums funeral march)

NICK: (groaning) Aww…

CAMERON: (laughs triumphantly)

NICK: Oh no…

## Outro

CAMERON: Thanks for listening to Tabletop Squadron. If you enjoyed our show please consider logging into iTunes and giving us a five-star review. Five-star reviews will help new listeners to find the show and give the squad warm fuzzies when we read them.

Xianna’fan is played by Laura Penrod. She can be found on Twitter at @cheerio_buffet.

Tink is played by Hudson Jameson and he can be found on Twitter at @hudsonjameson.

Karma Nailo is played by me, Cameron Robertson. You can find me on Twitter at @midnightmusic13.

Our game master is Nick Robertson, and you can find him on Twitter at @alias58.

Our intro song is Space Jam by Pablo Ribot.

Additional music by James Gunter.

Follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram at @tabletop_squad. For real! We’re real people and we wanna talk to anyone who listens to the show. Reach out! See you next time.