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Tabletop Squadron Transcript, Season 1 Episode 4:
A Monkey On Your Front

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, a fringer, and a slicer as they explore the galaxy helping a mysterious benefactor and each other.

Additional music this week is Stjepan Major by Peglica i Komandos.

Before we start, I wanna take a second to thank everyone for their five-star iTunes reviews. I’m talking to you LittleRaley, and you Scarbane. Special shout out to MiteyMights, DirectorSpy, you’re a wonderful person. leggd, go to Starbucks and tell them Tabletop Squadron says you deserve a macchiato. WesternShadow, thank you for your enthusiasm, and TheBrokenLegacy, may your dice ever roll triumphs.

If you’re keeping count that’s seven reviews. We only need three more to unlock super-secret art. It’s a lot of fun, and we’ll post it all over social media, so if you like us head on over there and tell the iTunes community. Maybe tell a friend. Once we hit this milestone we’ll come up with something else to bribe you into telling people about the show, so if you like content, review our show.

Anyway! On to the episode.

##

NICK: Hello, and welcome to Episode 4 of Tabletop Squadron. I’m your hosting game master, Nick. I’m gonna go around the table. Introduce yourselves and say who you are playing.

LAURA: Hi. I’m Laura, and I play Xianna’fan.

HUDSON: I’m Hudson, and I play Tink.

STEVEN: I’m not Hudson, I’m actually Steven, (distant laughter) and I play Sabos Niks.

LAURA: I’m also not Steven… Wow!

STEVEN: I Am Steven.

CAMERON: You’re not Hudson, either! (laughs)

HUDSON: Wow.

LAURA: And I’m also not Hudson.

STEVEN: Yeah, me neither.

HUDSON: Wooow.

LAURA: I’m definitely not Hudson.

STEVEN: Anyway!

CAMERON: Anyway. (giggling) I’m Cameron, and I’m playing Karma.

LAURA: I am also Cameron, though. (laughter) I’m not Steven or Hudson, but I am also Cameron.

STEVEN: I am in fact Cameron.

NICK: And now, let’s roll our Destiny points. I got it right. Oh yeah.

CAMERON: Good job. One dark side. Bad job.

STEVEN: Two light side.

CAMERON: Heyyy.

STEVEN: ‘Light’ side.

LAURA: One dark side.

HUDSON: Two light side.

CAMERON: Yay.

LAURA: We did so well.

CAMERON: Four light side, two dark side.

NICK: Alright. When we last left off you all had been given a rare moment of privacy and relaxation in your garden shed, and—

STEVEN: Guest quarters.

NICK: –guest quarters, and had been bedding down for the evening. We’ll open it up there.

LAURA: Xianna immediately sees that it’s two bunk beds and yells out, (gasps) “Top bunk! I call the top bunk!”

STEVEN: “Which one?”

LAURA: “The… right side. Yes.”

CAMERON: I just go and climb on the top bunk on the left.

STEVEN: Aww.

HUDSON: I take the bottom bunk. That’s what I wanted anyway.

STEVEN: I take the bottom bunk, because that’s what’s left.

HUDSON: I’m a bit heavy.

CAMERON: I look around and I notice that there are no cameras or recording equipment or anything in here.

NICK: Mm-hmm. You passed that check.

LAURA: Xianna would like poke her head upside down and look at Tink. “Tink! Do you like being the bottom?” (laughter) And is like smiling, and just staring at him.

HUDSON: I kinda crumple up my face and I don’t respond.

LAURA: I like twist over and look at Sabos. “Sabos! Do you like being the bottom?”

STEVEN: “I am on the bottom.”

LAURA: “Do you like being on the bottom?”

STEVEN: “I mean, I’d prefer the top, but I’ll take bottom.”

(laughter)

LAURA: Xianna just keeps laughing, and sits back up, and is very proud of herself.

HUDSON: Sounds like he’ll take whatever he can get.

LAURA: She is very amused with this.

CAMERON: I’m sitting on the edge of the top bunk. I have my feet swinging very much in Sabos’s area, not purposely trying to hit him, but also since he’s on the bottom bunk there’s just not a lot of space there.

STEVEN: Not trying not to hit me either, though.

CAMERON: Not trying to hit you, but also not really caring if you choose to put your face in the way of my foot.

STEVEN: (laughs) Oh. Cool.

CAMERON: “So, Togrutan.”

STEVEN: “Nautolan.”

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: “Again. What is with you two?”

CAMERON: “He introduced himself as Togrutan, so I’m going with it.”

STEVEN: “I’m… Sabos.”

CAMERON: “Nope. You’re Togrutan. Why are you here?”

STEVEN: “Uh, well, I’m from a small outpost on Osaron, not the Togrutan home world.”

CAMERON: “Okay…”

LAURA: “But—“

STEVEN: “And uh, we want to, you know, we’re seeking to establish trade routes throughout the galaxy. We’re trying to be independent of the home world. Kinda the first Togrutans to branch out. I was told that if I were to, you know, help someone scratch their back they could scratch mine, if you will.”

CAMERON: “That does nothing to explain to me why you’re here.”

LAURA: “Yes. That makes no sense.”

CAMERON: “Who’s back were you trying to scratch?”

STEVEN: “Oh, you know, the Corellian.”

CAMERON: “The Corellian’s back?”

LAURA: “The Corellian?!”

STEVEN: “Yeah.”

CAMERON: “Did this Corellian have a name, or did you just see what they look like and just went with it?”

STEVEN: “Ehhh… Sako.”

CAMERON: “Ah, so Sako.”

STEVEN: “Sako.”

CAMERON: “Oh, so the one who was supposed to be with us?”

STEVEN: “Yes. That’s right. I was told if I do some of his bidding he might help me establish some routes between Osaron and Corellia.”

CAMERON: “Okay…”

STEVEN: “Yup.”

CAMERON: “So, we’ve seen your vast expertise at Astrogation and piloting.”

STEVEN: “Yes. Yes.”

CAMERON: “Do you have any actual skills?”

STEVEN: “While I am an expert at Astrogation and piloting, I like to think I am a skilled negotiator.”

CAMERON: “You like to think, or you are?”

STEVEN: “I’m a good pilot, aren’t I?”

CAMERON: “No.”

STEVEN: “I negotiate as well as I pilot.”

LAURA: “No…”

CAMERON: “Oh great.”

STEVEN: “Okay. Okay. Before—“

LAURA: “You should not talk when we meet people.”

STEVEN: “We didn’t hit the trees. Okay? That’s how my negotiating works.”

LAURA: “Did we not? We did.”

CAMERON: “That was not you. That was me!” (laughs)

STEVEN: “I astrogated that.”

CAMERON: “Yeah. You astrogated to the trees.”

STEVEN: “That’s right. I wanted to test your skills. Why are you here?”

CAMERON: “Because I was hired for a bounty hunter job, because I’m a bounty hunter, and I brought in my mark very quickly and efficiently.”

STEVEN: “So why are you still here?”

LAURA: “Because money!”

CAMERON: “Well, because I’m being paid for a job. I don’t know if you are. Sako might be getting paid for this job.”

STEVEN: “Someone’s getting paid.”

LAURA: “I do not think that someone is you, though.”

STEVEN: “I’m getting paid in trade routes.”

LAURA: “So no.”

CAMERON: “Okay.”

LAURA: “That is not money.”

STEVEN: “And in credits.”

LAURA: “That is money. I do not think you are getting those credits, though.”

STEVEN: “Credits aren’t as important on Osaron.”

CAMERON: “Good, because I don’t think you’re getting any.”

LAURA: “Is it a trade based society?”

STEVEN: “It’s more of a hunter gatherer society.”

LAURA & CAMERON: “So, trade based?”

STEVEN: “We’re trying to make it into more of a modern world, almost like the home world.”

LAURA: “So then you want money.”

STEVEN: “Trade routes.”

CAMERON: “So wait, so you’re branching off from the home world to become a different group of Togrutans, and are trying to make it so that the current society more reflects the home world. So, why did you leave?”

STEVEN: “Uh, no. No.”

CAMERON: “That is what you said.”

STEVEN: “Well, there’s a lot of group think that goes on in the Togrutan culture. Us on our colony aren’t as, uh, groupy.”

LAURA: Xianna pops back down, like upside down, and looks at Tink and goes, “That is going nowhere, and I do not think he knows what he is talking about. What is your deal? You are big, and furry.”

HUDSON: “Well, now that I’ve gotten to know you a little bit… What do you wanna know? What do you mean my deal?”

STEVEN: “Top or bottom?”

LAURA: “Like, what is your deal?”

HUDSON: “Well, as a child—Err. How far back? How far back do we need to go here?”

(laughter)

CAMERON: I was born on a Tuesday!

LAURA: “Just like a general… What is your thing? Who do you like? What is—?”

HUDSON: “Well, if you haven’t noticed, my thing is slicing. I’m very, very good at it. That’s why I got picked up for the job. One of the best in the land, actually, in Corellia.”

LAURA: “Okie. Computers. Uh-huh.”

HUDSON: “Yes.”

LAURA: “Anything else?”

HUDSON: “Well, um… I did learn computers in an Empire run school one time, but you can’t really trust the Empire I found out, and so I ditched that. Since then I’ve just been kinda learning on my own, making my own way.”

LAURA: “Where is your home? You say Imperial, but…”

HUDSON: “So, I was on Mandalor as a child, but for the longest—”

LAURA: “You do not look Mandalorian.”

CAMERON: “They normally don’t have quite as much hair.”

LAURA: “Usually they are just humans.”

HUDSON: “Well, my parents were brought there as slaves, thank you very much, if you had to know…”

LAURA & CAMERON: “Oh…”

HUDSON: “…from their original home of Gigor, which is where my race is from, but then they got sent to Mandalor as slaves before they were freed by Duchess Satine. So, there’s my story.”

LAURA: “Cool. I was just curious.”

HUDSON: “What’s your deal?”

STEVEN: “Top.”

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: “I steal things.

HUDSON: “You steal things?”

LAURA: “I am sneaky.”

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: “Also, how open are you to a threesome with the Zabrak? He seemed interested. I just want to make sure, you know, keep things open just in case.”

HUDSON: “Well…”

LAURA: “I do not think we will have to, but you know, in the off chance that this will make things easier or if things get weird.”

CAMERON: Karma rolls over so that her head’s now hanging over the bed and just kind of stares at Sabos uncomfortably, and all my head tails just kind of fall around.

STEVEN: I like clear my head tentacles and stare uncomfortably back.

CAMERON: I pull my head back up.

HUDSON: “There was this one time back in college, things just kind of got weird. I had a lot of wine… So, if things happen, they happen is what I say. I try to go with the flow, cautiously.”

LAURA: “Okie. Just checking. Again, I do not think it is going to happen. You know, just checking all the options.”

HUDSON: “Well, thank you for your communication?”

LAURA: “I mean… Okie.”

STEVEN: “It seems like everyone’s open to it here, so… (mumbles)”

CAMERON: “Wait, what?”

HUDSON: “No one even asked you.”

(laughter)

LAURA: “No one asked you, Sabos. No one asked you.”

STEVEN: “I didn’t mean me. I’m not in y’all’s bunk. I’m in this bunk.”

CAMERON: “Oh. Okay. So, everyone referred to that bunk?”

LAURA: “You are on that side of the room. This side is the cool bunk. You are the not cool bunk.”

STEVEN: “I’m an ambassador.”

LAURA: “No you are not.”

STEVEN: “I’m too good for that.”

LAURA: “I do not think you are an official ambassador.”

STEVEN: “Look at my badge.” I hold up the badge.

LAURA: “Does that say Sakos?”

STEVEN: “No. this says Sabos. This is the Osaron official—“ (laughter)

LAURA: Which one does it say?

NICK: It says Sabos on it. Describe your Osaron ambassador’s badge.

STEVEN: It has a picture of Osaron, so basically just a circle with an orange… an orange circle. (laughter) And it says Sabos Niks, and a picture of me with my thumb up, and under that it says Ambassador.

LAURA: “That looks fake.”

STEVEN: “It’s laminated.”

LAURA: “That looks more fake than the fake badges I make.”

STEVEN: “As I said, we don’t have many resources on Osaron.”

LAURA: “Also, why is there just an orange blob? That could be anything.”

STEVEN: “That’s Osaron.”

LAURA: “I mean, again, it could be anything. So it is fake?”

STEVEN: “No. this is the official ambassador badge of Osaron. I know, because I am the official ambassador.”

LAURA: “Mmm… If you say so.”

STEVEN: “If you can make a better badge…”

LAURA: “I mean, maybe.”

STEVEN: “We Togrutans on Osaron might have need for your services.”

LAURA: “I do not have a laminator machine with me.”

STEVEN: “We can work that out.”

##

NICK: So, as you continue to discuss for a few hours, the camera pulls back. The sun has set. You hear night life in the jungle. As the camera pulls away from the outpost you see patrols going around on the exterior, and there’s a side-wipe that goes across, and suddenly you’re zoomed back in on the outside of your guest quarters, and it’s daytime, early morning.

HUDSON: I yawn as I wake up.

STEVEN: I sit up ambassadorily.

NICK: There’s a brief shot of you all waking up, and then another wipe—maybe this one’s a star wipe, we’ll get ridiculous with it—and you are all geared up and walking into the square in the middle of Outpost 4. You see one of the off-road speeders that was on the expedition yesterday, and Mills, the large guy with dark, lanky hair and scars, is throwing some crates of supplies into a trunk on the back. The speeder, now that you get a closer look, it hovers but also has skids on the bottom for sudden changes like palm tree trunks and underbrush and things. It looks like it seats six people. It’s got three two-person benches and then a large crate strapped to the back that works as a trunk, and he’s putting stuff into that crate back there.

As you walk up he waves at you and says, “Good morning.”

CAMERON: “Good morning.”

STEVEN: “Howdy, Mills.”

LAURA: “Egh.”

HUDSON: “Morning.”

CAMERON: Xianna doesn’t do mornings?

LAURA: Xianna’s not a morning person. She’s still kind of half asleep, and she’s probably leaning against whoever is right next to her, and kind of doing the jerky ‘I am awake, I am awake.’

STEVEN: “Mills, do we happen to know the description of the men we’re looking for today?”

NICK: “Well, there’s a couple of them. Their names are Lira and Williams. One of them is a stormtrooper and the other one’s an officer.”

CAMERON: “Which one is the trooper?”

NICK: “Lira.”

HUDSON: “Are they in love?”

NICK: “I… I don’t care. My job is to go get them.”

HUDSON: “So you’ll be joining us?”

NICK: “Yeah. I’ll be your guide, I guess. I was supposed to keep an eye on you. Falx presumably trusts you, which makes no sense, but the money’s good, and this is a lot more comfortable than where we used to live with all those beasts about, so I’ll take you wherever you need to go, but it’s gonna probably be an hour or so before we’re ready to leave. The speeder’s still charging, so if there’s anything you need to take care of before you go, now would be the time.”

CAMERON: “Wonderful.”

HUDSON: “Bathroom break.”

LAURA: “We literally just left. Did you not go?”

HUDSON: “I have to go a lot when I first wake up.”

(laughter)

LAURA: ‘Okie.”

NICK: Mills is like, “No, no, no. Not, not here in the square. There’s a barracks bathroom over there.”

HUDSON: “Oh. Oh, okay.”

STEVEN: I turn around so I cannot be seen by Karma, and clean my weapon and prepare it.

NICK: Ew.

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: Why…?

STEVEN: I was giving Karma crap about cleaning the bug guts.

NICK: Oh, your actual weapon. Ohh.

STEVEN: Yes.

CAMERON: His actual weapon. And now you’re really regretting not cleaning it yesterday.

LAURA: “Why do you–? You clean your weapons at night. Why are you do it right now?”

STEVEN: “I’m not cleaning my weapon. Damn it.” I run off.

LAURA: “Okie.”

CAMERON: Karma turns as she hears Xianna say this. (laughs)

NICK: As they all kinda scatter, Mills looks at Xianna and Karma who are still there and says “I’ve got basic supplies, but if you need anything specifically for the jungle there’s a quartermaster off the square over there,” and he points across the square.

CAMERON: “Fabulous.” I’m gonna go that way.

LAURA: “Thank you.” I go that way as well.

NICK: Okie-dokie. You see the building that he pointed out across the way, it looks like a very small shack on the other side of the square. Most of these buildings are probably between 500 and 1,000 square feet, so generally cabin sized. This one looks like an outhouse. As you come up to it, it’s another concrete building but it’s got one of the Star Wars doors on it, so it swooshes open and you see that it actually leads to just a staircase going down. The quartermaster is actually stationed in a basement dug into the ground.

As you go down the stairs, the walls are all dirt crisscrossed with durasteel beams to keep the area stable, and there’s a steel cage that takes up about two thirds of this basement with a bunch of crates of supplies behind it, and there’s a bored looking human behind a glass window. He’s bald with graying, short, cropped hair on the sides and eyes that bug out of his face. His belly presses against the desk in front of him. He makes eye contact with you but says nothing.

CAMERON: “Hey hun, do you have any vibro-swords?”

NICK: (reluctant and disinterested) “Yeah… but… Do you have an order issuing you a vibro-sword? They don’t just give those out.”

CAMERON: “No. I’m wanting to purchase one. We’re about to leave on an expedition for Falx.”

NICK: “Ugh. Vibro… Yeah. If you’re working for him, I guess I can explain the inventory later. Charge you… I don’t know, throw out a number. Normally I don’t have to do this. Uh, 750 credits?” The exact going rate of a vibro-sword.

CAMERON: Yeah. I was seeing if I had Negotiation, but I don’t yet. “Alright.”

NICK: You hand him ‘some credits,’ because Star Wars is super vague about what that looks like depending on what it is.

CAMERON: It’s like two and a half blocks of credits.

LAURA: Or maybe just one stick? I don’t know.

NICK: Gold bars, but sometimes they’re flash drives. Yeah, so you have a vibro-sword. It’s not super fancy, it’s got a tape grip on it, but it looks pretty much fresh out of the box, they just bought the cheapest functioning one that they could.

CAMERON: I go through the ones that they have and like slash with them and stuff to get the one that has the best feel.

NICK: Okay. They’re all identical, but one of them feels like it was wrapped a little bit better.

CAMERON: Cool. I take that one.

NICK: The guy behind the counter, after you’ve asked for the third one, is starting to look really annoyed. “Look, they’re all the same, just take one. I don’t know what you’re doing.”

CAMERON: The one that he hands me that time I do a more flashy slash with and go a little bit closer to him than I had been doing, so that he backs off.

NICK: Yeah. He shuts up, but also does not change his posture at all.

CAMERON: That’s fine. I just wanted him to stop talking.

LAURA: Xianna’s just gonna kinda smile and be like, “Do you have any grenades?”

NICK: “Uh, is this a military outpost? Yeah. What do you want?”

LAURA: “I know, but like… Do you just like give to me? I do not know the rules here. I’m sorry.”

NICK: “Just… they cost money. Just—“

LAURA: “I know they cost money, but you seemed confused about how much it costs with her.”

NICK: “No, I know things. I’m really good—I’m a good quartermaster. Yeah, we’ve got like all the grenades. Half these boxes are probably grenades. That’s why we’re underground. It’s not like I could die, or whatever.”

HUDSON: “I’d like two grenades, please.”

CAMERON: Tink says, walking in from the bathroom.

NICK: Oh, are you there now?

HUDSON: Yeah. Yeah, I’m done.

NICK: “Great, some weird albino Wookie.”

HUDSON: Whoa.”

LAURA: “Excuse me.”

HUDSON: “I’ll take THREE grenades.”

NICK: I don’t know how much grenades cost. How much do grenades cost?

LAURA: Uh, so I have knock-out grenades listed as 120, but that’s not a regular grenade.

NICK: We’ll just do 120, that’s fine. “So, it’s 120 a pop. I’m sure they all cost slightly different, but I don’t feel like looking it up, so either I’m giving you a good deal or I’m ripping you off. I’m not sure. Yeah. You want just like explode grenades?”

LAURA: “I want the exploding grenades.”

HUDSON: “Explode, please.”

NICK: “Okay. Wookie guy, here’s three.” He slides them across, you give him the money.

LAURA: “I want two please.”

NICK: “Okay. Here’s two. It’s fine. Whatever. Maybe I’ll even make sure the Empire gets this money back. Doesn’t matter.”

STEVEN: While they do that, I finally finish cleaning my weapon, go to Mills, ask where everyone is, and then join them in the outhouse.

NICK: Mills looks up from a panel he has open on the speeder, and he’s got a data pad plugged into it, and he’s running some diagnostics. “Why—You’re not with everyone else? What are you even… They’re that way. Go to the outhouse looking building. We’re leaving in like 20 minutes. I hope you get your stuff together.”

STEVEN: “Yeah.”

NICK: Okay. Then it cuts back to you walking down the stairs. So, grenades, and a sword, I’m sure you’re definitely gonna wanna use a sword against a kirstens beast. Yeah, that’s a great idea.

STEVEN: “Ooh, I’ll have one of those swords.”

NICK: “You want a sword?”

STEVEN: “What did she get?” I point to Karma.

CAMERON: I slash the sword threateningly at you.

STEVEN: “Yes. Yes.”

NICK: “Sure, 750 credits.”

STEVEN: “Hoo, that’s pretty steep.”

NICK: “Yeah it is.”

CAMERON: “That’s the going rate for a vibro-sword.”

STEVEN: I can negotiate here, so I’m gonna actually try to negotiate with him.

NICK: Okay.

STEVEN: I’d like a better price. I’m kind of aiming for 500, but if he wants to do better…

NICK: (chuckle) You’re aiming for 500? Okay.

STEVEN: yeah. I want just a better price.

HUDSON: Get triple triumphs and you got it for 200.

NICK: Okay. Roll your Negotiation against his Negotiation, which is a red and two purples.

STEVEN: Sure.

NICK: And also, you can have a black die because they’ve been irritating him this whole time.

STEVEN: Nah, I’ll just not do that, if that’s cool with you.

NICK: Is that one of your talents?

STEVEN: What?

CAMERON: No, he flipped a light side point to not have the black die.

NICK: Oh. That’s not what that does. You can upgrade one of your greens to a yellow.

STEVEN: Oh. Well, never mind then. We can just put that back, and I’ll see what my talents are. Let’s see… Streetsmarts or Knowledge, that’s not that. Fuck it. Black die.

NICK: If you flip one it’ll upgrade one of your greens to a yellow, or add a green if you have all yellows.

STEVEN: Nah.

LAURA: He’ll be fine.

NICK: Okay.

STEVEN: Or not.

CAMERON: Nope!

NICK: Oh wow.

STEVEN: That would be a fuck ton of—

CAMERON: Two threats.

STEVEN: Two threats, yeah, and nothing else that really happens.

NICK: “Look, so, I report to the Empire. I don’t have to do anything for you all.”

STEVEN: “Oh, I understand. I’m not an imperialist.”

NICK: “Yeah. It’s time for you to stop talking now, buddy. Uh, you can give me 1,000 credits for this vibro-sword, or you can all get out.”

STEVEN: “750 sounds great.”

NICK: “Nope. The price is 1,000 credits.”

LAURA: “Do not—“

STEVEN: “What? What?!”

