Tabletop Squadron Transcript, Jedi Adventures #1:
Asking the Important Questions

Transcript by Harrison (Twitter: @unabletowhistle)

## Intro

[Cameron hums space music]

NICK: Hello everyone, and welcome to Tabletop Squadron, a Star Wars: Edge of the Empire actual play podcast. I’m Nick, your game master. We’re doing something a little different the next few episodes as our crew departs on Roulette Dawn, we flash back to simpler time when the Empire was a republic and the Jedi maintained peace throughout the galaxy. Come along with us on this Jedi buddy cop adventure!

Our intro music is Tanza Depanza at 77 by Juan James Juan.

Before we get started, I’d also like to take a second to thank Colds Folds for the iTunes review. Here’s to you, new good internet friend. I’d also like to thank Agent Cid for your iTunes review. You’re super great and everyone likes you on the internet.

Friends, a big announcement: that makes ten reviews. We did it. The art has been released. You can find it on Tabletopsquad.com or our Twitter or our Facebook or our Instagram. We’ve put it everywhere. Get out there and see for yourself. It’s some good stuff. Thank you all for helping us make this first milestone. It will be the first of many.

Anyway, onto this Jedi Adventure. We hope you enjoy this first episode.

##

NICK: Hello, and welcome to Episode 1 of our Jedi buddy-cop adventure series. This is supplementary. I don’t know when this is coming out but I’m sure it’ll be awesome. So it’ll be the same players that you’re  used to hearing, but they’ll be doing different characters. And this is a different time in the Star Wars timeline so there will be some hints. Maybe you can figure out when it is. WooOOoo.

So today, I’ve got two people with us playing main characters that made us some Jedi today. So we’ll go around the exact same-sized table with less people on it and we’ll start with Laura!

LAURA: Hi.

NICK: [chuckles] Hi.

LAURA: I’m playing a Jedi today.

NICK: That’s exciting. That’s fun.

LAURA: Her name is Darcevy Sivulur. She’s a Selonian, which are just giant otters. Just in your head, picture a giant human-sized otter. Don’t try to change that. You got it.

NICK: Sounds about right. You got it.

HUDSON: Darcevy for short?

LAURA: Darcevy.

HUDSON: Darcevy.

LAURA: The first name is Darcevy. Sivulur is the last name.

HUDSON: What about Darcy?

LAURA: You could say Darcy or Cev or Cevy.

HUDSON: I’m trying to take shortcuts with your names.

LAURA: Cev would probably be the shortest one.

HUDSON: OK

NICK: Alright. And the other voice you’re hearing is Hudson.

HUDSON: I’m playing—wow, I named my character Vross, but I wrote Vrose like in a romantic way accidentally. So my character’s name is Vross, also known as Vrose suddenly, who is a Devaronian seeker.

NICK: Cool. And a Devaronian looks like what?

HUDSON: A dee-vil.

NICK: A devil, yes. OK. Just picture the bad guy…

[laughter]

LAURA: Ow, this hurts. My stomach. Just the way you said devil really got to me.

HUDSON: I was hoping it would have an effect.

NICK: So picture the bad guy from The Pick of Destiny or just standard caricature of devil, just not with furry legs.

LAURA: Or google it.

NICK: Or yeah, you could google it. Just imagine devil horns.

Alright, so before we get started on this adventure, let’s get started with the Destiny roll. It’s even more important in this one.

LAURA: One dark side.

HUDSON: Is it even called the Destiny roll in the other one?

LAURA: Yes!

HUDSON: Oh, I thought it was like a Force roll.

NICK: No. [laughs]

HUDSON: How many times have we gone through this again? I should know by now.

NICK: How long have we been playing this? One dark side.

LAURA: It’ll be fine.

NICK: Since the there’s just three of us, I’ll roll one too. Two light side.

LAURA: Yay.

NICK: Let’s go ahead and get started.

##

NICK: You are sitting at a noodle cart in the middle of Coruscant, not to far from the Jedi temple. It is a humid afternoon. It’s pretty shady down here. It would look more like sunset really. And you are seated next to a human who says, “Thank you for joining me.” She is a short blonde woman and has hair in a curly mop on her head. She’s wearing brown robes over informal linen garments. A silver tube is inset with a small glowing panel and sits on her hip. She slurps her noodles. I’m not making that noise.

“This mission is highly sensitive. We suspect that the Temple is being monitored and need to send someone lower profiled. Someone new who hasn’t gotten the attention of the Galactic Intelligence community yet. You both have a few missions under your belt, but you’ll need to work together on this one. The daughter of the Nautolan senator for the Galactic Republic returned to Glee Anselm for the Breaching.”

You can roll me a Xenology check if you want to figure out what the Breaching is.

HUDSON: I would love to roll a Xenology check. How many do I have in it? I have two and my Intelligence is level two.

LAURA: I have Education.

NICK: Bummer. This one is very weird.

HUDSON: Oh, it’s cocked.

LAURA: Was there difficulty involved in that?

NICK: This would be hard.

HUDSON: So no.

LAURA: Definitely no.

NICK: A lot of failures coming out from y’all. Well, you’re a Devaronian and Selonian so yeah. So you failed the Xenology check.

“She was supposed to return last week but never arrived. The senator has heard nothing, but suspects that this is some political maneuver. Return the girl to Coruscant. I would recommend you start your search with her security detail. They’re still on-planet.” And she goes back to slurping her noodles.

HUDSON: “So you need a low-key team to go in and rescue this girl?” I say a little too loud.

NICK: [chuckles] She like stops mid-noodle and nods slowly and says, “Your ship leaves in an hour. We’ve already arranged for you to have a traveling cabin.”

HUDSON: “I’ll be taking my noodles to go.”

NICK: [laughs]

LAURA: Darcevy just kind of shakes her head at you.

HUDSON: I go to get my noodles to go.

NICK: There’s a four-armed alien in the cart wearing like a straw hat that’s really small. It looks like a fez. He’s carrying multiple spatulas and knives and he says something in some language you don’t know and pulls out a little plasteel box and it’s a gray plasteel box about five inches wide–

LAURA: Oooh.