LAURA: “Sabos, stop it.” Has he given the rest of us all our stuff already?

NICK: yeah. You guys already have your stuff.

LAURA: Okay. Xianna definitely has already put the grenades into her magical pockets and is like kind of backing up with Karma and Tink, being like, “We should go… We should go right now… Let’s go…”

CAMERON: I sheath my sword with a flourish, and just turn in a swing of head tails and walk back up the stairs.

NICK: So it’s just him and Sabos left.

STEVEN: “So, 1,000 is not gonna work.” (laughter)

NICK: “You know, it’s kind of weird that she didn’t have a sword, right?” He says, pointing at Karma as she leaves. “Because she’s obviously good with one, but she didn’t have one. Are you good with a sword?”

STEVEN: “No.”

NICK: “Okay. Why won’t 1,000 work? You broke?”

STEVEN: “Yeah.” (laughs)

NICK: “You smugglers never have any actual money, which is weird because you work in expensive stuff.”

STEVEN: “It’s a long trip out to Osaron.”

NICK: “Mm. You got anything worth trading?”

STEVEN: “That’s a curious question. Uh… Unless you’re interested in macro binoculars, I’m not entirely sure I got much for you.”

NICK: “How much money do you have?”

STEVEN: “750.”

(laughter)

NICK: “Oh. Well, I notice you’ve got an extra head tail. I’ll take that.”

STEVEN: “Not sure I’m willing to part with my extra head tail.”

NICK: “That’s pretty inconvenient for you, huh?”

STEVEN: “It certainly can be.”

NICK: “It’s weird having someone come into your personal space and immediately say that what is a part of you is not worth what you asked for, isn’t it?”

STEVEN: “Is the vibro-sword a part of you?”

NICK: “This is my inventory. I am the quartermaster.”

STEVEN: “Do you have any smaller cutting items, that might cost less?”

NICK: “I’ve got a vibro-knife, give to you for 200, and your macro binoculars.”

STEVEN: “Well, how about 250 and not the macro binoculars?”

NICK: “Yeah, okay. I was just trying to be mean at this point, but I want you to leave my thing now.”

STEVEN: “I’m cool with a knife.”

NICK: “Okay.”

STEVEN: “Alright.”

NICK: You can have a vibro-knife. I’m pretty sure I overcharged you like crazy for that, but whatever.

STEVEN: (laughing) That’ll work.

LAURA: Eh, they’re not cheap.

NICK: Yeah, well, or undercharged. This guy just wants him to go away. You have a vibro-knife. The stats are in the book.

CAMERON: The stats are right here.

NICK: And we’ll do a scene transition where they shake hands over the vibro-knife and the credits, and it zooms in on their hands, and it zooms out and everybody is in the speeder driving through the jungle.

##

NICK: Okay. You’re in the speeder. Did anybody volunteer to drive?

LAURA: No.

STEVEN: Oh, I—Yeah.

HUDSON: I should drive. Wait, is there only one speeder for all of us?

NICK: Yeah, it’s like a six-seater.

STEVEN: Oh yeah, I’m gonna drive.

LAURA: Xianna would’ve immediately called for a center seat, she wants a middle seat.

CAMERON: Are there? I thought it was three rows of two seats.

LAURA: Oh. I heard two rows of three seats. Which one is it?

NICK: It’s three rows of two seats.

LAURA: Oh, okay.

STEVEN: I have Piloting: Planetary. “I’m just really confident in my abilities.”

HUDSON: “Um, I’m gonna take this one after the whole tree incident.” So, I pilot.

STEVEN: “I do not concede.”

HUDSON: “We roll chance cubes to settle this.”

LAURA: Xianna takes both of the back seats.

HUDSON: “Do you need to borrow mine?”

CAMERON: Alright. Roll a force die. If it’s a light side then Tink drives, if it’s a dark side… (laughs)

STEVEN: Alright, let’s do it. Damn!

CAMERON: Tink drives.

HUDSON: Tink drives, light side!

NICK: And you owe him five credits. No, it’s just one light side. I thought it was two light side. Okay. You pull out chance cubes immediately with a glint in your eye and win the roll. You’re driving, Mills is in the seat next to you—

STEVEN: I sit in the passenger—No. No he’s not. (laughs)

NICK: So we flash back to a scene of Mills getting into the passenger seat and you laying a hand on his chest, with like ‘Excuse me.’

STEVEN: “Chance cube.”

CAMERON: (laughs)

NICK: Okay. He’s like, “Fine. I’ll roll a chance cube. I’m a gambler.” Roll it.

STEVEN: Light, I sit there?

NICK: Yeah.

STEVEN: Okay. Damn it!

CAMERON: Dark side!

STEVEN: I get in the back seat.

NICK: Mills is like, “Fine, I’ll gamble. It’s fine. I’m just supposed to kind of help you guys figure out where to go. No big deal.” And you say, ‘Well, chance cubes,’ and without even turning from the driver’s seat Tink holds up a cube. You snatch it out of his hand, you roll it, and you immediately lose. Mills goes, “See,” and so he’s in the passenger’s seat.

In the second row there is actually one other person. It is an Imperial officer. He looks to be pretty young, like fresh, pretty nervous. He introduced himself as Spark Duelson. The camera zooms around, you’re all wearing the helicopter earphones with the microphones. “Oh boy. I sure am glad we’re out here in the jungle.”

LAURA: Wait. How old is he?!

NICK: (grinning) Like, 20-ish.

LAURA: Okay.

NICK: A young 20.

CAMERON: Xianna is 100% sitting next to him.

NICK: I don’t know why I did the Morty voice. Okay?

LAURA: Xianna got into the back seat at first, and her plan was to spread out, and then she realized there was someone sitting there.

CAMERON: Karma was climbing into the middle seat, saw him, and was like ‘…no,’ and got back down and stood next to Xianna until Xianna got in. (laughter)

LAURA: No, no, Xianna is in the back seat, but she’s in the back seat right behind him and is doing the like, elbows on the back of his chair, leaning forward, being like, “So…” (giggles)

NICK: Which is funny, too, because you’re all connected with microphones, so there’s no reason to do that.

LAURA: Mm-hmm.

NICK: “Oh. Oh wow. That sure is exciting. I’m sure excited to go out on this mission. Oh geez.”

CAMERON: So, I get back in the middle seat.

NICK: Spark Duelson. He’s a petty officer. “I specialize in communications!”

(snickering)

STEVEN: “Do you?”

NICK: “Yeah!”

LAURA: “Oh. That is fascinating. Tell me more~”

NICK: He blushes. “Yeah. Well, the funny thing is hyperspace communication, you’d think the higher frequency would—“ and the camera pans out, but he keeps talking for quite a while.

LAURA: No, like straight up, can I make a Charm roll to see if he can just like keep talking and maybe say something he shouldn’t?

NICK: Sure. What a great idea.

LAURA: What would the difficulty be?

NICK: Easy, because he’s a turd, but two black dice because you are driving fast, and also he doesn’t know a whole lot.

LAURA: So then, how many? Two black?

NICK: Two black dice. One because you’re on a speeder, and the other because he doesn’t know that much useful stuff anyway.

LAURA: Two successes.

NICK: Oh. Yeah. “Well, you’d think the higher frequencies would be more important, but actually the low frequencies are more important, especially when we’re bypassing Imperial code to try to get our smuggling equipment out. … Oops.”

(laughter)

LAURA: Uh, where is Tink sitting?

CAMERON: Tink’s driving.

LAURA: Oh, Tink’s driving, so never mind. She does kind of look over at Karma and wink, and then just go, “Oh? Um, why would you say oops? I did not hear anything. I am just so interested in what you are saying.”

NICK: “Oh, that’s good, because if I let loose that the lower frequencies make it easier to bypass Imperial code so we could shed our smuggling equipment, that would be really bad. … Oops.”

LAURA: “Again, I do not understand. It is okay.”

NICK: “Maybe it’s like a nervous tick. I just say oops sometimes. I’m sure it won’t come up. Everything’s fine.”

LAURA: “It is so cute. Do not mind.”

NICK: “Oh, you think I’m cute?” He like clams up and blushes.

CAMERON: (laughing) Karma scoots over towards the wall a little bit more in their seat, kind of like ‘um…’

NICK: Yeah.

CAMERON: She’s feeling awkward, because he’s the same age as her sons, and she’s like, agh, I don’t wanna think about my kids doing this. I do not want my kids to meet Xianna. (laughter)

LAURA: Yeah. I mean, Xianna’s like 23 or 24.

CAMERON: Yeah, but you seem real dangerous. (laughs)

LAURA: (laughs) Oh yeah. It is not good.

NICK: You drive your speeder for about an hour into the jungle, and you come to a clearing, and there’s some obvious blaster marks on some of the surrounding trees, and like a fight has happened here. Mills signals for Tink to slow down and stop.

HUDSON: I slow down and stop.

NICK: Great. Mills hops out with a (grunts), action man noises, and he’s carrying his stripped down blaster. “This is where we lost track of the original party. We found two of them, but three of them are still missing besides the deserters.”

HUDSON: “Were the two found dead or alive?”

NICK: “They were pretty dead, but I can’t tell if they got shot first or chewed on by some of the local flora and fauna first. By the way, some of the plants also eat, because I said flora and fauna.”

STEVEN: (laughing) “You did say flora.”

CAMERON: “Yeah, the flora kind of freaked me out a little bit. Alright.”

HUDSON: “That’s a little bit scary.”

LAURA: “That is concerning.”

NICK: As he says that, you hear this weird creaking noise from a tree. He goes, “Not today!” And he shoots it twice, and the tree goes still. (laughter) “That’s right! That’s where these scars are from.” He points to some big, long ones down his chest.

LAURA: “A tree? Really?”

CAMERON: “Wow. Alright. Don’t touch trees.”

LAURA: “Okie. Yes. Do not touch the trees.”

NICK: “Basically, if it bleeds you can kill it, but it can also kill you…”

LAURA: “Do the trees—“

NICK: “And everything on this planet bleeds!”

LAURA: “Okie. I was just about to ask if the trees bleed.”

CAMERON: “So we’re shooting all the plants?”

NICK: “Except for the ones you don’t want to make angry. That tree had it coming.”

CAMERON: “Okay…” (laughs)

LAURA: I’m going to stand in the middle.

STEVEN: This makes sense.

NICK: “This is why I’m along. I was born and raised here on Unroola Dawn.”

CAMERON: “I am finding myself more and more grateful that you’re here, Mills.”

NICK: “Me too.” He looks confused for a second, and then goes back to surveying the scenery. “Well, you’re on this mission to try and find these deserters, so get to finding.” He sets up like a cover position on a tree stump and starts scanning the edges of the perimeter.

CAMERON: Could I do a Perception check?

NICK: Perception checks would be good. Survival would be better.

STEVEN: I was gonna roll a Survival.

CAMERON: Okay, you roll Survival.

LAURA: I don’t have Survival. I could try it, though.

HUDSON: I’m doing Perception.

STEVEN: How hard is this Survival check, Mister Master?

LAURA: Actually, I’ll do Perception.

NICK: Average.

LAURA: It’s not dark or anything, is it?

NICK: No. There’s a lot of undergrowth. Perception will be hard. Survival will be average. That’s three purples.

HUDSON: Three successes, two threats.

STEVEN: Two successes and a threat.

LAURA: (groans)

CAMERON: That was a Survival?

STEVEN: Yeah.

CAMERON: Alright. Here comes my Perception…

HUDSON: Xianna got a weird roll.

CAMERON: Hey! You got a Cam roll.

LAURA: Okay, so I rolled a Perception, and it’s definitely a Cam roll. It’s a triumph with the success cancelled out, and a threat.

CAMERON: Nope. I failed.

NICK: Any threats or anything?

CAMERON: Nope, just failures.

HUDSON: I had two successes and two threats.

NICK: Okay. With the successful Survival check by Sabos, you find a trail through some, they look like palms except when you look on the underside there’s a bunch of teeth hanging down, but they’re kind of bent back and broken, and there’s a tree with a blaster mark in it that doesn’t look like a ricochet, it looks like someone shot this tree, and you see a little trail of footsteps with a little bit of blood leading off, at about a 45 degree angle to the left, more west than the way you were driving but still the same general direction you guys were going.

With the successful Perception check, Tink, you see the same thing. You and Sabos are standing on the edge of the clearing pointing. ‘Okay, I see this,’ and he’s able to chime in with his survival skills of ‘you can tell from here that they were hurt, because they’re bleeding…’

LAURA & HUDSON: Ahhh.

HUDSON: Didn’t pick up on that.

LAURA: Uh-huh. Yeah?

NICK: Then, all of those threats kick in right about now. You hear a horrific screeching noise, and a bunch of what look like monkeys drop out of the trees straight down onto you. You look at about four of them. What they look like is capuchin monkeys, but with no legs or arms or tails, and where their tail would be is a hooked crab claw looking thing, and on their tummies are whole bunches of like millipede legs. You don’t get to see a very good look at that because they’re dropping at your faces.

LAURA: Agh!

NICK: This is where Xianna’s triumph kicks in, that she happens to be looking up, because she’s looking around like ‘I don’t see shit…’

LAURA: ‘That is not why I am here. I am here to steal things. The bounty hunter an survivalist person can look at trees.’

NICK: Yeah. You’re looking up, tapping your foot, and you see these things drop out of the sky, so you get a shot before a Vigilance roll.

LAURA: “Oh shit!” Yeah. I’m gonna pull out my gun and shoot them. Also, my gun has Quickdraw in it.

NICK: Nice. The gun has Quickdraw?

LAURA: Filed Frontsight, gives you the innate talent of Quickdraw but it does increase the difficulty of checks beyond short.

NICK: Okay. They’re medium. So, it doesn’t upgrade, it increases? So would that make it a hard shot?

LAURA: Increases difficulty of checks beyond short range by one.

NICK: So you get a shot off while they’re still at range, and then you’ll still get to roll initiative, so you might get another shot off before they actually land.

HUDSON: Is our first battle gonna be four monkeys?

NICK: Maybe. (laughs)

HUDSON: That’s great.

NICK: Hey man, don’t shit all over my encounters.

HUDSON: (laughs) No. I’m saying it’s great.

STEVEN: And they’re pretty tasty.

NICK: Good connection.

LAURA: One failure, three advantages.

NICK: Okay. You miss. How would you like to spend those advantages? You can give people blue dice, you can change the environment…

LAURA: I’m gonna give whoever shoots next a blue die, just by the fact that me shooting them lets everyone know where they are.

NICK: Yeah. I think that’s fair.

CAMERON: Amid you yelling ‘oh sheet!’

LAURA: I do yell ‘oh sheet!’ (giggles)

NICK: I need you all to roll Vigilance for me, please.

STEVEN: Oh, wonderful.

HUDSON: Oh great.

CAMERON: Two advantages for Karma.

HUDSON: One advantage.

LAURA: Two successes and one advantage.

STEVEN: Two advantages.

NICK: Wow, y’all are really bad. Could you roll me a yellow and a green for Mills, please?

CAMERON: Yup. Two successes and a triumph.

NICK: Okay. So, Mills is gonna go first.

LAURA: yeah!

STEVEN: Triumphs don’t include successes?

CAMERON: Yes they do.

STEVEN: Oh, they do?

CAMERON: A triumph includes a success, but not an advantage, because the triumph is the better advantage.

STEVEN: Oh, okay. Gotcha.

NICK: So, if you could go ahead and roll for me… his shooting is two greens and a yellow, and it’s an average check, but he gets a blue die for reasons.

CAMERON: That is, heh, five advantages.

HUDSON: Was that blue die from Laura or for other reasons?

NICK: The blue die: He hears ‘oh sheet,’ and immediately action rolls and lands in the middle, points up, and starts shooting. He sees that he’s not gonna be able to move his arms fast enough, but he’s so comfortable with the jungle and having been raised there his whole life, he immediately shoots down in a circle around him, and you realize his blaster is a fully automatic modified rifle.

He shoots, and it sprays a whole bunch of dead leaves and stuff into the air and makes a weird smoky screen thing where anything that might be trying to land on you wouldn’t be able to see as well. He’s going to spend all of his advantages on, the first round, any attack that they do is gonna have a black die. There’s four of them, and four of y’all, so that’s pretty good. That was Mills, being awesome, and he spits to the side and says, “I hate bug monkeys.”

CAMERON: “Oh, these are the cute things? What?”

LAURA: “These are not cute.”

NICK: It’s the next person’s turn.

LAURA: I had two successes and an advantage. Karma should use that first PC slot.

NICK: Okay. One PC slot.

CAMERON: Are they still at medium?

NICK: By now they’re at short range, so they’re probably five or six feet above your head at this point.

CAMERON: I’m gonna shoot ‘em.

LAURA: Shoot ‘em real good.

CAMERON: With my blaster. I’m gonna take the blue die from Xianna.

LAURA: Yes.

NICK: Do you want to aim? You could use a maneuver to aim.

CAMERON: Oh hey! I’ll use a maneuver to aim! Another blue die!

NICK: What a great idea. Let’s use the game.

CAMERON: (laughs) Oh right, we’re playing a game. Two successes, two advantages.

NICK: Okay. How much damage is that?

CAMERON: That is 11 damage. I shoot one of the bug monkeys for 11 damage. For my advantages, I want to shoot that monkey into one of its friends to knock it off course so it doesn’t land on someone.

NICK: Okay. It’ll have a black die on its attack, but it’s because its corpse fell into it.

CAMERON: Yeah.

NICK: The bolt—You’re using military grade hardware here, so it basically turns into a donut of a bug monkey, and the shrapnel spins into another one and you hear (animal noise) and then it continues to fall in bullet time. Looks like it’s four, now three times NPC slots. The first one is going to fall directly onto Sabos’s face. Do you have defense of any kind?

STEVEN: No.

NICK: Alright. Can you roll me an average difficulty two green dice? Oh, with a black die because it can’t see very good.

CAMERON: A failure and three advantages.

NICK: Okay. It’ll use the advantages. They have some sort of weird sonar thing going on, so it misses but it begins chittering to one of its friends who is also landing right now on Tink’s face. Tink, do you have any defense or anything?

HUDSON: Mine shows blank, so I don’t think I do. I don’t know if I ever calculated it.

CAMERON: (laughs) So, no.

LAURA: You don’t, no, because you have no armor or anything.

NICK: Okay. The same thing, but with a black die, but also a blue die.

CAMERON: Failure, three advantages.

NICK: Okay. Well, it’s gonna use those three advantages to super boost the last one that is falling straight for Xianna. It’s the one that she missed the first time. It’s also the one that got hit with the shrapnel. So, two black dice, two blue dice.

CAMERON: Four failures and an advantage.

NICK: Wow. These things suck.

CAMERON: I roll so well. This is great.

NICK: Next time Hudson is rolling for the bad guys.

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: Xianna’s also yelling, “No! Not my face!”

NICK: It comes flying down. The advantage is that you flinch away, because these things are kind of gross looking. You flinch away, it lands to the ground, but you’re kind of off balance if you try to shoot it so you’ll have a black die on your next attack, but it looks up at you and bears its teeth and hisses, and it has those same giant red bug eyes where you would expect cute, little monkey eyes to be.

LAURA: ‘Nooo!’

(laughter)

NICK: And its tail has that lobster claw thing on it, and it clicks at you a little bit. Now there are three more PC slots. Who would like to go next? These things are now on the ground, one bounced off of Sabos without really doing much, one bounced off of Tink, and the other one just went (falling noise), bump, on the ground away from Xianna.

STEVEN: I’ll shoot.

NICK: Okay. Sabos is gonna try and shoot one of these things. Does the full rifle have any negatives for close range? This thing is engaged with you—

LAURA & CAMERON: Awww!

NICK: Well, not engaged like you’re gonna get married. Oh boy.

LAURA: Tell us. How did it propose?

CAMERON: It tried to fall on his face.

STEVEN: It did. It dropped out of the sky on my face.

LAURA: Aww. It dropped down onto one knee and presented a ring.

CAMERON: Of teeth.

LAURA: With a beautiful jewel of Yavin on it. (giggles)

NICK: (weakly) It is at engaged range. That means, because you have your big, giant rifle, that it is +2 difficulty, so instead of an easy check it’s a hard check.

STEVEN: Sure.

NICK: yeah. Shoot that thing. Or, you could try to shoot one across the place from you, and those are at medium range. Across the clearing, that’s the word I was trying to use. That means the one that tried to kill you—

STEVEN: No, I’ll shoot the one close to me.

NICK: Yeah. That’s probably a good idea.

CAMERON: Do you wanna flip a light side point to upgrade?

STEVEN: Yeah. Can I upgrade one of my dice?

CAMERON: Yeah.

NICK: Ooh, fancy.

(laughter)

STEVEN: Well, there’s a failure and an advantage.

NICK: You miss. This thing hisses at you. How would you like to spend your advantage?

STEVEN: It is pissed off at someone else.

NICK: I think that would take more than one advantage.

CAMERON: You can give the next person a blue die.

STEVEN: Yeah, let’s do that, or just like it slips in the leaves and shit.

NICK: I like that it slips in the leaves. You could give it a black die for that. It’s a little dazed. It’ll be harder to hit you.

CAMERON: Your shot fires up some leaves and they land on top of it.

STEVEN: That’ll work.

CAMERON: So now it has to dig its way out.

NICK: It’s covered in the leaves. You just see the pincer claw come up. It’s like the old vampire myths. It’s picking up one leaf at a time to set it aside.

LAURA: Oh god. It’s gotta count all the leaves now. (laughter)

NICK: Alright. On to whoever is going next.

HUDSON: I wanna go next, because I have a vibro-axe, so I was built for this type of battle.

NICK: Oh, yeah, okay.

CAMERON: (giggling) Against tiny monkeys.

HUDSON: Against tiny monkeys. The one that landed on me, where is that?

NICK: It’s just in the grass next to you scuttling around and missing.

HUDSON: I just try to go, whack, and hit it with my vibro-axe.

NICK: Makes sense. Your difficulty will be two purples.

HUDSON: A success.

NICK: How much damage does your vibro-axe do?

HUDSON: It does Brawn +3, and my Brawn is 3, so 6. Crit 2!

NICK: Well, you didn’t have a crit…

HUDSON: I know. I’m just letting you know. Laughs)

NICK: No, that’s good to know. Thank you. I appreciate that. You cut it cleanly in half and the two halves fall to the ground, and skitter off in separate directions, and then fall down and finish dying.

HUDSON: Ah. I didn’t know they work like that. That’s interesting to know.

CAMERON: Question. On melee, do you add the number of successes to your damage as well?

NICK: Yes.

CAMERON: Okay. So, it was actually one more damage than that, too.

NICK: Okay. That leaves Xianna left.

LAURA: Yeah. I’m going to aim at the one in front of me, and then shoot it.

NICK: Okay.

LAURA: Would it be short range by now?

NICK: Yeah. It missed so it’s not engaged with you, but it is short range.

LAURA: What is short range? Average?

CAMERON: Two, yeah.

LAURA: And then, what is my shooting… That would be five successes and one threat.

NICK: Wow. That does, what, 11 damage?

NICK: Yes, 11.

NICK: Dang I’m good. Yeah, it explodes in a puff of purply venom, with a small monkey ‘eep.’

LAURA: “Ew.”

NICK: Yeah. There’s like one little stream of smoke out of a crater from where the monkey used to be. It is gone. You shot it real good. Now we’re back to the top. Mills looks around and says, “I’ll make sure there’s not more of them,” and he goes running off into the jungle.

STEVEN: (laughs)

LAURA: “No. where are you going? There is still one here.” Xianna’s like pointing at the claw like, ‘No…’

NICK: You hear a tree creaking. He says, “Shut up, tree!” Pew pew, and then goes running off. That comes to a PC slot.

STEVEN: Uh, yeah…

NICK: … Okay. It’s the one by you. You gonna shoot him?

STEVEN: I’m gonna try to stab it with my vibro-knife.

NICK: Okay. (laughs) I’m so excited. The difficulty is two.

CAMERON: So, that’s Melee. Melee is always two.

NICK: Thank you rules expert.

CAMERON: You’re welcome!

STEVEN: Should I upgrade? I don’t know.

NICK: Ah-ha.

CAMERON: You should’ve upgraded.

LAURA: Yeah.

STEVEN: So, it’s a failure and two advantages.

NICK: I like this monkey thing so much. How would you like to spend your two advantages?

STEVEN: It’s buried again.

NICK: Okay. It’s more under the dirt.

STEVEN: (laughs) It’s really buried.

NICK: It’s going to spend its maneuver digging itself out of the dirt, I guess. It’ll still have a black die. It’s going to attack you, Sabos.

CAMERON: Alright Hudson, you have to roll this time for the monkey.

HUDSON: Oh, you’re right. What do I roll?

NICK: Two greens and two purples with one black die.

HUDSON: One success, two threats.

NICK: Yay!

STEVEN: Aww.

NICK: Good job, buddy!

HUDSON: Good die rolls.

(laughter)

NICK: Geez. That’s weird. You said one success and two threats? Here’s what happens. It finally jumps up out of this, you see from where it jumps that it’s actually in a two foot hole at this point because you keep burying it further. It latches onto your chest, and it opens its mouth and it does that really creepy unfolding thing, and some mandibles come out and sink into your chest. It does, with one success, 7 damage.

STEVEN: Oh, of course.

CAMERON: That hits your soak, so you take 3 wounds.

NICK: And it’s super excited, and it makes happy, gloating monkey noises.

STEVEN: “Ah!”

NICK: You all see this thing latch onto Sabos and stab him with its weird, monkey bug mouth.

LAURA: “Ah? That is not good.”

HUDSON: “Ooh. Ow.”

STEVEN: “Ow.”

NICK: While its head is sunk into his chest the claw tail is snipping at all of you. Click-click-click.

HUDSON: Who’s next?

CAMERON: So, next is a PC slot?

NICK: Yes, PC slot.

CAMERON: Okay. Karma looks at Sabos, and then looks down at her gun… and then is like ‘well, alright, let’s do this,’ and aims her blaster carbine at his face. (laughter)

NICK: Okay…

STEVEN: Yup.

NICK: Which is especially interesting since it’s on his chest.

STEVEN: Because a knife wouldn’t work.

NICK: She’s like, ‘it would be a mercy to put him down.’

CAMERON: (laughs) I’m aiming at the monkey.

NICK: Okay.

LAURA: Xianna’s looking at Karma, looks down at her gun, and then Xianna also looks over at Sabos, and is like, ‘oh no…’ (giggles)

CAMERON: (laughs) Okay. So, there’s no blue dice left or anything, right?

NICK: No.

CAMERON: I’m sure you’ll be fine.

STEVEN: Yep.

CAMERON: (laughing) I am gonna upgrade it so that I have less of a chance of shooting you on accident.

STEVEN: Yup. Yup.

CAMERON: I’m sure it’ll be fine. See, look, you’re fine. One success.

(laughter)

NICK: Ooh, that was close.

LAURA: So close.

CAMERON: That’s 10 damage to the monkey.

NICK: Okay. You shoot him, shoot the monkey in the back of the head, and it splatters its guts onto Sabos’s chest, and falls to the ground. The force transfers into you a little bit. It knocks you back. It feels like you got punched by somebody who wasn’t trying to hurt you too bad.

STEVEN: Great.

NICK: But it was real scary, and the monkey is now dead at your feet. The bug monkey, that’s the race’s name, bug monkey, and by race I mean animal species because this is not a sentient creature.

CAMERON: From Sabos’s point of view, you just saw me look at you, look at my gun, and then kinda shrug and just raise my gun and point it at you no biggie.

STEVEN: Yup. Yup… Um…

CAMERON: So, you feel loved.

STEVEN: “I appreciate you getting the monkey off me.”

CAMERON: “You’re welcome. You should try shooting it next time.”

STEVEN: “I… Mm-hmm.”

HUDSON: I missed the opportunity to say ‘You got a monkey on your front!’ instead of on your back. That wouldn’t have been a good joke.

(laughter)

LAURA: “Is okay.”

NICK: So, Sabos is standing there and he’s got a big, purple splotch on his chest, and as you’re watching you see some red kind of seep out of two pretty good sized holes in his chest.

LAURA: “Do you have medical supplies for yourself?”

STEVEN: “Nah.”

LAURA: “No? (huffs) You owe me.”

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: She like rummages around in her pockets until she finds a stim pack and like walks up and just jabs it into his throat. You heal 5 wounds.

STEVEN: Oh. That should do it. (laughs)

NICK: So, the stim packs are just like pocket morphine and adrenaline. The bleeding kind of stops, because they have stuff for that, but there’s still some holes in your chest you’re able to bandage up, but you feel great.

LAURA: Well, you heal 5 wounds, then 4, then 3, then 2, then 1, then they don’t work.

NICK: Yeah, they become less useful, so yay drugs.

LAURA: Yay! (laughs)

NICK: You’re able to kind of shrug it off. Mills comes charging back into the clearing, and he’s got like seven more of those monkey things in various states of exploded held by the tail. “Here, I got the rest of ‘em. They were trying to make an ambush. These things are wily suckers. So, if we scatter these around the clearing… We’ve been driving for not that long, but I think we probably need to set up. We can plan from here.” He sets about scattering all the monkey guts around the clearing. “That’ll keep the trees from coming after us for a while.”

STEVEN: (laughing) “I don’t believe the trees—How do they move?”

CAMERON: “Are the trees gonna go after the monkeys instead?”

NICK: “No. They just don’t like the smell, and it’ll keep the other monkeys away.”

CAMERON: (quietly) “The trees don’t like the smell?”

LAURA: Xianna is SO concerned at this point. She’s like, ‘The trees? What is this planet? What are we doing on here?’

NICK: Oh, I forgot to mention. Mills has a headband tied around his forehead, like a red long one, and like jungle camo paint on his face which he did not have two minutes ago. ‘I’ve seen some things in the jungle… SO, let’s make camp here for just a minute and come up with a plan—it looks like you guys saw something—and then we’ll move on.”

CAMERON: “Great…”

NICK: And that’s where we’ll end this week’s episode.

(all make dramatic noises)

(laughter)

CAMERON: Lovely.

STEVEN: Just like half a step off.

## 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.

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.

Sabos Nix was played by Steven Schroeder. He… does not exist on the internet.

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.

Hello Squadron!

We have a short survey that we’re asking you to do. It takes less than 5 minutes, but will hopefully give us information on what we can do better on and what we’re already getting right.

Please keep these responses anonymous and honest.

Find the survey here.

 

Thanks for listening and may the Force be with you,

Laura, Tabletop One

Tabletop Squadron

Ah yes, the bug-monkey meatballs again. Or is it monkey-bug? For a creature we made up ourselves we sure don’t know anything about it. This week we’re bringing you another version of these little cocktail appetizers. This time they’re made out of mushrooms and lentils. And before you even say “but I don’t like mushrooms” know that once they’re minced, fried, and mixed in you can’t tell they’re there. We promise! A few of our squad mates down right hate mushrooms, but love these.

Faux Bug-Monkey Meatballs

 

These little meat-less balls are similar to our original Bug-Monkey Meatballs, with a few differences. The biggest is a base of lentils and mushrooms instead of pork and fish. Since the lentils and mushrooms are on the softer side there’s also less soy sauce with more cornstarch and breadcrumbs to help them bind together. Because the mixture is a bit softer they are also baked instead of pan fried. The sauce is almost the same with the exception of the removal of the fish sauce and extra soy sauce to compensate for it.

 

Ingredients. Piled artistically. Because we could.

 

The lentils are first cooked in vegetable stock and liquid smoke to give them some extra flavor. Once they’re soft and all the liquid has been absorbed three-fourths get pureed in a food processor. Pureeing some of the lentils creates a base that is easy to form and binds well, while keeping some of the lentils whole gives the “meat”balls more texture so they don’t end up mushy.

 

Then mushrooms are cooked in a mixture of vegetable oil and coconut oil. The coconut oil will firm up while the mixture rests in the fridge and make these easier to roll into balls, but will melt when cooked and help keep things “juicy”. Once all the moisture from the mushrooms has cooked out and they become crispy we add the garlic and ginger for a minute to release their flavor.

 

“Meat”ball mixture

 

Everything is then mixed together and put in the fridge for an hour. This rest time lets the coconut oil solidify. Towards the end of the rest time preheat the oven. We tried pan frying these, like the original Bug-Monkey Meatballs, and it did not work well. The softer mix didn’t hold up and they fell apart. If you are set on pan frying these and are fine with them not being vegan you can add an egg to help create a tighter bind.

 

“Meat”balls on the baking tray.

Use about a tablespoon of filling and roll into little balls. Make sure you line your baking sheet with either parchment paper or a silicone mat. Don’t use tin foil. These little suckers will stick to the foil.  Bake for 30 minutes, flipping them around every 10 minutes.

 

While they bake, make the sauce. It’s almost exactly the same as the sauce from the original recipe, except you’ll use the pan the mushrooms were cooked in and extra soy sauce instead of fish sauce.

 

Once the sauce is done and the balls are baked combine them, place in a bowl (We understand if your bowl isn’t square and fuzzy. We ourselves could only get a square bowl), garnish with green onions, and serve!

 

Faux-Bug-Monkey Meatballs with toothpicks!

 

Faux Bug-Monkey Meatballs

1 cup green or brown lentils
2 cups vegetable stock
1/4 teaspoon liquid smoke (optional)
3 tablespoons vegetable oil; divided use
3 tablespoons coconut oil; divided use
8 ounces cremini mushrooms; minced
4 cloves finely minced garlic
1 tablespoon minced or grated ginger
4 tablespoons Chinese garlic chives, finely chopped (or a mix of the green part of scallions and regular chives)
1/2 teaspoon ground Sichuan peppercorns
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons sesame oil
2 tablespoons soy sauce
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1/2 cup breadcrumbs

Prepare lentils by rinsing them and adding to a pot with the vegetable stock and liquid smoke. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat down and simmer covered until all the liquid is absorbed and lentils are tender (about 15-20 minutes).

Heat 2 tablespoons vegetable oil and 2 tablespoons coconut oil over medium heat in a medium sauté pan. Add the mushrooms and cook, stirring frequently, until the mushrooms have lost all moisture and have become crispy. Add the garlic and ginger and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. Remove from the heat.

Add 3/4 of the lentils to a food processor and pulse until a thick paste forms. Pour into a large bowl, along with the reserved lentils, the cooked mushroom mix, chives, peppercorns, salt, sugar, sesame oil, soy sauce, cornstarch, breadcrumbs, and the remaining vegetable oil and coconut oil. Stir thoroughly to combine.

Cover with plastic wrap, and place in the refrigerator for an hour.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Form into small meatballs, about 1 tablespoon each. Place the meatballs on a parchment or sil-pat lined baking sheet. Bake for 30 minutes, rotating the balls every 10 minutes.

 

For the sauce:

1 clove minced garlic
1/4-1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/4-1 teaspoon ground Sichuan peppercorns
3/4 cup vegetable stock or water
3 tablespoons Shaoxing wine
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons Chinkiang vinegar
1 tablespoon sugar
Cornstarch slurry (2 teaspoons cornstarch dissolved into 1 tablespoon water)

To the skillet the mushrooms were cooked in, add the garlic, red peppers flakes, and Sichuan peppercorns. Stir for about 30 seconds, until the garlic is fragrant.

Add the vegetable stock, Shaoxing wine, soy sauce, vinegar, and sugar. Stir to combine, making sure to scrape up any browned bits on the bottom of the skillet left from the meatballs. Bring to a simmer.

Add the cornstarch slurry and continue to simmer for about 2 minutes, whisking constantly, until the sauce has thickened. Add the meatballs to the sauce, and stir to coat them.

Garnish with sliced green onions and serve with toothpicks.

 

Word document download: Episode 3 Let’s Get Civilized

PDF download: Episode 3 Let’s Get Civilized

Read in browser:

Tabletop Squadron Transcript, Season 1 Episode 3:
Let’s Get Civilized

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, a fringer, and a slicer as they explore the galaxy helping a mysterious benefactor and each other. Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you enjoy.

Before we get to the episode, I have a quick note from Laura about some exciting developments.

LAURA: Hello squadron. This is Laura here, letting you know that we have some cool new artwork! But, we will only release it when we hit ten iTunes reviews. Yes, we are holding our own artwork hostage. So, please head over to iTunes and leave us a review. Every review helps new people find us, so leave us a five-star review.

##

NICK: Hi everyone, and welcome to Episode 3 of Tabletop Squadron. You’re back for more. Isn’t that great. I’m here with the whole party today. We’re gonna be doing some stuff and some things. We’ll go around, say who you are, and what character you are playing.

CAMERON: Hi!

NICK: Hello.

CAMERON: (giggling) I’m Cameron. I’m playing Karma Nailo.

STEVEN: Hi. I’m not Cameron. I’m actually Steven. (laughter) I’m playing Sabos Niks.

NICK: Great.

HUDSON: Hi. I’m Hudson, and I’m playing Tink.

LAURA: Hi, I’m Laura, and I’m playing Xianna’fan.

NICK: And I’m Nick, your game master, working on my podcast voice… Okay. You guys got some experience from the last couple of sessions that we played through. Go around and if you purchased anything to make your characters better please let me know what you did.

HUDSON: So, Tink used the 20 XP. I purchased an item from the talent tree called Defensive Slicing. When I’m defending a computer system, add a black die per rank of Defensive Slicing to the opponent’s checks. I also leveled up my Piloting: Planetary to Level 2.

NICK: Ooh.

CAMERON: Alright. I spent a mystery 10 points on some skills that I don’t know what I upgraded… But! I also bought two talents from my talent trees. From my Skiptracer tree I’ve got Hardboiled. When I’m recovering strain after an encounter, I can spend an advantage up to my ranks in Hardboiled to recover one wound per advantage. I also bought Stalker from my Assassin tree, so I add a blue die per rank of Stalker to all Stealth and Coordination checks.

NICK: Ooh. Wow, that’s pretty cool.

CAMERON: Yeah. I am death. Hear me.

LAURA: I used my points to buy Street Smarts, which is to remove a setback or black die per rank of Street Smarts from Streetwise or Knowledge: Underworld checks. I bought Indistinguishable, which upgrades the difficulty of checks to identify my character once per rank of Indistinguishable. And I got Grit, so I have +1 strain.

NICK: Neato.

STEVEN: I done used my extra points. I’m not sure if that’s how a Togrutan talks.

(snickering)

CAMERON: Oh gosh. (laughs)

STEVEN: To upgrade my Piloting: Space to Level 2, and I added a level of Galaxy Mapper to my fringer tree which I can remove a black die per rank of Galaxy Mapper from Astrogation checks.

NICK: Yeah. God knows you need that.

CAMERON: That’ll be needed. That’ll be useful.

STEVEN: Now it’ll take half the normal time.

NICK: Right. So, that’s what your characters are doing. Time to roll your… force… points…

CAMERON: Destiny Roll.

NICK: Destiny… points…

STEVEN: (laughs)

CAMERON: Destiny—(laughs)

NICK: Destiny’s Child points. All the single Togrutans.

CAMERON: One dark side.

HUDSON: Quick, no one chase waterfalls.

STEVEN: One light side.

HUDSON: Ah, it was almost white side, but it’s one dark side.

LAURA: One dark side.

CAMERON: Oh dear.

STEVEN: Y’all suck.

HUDSON: We. Suck.

NICK: Excellent.

STEVEN: Am I the only one here on the white side?

LAURA & CAMERON: Yeah.

NICK: Can we call it light side, please?

STEVEN: That’s what I said. (laughs)

NICK: I’m hearing white side from multiple of you.

STEVEN: Oh, no, on the light side. Light. (emphasizes) Light.

(laughter)

NICK: Light side.

STEVEN: Light side.

CAMERON: So we have one light side, three dark side.

NICK: Sweet.

CAMERON: This is gonna go great.

STEVEN: Yup. This will be fine.

NICK: When we last left off you saw an Imperial contingent coming into Outpost 4. You’d kind of gotten a lay of the land, and they showed up, and you watched them enter. You saw some stormtroopers. You saw a strange, shark-like monster with millipede feet all over it called a Kirtsen’s beast, and you also saw the supposed leader of the outpost, a Zabrak man with light tattoos and an all-white expeditionary outfit who managed to pack his own martini with him on the trip. He climbed out of the speeder and said, “Oh boy. Sure is good to be home.”

The locals were going to cut down that big shark thing, and as you’re taking in this scene they cut the rope that’s attached to its tail, and it falls and hits the ground. There’s a poof of dust, and you see the monster’s eyes open.

CAMERON: Uh-oh.

NICK: They’re bright red, and they have segmented, like insect eyes that you didn’t see under the lids, and it locks with you. I’m going to need Cool checks from everybody.

CAMERON: Oh shit.

STEVEN: (nonchalantly) Oh yeah.

NICK: Or I guess that would be Vigilance, wouldn’t it?

CAMERON: That would be Vigilance, yeah.

LAURA: Ew.

NICK: Because this thing immediately starts scuttling towards you.

STEVEN: Are you sure it can’t be a Cool check?

NICK: Yes.

CAMERON: (laughs) Because we weren’t planning for this to happen.

HUDSON: What level of difficulty?

CAMERON: None.

NICK: I just need to know what you guys get.

STEVEN: Sure. This will be fine.

HUDSON: Oh, two successes.

NICK: Your Vigilance is one green?

HUDSON: Yes.

NICK: That’s gonna be real bad for you.

HUDSON: It’s one Willpower.

LAURA: One success and two advantages.

CAMERON: Karma got a success and a triumph, so two successes and a triumph?

NICK: Mm-hmm.

STEVEN: I got a success.

NICK: Okay. This monster thing is moving at you surprisingly quickly. You see that its tail is actually moving back and forth like a shark would while swimming, but it’s on the ground, and you hear this really gross (squeaking) noise as it comes across the dirt.

CAMERON: Ew.

NICK: And as if in slow motion, Karma is able to bring her blaster rifle to bear on this thing as it gets within about ten yards of you, and you can try and do something about this.

CAMERON: I’ma shoot it—

NICK: Makes sense.

CAMERON: –in the face.

NICK: So, the rest of you are staring aghast at this monster, and you’re also noticing that all of the stormtroopers who are at parade attention are slowly going for their weapons, much slower than Karma would.

CAMERON: What’s the difficulty? Average?

NICK: Two.

CAMERON: Okay.

NICK: But also a black die, because gross.

LAURA: (laughs) Ew.

NICK: So, roll me that shot.

CAMERON: Okay. Hey… Two successes, three threats.

NICK: Great. So, you manage to hit—

CAMERON: Can I fall prone, (dramatic bass noise) because there’s a giant shark coming at me and I fall backwards as I shoot?

NICK: Absolutely. Three threats is you fall prone. Fall prone.

CAMERON: Three threats is fall prone. I wanna fall prone! (dramatic bass noise) I fall on my butt.

NICK: How much damage do you do?

CAMERON: Let’s see… That was my carbine. I do 11 damage.

NICK: Wow. That’s a pretty solid hit. You hit it right between the eyes, and it stumbles for a second, and stumbling on a thousand legs looks pretty interesting, but it keeps coming at you. As Sabos and Xianna go to pull their guns up as well, you hear two more shots ring out, and it’s the two locals that you saw standing by the speeder. They both draw and fire pretty much in unison just a little behind you, and they hit it and you see the light go out of its gross bug eyes, and it skids on its nose right up to your feet, and it stands still.

CAMERON: Eww.

NICK: That happens.

CAMERON: I just kind of stare at it.

STEVEN: I still kinda wanna shoot it.

CAMERON: (laughs)

NICK: Go ahead, if you want to. It’s not moving. You don’t really have to roll. How much damage does shooting it do?

STEVEN: Nine.

NICK: Okay.

LAURA: Double tap it.

STEVEN: Oh, yeah, yeah. Right. I’m the double tap.

CAMERON: You have to have an even number of shots for double attack to work.

STEVEN: That’s true.

NICK: As you draw your pistol and shoot the—

STEVEN: Oh, it’s not a pistol.

CAMERON: (laughing) It’s his rifle.

NICK: Oh, your giant rifle.

STEVEN: This is a blaster rifle.

NICK: I forgot. As you unsling your rifle, it just blows the head open in a fountain of fish guts. I know what fish guts smell like, I don’t really know what bug guts smell like, but this creature smells like a combination of the two

STEVEN: I actually could imagine that.

NICK: Hmm. Great. That means my descriptions are perfect. As you blow it open, the locals both put their guns back into the speeder and the male kind of shakes his head. “Waste of a good trophy.” He walks off to the other side of the speeder and starts to unpack.

You have drawn the attention of Mr. White Clothes who says, “Well, that was a surprise Mills, I thought you said you killed the thing.” The local shrugs again, and he pulls out a vibro-machete looking thing, so it’s almost vibro-sword, bigger than a vibro-knife, ‘now this is a knife’ type weapon.

HUDSON: Vibro-axe level, or?

NICK: No. it’s not a giant death machine. It’s like, not quite a fight people with this weapon, but much bigger than what you would use normally. He goes over to the Kirtsen’s beast and starts lobbing the head off of it, what’s left of the head, mostly a puddle at this point.

CAMERON: As more and more shark, fish, bug guts start flying, I back up and shake the guts off of me that I assume got on me when Sabos shot its head right in front of me.

NICK: Yeah. You didn’t get hit with like big, goopy bits, but it did shoot a fine, purple mist into the air that’s been kinda raining down, so you’re sort of speckled on your shoulders.

CAMERON: Ew.

STEVEN: That’s… trophy juice?

LAURA: How much is on Xianna, if any?

NICK: Probably a little, not much.

LAURA: Ew.

NICK: (laughs) You were a little further away. You can see there’s a lot of it, it definitely atomized a lot and it’s blowing through the crowd, and you see a couple of officers drop attention and go ‘Ew…’

STEVEN: “Back on Osaron we’re proud of our trophy juice.”

(laughter)

CAMERON: That’s disgusting.

LAURA: “No… Just no…”

NICK: That being said, when you look at the gentleman in the white uniform, he’s spotless. None of it gets on him. It gets on people around him. The guy decapitating it is about elbow deep in purple goop, but white clothes guy is clear. Speaking of him, he walks over and says, “You’re new to the outpost. What brings you here?” He’s looking at Karma, because she was the one who shot the thing, but he addresses the group as a whole.