NICK: It would look very familiar to the watcher if they had seen something like this similarly. And then he starts scraping all of your noodles into a box, folds it up nice, and starts to hand it to you, stops, and takes a little paper umbrella and plunks it on top, then hands it to you.

HUDSON: “The umbrella was a nice touch. Thank you.”

NICK: It does some weird gurgly, gargly words that you don’t understand.

HUDSON: “Back atchya.” I walk back to Darcy.

LAURA: “We should go. Are you done with your noodles?”

HUDSON: “No, because they’re to-go. I’m not going to–” And I start eating them while standing. It’s a good idea. I wasn’t going to admit it, though.

LAURA: “Then what was the—OK.” We head to the ship.

NICK: OK, so as you turn to leave, you notice in the shadow of this little alley that you’re on, a huge, probably seven-and-a-half foot tall figure standing in the shadows. It has like a pointy horn sticking out. It’s wrapped in a cloak. You can’t really see what it is. And it slowly nods to you as you walk by. And as you leave, it turns to approach this small woman that you were talking to.

We have a swipe unless there was something you wanted to spend your hour doing, getting ready or anything you needed to procure. The Jedi Temple will provide you with general supplies and things, but if there’s anything specific you wanted to grab.

LAURA: No.

HUDSON: No.

LAURA: Darcevy travels light.

NICK: Cool. So we have a swipe cut and the camera stays pretty high up and you see a standard transport ship. It’s usually used for low profit merchants or colonists or just traveling. It’s a space bus essentially and it’s parked next to a landing pad and there’s a stream of people going up and we see two cloaked figures walking up the ramp. You guys are wearing probably standard Jedi clothes, but are there anything about your appearance or dress choices?

LAURA: Darcevy wears the smallest skimpiest Jedi robes you’ve ever seen because Selonians don’t wear clothes in their normal dens and tunnels.

NICK: Hmm.

LAURA: They don’t think it’s necessary because they’re covered in fur being, you know, otter-people. Also it’s almost entirely a female society so they just don’t wear clothes and they don’t understand the point of clothes. They wear them to make others feel more comfortable.

NICK: So are you wearing like a linen bikini with a Jedi robe?

LAURA: No, not like a bikini. Just like a vest. It doesn’t have any sleeves. It’s really just the folded over pieces with the belt and then little like bloomers almost, not the full Jedi pants, just kind of little bloomers with a hole for her tail.

NICK: Great.

LAURA: And no shoes.

NICK: Makes sense.

LAURA: Or anything like that.

NICK: Great. Do you have the cloak, the brown robe-y cloak they all wear or not?

LAURA: She probably has one but doesn’t wear it as frequently as other Jedi do. But if it’s raining or something, she might wear it.

NICK: OK. What about you, Vross?

HUDSON: So I’m wearing traditional Jedi robes. However, I do have a few tattoos, namely one written on my left arm, like the upper part of my left arm, and it’s written in a language I clearly don’t understand but, you know, I can kind of pull that off as saying whatever I want it to mean when I’m, you know, meeting women.

LAURA: Anonymous sex is OK, just no relationships!

HUDSON: Consensual anonymous sex with Jedi.

LAURA: Yes. But no relationship.

NICK: [laughs] That’s what it says above the Temple in Arabesh. “Jedi Temple: Consensual, Anonymous Sex.” Great.

HUDSON: [Laughs] So I have traditional Jedi robes. I do, however, like kind of try subtly but sometimes it’s a little too bright like highlight my horns, like my horn nubs up there. Like get some blue coloring around it.

NICK: OK, so you have like eye shadow for your horns?

HUDSON: Yes, but on a bad day or when I’m applying it wrong, it just looks like I took a really powerful highlighter and just rubbed it around there.

NICK: [laughs] Great.

LAURA: Is today a good day or a bad day?

HUDSON: Today’s a bad day, but I’m overly confident like it’s the best I’ve ever done.

NICK: Alright, the camera zooms in. Does a cool sweep where we get a good view of everything and you swagger your way up onto this ramp. I imagine that people get out of your way. On Coruscant, they recognize Jedi pretty easily, but most places, because there’s probably only about 10,000 Jedi, they’re more myth and rumor. So you’re pretty used to being able to walk around wearing Jedi robes and people just assume those are like clothes some people wear. Because in the Jedi universe, no one wears a cloak unless they’re trying to be anonymous but then if you see someone in a cloak, that’s fine and normal apparently.

We get a nice shot of you all going. The Jedi temple has paid for you to have a separate booth. It’s like a train cabin so there’s a sliding door and you walk in. There’s a couple of bunk beds on one side, a couple of chairs on the other. It’s small. These ships don’t go very fast. The trip’s going to take a couple of days. But you can spend that time meditating, doing research on where you’re going, anything like that that you would want to do.

So you have some time. You both are about the same age. You joined the Jedi Temple very young as most Jedis do and were kind of tangentially aware of each other. You would see each other in some classes, but you wouldn’t interact a whole lot so now might be a good time to get to know each other a little better. Or not.

LAURA: Once we sit down, Darcevy looks over at Vross and goes, “Your horn highlighters are done poorly.”

HUDSON: “You do bad introductions.”

LAURA: “I’m just telling you. You should redo them. It sends a bad message about the Jedi. You should look more put-together.”

HUDSON: I kind of frown, but then I give it a second thought like, “No, it looks just fine. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.” So I kind of give a stern look and stare at you for a second, but don’t respond though.

LAURA: She just starts like preening her fur. Gotta make it look nice. That’s pretty much what she’s going to do for most of the trip is just…

NICK: Comb yourself?

LAURA: Comb herself, preen herself, and then like clean her lightsaber pike.

NICK: Ooh, yeah, because you have a lightsaber pike. So what color is it? And what does that look like?