STEVEN: Uh… (laughter) “We had an issue with our Astrogation system and ended up here, and then tried some of your fine ales.”

NICK: “Right.”

CAMERON: “I think that was straight up an issue with Your Astrogation, not the ship’s.”

STEVEN: “I don’t believe so.”

NICK: “Well, I was out in the jungle so I didn’t see as much, but I’m sure we’ll be able to look at our orbital observation post and see what went wrong. Maybe we can help with your ship.”

STEVEN: “Absolutely. Uh, the trees just came out of nowhere.”

CAMERON: “Like I said sir, I don’t think it was the ship. I believe it was him,” she says looking at Sabos pointedly.

STEVEN: “No, it was the trees.”

LAURA: “It was definitely him.”

NICK: He looks very comfortable watching you guys kind of snipe at each other, and he says, “Well, either way, I’ll have someone look at it,” and he waves a hand. You see a couple of people from the back—

STEVEN: “Oh, you don’t need to do that. I think we got it all taken care of.”

NICK: “Oh, no, no. I insist.” And a couple of Imperial engineers start heading out of the outpost.

STEVEN: “Uh, if y’all could just look at the back of the ship at the rudder thing, that would be great. Don’t go in the ship.”

LAURA: Xianna is kind of like surreptitiously patting her pockets to be like, ‘Okay. I do have this. That means it’s not on the ship for them to accidentally find.’ (laughs)

NICK: Was there anything specific you wanted to make sure was in your pockets?

LAURA: All my drugs.

NICK: All your drugs?

LAURA: All of them!

NICK: Okay. Great. Yeah. I would imagine most of your drugs are in your coat. You did hide some stuff around the ship last episode. What did you put in there?

LAURA: Oh. I hid the weird mask thing in a box. I don’t think I actually hid that. I think that was just still sitting on a shelf. I was looking for hiding spaces.

CAMERON: You found a lot of hiding spaces.

LAURA: Yeah.

NICK: Oh, okay. So, there’s some stuff sitting out, and most of your very obviously illegal things are on your person.

LAURA: I would say all of them, just, except the mask that’s in a box and the decanter of whiskey that is now empty on the floor.

NICK: Okay. This guy watches you kind of talking back and forth. He watches the engineers start heading towards the ship. He basically just ignores your protest. “Make sure you give it a full sweep.” And they run off. As you’re talking he’s like scratching at one of his little head horns, because he’s a Zabrak so he has a ring of devil horns which are neat looking, and he says, “So, you must be here looking for someone. No one comes to Unroola Dawn looking to sightsee.”

HUDSON: Until us.”

(laughter)

NICK: “Riiight.”

CAMERON: I feel like that’s a Deception check.

LAURA: “Yes, sightsee… That is what we are doing.”

NICK: Yes. I would love a Deception check from Tink. That would be great.

STEVEN: “As you can tell, our friend Tink hasn’t seen places like these.”

NICK: This is gonna be a red and two purples.

HUDSON: Oh no…

LAURA: You don’t have Deception…

(laughter)

STEVEN: Mother fucker.

LAURA: And you’re not very cunning.

HUDSON: Oh no, and I’m not very cunning. Oh, this is not good.

LAURA: You are just smart. (laughs)

NICK: Wait, hang on, let me see. Deception would probably be against Perception, right?

CAMERON: Yes.

NICK: What is his Perception…? Oh. You’re lucky. It’s actually…

HUDSON: Is it actually a Perception check?

CAMERON: No. Your Deception goes against his Perception.

NICK: It’s just three purples. He’s actually not trained in Perception.

HUDSON: Oh. Great.

CAMERON: Three purples.

NICK: But, flip a dark side point, we’ll go ahead and upgrade one of those.

CAMERON: Oh god.

HUDSON: To a red?

STEVEN: Yeah.

NICK: There we go. Same roll.

LAURA & CAMERON: Ooh!

NICK: (laughs)

HUDSON: Two successes…

LAURA: No, those cancel out.

HUDSON: Oh wait, with those, yeah.

CAMERON: A failure and a despair.

HUDSON: A failure and a despair. So, before anything can happen, I try to save it by saying, “Just kidding!”

(laughter)

NICK: He looks at you, and you get the feeling—He is still smiling at you, he seems very friendly and welcoming, but you totally understand that he does not believe your bullshit in the slightest. He’s been here for a while, and he understands that. But with the despair…

LAURA: Xianna knows that Tink has just messed up so badly that she doesn’t even hide it, and she sighs and like puts her hand on her head, and (sighs heavily).

NICK: That happens. That helps with the despair. He looks back and forth to the four of you and goes, “Oh. Smugglers. Great!” And he starts to walk away towards the large building that you saw previously that’s made of wood, and nice, the mansion. He says, “Well, you might as well come and have a meal with me, because we probably got some talking to do. Most smugglers talk to me at one point or another.” And he walks away without seeing if you’re gonna follow him. You also notice that the locals, and still a pretty good amount of stormtroopers, are all just staring at you to see what you’ll do.

CAMERON: I follow him.

HUDSON: Yeah.

LAURA: Oh, Xianna heard food and is following him, and going, “Excuse me. What kind of food?”

NICK: “Well, the cooks here are a little… barbaric. They do tend to prefer open flame, but they make quite a good roast Kirtsen’s beast.”

CAMERON: (wavering) “Oh…”

STEVEN: “Oh, I’m down. Yeah. Especially having shot the Kirtsen’s beast myself.”

NICK: “Yes. Clearly you did it.”

CAMERON: “Oh my gosh. You shot it once it was dead.”

STEVEN: “I’m not sure how you know it was dead. I mean, it was right at your feet when I shot it.”

LAURA: “The light had gone out of its eyes. That is how we know it was dead.”

STEVEN: “I’m not sure about eye light on Osaron.”

CAMERON: God…

LAURA: (sighs)

NICK: The guy stops and turns around at hearing that the light had gone out of its eyes. “You seem like my kind of person. By the way, my name is Falx, Falx Urnstad. I’m one of the Vice Governors of this planet. This outpost is mine, and it’s great to meet you.” He holds out a hand to shake, specifically to Xianna.

LAURA: Oh, Xianna absolutely shakes it, winks, and says, “I am Serene.”

NICK: “Well, great to meet you, Serene.” And he throws an arm over you and just starts gesturing towards the mansion.

LAURA: Yep.

NICK: “Come along. I’ll give you the grand tour!” And he smells like sandalwood.

LAURA: Oooh.

NICK: Yeah. It’s nice, and the uniform is very soft. Normally they’re like that institutional fabric that holds up really well. This one’s not. This one is like silk and—

LAURA: Yeah. This guy definitely seems like he has a nice cashmere silk blend going on.

NICK: Yeah.

HUDSON: Everything Xianna would fall for.

(laughter)

LAURA: Oh, yeah. Xianna has a very low bar (laughs) for what ‘falls for’ is.

HUDSON: Yes.

LAURA: That was how words work. (laughs)

STEVEN: Oh.

HUDSON: Oh.

STEVEN: Oh.

NICK: “Mildly interested.”

CAMERON: So, as I’m following Xianna and dude-guy, I start cleaning the bug mist guts off of my gun.

HUDSON: What was his name again?

NICK: Falx.

STEVEN: Falx Urnstad.

HUDSON: F-A-L-X?

NICK: Falx, F-A-L-X, Urnstad, U-R-N-S-T-A-D, and he’s a Zabrak.

STEVEN: I tell Karma to wear the purple mist proudly.

CAMERON: “It’s going to rust my gun.”

STEVEN: “What type of crappy guns do you have on… where you’re from?”

(laughter)

CAMERON: “Yeah! Let’s continue this thread of conversation.”

STEVEN: Let’s not. (laughs)

CAMERON: “Where am I from, Togrutan?”

STEVEN: “Uh, not Osaron.”

CAMERON: “That is correct.”

STEVEN: (smugly) “Got it.”

CAMERON: “No—“ (snickers)

STEVEN: “The place where the Nautolans are from.”

CAMERON: “Which is?”

STEVEN: “Nautolania.”

HUDSON: Oh yeah…

CAMERON: “No…” (laughs)

STEVEN: “Nautolis.”

CAMERON: “No, but I do like that one.”

STEVEN: “Atlantis.”

CAMERON: “No.”

NICK: Closer.

(laughter)

HUDSON: You are getting closer.

STEVEN: Damn it. (laughs) Yup.

NICK: For the confused listeners at home, the planet is called Glee Anselm.

CAMERON: Yup.

STEVEN: “Yes.”

NICK: It’s a happy planet.

CAMERON: (laughing) You don’t hear that. The GM says that!(laughter)

STEVEN: Oh, right.

NICK: The narrator booms from the heavens, Curious George style.

LAURA: You don’t hear God! You’re not important enough. (laughs)

NICK: So, as you get close to the mansion the two main double doors swing open. You see exactly what you were expecting to see, it’s extremely stereotypical. A large grand staircase, the rug over the stairs you would expect to be like red crushed velvet, but instead it’s woven reeds, but the reeds are super fine so it’s still a nice carpet, and there’s wings going off in either direction. He leads you back around behind the staircase and a servant opens the door. It’s very strange to see one of the local humans who are all basically Conan the Barbarian jacked and scary looking people wearing a formal Imperial servants uniform, all like slim cut, and it looks like he’s about to burst every single seem on this thing.

CAMERON: (giggles)

NICK: He bows and pushes open the door, and you see a long banquet hall with a very large table, and there is one place setting at the head on the far side, but as you watch you can see some droids and one other person wearing servant gear. This one looks to be not a local, so someone that they must have brought with them, setting four extra places. He says, “Well, make yourself at home. Have some—“

HUDSON: “Gray stuff?”

NICK: “It’s delicious.”

HUDSON: All I could think of was Be Our Guest the whole time you were describing this.

CAMERON: (laughs)

NICK: And then he turns into a giant furred monster! No.

CAMERON: Oh no!

NICK: He says, “Make yourself at home. Try some appetizers. I’m gonna go change into something a little more… comfortable, and I’ll be back.” And he turns around and leaves. The large local servant is still holding the door and bowing graciously, but you see that he does not drop eye contact from you and is clearly waiting for you to enter the room.

CAMERON: I enter the room and walk over to the table where I assume there are white cloth napkins.

NICK: Oh yeah, absolutely.

CAMERON: I grab one from one of the spots and finish cleaning my gun.

NICK: Great.

STEVEN: I’ll follow her into the room, keeping on annoying her about why cleaning your gun is—

CAMERON: Just keeps suggesting planet names.

STEVEN: Yeah. Yeah, that’s actually what I’m doing, I keep on guessing planet names where I think the Nautolans are from.

NICK: Hit me with a couple more.

STEVEN: “Water World.”

NICK: (laughs)

CAMERON: “No.”

STEVEN: “Head-tentacle-landia.”

LAURA: “That is offensive.”

CAMERON: (grinning) I am not even going to respond to that one.

LAURA: “That is just offensive. You should stop right now.”

STEVEN: “The land where people don’t like purple mist on their gun.”

LAURA: “So, most lands?”

CAMERON: (frustrated sigh)

NICK: So, as you all enter the room—

HUDSON: Mos Eisley?

(laughter)

NICK: You clean your gun using one of the tablecloths, and one of the droids is a protocol droid. “Oh my!” It takes it from you and scurries off to bring you a fresh napkin, because now this one’s gross and it can’t even imagine what that would be like. “Why would you do that to my perfect napkins?” And off it goes.

CAMERON: “I thought that was kind of the point of napkins.”

LAURA: “Well, for food, not for weird…”

STEVEN: “This was food.”

CAMERON: “Did you not hear that they were serving that beast? It is food!”

LAURA: “Yes, but like, if you came in covered in fish guts, and then used the napkin to wipe away the fish guts, that would be a little different than if you used the napkin to wipe away the cooked fish—“

CAMERON: “The cooked fish guts?”

LAURA: “—off your mouth. No, you don’t eat the guts… all the time.”

(laughter)

LAURA: “I do not know. I do not think there are fish on Ryloth.” I don’t think there’s a whole lot of fish. (laughs)

NICK: Probably not.

LAURA: It’s mostly a desert planet, so I’m assuming very little fish.

CAMERON: “What about land sharks?”

STEVEN: “Mm.”

LAURA: “I mean, eh, you grind that stuff up into like a sausage. Then it is different.”

NICK: So, are you all sitting, or are you standing near the table, what are you guys doing?

LAURA: Xianna’s gonna sit next to the head chair, and she looks at everyone. “I am going to milk this. Yes. (giggles) He seems to like me. I’m going to use this. Okie? Good.”

HUDSON: “I think that’s a little TMI that you’re gonna milk him.”

STEVEN: “Yup.”

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: “Well, I mean, Zabraks do seem to be mammalian, so I could? But… Oh! Oh, you mean—Okie. Uh… Maybe. We will see. (laughter) We will see. Who knows.”

CAMERON: Karma swings her gun back around to her back, and then sits in the other seat next to the head seat, so that one of the boys doesn’t sit there.

STEVEN: Yeah. Sabos just kind of stands in the background.

NICK: Okay.

HUDSON: I sit next to Serene.

NICK: Hey. Good job.

HUDSON: I’ve been picking up on it.

NICK: Sabos, then you would notice first, a small astromech droid, you know, like R2D2, or I5D7, or… Anyway. A small astromech droid with a table hat, like they have in the movie on R2, rolls up and it’s got a ring of drinks along the outside. They’re all in tumblers. You see some whiskey, and you see a bunch of various tropical looking mix drinks. Then, in the middle, there are three square bowls, and inside there’s little diced up bits of meat with toothpicks in it. You can make a Perception check about that if you want.

STEVEN: Sure.

NICK: It bumps you in the back of the knees, because you were the one still standing up, and it’s offering you stuff.

STEVEN: How hard is it?

NICK: Uh, easy.

STEVEN: That would be one purple?

NICK: Yeah, just one purple.

STEVEN: Three successes and a triumph.

NICK: So, you notice off of that platter that this bowl is furry on the outside, and with your triumph you realize this is probably one of those dishes where they cook the meat inside of the animal they got it from, but you see that this creature was cooked in its own juices and then prepared, but it looks good.

STEVEN: Yeah. I take a bowl and a glass of whiskey.

NICK: Oh, you take the whole bowl?

STEVEN: Yeah.

NICK: The bowl’s like—

STEVEN: Oh, is it like toothpicks already in the cut up meat?

NICK: Yeah, there’s toothpicks in the stuff.

STEVEN: Oh, then I’ll grab a couple of toothpicks and then a glass of whiskey.

NICK: Okay. Yeah. With three successes and a triumph, it looks good.

STEVEN: Yeah.

NICK: It looks like you probably don’t want to think about it too much, but it looks tasty.

HUDSON: No food poisoning today.

LAURA: I’m sure tribbles taste fine.

NICK: So, you grab— It’s not a—(laughs)

LAURA: You said a round bowl that was furry, and I immediately thought—

NICK: No, it’s a square bowl!

LAURA: Oh, a square. Okay, so they pressed a tribble.

CAMERON: Yeah, so it’s a square tribble.

(laughter)

NICK: What’s the duck thing where you squish the duck and it makes food?

LAURA: Oh. It literally translates to pressed duck.

NICK: Oh, well, pressed tribble. Great. The astromech makes its way around the table and you all see that. You can roll that same Perception check if you want. I’ll say, if you wanna figure out that it’s weird, you can. You will all notice that the bowl is furry, so it’s up to you.

LAURA: Mm…

STEVEN: I just start definitely chewing on the meat.

CAMERON: What the heck.

HUDSON: I wanna check it out. I definitely care.

LAURA: A success and two advantages.

NICK: Yeah. You see that the bowl is furry, and that it looks reasonably tasty, and you notice that these are Imperial issued toothpicks. They were not made here.

LAURA: Do they have like the little gear Imperial symbol on them?

CAMERON: (gasps)

NICK: Yeah, like burned into the side.

LAURA: yes!

CAMERON: Nice.

NICK: These are very fancy.

CAMERON: Karma got three successes.

NICK: You notice not that it was necessarily cooked in its own juices, but like, this is not a normal bowl, this is pretty organic.

HUDSON: One advantage, a success, and a triumph.

NICK: You notice all that stuff. You know that they obviously killed this thing, drained it out and just cooked it in its own juices, and then made it prepared so it didn’t look gross.

CAMERON: Many of us in our past lives had a culinary career.

HUDSON: Apparently.

NICK: Yeah, probably.

CAMERON: Or we’re all just foodies. We all have food blogs. (giggles)

STEVEN: Being a fringer, I’m experienced with the cooking animals in their own juices.

CAMERON: That makes sense actually.

STEVEN: it does.

NICK: (laughs)

LAURA: Honestly, I’m probably okay with it. I’m sure Ryloth is mostly roasted meats. Also, I’m gonna take the girliest looking drink that’s there, and I bet it has like a weird frilly name like A Scarif Sunrise or something.

NICK: Okay. Describe A Scarif Sunrise for me, please.

LAURA: Okay. A Scarif Sunrise is green on the bottom, then orange, and then yellow.

STEVEN: Ooh.

NICK: Does it come in a special glass? Is there a sunrise glass in the Star Wars universe?

LAURA: Yeah, like a champagne goblet.

NICK: Okay.

HUDSON: So um, this is probably a good time to mention that Tink had a vegan period, (laughter) but it was only in college to impress a girl, so I know a lot about food and mostly about if food has animals in it or not, but not about animal cooking.

NICK: Okay. That’s important to know, and I’m sure it’ll come up again. You have busted open the meta-plot already. Good work.

HUDSON: Thank you.

NICK: So, around this time you guys are (emphasized) eating appetizers?

LAURA & STEVEN: Yes.

CAMERON: I grab one toothpick, and taste it, and then I’m like okay, this is alright, and I’ve just been nibbling. I did not grab a drink, though.

NICK: So, you’re snacking, the astromech droid is basically doing laps of the table… Astromechs, you guys know, they’re intelligent, they’re smart, it’s not like a Roomba, this thing is just straight up like, it told me to serve the room, I’m serving the room.

LAURA: They are so murderous.

NICK: You get a very petulant, like, obviously it is following the exact letter of whatever its instructions were, and it’s driving around. Around this time Falx reenters, and he’s wearing an entirely different outfit. He’s wearing a blue tunic with like a purple-ish blue overwrap giant scarf poncho thing, and like flowy pants…

CAMERON: That was a lot of words. (giggles)

NICK: Yeah. Well, it’s like a scarf, but also bigger, and also kind of a poncho. It’s like an extra shirt.

CAMERON: Okay.

NICK: You all would know it’s very Corscanti, maybe a little Alderanian thrown in. it’s very high class clothes, lots of extra fabric. He walks in and says, “Well, it seems that you’ve already been enjoying my hospitality. I’d like to welcome you again to Outpost 4.” He starts to walk by and the astromech runs into him, and he looks at it, and for just a second you see his pleasant exterior drop and he looks a little scary. He looks a little derisive, and you see him kind of shove the astromech away, and it almost drops its drinks and has to drive very quickly to catch them, and it beeps at him and drives out of the room.

He sits down, and it’s like that never happened, and he looks very happy. He says, “So, let’s talk. Smuggling, huh? What brings you to my humble, backwater residence?”

STEVEN: “Uh, you did, sir.”

NICK: “Well, yeah, if you’re gonna be nit-picky about it. I mean, what brings you to Unroola Dawn?”

STEVEN: “I just saw the trees.”

CAMERON: Oh god.

LAURA: (sighs)

(laughter)

NICK: So, if anyone would like to, if you wanna make a Knowledge: Underworld or a Knowledge: Core Worlds…

LAURA: I will do Knowledge: Underworld.

HUDSON: I can Underworld as well.

STEVEN: Yeah, I’ll roll. Sure.

LAURA: Difficulty?

NICK: Average.

CAMERON: Okay. I’m rolling Core Worlds, because it’s the exact same check for me, so I’m gonna be different.

NICK: Okay.

CAMERON: Just a threat.

STEVEN: I’ll roll Underworld.

HUDSON: Four successes and two threats.

LAURA: I had one advantage.

STEVEN: I have two failures and an advantage.

NICK: So, everyone failed except for Tink, and we’ve got a couple of advantages and a couple of threats in there. Okay. So, Tink, you in your experience working as an underground hacker and things like that have a pretty good sense for when people are trying to get someone to work for them, or like a broker, or a job giver-outer, and this guy is doing a lot of those same things. You feel like, having interacted with the Empire before, he wouldn’t have invited you to dinner if he was on the straight and narrow. This guy’s got some stuff going on, and he probably wants to help in one way or another. Anybody with advantages recognizes that his outfit is alderanian, like it’s very much an Alderan politician’s outfit, granted with some upgrades and very nice cloth, so this is somebody who may see themselves as like a head of state kind of person. Who had threats?

CAMERON & TINK: Me.

NICK: Did you succeed?

CAMERON: No.

HUDSON: I succeeded, with threats.

NICK: Okay. Tink, with your threats, you have a feeling that this guy probably wants to work with you or to actually help you because he could see himself getting an advantage from it, but you’re also getting very comfortable with that, probably more so than you should being in the middle of an Imperial outpost. Karma, you had two threats, no failures?

CAMERON: It washed with two threats.

NICK: Okay. With two threats, you’re just very into the ambience right now, the architecture looks very familiar to you, and your next Perception check in this room you’re probably gonna have a black die because you’re having a lot of trouble focusing. That’s all of those.

He says, “I often deal with people in your kind of situations, and I may be able to help, if you could just tell me a little more about why you’re here.”

LAURA: “So, quick question. Do you happen to have a box that you were wanting to have transported? No reason.”

NICK: “Hmm. That is particularly vague. I like it. I have a lot of boxes. One might even say I specialize in moving things that the Empire doesn’t have strongly stated opinions about.”

STEVEN: “Moving things the Empire does not have strongly stated opinions about?”

NICK: “Right. Things that, if I asked, may not be a great idea, but they haven’t ever specifically said, and I get to keep my little home away from home in top shape.”

STEVEN: “Oh. I see.”

HUDSON: “You might be able to help us, then. We are having to move an item…” I feel very comfortable with him, so I say, “Does the word centennial mean anything to you?”

(laughter)

LAURA: (groans)

NICK: You say centennial, and he’s already—So, he had a space martini, and he downed that one during the first part. He’s half way through his second one, you say that, and he does a spit take. “Um, centennial? No.”

CAMERON: “Sentinel?”

NICK: “Oh… Sentinel. I was a little wrong about the smuggling thing. I am a little embarrassed you let me keep going with that for so long, but if you’re moving something for Sentinel, yeah. I’ve got something he told me to go ahead and get. Do you know where you’re bringing it?”

CAMERON: “No…”

LAURA: “There was an issue at the meeting. We did not get all of the information. also, is that drink droid coming back?”

NICK: “Yeah. I could make that happen.” He snaps his fingers, and the droid, you hear very angry astromech tootling from behind a closed door, and as soon as it bumps into the door and the door swings open it turns into just very low, muted grumbling, and it comes back around with a fresh thing of drinks. They were originally just around the outside of the platter, now it fills the whole platter.