LAURA: So the main staff of it is sort of a metallic brownish gray. Just a very neutral color. And there’s a little bit of decorative swirling on the ends of it. And—ooh, what color do I want it? It’s gonna be green. The blade is green.

NICK: You’re fairly new to being Jedi Knights. You’ve been on a few missions, but the reason you were selected for this one is because you haven’t done anything hugely of note or that would’ve gained a lot of renown on Coruscant. So you spend some time thinking about missions you’ve completed so far, either with your Master when you were Padawans or when you were newly minted Jedi Knights. So I’d love for you both to tell me one mission that you’ve been on and how that went.

HUDSON: Do you want an over-embellished mission as I usually go or?

NICK: Yeah, OK, so we have a flashback shot to Vross sitting in a bar with his sleeves rolled up to show off his tattoo, talking to a Twi’lek lady who looks pretty bored and uninterested, telling this story of a mission he went on.

HUDSON: Are we going to have to be friends with a Wookie in the immediate future?

NICK: I don’t think so.

HUDSON: OK, great. I mean, even if we were, this would be fine. “So there I was, me, a planet I’ve never been, Tatooine, and there was this rabid Wookie army. Alright, just me there, remember this. I get out my guns, my saber. Gun in one hand, saber in the other hand, I go bantha steak on them.”

That’s the story, the flashback story. I keep it very vague because none of that happened. Really I’ve done a lot of supply missions and, you know, simple, you know, simple guarding politicians and stuff. Nothing bad ever happens to them as they go to different planets.

NICK: OK. So in the flashback, the Twi’lek yawns and the camera zooms in on her mouth till the screen is black and zooms out and we’re back in the cabin and you just have like this happy look on your face as you’re reminiscing.

LAURA: Most of Darcevy’s previous missions, yeah, have been pretty similar. The most interesting one was when she was on Salukami because as we found out it’s not Salu-kami, it’s Saluk-ami.

NICK: Really?

LAURA: Really. They say it in one of the episodes of Clone Wars.

HUDSON: Salukami sounds better.

NICK: No, it doesn’t.

[laughter]

LAURA: And it actually took me a second because I was recognizing stuff in the images and I was like, “Wait, is Saluk-ami what we were calling Salu-kami the same planet?” They were.

The most interesting mission Darcevy would’ve gone on was when she and her master were on Salukami in a foresty area and became surrounded by a clan of—a gaggle? I’m not sure what a group of these are called—of Noonos. These large rock crabs.

HUDSON: It’s a murder of Noonos

LAURA: A murder of Noonos

HUDSON: Yes. I mean, technically if you’re a real Star Wars fan.

NICK: [laughter]

LAURA: Yes, but they have incredibly thick shells that look like rocks and that’s why she and her master didn’t notice them. They just thought they were walking into a circle of rocks and then had to fight giant crab monsters.

NICK: Cool.

LAURA: That’s why she has a small section on her tail that doesn’t have fur.

NICK: Oooh.

LAURA: Because one of them grabbed her tail so there’s like a thin line probably about halfway down her tail that is like just shiny skin with no fur.

NICK: Hmm, interesting. OK, we get some shots of you all reminiscing just sitting there. You lay down to go to sleep. We’ll fade to black.

We’ll fade back up to the transport flying low over Glee Anselm and it’s a beautiful ocean planet. You look out through a view port and see sparkling blue water. The ship leaves a wake behind it which makes nice white capped waves and you see a city in the distance. And as you get closer, you see kind of a hill in front of the city and then the city itself is all white buildings. And as you get closer, you see all of the buildings are actually gray stone but they’re all crusted over in barnacles and like dried out sea life. It looks kind of like limestone when it’s got a lot of fossils and stuff in it. And as the ship flies directly over that hill, you see it’s actuall the giant head of a turtle. And the camera pans out wide to see the city is built on the back of a giant, currently-swimming sea turtle that is slowly, oh so slowly paddling through the water.

And the ship swoops down to a landing pad and lands. And then we have a shot of you all walking off carrying your bags of Jedi goodies and you remember the Jedi master who had given you your mission had suggested you go and talk to the security detail and you had some maps of general things around the city. You know where the hotel where she was staying is. You know a couple of bars where she was going around. You know where the diplomatic core is. And you know like where the market center and stuff is, too.

So where would you like to go?

LAURA: “Where do you think we should go?”

HUDSON: He takes a long pause to think.

LAURA: Also, while she’s saying that, she’s kind of like looking at the ground and with the end of her lightsaber pike, kind of just like poking it like, “Are we on a turtle? Why are we on a turtle? This is weird.”

NICK: So the ground that you’re walking on, it looks kind of like concrete. It’s actually ground up stone that’s been made into a slurry and hardened. You’re not walking on a shell right now.

LAURA: I know but she’s still not comfortable with the idea that of a city on a floating turtle.

HUDSON: So is there like something that was said, like a clue, that she was taken from the hotel?

NICK: You don’t know.

HUDSON: Oh OK.

NICK: You just know her general whereabouts. There’s been very little information spread about this. It’s being kept very much on the down-low. You don’t know a lot about Glee Anselm. You guys failed that real hard. But you would probably want to make some sort of contact with someone and ask them some questions to get kind of a good rundown about what’s going on.

HUDSON: “Let’s start with the things that can answer us real questions: the security detail.”

LAURA: “Good.” We will go talk to the security detail.

HUDSON: Yeah, we will.

LAURA: Yes, that is what I said.

NICK: And you all walk down the street towards the hotel where the security detail is most likely and shove at each other a little bit as you walk by. The crowd doesn’t really part around you or anything but you also don’t find yourself slowed. You’re able to move very easily as though you could sense what their intentions are and step where they are not stepping ‘cause y’all are Jedi Knights and you’re good at stuff.

LAURA: We are?

NICK: Yeah.

LAURA: [gasp] We’re good at stuff!

NICK: So you come to the hotel that is called the Tortillian. It is a large grand building. The windows on all bubble out like submarine view ports. They all look pretty hard but also kind organic. The whole shape looks like it was carved out of a giant conch shell, just really big, and it has these doors that swing open and the weird thing is that as you come into the entryway, there’s like a woven rug that seems fixed to the ground and the doors on the inside slide up into the roof but only after the door has shut behind you and it takes a little while. Just a weird design feature.

And as you come into the lobby, you see mostly brown wood with some stone highlights in it and some comfortable chairs. You also see that there’s some chairs like halfway up the walls like like if you could sit up really tall, you could sit up there and it’s all spread around. There’s no fireplaces or anything, but there are some nice view ports that look out into the city and some nice skylights that look straight up. And there’s a desk and behind the desk, there’s a Nautolan wearing the stereotypical bellboy outfit. It’s red with gold braiding all over it and he is currently trying to affix the little fez between all of his head-tails trying to get it to stay and seems to be struggling with it.

LAURA: What was the name of the person that we’re…?

NICK: You don’t know.

LAURA: Oh, we don’t know?

NICK: It’s just the head of their security detail.

HUDSON: Did you mean the person who was kidnapped?

LAURA:

NICK: Yes, you guys forgot to ask questions.

[laughter]

LAURA: Yes, we did.

HUDSON: We did. Wait, how did we get to the security—never mind. I don’t want to bring that up.

LAURA: Darcevy walks up to him and says, “I would like to speak to the head of your security.”

NICK: The Nautolan looks at you kind of confused and says, “Well, this is just a hotel. We don’t really have security, but if you’re talking about the diplomatic detail security, I could page them for you. I don’t know if they’ll respond. They’ve been real secretive lately. I don’t really know what’s going on with that. I probably shouldn’t have said that.” And he touches his hat nervously.

HUDSON: “Hey, calm down little guy. Just call the detail.”

NICK: He looks at you kind of confused. “It’s not everyday that I see non-aquatic species here. It sure is lucky that you came during the Breaching. But alright, yeah, let me give them a call.”

HUDSON: “What’s the Breaching?”

NICK: “You don’t know what the Breaching is?”

LAURA: I know what the Breaching is!

HUDSON: I know you know what the Breaching is. I do not know what the Breaching is.

NICK: [cracking up] Your character doesn’t know!

LAURA: My character doesn’t know.

HUDSON: Your character doesn’t know.

LAURA: I have put two and two together.

HUDSON: It’s like I said space Titanic running into an asteroid.

NICK: Yeah, that’s what it is.

LAURA: Clues were given.

NICK: Oh, I’m feeling so vindicated as a GM right now. So you want him to call the security detail for you?

LAURA: Yes.

NICK: So he pulls up a conch shell and turns a nob on it for a minute. You can it’s kind of glowing on top and you hear him whisper into it then hold it up to his ear then whisper into it again. And its not like he’s trying to be secretive. It’s like it picks up a certain frequency so he has to sub-vocalize to get it to go through. Then he puts it back and goes, “Well, um, most of them aren’t answering but I was able to get hold of the security chief. Her name is Soana Lette and she should be down in a minute. She asked for description of you all and I just said she’ll just have to see for herself.”

And he put the conch shell down and turns around and looks very busy like arranging mail and keys in cubby holes behind the desk, but isn’t really doing anything and you can feel through the Force, he’s very nervous. It’s been very tense here lately. You get that vibe off of him. Because you’re Jedi Knights. That’s a thing you can do. It’s pretty cool.

HUDSON: Did he just ignore my question about the Breaching?

NICK: Yeah.

HUDSON: OK.

NICK: Well he went, “You don’t know what the Breaching is?!” and called the security guy. Or security lady.

So you wait for about five minutes then you hear somebody walking down the stairs to the left of the hotel. You get a sense that the hotel is very old, but looking at the stairs, they all look pristine like very little wear or tear on them. They have that same woven rug that seems like attached down to the ground and it doesn’t seem particularly durable, but it still looks new and it still looks great as if people don’t walk on it very often.

And the security captain walks into the room and she is a bulky Nautolan with her head-tails pulled back tightly out of the way. She’s wearing heavy armor and carries a trident-shaped weapon that looks wickedly sharp and also like it might also shoot blaster bolts.

LAURA: “Hello, you are the head of the diplomat’s security?”

CAMERON: “Yes, who are you?”

HUDSON: “I’m Vross!”

LAURA: “Yes, he is Vross. I’m Darcevy. We are Jedi.”

CAMERON: “Oh! Wonderful,” she says and looks slightly nervous. “I’m so glad y’all are here. Please, um…” She looks to the bellhop. “We’re going to be using your office.” And just walks behind the desk past him and into the room behind him. “Please come this way.”

LAURA: Darcevy confidently follows.

HUDSON: “I more confidently follow.”

CAMERON: “I’m not looking at you so I don’t notice.” The door swooshes shut behind us. “So what brings y’all here?”

HUDSON: “Well, it’s just a shame that she came up missing, but we have a series of questions that we hope will get us closer to finding her.”

LAURA: “What he means is that the diplomat should have already returned to Coruscant so we are requiring as to why she has not returned.”

CAMERON: “Yes, well, I’m assuming the senator sent you.”

HUDSON: “Yes.”

LAURA: “Yes.” I’m just going to repeat everything you say, I guess.

[laughter]

HUDSON: Well, it really was the senator, right? I hope I’m

NICK: Maybe.

HUDSON: Oh, we didn’t ask.

[laughter]

HUDSON: Oh no!

LAURA: I thought another Jedi but maybe not.

HUDSON: Suddenly we spend six episodes on a different arc.

NICK: So the lady you were talking to was very clearly a Jedi master.

LAURA: Yes.

NICK: You forgot to ask who was asking the Jedi to intervene but you would assume the diplomat who’s missing is the senator’s daughter that it was probably the senator. But you’re not sure.

LAURA: “We were sent by the Jedi Temple.”

CAMERON: “Fabulous. Kira has been missing for several days now.”

HUDSON: “Excuse me, can we get a full legal name?”