LAURA: I definitely take a new one, put my empty glass on top of it, and I say, “Thank you,” and I boop the astromech, just a little.

NICK: The front panel on it opens up and one of those little shock arc-welders comes out and, bzzt, and you hear (alarm noise).

LAURA: “How rude.”

NICK: Falx snaps his fingers and pulls out a remote with a button on it. “Don’t make me do this.” And it goes, (disappointed robot noise), and drives away, and makes jingle bell noises. It is not the nicest of droids, but you have another drink. “So, now that we’re all further supplied with libations, where are you taking this thing? It’s a pretty weird artifact.”

LAURA: “Again, we do not know. We are winging it.”

NICK: “Oh yes, probably a good choice. Sentinel tends to bring stuff only with half the information involved. You should’ve seen what I had to do to get this thing.”

CAMERON: “So, you had to get it from Sentinel as well?”

NICK: “No I thought Sentinel was the guy who sent you. Is he not?” You see him start reaching under the table suspiciously.

LAURA: “No, no, he was.”

NICK: (hesitantly) “O-Okay…”

CAMERON: “Sorry, just the way you phrased that sounded like, the things I had to go through to get this, because of the way Sentinel set stuff up, it just sounded like he’d also sent you to go get it…”

NICK: “Yeah. That’s what happened.”

CAMERON: “Okay. That’s what I was asking. Sorry.”

NICK: “Yes. He sent me to go get it, and I didn’t know a lot about what was going on. I still don’t, but if you’re picking it up, that means he probably sent you with some goods for trade and a bunch of credits, right?” He looks really happy. He’s leaning back in his chair.

CAMERON: “I’m sure if we have anything your troopers will find it on our ship.”

NICK: “Uh…”

CAMERON: “We did take his ship, so… There are cargo boxes on there, right?”

LAURA: Xianna just kind of like gives a glance at Karma, like, ‘You don’t tell them we don’t have money. You always lie about having money,’ kind of a look, and then like turns back to Falx—

CAMERON: If Karma could, she would raise an eyebrow at Xianna, but I don’t think she has eyebrows. So, her eye triangle shifts slightly on one side.

LAURA: Either a Charm or a Deception to look and be like, “Oh, no no no, we have stuff to trade. We have things. I’m sure, yes, we do.”

NICK: Alright. Yeah. You can roll.

LAURA: Would that be Charm or Deception?

NICK: He likes you, so you can use either.

LAURA: Okay. I’m gonna do Deception. That’s higher.

NICK: Okay. It’ll be two purples, and flip me another dark side point, so it’ll be two purples and a red with the flip.

LAURA: Two advantages!

NICK: Mm.

LAURA: Yep.

NICK: Any way in particular you would like to spend those advantages?

LAURA: Um, so I’m assuming he’s gonna know that I’m lying, but I would like him to still like me, and maybe have there be an implication that even though we don’t have anything we are willing to work something out.

NICK: But the implication…

LAURA: There’s an implication, and Xianna is fine with however he takes that implication.

NICK: (laughs)

CAMERON: Oh goodness.

NICK: Okay. He kind of leans forward in his chair, his smirk drops a little, and he sets his now empty martini glass on the ground. The protocol droid walks out with a decanter of space martini and pours it for him, and then shuffles away. This takes about two minutes, because those things walk really slow, and he says nothing during that time so it’s just a very awkward, long pause. He takes a sip, and he says, “Well, you weren’t kidding when things got out of hand. This is highly irregular. I think we can work something out. I’ve got some people I need tracked down, and—“

CAMERON: Karma perks up a little bit.

NICK: He notices that. “From the way you all have responded, I think some of you may have some skills to help with that. I’ll still give you the Stone Breaker, by the way it’s called the Stone Breaker, if you will go and get some deserters out of the jungle, because I sent some people to go find them and they never reported back.”

CAMERON: “How many deserters?”

NICK: “Two.”

CAMERON: “How long have they been out?”

NICK: “About two weeks, but they can’t have gotten far.”

STEVEN: “Do you care if they come back alive?”

NICK: “Not particularly.”

STEVEN: “Excellent.”

NICK: “I just need them identifiable. Examples, you know.”

HUDSON: “What if we find a group that’ similar to them, but not the same people, but maybe even better?”

CAMERON: “Tink, that is not how bounty hunting works.”

LAURA: “I do not— That is not how it works.”

HUDSON: “I’ll be honest, I’m not as experienced in bounty hunting as these people are.”

CAMERON: “How many people did you send out after them?

NICK: “Five. Just a small platoon.” At Tink’s suggestion he stands up and starts pacing back and forth at the head of the table. “Two people, but better, but not the same people… Interesting. Interesting.”

(laughter)

LAURA: Xianna immediately puts her finger over Tink’s mouth. “Tink, shh, do not talk anymore please.”

HUDSON: I crumple my face but don’t say anything.

LAURA: Or over his little translator thing, because he doesn’t have a mouth visible. He has one.

CAMERON: Probably.

NICK: Yeah. He leans over and puts his elbows on the back of his chair. “Well, while that’s an interesting proposition, I think in this case I’m gonna need the actual ones, but you keep in touch, big guy. I like the way your brain works. At least, I assume you have a brain.”

HUDSON: “Yeah. I got a brain. I like yours as well.”

NICK: “Thanks!” He winks at you. Around this time the Imperial and the local servant come in with some big trays of food. It all looks like it was cooked over a spit over an open fire. It’s like turkey legs, and big roasts, and charred vegetables and things, but all the food looks mildly off-putting. Like, the turkey legs maybe have one little leg still stuck to it that they didn’t clean off, like on a shrimp when they don’t quite clean it all, or the roast is, by all intents and purposes upside down, the way it’s shaped it’s like the leg worked backwards. Things are just slightly weird. The flora and fauna here are not great. All of the vegetables have thorns on them, which is why they charred it so it could come off, but you can see every once in a while there’s still like a spine that you’re gonna have to peel off. But the food, if you eat it, is delicious. It’s very good.

STEVEN: I eat the food. I also inquire what that amazing appetizer was.

NICK: “Oh that? Over here we just call them monkey bugs.”

STEVEN: “Cool.”

LAURA: “Okie.”

NICK: “Yeah. In the jungle you might see some of them. They’re adorable little critters.”

STEVEN: “I look forward to trying to make some myself.”

NICK: You pass through the rest of the meal with pleasantries. He flirts with Xianna a decent amount, but as far as you can tell he also flirts with Tink, and he starts to flirt with Karma and then I’m assuming that she shuts that down pretty hard.

CAMERON: Yeah. She answers very politely whenever he tries to engage her in conversation, but then will just turn back to Sabos and just keep saying no to planet names.

NICK: (laughs) He gives up on that pretty quickly. You learn from him he’s been here for like three or four years at this point. He likes to be kind of the middle man with a lot of stuff that, nothing that’s hyper illegal, but stuff that is kind of frowned upon, because no one gives a crap about his little backwater station, he figures he’ll do what he can since his career has kind of dead-ended.

After the meal, and everything is delicious and you’re full, and he’s sipping on a snifter of dessert martini, and there’s been plenty of drinks around, he says, “Well, you won’t be able to set out at night. I’ll put you up in the guest quarters next to mine. There’s a separate building for you. I’ll have you meet up with Mills tomorrow. He’ll set up the expedition for you. He’ll be your guide.” He makes a note on a data pad that he pulls out of a pocket under the table. “So, when you wake up in the morning go find him in the square. I’ll have you escorted to the guest quarters.” He stands up and leaves with a flourish of his cape scarf.

The protocol droid from before walks in holding a clean napkin. This one looks very freshly laundered. He says, “If you’ll come with me I’ll show you to the guest quarters.” He heads out the front door with that (robot noises), super slow pace. It’s like getting stuck behind someone in a hallway that’s not walking as fast as you would want. It’s annoying.

LAURA: Oh… (groans)

CAMERON: I follow.

LAURA: I mean yeah, we follow, but it’s just the annoying of like—(groans)

CAMERON: Tink’s having to take really small steps.

HUDSON: Yeah. I don’t like this pace.

STEVEN: I just take small footsteps, and be like ‘okay, this is cool.’

NICK: (laughs) So, the building that they’re leading you to is shorter than most of the other ones, and it’s behind some of the taller buildings from where you were standing before so you didn’t see it. If you guys could either make me a Knowledge: Lore, Education, or Core Worlds check.

CAMERON: Difficulty?

NICK: Easy.

LAURA: One success, two advantages.

CAMERON: Two successes and a threat.

HUDSON: Oh my. Three successes and two advantages.

LAURA: (laughs)

STEVEN: A triumph and a failure.

CAMERON: Yep, just a triumph.

STEVEN: So just a triumph.

NICK: Heh… You all recognize this, well everyone who passed recognizes this as a prefab garden shed. This is not fancy at all.

CAMERON: (laughs)

NICK: They called it the guest quarters, but you can tell this is basically the Star Wars equivalent of that plastic shed you can get at Wal-Mart, so it’s made out of concrete, pre-assembled, a droid probably put it together in an afternoon, but with all of your advantages… As you open it, it’s actually quite nice on the inside. It doesn’t have any electricity or water, but it doesn’t have cots like it was originally going to have, it has like really nice bunk beds with not prefab mattresses, so something that the locals put together. Seated in the middle of the room is a large heater lamp. It’s basically like an electric campfire, and it’s really pleasant, and it’s a nice temperature, and it glows nicely. As you open the door, the sun begins to set below the trees behind you, and you have a moment of peace as the shuffling of the droid fades back into the distance and you hear the shut of the door. The troops that have been marching around and doing drills in the square all head off towards their barracks, and you can hear things settling down for the night. It’s a weird moment of peace. You all realize that this is the first real pause you’ve had since you all received those communications a few days ago. Even when you were on the ship it was like tensing up for the unknown, or being unconscious after being drunk for some of you, and this is a quiet, down moment before the next thing, and you finally have some answers of what you’re doing… and it’s nice.

LAURA: Xianna immediately yells, (gasps) “Top bunk! I call the top bunk!”

HUDSON: I get bottom bunk. How much do I hang off the bed?

CAMERON: (laughs)

NICK: Uh…

HUDSON: Is this a double-long twin?

NICK: How tall are you?

CAMERON: Seven feet.

HUDSON: Yeah, seven feet.

LAURA: He’s two-something meters, so.

NICK: So, it’s that awkward length where if you have your head all the way up to the top, your mid-calf down hangs off the back, so it’s not even enough that your knees can bend.

HUDSON: (huffs)

NICK: Yeah. You have a moment of quiet, and you all realize that you don’t actually know much about each other.

HUDSON: I know enough about everyone. Y’all go ahead.

CAMERON: Can I make a Perception check of the shed to try to see if there’s any recording equipment of any kind?

NICK: Sure you can.

CAMERON: Like microphones. (laughs) What would the difficulty be?

NICK: You notice that the shed is really stripped down, so even with the nicer furnishings and everything the walls are bare concrete, so it’s easy.

CAMERON: A success and two advantages.

NICK: Yeah. You do a quick sweep. You don’t really find anything. The walls are pretty much bare. There’s not really anywhere anyone would even be able to hide a bug, so you’re pretty sure this room is clear. So, as people bed down for the evening and you have a nice moment of peace, that’s where we’ll end it for this episode, Episode 3.

(all make dramatic noises)

## 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.

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.

Sabos Nix was played by Steven Schroeder. He… does not exist on the internet.

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.

Word document download: Episode 2 New Kids on the Block

PDF download: Episode 2 New Kids on the Block

Read in Browser:

Tabletop Squadron Transcript, Season 1 Episode 2:
New Kids On The Block

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, a fringer and a slicer as they explore the galaxy helping a mysterious benefactor and each other. Thanks for tuning in and we hope you enjoy.

Before we get to the episode, I have a quick note from Laura about some exciting developments.

LAURA: Hello squadron. This is Laura here, letting you know that we have some cool new artwork! But, we will only release it when we hit ten iTunes reviews. Yes, we are holding our own artwork hostage. So, please head over to iTunes and leave us a review. Every review helps new people find us, so leave us a five-star review.

##

NICK: Hi everyone, and welcome to Tabletop Squadron Episode 2. I’m here today with everybody. Let’s go around the table, introduce yourselves, and say who you play.

CAMERON: Hello! I’m Cameron, and I’m playing Karma.

STEVEN: I’m Steven. I’m playing Sabos, or if the rolls go well, Councilman Sako.

HUDSON: I’m Hudson, and I’m playing Tink.

LAURA: I’m Laura, and I’m playing Xianna.

NICK: Great. When we last left off, you guys had—

CAMERON: Who are you?

NICK: I’m Nick. Hi.

LAURA: Who are you playing?

STEVEN: What do you do?

NICK: I-I’m in charge.

CAMERON: What do you do here?

NICK: What DO I do here? I think that’s a fair question. I’m everyone else, that’s what I do.

Alright! Before we get started, let’s do the Destiny Roll!

STEVEN: Yes, let’s.

CAMERON: Two light side.

HUDSON: One black.

CAMERON: (snickers) Dark side, Hudson.

LAURA: One dark side.

STEVEN: One light side.

CAMERON: Alright, so we got three light side, two dark side.

NICK: Great. Not too bad. Okay. When we last left off you got a job from a mysterious hologram, decided to work together for an exorbitant fee, were assaulted by stormtroopers in scary black armor, got a ship called the Afternoon Delight, got into space, were attacked by a small Star Destroyer, and made a jump to light speed with three failures.

LAURA: I’m sure it’ll be fine.

CAMERON: And one advantage.

NICK: And one advantage.

LAURA: Yes.

CAMERON: An important distinction.

HUDSON: Hey, we got that advantage, that’s a blue die we will need.

NICK: (exasperated) Yeah.

CAMERON: (laughs)

NICK: Alright. Let’s get started. The camera starts at the back of the cockpit, it’s like that classic Millennium Falcon shot, so it’s looking over the shoulders. Who all is in the cockpit right now? You’ve been in space for like 12 hours at this point so you’ve had time to move around.

LAURA: Xianna is sleeping.

CAMERON: I am in the cockpit and I have my feet up on the dash.

STEVEN: I, Sabos, am in the cockpit.

HUDSON: I’m rolling my chance cube over and over again and taking down statistics.

NICK: In the cockpit or somewhere else in the ship?

HUDSON: Somewhere else in the ship.

NICK: Okay. Are you doing it on the zero-G relaxation bed?

HUDSON: Yeah. Or actually, is there a velvet couch or chair?

NICK: Oh, absolutely. They’re all over the place.

HUDSON: I’m on one of those.

LAURA: I’m assuming everything is velvet.

NICK: Yeah, like that crushed red velvet.

LAURA: Yeah.

HUDSON: Everyone’s been like picturing purple too, right?

NICK: No, it’s red.

LAURA: Mm-hmm.

HUDSON: Oh, red velvet, okay.

CAMERON: Like the dark movie theater red.

HUDSON: Ah, okay.

NICK: Your quarters can be purple.

HUDSON: Okay!

NICK: It’s the purple room.

HUDSON: I like to be different. Yeah. Mine’s the purple room.

NICK: Okay. So, your quarters… Let’s just talk about Tink’s quarters for a second. It’s an extra-large bed that’s sunk into a compartment on the wall. It’s a water bed mattress. The floor is all purple shag carpeting.

LAURA: (giggles)

NICK: The walls have that carpet-like movie theater wallpaper that looks soft but when you touch it it’s kind of not. You’re sitting in a purple velvet couch over a gold and glass coffee table rolling your chance cube, taking down statistics.

HUDSON: Laura had a visceral reaction to you saying purple shag carpeting, (laughter) but no one could actually see that.

CAMERON: It’s important to note.

LAURA: I mean, it’s glorious, but…

HUDSON: Egh. But…

NICK: Tink likes it. It reminds him of home.

HUDSON: Yes.

NICK: The planet of Gigoran, by the way, just purple shag, the whole thing.

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: Purple shag everywhere.

NICK: Which is a bummer, because their fur shows up on it like really obviously.

LAURA: And it’s really hard to vacuum because of it.

NICK: Yeah, so you’re doing that. The camera is just looking over Karma with her boots on the dash placed ever so carefully amongst all the buttons and dials and control sticks that are on this.

CAMERON: Yep.

NICK: There is a big red button that says Do Not Touch and you’ve got your boot, the heel of it, kind of wiggling back and forth while you’re humming to yourself, and every time it gets really, really close to this big red button. Sabos, have you noticed that?

STEVEN: I’m sure I know where I’m going.

CAMERON: He’s not in the cockpit, is he?

NICK: He said he was in the cockpit.

CAMERON: Oh, you are?

STEVEN: Oh, I’m in the cockpit. I’m very intently staring out the window, because I definitely know where I’m going.

NICK: Okay, so you’re very focused on that.

STEVEN: Yes. (laughs)

CAMERON: “You realize you don’t have to drive while it’s in hyperspace, right?”

STEVEN: “I’m sure I know where I’m going.”

NICK: He’s looking for landmarks.

STEVEN: (laughs)

CAMERON: “The ship at this point is kind of doing it itself, so…”

STEVEN: “Yup. Yup.” (laughs)

CAMERON: “Alright… Good talk.”

STEVEN: “Yup.”

CAMERON: Ooh. During this time, at some point, I took out the data stick that I stole off the curly haired woman who attacked me and plugged it into my data pad, to look and see what information was on it, because it can’t be tracked while I’m in hyperspace.

NICK: Ooh, okay. What information was on that? Oh yeah, that’s true. Okay, so from the data stick you learn that the name of the bounty hunter that you tangled with on your way to this mission was Betani Boatthrower, and that she is Corellian, and she’s from Coronet originally. There’s a lot of personal data on there, bounties that she’s taken in. She has one missive from the bartender that you met, Jefredrick Douglas—

CAMERON: Yeah, my friend Freddy.

NICK: Your friend Freddy. And he’s basically inviting her to the bar on that day for something unrelated, and she happened to be there. It’s a lot of business emails, basically. She’s a member of a bounty hunting tip network, so her sending stuff out to get points, and her spending points to get info on stuff, so that’s mostly what’s on there. Was there anything in particular you were hoping for?

CAMERON: I was just mostly trying to figure out who she was, because I did not recognize her.

NICK: Yeah. She’s pretty small-time, and you don’t go to Corellia very often, so if it’s someone who specializes in Corellia you probably wouldn’t know them. Oh! There’s a letter in there from someone that just says ‘Nana.’ It says: ‘I hope you enjoy the new blaster. We saved up such a long time to get it for you.’

CAMERON: So, at this point I don’t know that Tink rescued her, and left her, so…

NICK: Yeah, that hasn’t come up.

CAMERON: I feel a little better about having left her blaster where she can easily find it.

NICK: Mm-hmm, at the bottom of the canal.

CAMERON: Uh, that she pushed me into, yes.

NICK: Mkay.

CAMERON: If she didn’t want it getting wet, she shouldn’t have pushed me into the canal.

NICK: Okay. You’re flipping through this data stick getting information. Sabos is desperately looking for some sort of landmark in hyperspace that will direct him.

STEVEN: I am seeing all of them too.

LAURA: (laughs)

NICK: ‘Oh yeah, I recognize that star!’

LAURA: I don’t think he knows how hyperspace works.

STEVEN: Every landmark.

(laughter)

HUDSON: Now, is he convincing himself or no one around him?

STEVEN: No—Yes.

NICK: Tink is doing statistics research, and Xianna is sleeping?

LAURA: Yes. She definitely picked a water bed.

NICK: Mm-hmm. They’re all water beds.

LAURA: Well, they’re all water beds, but she made sure she picked a round one that will rotate, and I’m sure that there are gold pillows on it, and if there aren’t mirrors on the ceiling I am leaving.

NICK: Yeah, there’s mirrors.

LAURA: Yeah. There’s mirrors on the ceiling. Probably half the stuff in her pockets are just thrown about the room.

NICK: (laughing) Already?

LAURA: Already! Like, the weird mask in the box is sitting on a shelf, though. She put that on a shelf.

CAMERON: The decanter’s on the bedside table.

LAURA: The Twi’lek totems are on the shelf. The decanter is already empty, on the floor, the stopper’s gone somewhere, like her scanner goggles are thrown on the floor, and she’s probably like half in the bed, and at least one foot is hanging out of the bed.

NICK: Okay. I’m picturing her sprawled on her back unconscious, one leg kind of dangling. There’s a disco ball hanging from the ceiling that’s spinning.

LAURA: Oh definitely, and it’s on.

NICK: Yeah. There’s low jizz music playing, and the bed is rotating so your foot occasionally will kick your boots or something on the way back around. We’ll do a quick flashback to when Xianna first walked into the room. What color scheme do you think the room is? Is it the red-gold?

LAURA: Oh, I’m imagining the dark red and gold, like just gold everywhere.

NICK: Okay. Xianna walks in, the comforter on the bed is red and gold leopard print.

LAURA: Yes.

CAMERON: Nice.

NICK: Or, loth-leopard print, I guess? Space leopard. Whatever.

LAURA: Some sort of space cat.

NICK: Yeah, space cat. She walks n and she looks around, and she says out loud, ‘If there aren’t mirrors on the ceiling, I am leaving,’ and—

LAURA: “If there are not mirrors on the ceiling, I am leaving!” (laughs)

NICK: Yeah. You look up, and you see mirrors, and you clap to yourself, and then the disco ball comes down from the ceiling, and the bed starts spinning.

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: “Ooh. This is definitely my room!” And I just like go, (repetitive clapping), and I just keep watching it go up, then go down, then I leave it down and start throwing stuff everywhere.

NICK: Then it flashes back forward. Does Xianna snore?

LAURA: Eh, probably not.

NICK: Okay, to her just drooling slightly out of the side of her mouth while she’s asleep. And—

STEVEN: Also, you definitely described the low jazz music as low jizz music.

NICK: Yeah, Star Wars—

CAMERON: Star Wars music is jizz.

STEVEN: Oh, is it really?

LAURA: It’s called jizz.

STEVEN: Oh. I didn’t know that.

(laughter)

LAURA: I mean, we all love some hot jizz.

NICK: So, for anyone who isn’t way too into Star Wars, yeah, jazz is called jizz music. Gotta get you some of that hot jizz whenever you’re listening to music in Star Wars.

LAURA: We are gonna earn our explicit rating ONLY by saying jizz 40 times a podcast.

NICK: So, that’s what everyone’s doing. Tink, you and Xianna, Xianna comes awake, you two feel the ship drop back into normal space. I need a Vigilance roll from Sabos right now, right now, right now.

STEVEN: Okay.

LAURA: Xianna tumbles out of the bed. “Oh… Are we here? What?”

STEVEN: Is it a hard Vigilance roll?

CAMERON: Is it for Piloting? Can he have a blue die because I’m co-piloting?

NICK: Not on the Vigilance roll, on the Piloting check, yes.

CAMERON: Okay, cool.

STEVEN: Is there a difficulty associated?

NICK: Yeah, average, because you did say that you were sitting up straight.

CAMERON: Total wash.