CAMERON: “Kira Toondely. She is the senator’s daughter. They do have the same last name.”

HUDSON: “Just making sure. Go on.”

CAMERON: “Alright, as I was saying, Kira has been missing for several days. We were supposed to return to Coruscant. About a week ago, we were held up slightly then she disappeared and we’ve been searching for her but so far we’ve been unsuccessful.”

LAURA: “Do you have any leads?”

CAMERON: “Everyone loves her. This is our capital city. Everything was going smoothly. We visited orphanages. She spoke to the city leaders. They all seemed pleasant. We very much like the senator. He’s been doing good things for Glee Anselm as a whole. She participated in the Breaching parade as the turtle queen,” she says proudly.

“Then she did the ceremonial dance to open up the new hospital. The only thing that could possibly play into it was that the last few days before she went missing, she was spending a lot of time with the Anselmi diplomat who was also here for the Breaching. They’re visiting from Anselm, their capital on land. She seemed pretty taken with Quitall Nol, the son of their diplomat, but beside that I have—she’s a smart girl. She knows that the Anselmi are not to be messed with. They’re a terrible war-like creatures.”

HUDSON: “I think you haven’t looked at a different angle for this thing. You know, some people like Kira become rebellious. Sure it’s not a runaway?”

LAURA: “Yes, I’ve been told that sometimes people run away with their paramours.”

CAMERON: “They’re not paramours. As I said, she’s a girl with good sense. She would not align herself with them. However, you do bring up a good point. I did train her in self-defense myself so the likelihood of her being taken unawares or without raising a scene at all is lower than it would be than most girls her age.”

HUDSON: “And her age is?”

CAMERON: “She’s 22.”

HUDSON: “Ah, thank you. I was just making sure.”

[laughter]

HUDSON: “I was right ‘cause I knew that.”

LAURA: “Yes.”

CAMERON: “You do not seem to have a lot of details.”

HUDSON: “See, we’re just being very thorough about the details we already know.”

LAURA: “Yes.”

CAMERON: “OK.”

LAURA: “May we see her room?”

CAMERON: “Yes, you can.” She smooshes the door back open and heads back up the stairs she came down.

LAURA: Darcevy almost certainly walks upstairs on all fours because Selonian can walk on all fours if they want to and I totally imagine that for stairs she does crawl up them. I don’t know. I find the concept of Selonians so cute and fun. They’re just giant otters.

NICK: We definitely get a scene of Darcevy going up the stairs first and her tail like whacking back and forth in Vross’s face and him trying not to get hit by it and Darcevy just enjoying going up the stairs because it’s more comfortable to walk on four legs than two.

LAURA: Well, especially for stairs.

NICK: Yes. OK, so you go down the hallway. It’s several flights of stairs up and you get to the top. The building, you notice, is smaller on each floor and at the very top, there’s the penthouse and the doors irises opens like a cool portal so they swing open.

[portal sound effect]

NICK: Yeah. And there’s a sandy pit with blankets thrown over it that looks to be the bed area and there looks to be a bathroom off in the corner. Most of the walls are transparisteel and there are shell-like ribs going through all of it so you can still see the shape of the shell and you have a really beautiful view of the city and the Nautolans walking around. You notice almost the entire population here is Nautolan and they’re all walking around kind of like tourists. People are taking holos of the areas and looking up at the sun and there are a lot of people on the streets like they’re celebrating and you figure it has something to do with the Breaching.

So, yeah, what are you looking for in this room?

LAURA: I want to search for any journals, datapad, maybe find any trinkets like seashell necklaces, you know.

HUDSON: I pounce onto the scene like really quickly and I just dart my head around and look.

NICK: [laughs] OK, I could use that for both of you actually. Unless you’re looking for hidden things then that would be Skulduggery.

HUDSON: What’s the difficulty?

NICK: Average.

LAURA: That’s the same roll for me either way.

HUDSON: Three successes and a threat.

NICK: With three successes and a threat, we’ll wait to see what she rolls first.

LAURA: A failure.

NICK: A failure. So Darcevy is looking for wherever she would put her favorite things in this room.

LAURA: I am most certainly digging in the sand a little bit, being like “Obviously you would bury–” Up by the head if there’s like pillows, I’m digging in the sand like, “Obviously you would bury it next to your bed. That is the most safe place to keep personal items.”

HUDSON: Do you say that aloud?

LAURA: I probably do tell you like, “The safest place to put personal items is to bury it next to the head of your bed. That is where I’m going to check.”

HUDSON: “That is a great idea. I’ve wanted to do that but I just didn’t see anyone else doing it.”

LAURA: “Yes.”

NICK: So you say that and as you’re doing that, Darcevy, you can’t quite tell if he’s being sarcastic or not with that statement because as he does that, he elbows a wall panel which falls open and there’s a leather-bound journal with kelp leaf pages with what looks like a cord with a seashell wrapped around it. And he picks it up and waves it at you.

LAURA: “Or that. I guess not all species dig.”

HUDSON: “Yep.”

LAURA: “That would make sense.”

HUDSON: “Some have trapdoors.”

LAURA: “Yes.” So I get up and walk over to Vross and we open up the journal.

CAMERON: Soana walks over and slaps it shut. “You cannot be reading this.”

LAURA: I look down at her a little bit, because Darcevy is quite tall, and go, “Excuse me. Do not impede upon our investigation. There could be pertinent information inside this journal.”

CAMERON: “I’m not sure y’all are even Jedi at this point.”

HUDSON: I do an open-hand wave to try and scare her a little bit but it actually doesn’t exude any powers.

LAURA: You don’t actually try?

HUDSON: I don’t actually try at all. I just do my hand wave like, this should show you that we do this wave just right that we are Jedi.

CAMERON: She hits her giant trident thing on the floor. Does not look intimidated by you.

LAURA: Darcevy is going to use Coercion and, while towering over her a bit, turn not like at her but like holding to the side turn on her pike for a second or two and be like, “We are, indeed, Jedi. Do not make us Forcefully remove you from this room.”

CAMERON: She snorts.

HUDSON: Who’s holding the journal?

CAMERON: I’ve got the journal. I snapped it shut.

HUDSON: I Force move it from your hand.

NICK: Alright, we’ve got a lot of rolls going here. So for Coercion first, it’s going to be an Imposed roll. What is your Coercion stuff?

LAURA: So my Coercion roll is three greens and a yellow and I can suffer a strain to reduce the difficulty?

NICK: Ooh. Is it to reduce the level or downgrade?

LAURA: To downgrade difficulty of Coercion checks or upgrade difficulty of when targeted by Coercion checks.

NICK: Interesting. OK, so it will only be against two purples and a red if you suffer your strain. Otherwise, it’s two reds and a purple.

LAURA: Oh yeah.

NICK: I was not expecting that ability.

LAURA: It’s called intimidating. That would be three successes and two threats.

NICK: Oh, so close. She backs down a little bit and loosens her grip on the journal and, Vross, you said you were going to pull the journal out of her hand with the Force?

HUDSON: Yep!

NICK: Cool! We get to do a Force roll, you guys. This is super neat.

HUDSON: Do I need to pull out the book for this because it’s part of a tree?

NICK: Yeah, so it’ll tell you exactly how to do this move.

HUDSON: Give me the book because we didn’t print off this part of the book. So the Force user can move small objects is my first one.

NICK: So roll me a Force die and we’ll…

HUDSON: What is a Force die again?

NICK: That’s the white one.

LAURA: The white one.

HUDSON: OK, perfect.

NICK: We get to actually do that now.

HUDSON: I saw new dice out here and it made me nervous.

NICK: Yeah, no, you’re good. Great, so you can absolutely pull that away. The Force flows through you—he got two Light Side for the record—and you’re able to pull it straight out of her grip and into your hands and she looks very nervous.

HUDSON: “So are we Jedi now?”

CAMERON: “Your behavior beside the magically moving thing does nothing to support that statement.”

LAURA: “Please ignore my friend here. He sometimes gets carried away with himself.”

HUDSON: I get a little tinge of excitement. We’re friends.

[laughter]

HUDSON: That’s exactly what I wanted. A partner who likes me.

LAURA: “Again, we are indeed Jedi. We are here to assist you in finding Kira. We would like to do everything we can to find her and that includes looking inside this journal.”

CAMERON: She shrugs and takes a step back. Is not looking as helpful as before.

LAURA: “Just like I’m not sure what more beside Force powers and lightsabers you need as proof.”

HUDSON: “You know this tattoo on my arm? It says Jedi. I wouldn’t do that to myself unless it were true.”

CAMERON: “It does not. I know what language it speaks. It is.”

HUDSON: “Dammit.”

NICK: Is it in Nautolan?

CAMERON: It is in Nautolan, yes.

LAURA: Darcevy like the moment you say that is like, “I suspected that.”

CAMERON: I don’t tell you what it says though.

LAURA: Ooh! But what does it say? Is it something like it says, “Taco dog,” or something completely nonsense? Or does it actually mean…?

NICK: So I would assume–well, here’s a question for Vross: Where did you get your tattoo from? Did you get it on Coruscant? Did you get it on a mission? What was the artist?

LAURA: Like a hole in the wall on Tattooine? Or…?

HUDSON: During Jedi academy training on Coruscant I got pressured into it by people who I thought were my friends who pressured me into getting a tattoo and they said they’d take care of it and I was a little nervous so I just let them pick the tattoo and pick the area of my body and I just went with because I’m no weakling.

NICK: Alright, if that’s the case, it’s probably something disparaging that one padawan would call another padawan, but we’re not going to say what it is.

HUDSON: A padawanker.

NICK: I was thinking like a padawan forever, but it’s not good. So do you flip through the journal at all?

HUSDON & LAURA: Yes.

NICK: OK, are you like starting at the end? Are you looking for anything in particular out of this? Because it’s like her journal. It’s not just her journal for this trip. There’s a lot in here.

LAURA: I would start at the back just because that’s where new information would most likely be seeing how it’s at the end and that is the newer pages, but it might have more information about Quitall because Darcevy is pretty convinced she ran away with this boy.

NICK: Right, so you do notice that, flipping through the last couple of entries, she does mention Quitall, specifically one passage about he seems quite nice and she seems taken with her and she hopes to promote positive relations between their two species and that the discomfort that they have, she laments that they are stuck to the land while they get the full freedom of the sea and she hopes to have some sort of exchange program. She has a lot of naive and high-concept thoughts about what she can really do to change her planet and it seems to start with convincing him that Nautolans don’t mean anything again the Anselmi and they should be friends and he seems kind of open to it.

But it’s clear from the entries that he’s really more interested in her than Nautolans as a whole. And you see some things about that she did the ceremonial dance at the hospital opening and she feels so light on her feet with the gift from her father and there’s like a sketch of a headband thing that she’s wearing that just makes her so happy when she wears it and she just talks about how the people are so nice and even though she was raised away from home that everyone here is great and how lucky she was that the Breaching of the capital of the planet happened during her lifetime. And yeah, it’s just a lot of flowery, happy rich girl thoughts.

LAURA: “We should definitely talk to Quitall.”

HUDSON: “Yep, I understand all this forbidden love.”

LAURA: I turn and look at Soana and go, “Please give me more details about this ‘the Breaching.’”

CAMERON: How often do Breachings happen like once a century?

NICK: Yeah.

CAMERON: OK. “So you may have noticed as your ship came in that the city is on the back of a giant turtle.”

LAURA: “I did see that. It makes me uncomfortable.”

CAMERON: “No, it’s quite steady. This turtle has been around for eons. Still going strong. But the Breaching, once every century or so, the turtle rises to the surface to breathe and stays up for around a month normally, and that is the Breaching. All of the cities, of course, breach at different times as each different turtle has a slightly different lung capacity, but this Pieralos’s Breaching.  The moment.”