NICK: Oh, great. Well, that’s gonna make this check harder. So, you drop out of hyperspace. By your calculations you shouldn’t have yet. You’re about 100 yards from a forest. You are well within this planet’s atmosphere. You overshot a little bit, and so you frantically grab the stick and try to pull up, and Xianna even with the inertial dampeners—which is a really cool Star Wars thing where you don’t get turned into paste when you turn too hard—you are thrown out of the bed, and Tink your chance cube goes bouncing away from you and out into the ship.

HUDSON: “No!”

(laughter)

LAURA: (weak and sleepy) “I take it we are not there.”

STEVEN: “There was a slight miscalculation. Everything is fine up here. You’re good.”

CAMERON: “I can see trees.”

LAURA: “Trees?”

CAMERON: “Trees.” (giggles)

NICK: You desperately need to pull up, so I need a hard Piloting check.

STEVEN: Is this a Planetary?

NICK: No, Planetary and Space are the kind of vehicles you have. You are in a space ship, so it’s Space.

STEVEN: Oh, okay. Wonderful.

NICK: And you have a black die because you did not do well on your Vigilance roll.

STEVEN: Wonderful. Hopefully this is gonna be fine.

CAMERON: And you have a blue die, for the Piloting check, because I’m co-piloting.

NICK: Yes, you can have a blue die, because—Probably she has kicked the stick—

CAMERON: I removed my feet from the dash very quickly when I saw trees!

NICK: I’m really excited that Sabos is the pilot, you guys. This is great.

LAURA: It’ll all be fine.

NICK: Look at this team. We’re gonna do great.

STEVEN: Yes!

CAMERON: Triumph, alright.

NICK: Really?

CAMERON: Hold on.

STEVEN: Yup.

LAURA: I mean, I see a lot of threats.

CAMERON: Hold on, recalculating. (laughs)

HUDSON: Recalculating.

NICK: You know how I like to spend threats, you guys.

LAURA: I see three.

NICK: Yay.

CAMERON: Okay, so…

LAURA: Oh boy!

CAMERON: A success, three threats, and a triumph.

NICK: … Huh… Okay, um… That was a very Cameron-type roll.

CAMERON: Good job, Steven.

NICK: So the success, you manage to pull up above the tree line.

STEVEN: Hell yeah.

NICK: The triumph, that thing that had been knocked loose from the ship snaps back into place.

STEVEN: Oh yes.

NICK: It was a rear stabilizer that was going to make doing things very difficult until you figured that out. I’m assuming Tink has probably jacked into the system diagnostics on his data pad by now. Like, that’s what you do when you enter an area is just like connect to every network.

HUDSON: Yeah.

NICK: So, as that snaps back into place a little diagnostic pop-up shows up on your data pad as you’re like chasing after your chance cube and it’s rolling around in the hallway. It says ‘Rear Stabilizer Detached, Temporary Fix’ and it shows you exactly how to fix it, so all you have to do is go out there and weld something down and it’s good.

HUDSON: “Remind me to tell y’all about a slight issue later.”

LAURA: “I think we are having a slight issue right now.”

STEVEN: “No, we are fine.”

HUDSON: “This is not a slight issue.”

CAMERON: (laughs)

NICK: So, with all the acceleration and the sudden change, Xianna actually goes sliding down the hall and she slides past Tink with her arms crossed saying that, so that’s fun.

CAMERON: I’m proud of you, Steven.

STEVEN: That was a good roll.

NICK & CAMERON: Yeah, good job.

NICK: And then, the three threats… Hey guys, guess what happens if you get three threats in Star Wars.

CAMERON: You fall down.

NICK: You fall prone! (dramatic bass noise) It’s my favorite thing ever. So, you fall out of the chair—

CAMERON: The ship falls prone. (dramatic bass noise)

NICK: No, not the ship.

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: The ship falls down!

NICK: Sabos falls prone. (dramatic bass noise)

STEVEN: (laughs)

NICK: The ship is actually very nice even if it is a little tacky, so as he falls out of the chair it senses no one’s in the pilot seat and gives you full control of the ship, Karma.

CAMERON: “Oh goodness!”

NICK: With the acceleration, to avoid hitting the trees, he had to punch it, so as he falls backwards out of his chair he goes sliding off down the hall and into the rest of the ship.

CAMERON: “Alright. I’ll just hang out here.”

NICK: As you’re flying, you get readouts of local scanning and fauna, there are some very big animals although you can’t identify what they are, and you see that the planet—well, you would have seen from space if you had been in space.

CAMERON: (giggles)

NICK: But, you can gather kind of from what you can see, the planet is mostly large forest, and there’s a lot of scrub bush and stuff everywhere but it’s mostly pine trees and things like that, and not Douglas Fir pine trees, it’s like the big tall ones that just have pine needles at the top. You also see some lakes, like some mega lakes scattered around, Lake Erie-sized give or take you imagine because it disappears on the horizon, but the way it’s shaped you can see it’s not an ocean.

STEVEN: As I slide down the hallway and pass them, I say, “Hey guys. I came down here to tell you I think we’re here.”

(laughter)

HUDSON: (hesitantly) “Thanks.”

NICK: At this point the inertial dampener has caught up and you guys are able to stand up and move freely about the cabin. You made it to the back by the wet bar.

STEVEN: Wonderful.

CAMERON: Karma says over the coms, “This is why we wear seat belts.”

LAURA: “The ship has seat belts?”

CAMERON: “Yep. I’m wearing mine.”

LAURA: “Hm. There were not seat belts in my bed. I checked.”

CAMERON: “That does make sense. I was talking specifically about the pilot flying through the back.”

STEVEN: “The captain’s chair did not have a seat belt installed.”

CAMERON: “It totally does. I can see it.”

STEVEN: “It was not attached.”

CAMERON: “Well yeah, no duh.”

HUDSON: “Were there restraints in the bed?”

LAURA: “No, I checked for those. There were none.”

(laughter)

STEVEN: “The important thing is we missed the trees. I mean, the important thing is we are definitely at the planet.”

LAURA: “Are we?”

STEVEN: “We’re at a planet, aren’t we?”

CAMERON: “Can confirm, we are at a planet.”

NICK: That sounds like a check, doesn’t it?

CAMERON: It does sound like a check.

NICK: Either Astrogation—This is all Karma because she’s the only one that’s nearby.

CAMERON: I can see it.

STEVEN: (sighs) I can’t look out the back window by the wet bar?

NICK: I mean, you can see trees and a lake.

STEVEN: Perfect.

NICK: Astrogation or Knowledge: Outer Rim.

STEVEN: Can I use Outer Rim with my trees and the lake?

NICK: Sure.

STEVEN: (quietly) Yesss.

CAMERON: What’s the difficulty?

NICK: Average. You’re here ,and you have all the readouts and everything.

CAMERON: Can I have a blue die from looking at the ship’s navi-computer?

NICK: Sure.

CAMERON: (laughing) To give me some idea about where we are.

NICK: Half of the navi-computer readouts are just like question marks and UNKs and things, because it was not expecting there to be a planet here. It had been assured that there was not a planet here when someone programmed it.

CAMERON: Mm-hmm. Oh, goodness. So, I fail with four advantages.

NICK: Great. You don’t fall prone.

CAMERON: Correct. I don’t think I would from a Knowledge check. (laughs)

NICK: How did you do, Sabos?

STEVEN: I have one threat and two successes.

NICK: Okay. You know you’re definitely on Unroola Dawn. The threat is you’ve been here before.

STEVEN: Hm.

NICK: That’s part of the reason you recognize it, but some people may recognize you if you are unlucky.

STEVEN: Mm, hmm.

NICK: And you had?

CAMERON: Four advantages.

NICK: How do you wanna spend the advantages? Four is a lot.

CAMERON: We’re approaching the lake. There is a nice clearing to land the ship in. what else?

NICK: So, one of the advantages, you can see that there is a settlement near the lake as well.

CAMERON: Cool.

HUDSON: You can make a perfect cocktail.

LAURA: Does Tink have to fix anything with the ship?

HUDSON: I do when it lands.

CAMERON: He’ll have to repair the dampener once we land.

NICK: But it’ll be really easy to do.

LAURA: Ah, okay.

HUDSON: It’s not that bad.

NICK: It’ll take him like five minutes.

LAURA: While we’re landing and I’m up, can I get an advantage for a Skulduggery check to just check around the ship to see if there’s any cool hiding spaces?

NICK: Sure.

CAMERON: I’ll give you a blue die.

LAURA: Is there a difficulty?

NICK: Probably hard, because if they are cool they’ll be hard to find. Right? Oh, and one of your advantages can be spent on the navi-computer resetting, and you see that it’s Outpost 4, which is where you were supposed to go.

CAMERON: Awesome.

STEVEN: Oh, we made it.

NICK: Yeah, good work.

CAMERON: You don’t know that. You can’t see it.

STEVEN: (laughs)

LAURA: Okay, that’s three successes, a threat, and a triumph.

CAMERON: Four successes, the triumph as well.

LAURA: Oh, four successes. The triumph has a success in it.

NICK: Okay. With the triumph and all the successes, yeah, there are several good hiding places. In fact, one might say mechanically that one of the hard points on this ship is used up by smuggler compartments.

LAURA: Nice.

NICK: Yeah. Rather than it being floor panels or something, there’s a lot of little nooks and crannies where things can go. There are some that are bigger for like big sized stuff, but there’s lots of small little stashy hideaways. How many threats was it?

CAMERON: One.

NICK: So, the threat is one of the places where you think is a hiding place is actually a garbage disposal, and you may accidentally throw something out if you put it there.

LAURA: Ah, okay.

NICK: It looks like a hiding place, but it’s got a little trap door at the bottom.

CAMERON: And you don’t know which one~

NICK: Yeah. Cool. That may come up. So, Karma, you see that you are approaching that open clearing by the lake. There is a settlement over there, and it is Outpost 4 which is one of the things that you heard your contact saying you need to visit.

CAMERON: Cool. I’m gonna go fly over to that clearing.

NICK: Okay. You gonna land?

CAMERON: Yup.

NICK: That takes probably like five or six minutes. No one coms you. There doesn’t appear to be air traffic control or anything, you can just come in for a landing. What are you guys doing during that five or six minutes, everybody but Karma?

HUDSON: Getting my toolkit together.

LAURA: Putting my shoes on, picking my stuff up, and then looking around the ship.

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: I’m probably looking for the compartments as I’m putting shoes on and stuff, so I’m just walking around, putting shoes on, like poking panels.

NICK: Hmm, okay.

STEVEN: I’m taking a drink, very happy with myself that I didn’t crash into trees.

NICK: What’s Sabos’s drink of choice?

STEVEN: Corellian whiskey.

NICK: The wet bar is not as well stocked as you would expect.

STEVEN: I’m sure it has some nice Corellian, though.

NICK: So, it has some whiskey, it has some space gin, it has some of the main stuff. It doesn’t really have any mixers, and most of the bottles are only like a quarter full. It’s like this ship was taken on a pretty long journey and then never restocked.

HUDSON: Does it have a White Gigoran in it? It’s a White Russian with hair.

CAMERON: Ew. (laughs)

LAURA: Ew.

STEVEN: You know, I don’t see that.

NICK: So, you have the hair to supply. There is some space Bailey’s, but it’s not refrigerated so it’s kind of sour.

HUDSON: I get my tools together anyway. I don’t need to drink before a job.

NICK: Cool. Sabos is just leaning against the bar looking out the back window acting like nothing ever went wrong. Everything’s great.

STEVEN: Everything went to plan, and we’re on a planet. (laughs)

NICK: Yeah. So… You can see that Outpost 4 is a large camp settled in the wilderness of Unroola Dawn. It has a ring of durasteel walls around it that slope inward, and you can see the tops of prefabricated buildings peeking over the wall. You can see several Imperial shuttles and a couple of civilian ships parked in the clearing outside. There is a large automated gate on one side. It’s like a sliding flat door that has overlapping triangles that go across, and you can see that the settlement is pretty plain. It has dirt roads, and most of the buildings are one story and square, and they’re arranged in kind of concentric circles around the middle of the settlement where there is a larger building. That’s about all you can tell before you settle into a landing.

You have landed. Congratulations, you did not die. This is good.

CAMERON: Karma slowly peels her fingers off of the control and like rolls her neck, and stretches. “Okay. That was stressful.” Which you all hear, because the ship coms are on.

LAURA: Yeah. Xianna looks over at Sakos and is like, “Do you actually know how to fly?”

STEVEN: “We’re on a planet, aren’t we?”

CAMERON: “He flew alright, it’s the Astrogation that I’m  not so sure on.”

STEVEN: “I might have overshot the—Well, here’s what happened. Remember that orbiting destroyer thing that was just such a problem?”

LAURA: “You mean the ship?”

CAMERON: “That left?”

STEVEN: ‘I decided to skip the orbit this time. Boom.”

LAURA: “I do not think that is a good thing.”

STEVEN: “We just went right on in.”

LAURA: “I think there is a reason that ships usually stop that.”

NICK: I wanna flip a dark side point, and Xianna, you’re still talking a big game but you’re genuinely unsure if he did it on purpose or not.

STEVEN: (laughs)

LAURA: Yeah…

NICK: You probably wouldn’t be thrilled to see him piloting, but also you think maybe he’s good at it. You’re not sure.

LAURA: Oh no, I’m gonna let him pilot again, I’m just like almost legitimately concerned, like is that actually how…

CAMERON: Is this a thing that people do?

LAURA: I’m gonna pretend that I know, but like… Does it?

(laughter)

STEVEN: We just orbited the trees instead.

HUDSON: Can I look out? I was about to get my tool bag, whistle a tune, and go out there to fix the thing. Can I do a Perception check to look and see if anyone’s around the ship?

NICK: Sure. That’s pretty easy. In fact, I would say it was easy.

HUDSON: Oh, nice. Okay.

STEVEN: How convenient.

NICK: I’m really excited about how many of our characters are trained in Perception in this game.

HUDSON: One success.

NICK: You can see, this is the equivalent of like concert parking. It was a grass field. It’s all kind of beaten down, the grass is mostly dead, but it’s not muddy because of the thatch effect, and there’s not really anyone around the ships. The civilian ships appear to have their own onboard security systems. The Imperial shuttles are all folded up. But, over by the gate, you can see that there are two stormtroopers standing guard.

STEVEN: What are they dressed in?

NICK: It’s the forest camo ones from Endor.

LAURA: Ooh.

NICK: So, they’re like the scout troopers with the stupid visors that make it so they can’t see. It’s the black body suit and then the armor panels are all like the spray paint-y camo.

HUDSON: So, I walk off the ship and go to the back to fix the… What do I fix?

CAMERON: The dampener?

STEVEN: Horizontal stabilizer.

NICK: The rear stabilizer. You guys were all close.

HUDSON: I walk off the ship to fix the rear stabilizer.

NICK: Okay. So, you climb down, the scout troopers see you, make the tap on the side of the visor hand gesture that they’re acknowledging that you’re there, and it’s aimed towards you and each other, and they don’t mess with you. They just kind of stay put.

HUDSON: I do a similar action back, tap on the side of the head.

NICK: They just kind of ignore you and go back to their thing. They look bored, which is weird for stormtroopers. Well, have you ever interacted with stormtroopers before, besides being shot at by them a second ago?

HUDSON: Yeah, I mean, off and on, just never been like arrested by them, I don’t think.

NICK: Okay. If you’ve ever seen them walking by doing their tour de force thing they’re almost always at extreme attention, they’re always really focused and emanating scary aura. These guys are like leaning against the wall and look bored.

HUDSON: I kind of wanna go play hacky sack with them, but I resist that urge to go fix the ship.

(laughter)

NICK: You swing around to the back of the ship and there are two tall fins on the back, and one of those was obviously at an angle and is kind of bent back. You figure if you take this wire and connect it here, and if you spot weld this piece, it’ll be fine. Like, not even a patchwork job, it’ll just be good. It’ll be solid. So, you climb up there, and make me a Mechanics check. This one’s easy.

HUDSON: Yay. I’m pretty good at Mechanics.

NICK: You say to yourself.

HUDSON: I’m just holding the wrench like, ‘Yeah man, I’m doing a good job.’ Three advantages.

NICK: Okay, so, it’s not fixed. You realize that you’re out of fluid for your welder torch. It will last for a while. It’s mostly good, this was just preventative maintenance so it doesn’t break again, basically. One of your advantages is that the stormtroopers see you doing that and see your toolkit, and they make note that you’re someone who’s good at mechanics. They overheard you say that, like ‘huh, cool.’

(laughter)

HUDSON: ‘Hey, he talks to himself.’

LAURA: ‘Hey, he’s good at mechanics.’

NICK: ‘Hey! That guys good at mechanics. Maybe we’ll have a job for him.’

HUDSON: That’s it for me. I go back into the ship after I’m finished.

NICK: Cool. What are you all doing?

HUDSON: I let them know that there’s two stormtroopers by the door, so anyone should kind of give up if they’re wanted across the galaxy now.

STEVEN: “Um…”

LAURA: “So, is anyone wanted specifically on this planet?”

CAMERON: “I have never been here before.”

LAURA: “I don’t think I am.”

STEVEN: “I’m not—I’m not wanted on this planet.”

HUDSON: “I haven’t even heard of Unrooly Dooly, so I haven’t been here.”

NICK: Unrooly Dooly. (laughs)

CAMERON: “You Sabos, or you Sako?”

LAURA: “Well actually—Yes. You seem to have two different names. I’m not really sure which is which, so…”

CAMERON: “You first introduced yourself as Sabos. The mysterious voice thought you were Sako.”

STEVEN: “I, Sabos, am not wanted on this planet. I think I’ve been here to try to establish some trade routes.”

LAURA: “Are you sure? You do not seem sure.”

CAMERON: “That would be how you knew the hyperspace route so well.”

STEVEN: “Yeah.”

CAMERON: “Mm-hmm.”

STEVEN: “I came in from a different side this time. I’m used to coming from Osaron…”

CAMERON: “Yeah. The planet placement depending on which side you come in at can really impact the Astrogation. Yeah.”

STEVEN: “East or west. Yeah.”

CAMERON: “Mm-hmm.”

LAURA: “Mm. Is there an east or west in space?”

STEVEN: “Relative to the planet’s gravity and axis alignment.”

LAURA: (laughs) “Okie.”

STEVEN: “I astrogate!”

(laughter)

LAURA: “Anyways. I am putting it out there. I do not know whether or not I am wanted on this planet. Probably not. I would say a solid 80% for no. it depends on how good their warrant system is.”

NICK: Hey guys… Can you flip me that dark side point, please?

CAMERON: Oh no.

NICK: Don’t worry about it. I’m sure it’ll be fine.

LAURA: (giggles) Xianna has been arrested many times.

CAMERON: We now have five light side points.

LAURA: So, we will be using that. Yeah, Xianna has been arrested a handful of times. At least three, probably more.

HUDSON: “Okay, so…”

CAMERON: So, I’ve been in the cockpit shutting engines down and doing all of that stuff, flipping all the switches.

STEVEN: “So, uh, Karma?”

CAMERON: “Yes?”

STEVEN: “You know where we are? I mean, I know where we are, but do you? You were the co-pilot.”

CAMERON: “I mean, so, the navigation computer says we’re by Outpost 4.”

STEVEN: “That’s where I was aiming.”

CAMERON: “Um, sure you were.”

STEVEN: “It’s wonderful.”

CAMERON: “Yup. Uh, Unroola Dawn, that’s the planet.”

STEVEN: “That’s the planet I was going for, too.”

CAMERON: “Mm-hmm. Yep.”

STEVEN: “It’s a good landing.”

CAMERON: “There’s a gate over there with some stormtroopers in front of it, and a little outpost beyond it. And I haven’t been off the ship yet, so that’s all I know.”

STEVEN: “I assume all we have to do is deliver said cargo to that outpost?”

CAMERON: “We have to get the cargo first.” Right?

STEVEN: I thought we already saw the two meter by one meter box.

NICK: No. you’re picking it up here to take it somewhere else.

STEVEN: Oh.

LAURA: Yeah, we have to get the box.

CAMERON: “Did anyone catch the name of who we’re supposed to talk to? Because it was kind of gargled.”

STEVEN: (static noises)

CAMERON: “Yeah. That’s what I heard, too.”

LAURA: “I only heard the word Sentinel, and I don’t…”

HUDSON: “I thought it was centennial.”

LAURA: “No. that means 100.”

HUDSON: “Yeah. It was confusing to me, too.”

LAURA: “No, Sentinel.”

HUDSON: “Ah, okay.”

LAURA: “That is what I heard.”

HUDSON: “We’ll go with what you heard.”

CAMERON: “Me too, but I don’t know what that means.”

LAURA: “I think it is someone who watches things?”

STEVEN: “Well, there’s two sentinels there.”

LAURA: “yes, yeah, like a guard.”

CAMERON: “We were warned to watch who we asked about it, though, so maybe asking the stormtroopers isn’t the best idea.”

HUDSON: “Let’s just get past the stormtroopers and figure it out from there.”

CAMERON: “Okay. Did you fix the ship?”

HUDSON: “It’s… gonna work.”

CAMERON: “Cool.”

(laughter)

LAURA: “That sounds like a no.”

HUDSON: “It’s not a no, because I’m just missing some welding fluid. After I get that then we’ll be 110%, but right now we’re 100%.”

LAURA: “Okie.

CAMERON: “Alright.”

STEVEN: “I believe you.”

HUDSON: I don’t even have to roll for that.

NICK: Nope. You’re good. So, you all head down the ramp and towards—

CAMERON: I take out the key and go (boo-boop), and lock the ship.

NICK: Okay. You arm it.

STEVEN: I take the key back.

CAMERON: No. (laughs) Karma does not give you the key.

STEVEN: I attempt to take the key back.

CAMERON: Yeah. You don’t get it.

NICK: I mean, is this important enough to you that we need to make an opposed roll on this right now?

STEVEN: Would it be a Brawl or a Melee?

NICK: Are you, like, fighting her for it?

STEVEN: I just want to grab it.

LAURA: Xianna’s gonna step in between them and just look at Sabos. “Mm. Just let her have the key, okie please?” I wanna use Charm.

CAMERON: Charm check? (laughs)

LAURA: I’m gonna roll Charm!

NICK: You can charm. What’s your Discipline, Sabos?

STEVEN: I have some Discipline. By that, I mean none.

CAMERON: Two green.

NICK: Okay, so two purple.

LAURA: An advantage?

NICK: You are unimpressed by her attempting to make you think it’s a good idea to not take the keys, but you also don’t wanna like start a fight. That’s the advantage. You’re not sure that’s gonna go well.

STEVEN: I don’t want to start a fight. I might try—

CAMERON: I put it in my breast pocket.

STEVEN: I might still try to grab it later, now that she’s revealed where the key is.

NICK: Yeah, that’s fine.

HUDSON: That sounded predatory, because of where she put the key.

CAMERON: Yeah. (laughs)

NICK: Sheesh, getting intense.

STEVEN: (laughs)

CAMERON: I put both my hands back, I’m gonna flip my head tentacles so several of them fall over my shoulders in front.

STEVEN: I flick my head tentacles too, unsure what’s going on.

CAMERON: I give you an unimpressed look as you only have four.

STEVEN: Sorry, head tails. Woo, not tentacles, I don’t want those.

NICK: She has tentacles.

CAMERON: I don’t care what you call them.