LAURA: Darcevy nervously looks at Vross and looks back at Soana and goes, “Um, how long has it been since the Breaching?”

CAMERON: “About a month. We’re going to need to leave in probably a few days.”

LAURA: “Yes. OK.”

HUDSON: “I was about to ask if we need to perform any actions for this.”

CAMERON: “You might. You may need to, depending on how long you’re planning on staying, find some additional gear to wear. I am not super well-versed in Selonians but I assume you would be fine being underwater.”

LAURA: So I can probably hold my breath a decent amount and swimming would be pretty easy, but I would need a rebreather because Selonians mostly, even though their planet is mostly water or the main homeworld planet is mostly water, they still live in tunnels and burrow underneath the oceans. I read about them. They’re interesting. One of them fights Han Solo.

“Yes, we would probably need to buy rebreathers.”

Can you swim?

HUDSON: “I mean I was only top in my school but it’s been a few years.”

LAURA: “Top? Do you mean top–”

HUDSON: “My academy.”

LAURA: “For swimming? Or just in general?”

HUDSON:  “Both actually.”

LAURA: “OK.” Darcevy’s like, “How long did we spend on swimming?” like trying to think back, like, “Did I like miss that day? Because I remember them teaching us how to swim, but not like a whole school, but OK.”

HUDSON: I quickly try to divert back to something.

LAURA: She’s sure she just missed that week or something.

CAMERON: “If swimming’s not your strong suit, you’ll probably also—and as you’re not used to breathing underwater, you’ll probably also wish to buy some weights to keep you planted to the turtle as it begins its descent.”

HUDSON: “So I have a question about this Bleakening.”

CAMERON: “Breaching, yes.”

HUDSON: “Breaching, sure. So my master collects those stupid little annoying spoons. Somehow they’ve survived all these years, his collection, and so I’m-a need one the Breakening.”

LAURA: “The Breaching.”

CAMERON: “The Breaching?”

HUDSON: “Yeah, the Bleakening.”

CAMERON: “I’m sure there are several carts in the streets that are selling them.”

HUDSON: “Ah, perfect.”

CAMERON: “You should have no problem finding any.”

HUDSON: “Oh, that’s great.”

LAURA: “We would like to keep the journal. We will return it to you, but we would like to keep it in case we need to reference any of it.”

CAMERON: “OK.”

LAURA: “Do you know where this Quitall Nol is staying?”

CAMERON: “Yes, he left with the delegation a few days ago.”

LAURA: “Left to where?”

CAMERON: “Anselmi, their capital. I’m assuming they went home.”

LAURA: “Do you know where he was staying when he was here?”

CAMERON: “They were staying at the Terrapin Inn by the landing bay.”

LAURA: “Thank you.”

CAMERON: “Mhmm. Do you have any other questions?”

LAURA: Let’s see. So we’re pretty sure Quitall’s an important part of this, I mean, just a hunch. Did we learn what species Quitall Nol is?

CAMERON: An Anselmi.

LAURA: An Anselmi. OK. Which ones are those? I forgot what Anselmi look like.

NICK: Oh, oh! Roll me a Xenology check.

LAURA: OK, I don’t have much Xenology.

HUDSON: I’ve Xenology for days.

LAURA: What difficulty?

NICK: Average.

LAURA: Can do. Nothing.

NICK: So you don’t know much about the Anselmi. Let’s see if Vross does.

HUDSON: Vross like lives and dies for Xenology. That would be two disadvantages and a success.

NICK: Alright. So you know that the Anselmi are the other native race to Glee Anselm, hence part of the name. You know that they have been at war. You will not find a picture of them.

LAURA: I was about to say, there’s no photo.

NICK: Oh no, I spent a long time looking. Anyway, you know that they basically have been at war with the Nautolans for basically the entire existence of the planet because the Nautolans can breathe underwater and the Anselmi can’t so the Anselmi are stuck on what little land exists on Glee Anselm and the Nautolans can swim everywhere.

Fun story two. This would particularly interest you. The Anselmi are not as strong or gifted fighters as the Nautolans so whenever they wage war on them, they tend to lose pretty heavily but they look kind of like turtle-frog people. They have—you’ve seen them before on your journeys, it’s not a huge population spread around the galaxy, but they have a kind of tortoise shell pattern that’s semi-flexible so they have plating everywhere and they have eyes sunk deep back in their heads. But they’re otherwise humanoid.

LAURA: Cool, so we know he’s Anselmi.

HUDSON: “So has Kira had any prior relationships we know of?”

CAMERON: “No, she’s pretty sheltered. Although sheltered in the high society. She has a lot of friends. She’s very sociable but being a senator’s daughter, being surrounded by security detail, you do tend to not get approached a lot by the non-children of other delegates.”

LAURA: “Has she ever been known to sneak out at night or break away from her security detail?”

CAMERON: “No, she’s actually been pretty good about it. We set up the rule that she’s able to wander the hotel as she wishes as the hotel’s secure. We checked it before we arrived. And she’s been very good about making sure she grabbed myself or someone from my squad when she wishes to leave. She knows that it’s for her own safety and we don’t cramp her style too much.”

LAURA: “How did you realize she was missing?”

CAMERON: “So she had gone downstairs to—you may have noticed as you entered, there’s a small snack area like next to the main desk.”

LAURA: “I did not.”

CAMERON: “Well, there’s one there. It’s rather small and it’s kind of round the corner so that makes sense. But she’d gone down to grab a snack and then never returned back up so we eventually wandered back downstairs to find her and have not been able to trace her since.”

HUDSON: “What about any camera footage?”

LAURA: “Yes, are there any holo-cams?”

CAMERON: “Of course.”

HUDSON: “Can we take a look?”

LAURA: “Yes.”

CAMERON: “I unfortunately do not have the power to grant you that access as this is not my hotel.”

LAURA: “We will ask the hotel.”

CAMERON: “You can certainly speak to the management.”

HUDSON: “On the way out, yeah.”

LAURA: “How many times has she met with this Quitall Nol during her visit?”

CAMERON: “So he was, of course, present at the Breaching parade that I mentioned then also at the hospital opening as they were here as a delegation. There were several council meetings. Times that they actually interacted, I’d say three or four times. Always in a public space with multitudes of other people around. She didn’t ever seem to seek him out specifically.”

HUDSON: “Are there any tracking devices on her?”

LAURA: “I’m assuming no.”

HUDSON: “Such as a holo-phone?”

CAMERON: “That’s not how that works.”

HUDSON: “Oh, they don’t have cell phones?”

LAURA: You have a data-pad and a comm link.

HUDSON: Using that, you can triangulate the data.

LAURA: Not in Star Wars really. Remember like…

NICK: The calls are basically radios.

HUDSON: Oh, OK.

LAURA: Remember, 70s. Because you can’t even truly do comm links like across planet. It’s what you need it to be.

NICK: 80s opera. I need it to not be trackable.

HUDSON: [laughs]

CAMERON: “Unfortunately, she has no tracking equipment on her.”

HUDSON: “Darn.”

CAMERON: “As this has never been a problem before, it did not occur to us.”

HUDSON: “The long con.”

LAURA: “Were there any items in this room that were missing or any items that she’d normally take that are still here?”

CAMERON: “Well, you’re holding her journal.”

LAURA: “Well, yes, but sometimes people don’t take their journals with them.”

CAMERON: “I mean, she walked down for a snack—if I was packing to leave, there are numerous things that are still here that I would’ve taken. From what I can tell, she left with just the clothes that she was wearing and the only piece that was really special or anything that she was wearing was the ceremonial dance circlet that she’s been wearing off-and-on since we’ve gotten here.”

LAURA: “That does make it less likely that she ran away and more likely that she was coerced.”

HUDSON: “Eh, yeah, I still think it’s still a runaway case.”

LAURA: “Please come with us when we go watch the footage as you are more familiar with her and might pick up on personal body language or clues that we would not.”

CAMERON: “Of course.”

HUDSON: “Let’s see how well you actually know her. What kind of snack would she pick out when she’s down?” I say suspiciously.

LAURA: “Is this information relevant?”

HUDSON: “Yes, because we need to know her loyalty and if she actually is close enough to her as her security detail.”

CAMERON: “I don’t quite follow your logic, but it would definitely be bantha cakes.”

HUDSON: “Hmm, everyone loves bantha cakes. Let’s go see that footage.”

LAURA: “I do not. I find bantha cakes overly sweet. Not enough shrimp.”

NICK: OK, so you leave the room and head back downstairs. The camera zooms in on the iris door as it opens and as the door opens, it’s onto the next scene in the lobby and the nervous desk attendant, basically just you steam roll over him and he’s adjusting his headset and says, “We can look at the holo-footage is you want. I have no questions for you and of course, whatever Soana Lette wants Soana Lette gets. Ha ha ha ha ha.”

And he leads you around a corner and down a hallway to a sparse room. This one’s durasteel which is interesting with all the like aquatic, pastoral ambiance the hotel has and so because we’re doing camera shots, we don’t have to watch you guys watch hours of footage. It goes very quickly to a scene and you see a pretty young Nautolan girl. She has sharp features. She’s pretty small but lithe and she’s wearing her headband. It’s a silver circlet. As she comes down the stairs you see the back. It’s got a bunch of individual fronds that wrap around her head-tails.

LAURA: Nice.

NICK: It’s got a bright red stone in the center. It matches well with her outfit even though she appears to be wearing—it’s like a mix of board shorts and pajamas. Just very comfortable clothes. She pats down the snack rack.

So we get a shot over the shoulder as Vross and Darcy lean over the nervous bellhop as he’s clicking through and the young Nautolan girl is reaching around on the rack and she reaches for some bantha cakes and then goes next to it to grab some Ewok jerky and looks up at the camera and then it just cuts to static for about two minutes of footage and when the static goes away, the room is empty. There’s nobody else in the screen. There’s no attendant. There’s no nobody.

LAURA: “What happened to that footage?”

NICK: “Um, I’m not sure. You know this is all set-up for underwater so with stuff being exposed to air for the first time in a hundred years, it’s likely just some sort of short. We’ve been having problems with it.”

LAURA: “It seems highly coincidental that she looked at the camera as it went out.”

NICK: “Sure does.”

HUDSON: “What’s that snack she was holding?”

NICK: “Looks like Ewok jerky. I think that was the last bag, too. I usually buy that for myself.”

HUDSON: “It’s obviously a sign to cut the film.”

NICK: “Maybe.”

LAURA: “Or it could’ve just…  Anyways.”

HUDSON: “Are you saying the security detail was lying about her favorite snack?”

LAURA: “No, I’m saying someone cut the feed on purpose especially since she looked at the camera, right at it as it was being cut. Most people don’t look directly into cameras like that, especially when they’re just picking out tasty snacks.”

HUDSON: “Those are points.”

NICK: OK, so the bellhop rewinds the footage again to the grainy shot right before the static completely takes over the screen and it zooms in on Kira’s face and that’s the end of the episode. Ba-naaa~!

LAURA: Ba-naaa~!

HUDSON: [humming] Longest time—whoa-oh-oh!

LAURA: Whoa-oh-oh!

## Outro

CAMERON: Thanks for listening to Tabletop Squadron. If you enjoyed the show, please consider logging into iTunes and leaving us a 5-star review. 5-star reviews help new listeners find the show.

Darcevy is played by Laura Penrod and she can be found on Twitter at @Cheerio_Buffet.

Vross is played by Hudson Jameson. He can be found on Twitter at @HudsonJameson

Soana Lette was played by me, Cameron Robertson. I can be found on Twitter at @MidnightMusic13.

Our game master was Nick Robertson. He can be found on Twitter at @Alias58.

Follow the show on Twitter and Instagram at @Tabletop_Squad. And check out our website at www.tabletopsquadron.com.

Please reach out to us and let us know what you like. We love to hear from our listeners. See you next time.