LAURA: Xianna’s looking back and forth. “Are we flipping our head tails for a reason? Is this a thing now?”

CAMERON: “No. mine are still a little soggy.”

HUDSON: I whisper to Xianna. “I think he’s just trying to copy people. I don’t think he knows how to actually do things.”

LAURA: “That makes sense. Also, I think they can hear us.”

HUDSON: “Nah, we’re good.”

CAMERON: (laughing) Tink’s like whispering, but he didn’t lean down at all to talk to Xianna, so just like seven foot tall whispering down to the Twi’lek.

LAURA: No, I imagine that he’s like standing at full height just looking down, and not really whispering, like it’s his version of a whisper but it’s still fairly loud, because his translator probably can’t handle the full whisper.

HUDSON: Modulate volume?

NICK: No, so I really like the idea—One thing. I have to apologize for the previous episode with Hudson. His mask is a translator mask, not a breather mask. For an alien race that shows up in the background of Rogue One for 20 seconds, I think we did a pretty good job.

LAURA: They’re in like two episodes of Aphra, in the background as bodyguards.

NICK: Oh, okay. And by episodes you mean issues, because it’s a comic—

LAURA: Two issues, I’m sorry. It is a comic book.

NICK: Yeah. I was gonna say, if I’m missing an Aphra show I need to know. So, he’s got this mask set, but I really like the idea that if he whispers it is designed to be easy to understand, so it just says ‘whispered’ and then says whatever he says.

(laughter)

STEVEN: Does Tink not speak Basic?

NICK: No. he can’t. his vocal cords aren’t set up right. It’s kind of like Chewbacca who can only speak Chewbacca.

LAURA: But, I guess most people understand Wookie, so everyone seems to understand Chewbacca. Nobody speaks Gigoran, so he has to use one.

HUDSON: Yeah.

CAMERON: What if it does like the ‘sarcasm.’

(laughter)

HUDSON: It’s only when volume is modulated.

NICK: Yeah. It can do tone of voice and stuff like that, otherwise then he would just sound like HK47 all the time. So, after that long exchange under the ship within sight of the scouts of like arguing and head flipping and whispering, and everybody just kind of looking at each other, the scouts still look bored. Do you approach the gate?

LAURA: Yeah. Xianna’s just gonna be like, “Follow me. We go into the city.” And starts walking that way.

CAMERON: “Okay.”

NICK: So, you get up right next to them, and the gate is on a motion sensor, and slides open, and the scouts are watching you but they don’t say anything.

LAURA: I wave at them. I like waving at people.

CAMERON: I give the one on the right a smile and flick my head tail and walk through.

NICK: The one you smile and flick at is just deadpan, as far as you can tell, and the one Xianna waved at kinda cocks his head slightly to the side, and it makes that high pitched armor creaking noise that they make when they get thrown into trees in Return of the Jedi, but he doesn’t say anything either. So, it looks like you can probably just go straight through.

STEVEN: I also salute with one of my head tails.

NICK: Ew.

CAMERON: With one of your head tails?

LAURA: Why would you salute with the head tail? Do you understand how creatures—

STEVEN: Just kind of acknowledge by moving the head tail.

LAURA: Oh. Oh.

CAMERON: So you like, pick it up? What?

STEVEN: No, the two at the top are opposable.

CAMERON: I was imagining he picked it up in his hand, and then like slopped it onto his forehead, and then dropped it down.

STEVEN: Oh, no. (laughs)

NICK: That’s what I was picturing, too. It’s about as prehensile as a dick is, so you can’t—(laughter) You can’t like gesture with it.

STEVEN: Right, but I have some facing up, so I can—

NICK: Uh-huh, so you like wiggle them at him.

STEVEN: Just the one side.

LAURA: Your two montrals.

CAMERON: It’s like wiggling your ears. You can wiggle your top montrals.

STEVEN: Yeah. Just the one side there.

LAURA: Well, so the top ones are called montrals.

STEVEN: Yeah, those aren’t the head tails. That’s right.

HUDSON: That thing jocks do when they pass someone and they do that head tilt up, like just slightly.

CAMERON: But it’s with the montrals, and they like twitch slightly.

HUDSON: Yeah. We’ll say he did that.

LAURA: They’re not like prehensile though.

CAMERON: It’s way less creepy than picking one up and saluting with it.

STEVEN: (laughing) Oh, yeah, not like that.

LAURA: Swinging it around.

CAMERON: That’s really weird.

NICK: Gross. You head through the gate. Like I said before, the inside of the settlement is pretty plain. It has dirt roads and small one story buildings arranged in a ring around the middle. The center you can tell now is a prefabricated Imperial barracks. They all look the same, so if you’ve ever seen one you’ve seen all of them, and you can see squads of stormtroopers jogging in formation. A group goes by and you hear, ‘ I don’t know but I’ve been told, the sarlac’s welcome is mighty cold,’ and they’re echoing it back and forth to each other and jogging around.

It’s pretty much an independent town within these walls. A lot of it appears to be Imperial military, but you can see several outpost shops. There’s a building off to the side where you can see off-duty Imperials, you recognize them by their gate and their posture, coming into and out of. Some of them look kind of drunk. There’s a building furthest from the gate that’s actually made of wood and not prefabricated and looks to be more comfortable than the other buildings, and in front of that one there are three white armored stormtroopers posted up front, and one of them is standing directly in front of the doors. That’s what Outpost 4 is like.

LAURA: “So, who are we meting?”

STEVEN: “Uh, Sentinel? (static noises)”

CAMERON: “Sentinel.”

LAURA: “Crinkle noise?”

CAMERON: (laughs) “Crinkle noise Sentinel. That’s what we got.”

LAURA: ‘Yes.”

STEVEN: “I was hoping one of y’all understood that in y’all’s native tongue.”

CAMERON: “No…”

HUDSON: “Do any of you know who was talking to us on the hologram in the room?”

LAURA: “He would not tell me his name.”

HUDSON: “Okay, and none of you knew him before.”

STEVEN & CAMERON: “No.”

CAMERON: “He just hired me for a bounty job.”

HUDSON: “Let’s find some shady character in town and ask them.”

LAURA: ‘Let’s find a non-stormtrooper.”

HUDSON: “Can I use Underworld and find someone?”

NICK: Actually, so finding someone would be Streetwise.

LAURA: I have Streetwise.

STEVEN: Yeah, I can do that.

HUDSON: Let’s have whoever has the most.

NICK: Someone could add a boost die to it if you’re trying to help.

LAURA: Help me.

STEVEN: Yeah. How do I do that?

NICK: Just say you’re helping her and she gets a boost die

STEVEN: I’ll help her. Do I roll the same as I would normally?

NICK: No, you don’t even have to roll. If you help someone they get a boost die.

LAURA: Difficulty?

NICK: To find a shady person in an Imperial outpost… Average.

CAMERON: Non-stormtrooper.

NICK: A non-stormtrooper is average, yeah. There are some.

LAURA: Five successes and one advantage.

NICK: You instinctively hone in towards the building that the drunk stormtroopers were coming out of. You go in and there are long, low tables and people in the black form suits that they wear under the armor, and some people in officer’s uniforms but it’s like the shoreside officer’s uniforms not the navy ones, so they’re just kind of like brown, boring clothes instead of the super legit gray uniforms.

They’re sitting very structured by rank, and most of them aren’t talking but they’re drinking. Some of the soldiers are whispering to each other, but it’s a very quiet, restrained atmosphere. Behind the bar is a person that you assume must be a native, you haven’t seen anyone like them before. They have kind of lanky, black hair. It does the crow feather kind of purple highlight thing to it, and they have a very tan face, they have broad features and long cheeks. It’s a guy with a ratty, brown apron on and no shirt, and he is in the process of handing a can of beer to somebody.

CAMERON: Can I roll a Xenology check?

NICK: Sure.

CAMERON: What would be the difficulty?

NICK: Easy.

CAMERON: Nope. I fail with three advantages.

NICK: You can spend the advantages however you want. They’re probably human, honestly. You don’t know specifically about this group, but there’s a lot of weird races in Star Wars that are human except for this one thing. This guy looks a lot like that. He’s ripped, think Conan the Barbarian ripped, with lots of stretched out really ugly looking scars on his arms and things, not action hero scars, like there are scars where stuff is missing… but he seems to serve a can of beer pretty well.

CAMERON: Cool.

LAURA: I’m probably already at the bar.

NICK: Okay. Everyone else paused to look around and see what was going on. You just walked right up to it.

LAURA: Yeah. Are there seats at the bar?

CAMERON: I use my advantage. There’s four seats together.

NICK: Sure. There are four seats together, and one of them is even big enough for a Gigoran.

CAMERON: It’s the end seat, so he can stretch out.

HUDSON: So, I pass down a message so I’m not speaking to the whole bar, saying one of the ladies should try to get some info.

NICK: Hmm, and you could’ve said that from the doorway or whatever.

HUDSON: Yeah.

LAURA: Yeah, I mean, I’m already at the bar.

NICK: The whole volume thing is just for comedic effect. I’m not gonna screw you over with it.

HUDSON: Great. Okay.

LAURA: While they’re still looking around, I’m already at the bar, in the stool, chin in my hand, leaning on the bar table. “Hello. I would like a beer? Is all you have beers?”

NICK: “Well, the beer is the one thing I can guarantee isn’t contaminated, but we have some starshine.”

LAURA: “Um, the beer is fine. Thank you.”

NICK: “Alright, one Imperial ale, coming right up.” He takes out, they’re like the high baller cans, and he sets it on the bar. You reach for it and he stops you, he puts a hand out, and he reaches over and opens it for you and turns it towards you.

LAURA: “Thank you~”

NICK: “That’ll be six credits.”

LAURA: Okay… Xianna internally is just like, ‘Damn! That is expensive… We don’t know who we’re trying to look for…’

HUDSON: Don’t say that to him.

(laughter)

CAMERON: At the point Tink leans over and passes the message that he thinks one of the lady folks should try and get information, the three of us are still by the door. Xianna’s the only one who went over to the bar.

HUDSON: Oh, okay. In that case, I’ll just say, “When talking to them play dumb like you were supposed to go and grab this package so that we can have plausible deniability if they say wait, you’re smugglers, or something like that.”

LAURA: I’m already at the bar…

CAMERON: Yeah, it’s just the three of us talking.

HUDSON: Yeah, just the three of us.

STEVEN: Alright guys, I’ll be the lady folk.

CAMERON: No…

LAURA: I want to be charming for a little bit, but then I want to… would it be maybe Skulduggery to do some very subtle hint droppings?

NICK: That’s Streetwise.

LAURA: Streetwise? Okay, I can do that.

NICK: Streetwise is talking to people and people not thinking you’re a nark.

LAURA: Yeah. I want to do I guess a straight Charm roll, just be friendly for a little bit…

NICK: Mm-hmm. You can use the Charm roll to try to get advantages on the Streetwise roll.

LAURA: Yeah.

CAMERON: “Honestly, I think Xianna is gonna be the best person to be talking since Imperials tend not to like aliens, but they tend to find Twi’leks sexy.”

HUDSON: “I don’t know if I trust her, but we’ll go ahead.”

STEVEN: “I’m legitimately confused, because most Togruta are female, so I don’t really understand what’s going on.”

CAMERON: “Cool, bro.”

LAURA: Two successes and two threats.

NICK: Okay. The successes, this guy likes you, and obviously the people around aren’t much of conversationalists so you catch him, you say something that’s like mildly entertaining and he has a hardy laugh, and you can tell he’s just hook, line and sinker, whatever you need from him. The threats are that some of the officers sitting in the corner notice that laugh, and are now—they don’t look suspicious, but they’re definitely paying attention to you. They’re curious about what’s going on.

LAURA: I mean, I’m smiling at them.

NICK: Mm-hmm. They’re not taken by your charms, because they were not directed at you.

LAURA: Well, yeah. You have to like ‘direct’ it. You can only project in one direction. (laughs) That’s how charm works!

NICK: Sometimes two, if you have more than one kind of asset, I guess.

CAMERON: At this point we’ve been standing at the door long enough so I kind of usher everyone out of the doorway over to the extra seats at the bar.

NICK: Yeah, for sure.

LAURA: What would the Streetwise check be?

NICK: At this point it would probably be hard, but you get a blue die. Man, we’re very much level one, and you guys still are starting with these huge dice pools.

LAURA: Two successes.

NICK: Nice. What information are you trying to get out of him, or what hints are you dropping?

LAURA: I’m trying to drop that we’re here for a job and we need to pick something up, and try to be real subtle that we’re not exactly sure where to be going, so if he knows of anyone who’s providing a job for someone let me know, like if he knows anything…

NICK: Okay, so, this takes a while. By the time you all are seated at the bar—Who’s drinking? Is anyone drinking?

HUDSON: I’ll be drinking.

STEVEN: I’m drinking for sure.

CAMERON: I am not drinking.

LAURA: I’m already drinking my beer.

NICK: You’re just sitting there?

CAMERON: Mm-hmm. I’m scanning the room.

NICK: Okay, so six credits for you all to buy beers.

STEVEN: Oh, I get starshine.

NICK: Oh, you’re getting starshine? That’s four credits, but I need a Resilience check from you.

HUDSON: (laughs)

STEVEN: Perfect. This is gonna go well. How hard is said Resilience check?

NICK: It is hard.

STEVEN: Oh, is it?

NICK: Yeah. This stuff is legit.

STEVEN: Hard is three?

CAMERON: Yeah.

STEVEN: Well, this is gonna go well… Yeah, it goes fine.

CAMERON: (whispered) No it doesn’t.

LAURA: Oh boy.

STEVEN: See, I have two failures and one advantage.

NICK: Okay. You’re gonna take four strain…

STEVEN: Sure.

NICK: …and you are mildly inebriated. It hits you a lot harder than you thought, and it hurts, your stomach hurts, but you get a good buzz off of it so as far as you’re concerned this was a good deal. Is there something you want to spend the advantage on?

STEVEN: I would like to know the brand of the starshine. Is it actually from this planet?

NICK: Yeah, like, the guy makes it in a bathtub out back.

STEVEN: Oh, wonderful.

LAURA: Yeah, it’s starSHINE. There’s no brand.

STEVEN: Well, I didn’t know if it was like, you know, one of the regulated starshines that comes from Corellia.

NICK: No, this is like bathtub gin.

STEVEN: I ask to be excused to go look at the tub it’s made in.

NICK: Oh, he goes with you.

STEVEN: Perfect.

NICK: So, there’s a little aside of you standing around, you kick at it, and he’s pointing out the still and everything. “Yeah, we make it right here out of these berries. They don’t really have a name that’s pronounceable in Basic, but they have a pretty good kick.” So, you have a little thing, and he likes you, and you guys are best friends now. Good job.

STEVEN: Yeah.

NICK: Now, back to the hints of the job and everything. He kind of gets what you’re saying, and thinks about it for a bit, and says, “Well, most people that aren’t Imperial are here for one reason or another. We don’t see a lot of people come here for no reason. But, the guy who handles most of these jobs is, uh, actually out right now, went on a hunting expedition. He should be back pretty soon, but you would want to talk to him. He’s the guy who lives in that bigger building in the back of the complex.”

LAURA: “Okay. Thank you.”

NICK: “His name is Falx Urnstad. He’s kind of a big deal.” Around then the Imperial officers get up to order more beers and he kind of clams up and goes back to pulling them out. You see there isn’t any refrigeration or even electricity in this building. Like, it’s a prefab building, but the inside is all cobbled together wooden tables and stuff, like they just cut 2x4s. it doesn’t have any refrigeration or lights, like they never hooked it up, so he just has an Imperial issued cooler with ice in it that the beers are all stuck in.

CAMERON: Is it shaped like a death star?

NICK: No, it isn’t. it’s square.

(giggling)

CAMERON: Damn. Missed opportunity.

NICK: It’s a case that is about three meters long and two meters wide.

STEVEN: That’s a big Imperial cooler.

NICK: The death star doesn’t exist as far as you know, so…

CAMERON: Yeah, I know. I just thought they’d have \the merchandise\.

NICK: That’s what you get from him before the Imperials walk up. They’re doing that hip lean in the bar thing while they’re looking at you kind of as an invitation to talk, but they’re not making a first move.

LAURA: I just kind of like politely smile at them, and then when I’m done with my drink I look at everyone else to suggest like, ‘we should go~.’

CAMERON: Karma gets up and walks out.

HUDSON: I down my drink and get up and go.

STEVEN: I stumble a little bit and say, “The starshine is to die for,” and I get up and go.

NICK: (laughs) Okay. As you come outside you hear the sound of speeders in the distance and you see the trees rumbling. The gate slides open, and you see three off-road vehicles come in. they’re speeders, but they’re rigged up, their air intakes and stuff have a lot of heavy grating over them so they can go through the jungle. The one in the middle has a crane arm and is holding some strange creature that is dripping black icor from it. It looks like a great white shark but with scales and teeth where its fin should be. Can I get a Perception check or a Xenology check from somebody?

LAURA: Ew.

STEVEN & CAMERON: Sure.

LAURA & CAMERON: I can do Perception.

STEVEN: I can do Xenology.

CAMERON: Can we all do Perception?

NICK: Sure.

LAURA: What’s the difficulty?

NICK: This one’s hard. Are you rolling Perception or Xenology, Sabos?

STEVEN: Xenology, but it didn’t go well.

NICK: Okay, so you don’t know what this is.

CAMERON: You succeeded with three threats.

STEVEN: Yeah.

NICK: Huh. You fall prone. (dramatic bass noise)

STEVEN: (chuckles)

CAMERON: But he knows what it is!

NICK: But you know what it is.

LAURA: Four successes on my Perception check.

STEVEN: (laughing) I fall prone at the sight of it.

CAMERON: One success for Karma.

HUDSON: Okay, I have (laughs) a failure…

LAURA: One of those gets cancelled out.

CAMERON: So you have a failure, a threat, and a triumph.

HUDSON: I have a failure, a threat, and a triumph. (laughs)

NICK: Okay. So, you don’t see anything. Sabos, you identify this as a Kirsten’s beast. It’s pretty rare, they like jungle environments, and they’re real, real, real scary, and it’s such a surprise to you that you fall on your ass in the mud. (dramatic bass noise) There’s no mud in this outpost except for one puddle that you managed to find, so your clothes are dirty now.

STEVEN: Wonderful.

NICK: Karma and Xianna, you see from this creature hanging, it has thousands of like millipede legs hanging off the bottom of it…

LAURA & CAMERON: Ew.

NICK: …and some of them are still kinda twitching. Yeah.

CAMERON: Ugh.

LAURA: Gross.

STEVEN: I say, “Hey guys, I think this is a Kirsten’s beast. They’re pretty fucking scary.”

CAMERON: “No shit.”

LAURA: “I can see that.”

CAMERON: Or I guess, no kriff.

LAURA: “I can see its weird, little leg things.”

HUDSON: Creepy crawly.

CAMERON: There’s so many legs, and so many teeth.”

NICK: All of the stormtroopers snap to attention as the speeders pull to a stop at the square around the barracks. You guys are all within probably 40 yards. You’re close enough to see but not close enough that you’re gonna draw immediate attention. A squad of stormtroopers pile out of one speeder, and it’s a mix of white armored stormtroopers and the scout troopers, and out of the other two speeders come people who are obviously military but are wearing expeditionary outfits. They are pale like they are used to wearing helmets and have short, utilitarian haircuts.

Out of the front speeder comes two grizzled looking people you can only assume are locals like the bartender. There’s a man and a woman. They look pretty similar. They have dark, lanky hair, a deep tan and scars just like the bartender did. They are wearing clothes that look like they started as the expeditionary outfit but have been patched together and strengthened with animal hides. Their blasters look simple but customized. They’re stripped down so there are as few parts that could fail on them as possible, but they still seem to be pretty deadly.

As you’re getting all that, after a small pause, the scarred people look behind them and one more person steps out of the speeder. It’s a Zabrak male. He has facial tattoos but they’re subtle, only a darker brown than his already tan skin. He has a light blaster strapped to his thigh, and a pure white version of the expeditionary outfit on. It’s spotless. There is an Imperial insignia above the left breast. He surveys the crowd that’s gathered, the stormtroopers are all still at attention, and looks perplexed for a second, then appears to remember something. He leans back into the lead speeder and pulls out a canteen, and a martini glass. He pours the contents into the glass and tosses the canteen back into the speeder. He sighs to himself, and waves at everyone to go back to their duties. The two locals that are with him go to cut down the lizard monster.

He looks around and says, “Oh boy, it sure is good to be home.” And that’s where we’ll end it this time.

CAMERON: He must be a king. He doesn’t have shit all over him.

LAURA: He doesn’t have shit all over him!

(laughter)

NICK: Ba-dum!

(all make dramatic noises)

NICK: Oh my gosh.

HUDSON: –longest time!

NICK: Oh no!

(laughter)

## 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.

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.

Sabos Nix was played by Steven Schroeder. He… does not exist on the internet.

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.

Word document download: Episode 1 We Meet at Last – Tabletop Squadron

PDF download: Episode 1 We Meet at Last – Tabletop Squadron

Read in Browser:

Tabletop Squadron Transcript, Season 1 Episode 1:
We Meet At Last

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. Welcome to Tabletop Squadron, a Star Wars: Edge of the Empire actual play podcast. I’m Nick, your game master. We made it everyone! Episode 1! This is always a great part of a campaign where players get to meet each other and figure out what their characters are.

Thanks for coming along for the ride. On to the episode. Enjoy!

[musical chime]
Hi, I’m Lilit and I play Xianna’fan, a Twi’lek smuggler. I was going by an old name during this recording and while we have left the audio as originally recorded, I would request that you use my current name when discussing the episode. Thanks!
[musical chime]

## [0:44]

NICK: Hi everyone, and welcome to Episode 1 of Tabletop Squadron. I am your hosting game master, Nick. Thanks for coming back. The previous episodes were all prologues. This is the first real one. We’ve got the whole party here. We’re all very excited. So, we’ll go around the table, introduce everybody, talk about their character for just a second, and we’ll get to it. Starting off with Cameron.

CAMERON: Hello!

NICK: Hi! How are you?

CAMERON: [giggling] I’m doing well, Nick. How are you?

NICK: That’s good. I’m doing phenomenally. Thank you for asking. So, who are you playing today?

CAMERON: I am playing Karma Nailo, a Nautolan bounty hunter.

NICK: Okay. Cool. Sounds good. Moving on. Next we have Steven.

STEVEN: Hi. I’m Steven.

NICK: Hi Steven, and who are you playing?

STEVEN: I am playing Sabos, a Togruta fringer.

NICK: Great. Awesome. Thank you. Glad to have you here, on the show. This is awesome.

STEVEN: Really?

NICK: Yes. I’m super happy to have you here.

STEVEN: Yay.

NICK: And, Hudson.

HUDSON: Are you happy to have me here?

NICK: No.

HUDSON: Oh, okay. Well, my name is Hudson, and I’m playing Tink who is a Gigoran slicer. I look very pretty in my white fur. You can visit our website TabletopSquadron.com to see my image. I will do autographs later.

NICK: Nice. (dramatically) TabletopSquadron.com! And next up, we have Laura.

LAURA: Hello!

NICK: Hi. … How are you?

LAURA: I’m good. I was waiting for you to ask.

NICK: I could tell. And who are you playing today?

LAURA: I will be playing Xianna’fan, a Twi’lek smuggler.

NICK: Great. When we last left off everybody ended up in a mysterious wood paneled room. We didn’t get a lot of action there because we were recording them one at a time, but before we get started let’s do the Destiny Roll. Everybody rolls one of those white dice. They have dark side and light side on them.

HUDSON: Cameron, go first.

NICK: You don’t have to do it all at the same time.

CAMERON: One dark side.

LAURA: One dark side.

HUDSON: Steven.

STEVEN: Two light side.

HUDSON: Alright. Steven’s my new friend, bestest friend. Two white side.

STEVEN & CAMERON: Light side! (laughs)

HUDSON: Light side, whatever.

NICK: Okay. The total, you guys have four light side and two dark side. Remember, you can flip those to make interesting story things happen or to boost dice, and I can flip the dark side over to light side in exchange for making bad things happen or boosting dice for my NPCs or bad guys, who are not always the same thing. Sometimes they’re not bad guys. You guys ready to go?

PLAYERS: Yes.

NICK: Oh boy. We’ll start with the camera on the interior of the room. It’s warm and wood paneled. It has high ceilings and smooth floors. There’s a wooden board room table in the center, and sitting on it there is a small ice bucket and a crystal decanter full of Corellian whiskey, and the camera does a slow sweep of the room giving you a solid view. It’s otherwise not particularly ornate. The room itself is pretty utilitarian, but the board room table and the wooden chairs that are there, the wooden chairs have leather pads on them, they’re very nice, and that part of the setup is very comfortable.

Sitting in one of those leather chairs we have a Nautolan woman who is green and has head tentacles, and is dripping wet.

CAMERON: Yep. I’m sitting in one of the chairs to the far side of the table from the door, facing the door, and slowly running my fingers through my tentacles as I’m drying them off, and whenever I move I squeak slightly in the leather chair.

NICK: Great.

CAMERON: And I’m sitting here by myself.

NICK: And you’re sitting here by yourself. You have about ten minutes to wait while—

CAMERON: I start inspecting my fingernails, cleaning the river muck out of them.

NICK: Mm-hmm. About ten minutes later the door slides open again and a Togrutan man is shown in by a protocol droid, and he walks into the room and you see a Nautolan sitting there wringing out her head tentacles.

STEVEN: “Nautolan.”

CAMERON: (hesitantly) “Togrutan?”

STEVEN: “I go by Sabos.”

CAMERON: “Well, I do not go by Nautolan. Karma.”

STEVEN: “Hm.”

CAMERON: “Lovely to meet you.”

STEVEN: “Is that whiskey?”

CAMERON: “Probably.”

STEVEN: I go take whiskey and sit down.

NICK: Okay. You sit down, you have a glass of whiskey, and within probably a minute, you don’t even have time to feel the silence get awkward, the door whooshes open again and a purple Twi’lek is led in.

LAURA: “Uh, where did you get the alcohol?”

STEVEN: “Right here on the table.”

LAURA: “Thank you.” And I immediately go for a very large glass, and drink most of it right away.

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: Then top it off again and sit down.

NICK: So, the Twi’lek and the Togruta are sitting on one side, the Nautolan is sitting on another, and you all have a few minutes of quiet while you enjoy what you actually realize is a very nice whiskey. It tastes expensive.

CAMERON: I’m not drinking.

NICK: You’ve had enough for today?

CAMERON: I’ve had enough for today, yeah. (laughs) I’m doing alright.

LAURA: “So, did you two also have to deliver a little box?”

CAMERON: “No. I delivered a Selonian, actually.”

LAURA: “That sounds much easier.”

CAMERON: “Eh, he’s quite heavy.”

LAURA: “The box was in a very weird place.”

STEVEN: “Mine got a little complicated as well.”

LAURA: “You killed someone? That’s what complicated usually means.”

STEVEN: “I busted some people out of a place that they probably should have been.”

LAURA: “Should have or should not have?”

STEVEN: “Depends on who you ask.”

LAURA: “Okie.”

CAMERON: “Hi, I’m Karma.”

LAURA: “Are we using real names here, or what?”

CAMERON: “I’m using my real name.”

STEVEN: “The Nautolan insists she go by her real name.”

LAURA: “Why are you…”

CAMERON: “Because I don’t go by ‘the Nautolan’.”

LAURA: “Is he racist? Is he xenophobic?”

CAMERON: “So, he walked in the room and the very first thing he said was ‘Nautolan’.”

LAURA: “Usually it is the humans who are xenophobic, but you know, you do you.”

STEVEN: “Togruta can be an isolated people.”

CAMERON: “See, that seems kind of xenophobic, too.”

LAURA: “Also, why did you say it in the singular?”

CAMERON: (giggles)

LAURA: “Just Togruta? It is not a planet. You are a people. You say Togrutan.”

STEVEN: “You say tomato.”

LAURA: “I do not say tomato! I do not like tomatoes. They are gross. They are squishy.”

CAMERON: Karma leans back in her chair and is just watching the conversation.

STEVEN: “Do you like human food, Karma? I see you’re uncomfortable by the tomatoes.”

LAURA: “No. Tomatoes are not the only human food.”

CAMERON: “Human food?!” (laughs)

LAURA: “Human food is more than just tomatoes. There are many more things. Where have you been?”

STEVEN: “Uh, the Togruta home world.”

LAURA: “Do they only have tomatoes? Wait, no, you think tomatoes are human food.”

STEVEN: “yes.”

LAURA: “What kind of food do they even have there? Do you not have like, bread?”

STEVEN: “Things very good for head tails.”

LAURA: “You realize that we all have some form of head tails.”

STEVEN: “Ours are superior?”

LAURA: “Can you use them to talk to your other people? Can you communicate with other Togrutans with your head tails?”

STEVEN: “Mine hang down.”

LAURA & CAMERON: “So do mine.”

LAURA: “And hers. They all do. You are the only one with two little weird pointy ones. Do you hear out of them?”

STEVEN: “They’re not little.”

(laughter)

LAURA: “I mean, compared to the length of mine they are littler.”

STEVEN: “I’m one of the few Togruta with four head tails.”

LAURA: “So, do you hear out of them? Can you use them to communicate? Are they just there to compensate for something?”

STEVEN: “Yes. Yes. No—No! Uh—“

LAURA: (laughs) “Got it. Got it.”

STEVEN: I say while sipping my whiskey.

NICK: As he takes a sip of whiskey and gathers himself, you do realize that Sabos does actually have an extra head tail. He has four. It’s very interesting.

CAMERON: I don’t think I know that’s unusual.

LAURA: Yeah, I don’t think I find that—I might know that. Xianna would know that, but she doesn’t really care. She’s been with guys with four head tails, and you know. (laughter) Or three, and four, who knows.

NICK: So, Sabos hides in his drink for a second and there’s a long silence as you all gather yourselves from this interaction. There’s the quiet clink of ice settling in the ice bucket. The door swooshes open one more time, and you all see a very large white furred creature come striding into the room.

LAURA: “Hello.”

HUDSON: I furrow my brow and look at Xianna, and don’t say anything really. I look around the room at everyone else, specifically I stop at Sabos and just kinda say “awkward” under my breath. I walk over, take the decanter and pour myself some whiskey, go ahead and sit down still just kind of looking. I don’t really trust anybody in here. Not really gonna say anything yet.

NICK: So, Tink comes and joins the table, sits in the last empty chair, and you have a few moments of silence before a blue holographic projection appears on the table. It is of a man from the chest up. He’s older with what looks like white hair and streaks of gray that falls to mid-neck swept back over his head. He has a white goatee, and his face is lined with smile lines. The hologram points in four directions at once, so it feels to each of you like he is looking directly at you. He nods pleasantly and speaks. His voice doesn’t come out of the hologram projector hidden in the table, but instead out of multiple speakers in the walls making him sound large and all around you.

“Thank you all for joining me.” Xianna, you recognize this voice as the voice from your ear piece.

LAURA: “Oh, ‘ello!”

NICK: “I am happy to see you all have arrived and accomplished your goals. Karma, your bounty was captured quickly and easily, as expected.”

CAMERON: “Mm-hmm.”

NICK: “Xianna, you showed agility and improvisation. Rallltinkraatakat, your ability to gather information, infiltrate a combat zone, and slice through defense systems was impressive. And Councilman Sako, you were able to… Wait, you’re not Councilman Sako. Who are you?”

STEVEN: “Uh, slight miscommunication. I’m Sabos, not Sako. Uh, it’s the same thing.”

NICK: “Well, it’s clearly not as I was trying to get a Corellian district leader, someone who’s good at talking, here.”

STEVEN: “I’m pretty good at talking over on Osaron, and I think I might serve your purpose as well. After all, Sabos—Sako is alive, isn’t he?”

NICK: “Well, you passed the test whoever you are, and we’re short on time, so you’ll have to do. The rest of you, if this Sabos does anything suspicious, kill him.”

LAURA & HUDSON: “Got it.”

CAMERON: “What?”

STEVEN: “Nothing suspicious at all about a Togruta.”

LAURA: “What? You are a bounty hunter. Do you not, you know, kill sometimes?”

CAMERON: “Normally they’re worth more if they’re alive.” She looks at Sabos appraisingly.

LAURA: “Oh. I mean, I killed a person this morning, so…”

CAMERON: “Dang.”

LAURA: “Don’t worry. He was a pervert.”

CAMERON: “Oh, okay. That’s fine then.”

LAURA: “And a drug dealer.”

HUDSON: “Killing doesn’t solve everything.”

STEVEN: “Sometimes you just gotta bust ‘em out.”

LAURA: “It solves some things.”

NICK: Tink has a far away and haunted look in his eye as he says that.

CAMERON: (laughs)

NICK: “I know you are all wondering why I called you here.” The hologram looks a little concerned at that exchange. “I have a delivery I need made, a delivery that the Empire would rather not be made. Before you can do that however, I need you to pick it up. I’ll be giving you some cargo for an exchange as well as some credits to buy the next leg of the journey.”

LAURA: “What is the cargo?”

NICK: “It’s not particularly important. It’ll be in a crate about two meters long and a meter wide.”

LAURA: “It is not a person, is it?”

NICK: “No, it is not a person.”

LAURA: “I do not do that.”

CAMERON: “I do.”

NICK: “That’s why you’re on the mission, Karma.”

CAMERON: “Because it’s a person?”

NICK: “No, because you have that particular set of skills.”

CAMERON: “Oh, okay.”

LAURA: “I assumed if you are moving someone in a box in cargo it is usually more of a slavery thing than a bounty thing.”

CAMERON: “Or a dead thing.”

LAURA: “I will do a bounty thing, no slavery. No.”

HUDSON: “Can we play 20 Questions to figure out what’s in the box?”

STEVEN: “That’s a wonderful idea.”

NICK: “Sure. I love games.”

LAURA: “Or you could just tell us. You could just tell us. We will probably end up looking in the box anyways, so.”

NICK: “Well, the box is mostly packing materials. I’m not sure if it’s in that box, I just assume it will be from who I dealt with in the past. It’s an artifact of sorts, and I need it for something else, and I need someone to bring it to someone else, and that is why you are all here.”

CAMERON: “This is the most specific job I’ve ever received.”

NICK: “Well, I mean, it’s smuggling. Right? I don’t have to tell you everything. I just need this box moved somewhere else. It’s very straightforward. It is not a person.”

CAMERON: “That’s why I’m not a smuggler.”

STEVEN: “Is this a smuggling operation? This isn’t just a transport op?”

NICK: “Well, yes, because the Empire does not want it delivered.”

STEVEN: “Oh.”

LAURA: “But how illegal is it? Like, pay someone to look the other way, or just straight up we are going to jail for a very long time if it is caught?”

NICK: The hologram looks considerate for a second and says, “Well, there are no specific laws banning the use of the particular technology, so nobody is looking out for it, but if you run into anyone who knows what it is it will probably not go well, so I would not advertise what you’re carrying.”

STEVEN: “What sort of people might know what this is? Who should we stay away from?”

NICK: “Anyone with a PhD I would avoid.”

LAURA: “Okie. So stormtroopers are fine.”

NICK: “Yeah. Stormtroopers will not be interested in this particular thing.”

HUDSON: “How long do we have?”

NICK: “The trip should take about a day to get there, and then the next leg of the trip should take you less than a couple of weeks. I would prefer you not take any side adventures.”

HUDSON: “Most important question. What do we get for this?”

NICK: “Money. A lot of money.”

STEVEN: “Credits, or human money? Osaron money?”

CAMERON: “So, what do you consider a lot of money? When I took up this bounty originally it was 4,000 credits, and then when I actually delivered, alive and very quickly, and you know efficiently as you mentioned, it was only worth 750 credits, so exactly what number are we working towards?”

NICK: “Forty thousand credits.”

LAURA: “Per person, or total?”

NICK: “Total. You’ll have to split it.”

STEVEN: “You got 4,000 credits? All I got was—“

CAMERON: “No. that’s what I was just saying.”

STEVEN: “Oh. I didn’t even get offered that. All I got was the job on this crew.”

CAMERON: “Well, apparently you weren’t supposed to be here, so.”

LAURA: “Well, I was promised a lot of money, so…”

NICK: For the record, side note, 40,000 credits is a shit ton of money.

STEVEN: Yeah, it sounds like a lot of money.

NICK: That’s like most of a ship, so, it’s pretty good. Yeah.

He looks like he leans back in his seat, because the hologram shifts angles a little bit. “So, now that we have that out of the way, the most important thing would be—“ and then there’s a loud bang that shakes the room. You hear the building rattle and some dust comes down from the ceiling. The hologram looks up. “Well, I guess we won’t have time for the cargo and the credits. It appears we have unwanted visitors. I suggest that you leave immediately.”

There’s another bang and the door that you entered through slides open. At the end of the hall, from the entrance of the building, you see a squad of six stormtroopers in black armor moving quickly down the hallway covering each other. There’s a rumbling noise, and all of the doors on either side of the hallway shoot down through the floor like elevators, leaving a view of empty rooms behind, like the side rooms have all jettisoned. The troopers snap to look at the doorways and then back to your group in the room. One stormtrooper has a data pad hooked to a panel on the wall. The stormtrooper presses a button and all the lights flicker off. A door behind you slides open.

Out of the walls of the room the voice of your contact says, “Three blocks north, there’s a pleasure yacht on a landing pad. It’s my personal ship. Get there, get into orbit, and head to Unroola Dawn. You need to speak with (static). He’s the man in charge. (static) Outpost 4 (static).”

LAURA: “You are breaking up! Hello?”

NICK: And you hear the word Sentinel, and then it goes dead. The troopers begin shooting through the door, and as the other room opens up you can see there is a dark hallway that leads outside.

CAMERON: When the troopers start shooting I drop, so I’m underneath the table, and take my heavy blaster off of my back.

NICK: Okay, so you take cover. Is anybody else doing anything?

HUDSON: I grab my vibro-axe and kind of crouch, which makes me about average height of everyone else.

(laughter)

NICK: Okay.

LAURA: I wave a little bit at the stormtroopers, and then hide under the table and pull my gun out.

STEVEN: Yeah, I just stand still.

NICK: You just stand there?

CAMERON: You were sitting.

STEVEN: I sit, and—

NICK: You have another sip of whiskey?

STEVEN: I do.

NICK: Okay. So, these are not stormtroopers that you have seen before. They’re not the ones that would be on patrols. They look pretty scary, and there’s at least six of them. Are you going to shoot at them or are you going to run?

CAMERON: Now that I’m crouched I’m backing towards the door behind us that opened.

LAURA: How close am I to the whiskey bottle?

NICK: You could probably reach up above the table and grab it.

LAURA: Yeah. I’m gonna reach up above my head, pull it back down…

STEVEN: “Hey!”

LAURA: Is there a stopper in it?

NICK: It’s a decanter, yeah.

LAURA: Yeah. So, I’m just gonna like put it in my coat a little bit, and then start making my way to the back door.

HUDSON: I yell, “Are we being detained?” (laughter)

NICK: You just hear radio chatter coming from the room, it’s indistinct from the hallway, and some blaster fire starts heading towards you.

LAURA: “I would say that is a yes.”

STEVEN: I look visibly disappointed that the whiskey bottle left the table.

NICK: Yeah. Are you all leaving or are you gonna fight these guys? It sounds like two people are leaving.

LAURA: I’m leaving.

CAMERON: Well, I’m backing away so I can still provide cover fire if necessary.

HUDSON: I start backing away to follow everyone else.

LAURA: I’ll go first.

NICK: Do you wanna roll me a Shooting check to see how well you can lay down covering fire?

CAMERON: A Shooting check? Sure.

NICK: If you do well enough they won’t start shooting at you as well because…

CAMERON: What’s the difficulty?

NICK: The difficulty would be hard because it’s dark, and you don’t have targets, and they’re kind of far away.

CAMERON: Okay. I’m sure this will be fine. Nope, a failure, but two advantages.

NICK: So, what would you like your advantages to be?

CAMERON: Okay. Can my advantages be that… So, I’m shooting over the table and stuff, I want to shoot the panel next to the door and have the door close.

NICK: Sure, why not. We’ll make that happen. You don’t hit anyone, you don’t lay down covering fire, but the door is shut, and you hear blaster fire hammer into the panel. You have a brief moment of respite while you’re being chased.

CAMERON: Then I turn and run.

NICK: Okay. You just book it?

CAMERON: Down the hallway, yeah.

NICK: Okay.

LAURA: I was already booking it down the hallway. Yeah.

NICK: You’re already gone. So, Xianna just took off down the hallway, the door is shut, what about Tink and Sabos?

HUDSON: Yeah, I run behind Xianna.

STEVEN: I’m gonna use the opportunity to get the hell out, too.

NICK: Okay. You’re all booking it down this hallway. You go down the hallway, there’s nothing there, it’s very dim. There’s like one emergency red light hanging from the ceiling. You get to the end of the hall and a door slides open, and you are on a street back behind the building. Now remember, this was a small brick-like building with two very large spires on either side that are hundreds of feet tall and this building looks more like a utility closet than anything else, honestly. So, you’re on a street. There is no foot traffic, and you actually see on either end of the street there are some militarized speeders parked, and you can see CorSec people standing there, but they’re not really looking around. They mostly look put out, and you can see a couple of different squads of stormtroopers doing like an area sweep coming towards the building. They have not seen you yet, though, because you are all in the doorway.

CAMERON: Uh-oh.

LAURA: Does it look like there’s any small doors that we could run to? Ladders? Anything like that?

NICK: Hmm… Yes. There are some fire escapes in this part of the town, because there are a lot of low buildings in between all the big spires, and the big spires have to be far apart because their about a quarter of a mile wide at the base. So, there’s some fire escapes, there’s some alley ways, there are doors but most of the ones that are open are businesses or parts of these giant spires. They don’t look like an easy way to go through.

LAURA: Can I roll a Streetwise check to see which alley way would be the best to go down?

NICK: You absolutely can, using dice.

LAURA: Yay. What would be the difficulty?

NICK: For an alley way, average.

LAURA: Hey. A success and an advantage.

NICK: You can tell that the closest couple of alleys are probably dead ends, but if you make it a block down the street you could find a way into a network of alleys that would lead you pretty far. You’re pretty familiar with this part of town, because you’ve been casing the city of Coronet for quite some time.

LAURA: Indeed.

NICK: So, do you want to tell people that?

LAURA: “There is an alley way over there that we could go down. It’s pretty complicated, so if they do follow us it would be pretty hard to. We could easily lose them.”

CAMERON: “Mkay. You blend in, don’t you, big guy?”

HUDSON: “Eh, I’ve been told so.”

CAMERON: Because it’s snowy outside, right? You said it’s very cold.

NICK: It’s very cold. It’s not snowing.

CAMERON: Dang!

HUDSON: “I mean, I’m not the tallest creature I’ve ever seen. So, it should be fine.”

LAURA & CAMERON: Could it be snowing?!

NICK: You can flip a light side point.

CAMERON: Yes! It’s snowing!

LAURA: It is snowing.

CAMERON: Tink blends in!

NICK: Since you’ve gone inside it has started snowing, and there is a light dusting on the ground, and there are flurries and motes in the air that would make it harder to see Tink, and honestly harder for you to see them and for them to see you.

LAURA: I put my scanner goggles on.

NICK: Okay. You see that there is at least three squads of six, just at a glance. They’re all wearing that black, shiny stormtrooper armor which you’ve never seen before.

LAURA: “That is not good.”

NICK: Yeah. It’s not good. So, you know what alley you are aiming for. Can I get Stealth checks from everyone? With two blue dice, because you are in the snow now.

LAURA: Cool.

CAMERON: Okay.

STEVEN: So, assuming one does not have Stealth…

CAMERON: (laughs) You just make an Agility roll.

NICK: It would just be your Agility, yeah.

CAMERON: So it would be two greens for you.

NICK: It’s not like Deadlands where you lose a whole bunch of points for not having it.

CAMERON: What is the difficulty?

NICK: Hmm, hard. They have equipment. I forgot.

LAURA: So, two to three and two threats.

NICK: Okay. I’ve got the threats. Don’t worry about it too much.

CAMERON: Alright. I have a lot of dice. Three successes, an advantage, and a triumph.

NICK: Wow. Anything particular you want the triumph to be? The triumph could be that a taxi parks right in front of your alley and you can just climb in.

CAMERON: You know, that sounds great.

NICK: Yeah. So, no more stealth needed.

CAMERON: Let’s do that.

NICK: Yeah, and the snow covers you enough that everybody is able to slip into the taxi. The person in the taxi is actually Seeley Mox who some of you all may remember from your adventures. That’s the scrawny blond guy who was Sabos’s getaway driver and the informant for Tink, and he’s behind the wheel. He looks back at you, he throws his arm over the back seat, and he says, “Well, it looked like there was something weird going on. We haven’t seen drop ships on Coronet in a long time, and something told me that Tink was going to be involved. Whenever he asks a lot of questions and then things start showing up in the morgue I get nervous. The good news is I knew exactly where to find you.”

HUDSON: “Good instincts, Seeley. Thank you, friend.”

STEVEN: “Thanks again.”

NICK: “You’re welcome. Where are you all headed?”

CAMERON: I whisper to Xianna, “He seems like kind of a dangerous person to be around, then.”

LAURA: “I mean, but then again I also killed someone this morning and stole his drugs, so I feel like I’m pretty on par, so…”

CAMERON: “Good company, then.”

HUDSON: “I can hear you whispering. He is trustworthy.”

(laughter)

LAURA: What was the address or place we were supposed to go to?

NICK: He said three blocks north.

STEVEN: So, about two blocks more?

LAURA: Yeah, however that translates, if it’s two more blocks or three more blocks…

NICK: Yeah. You tell him that you’re headed north and that you’re looking for some sort of landing pad, because you’re looking for a ship. He goes, “Huh. Okay. Let’s do this thing.” He throws it into whatever the speeder equivalent is of going straight into third gear and gooses it, and goes like barrel rolling over one of the buildings and takes off. These are some of your threats kicking in. You hear the stormtroopers, even from this distance, some of them have loudspeaker shoulder pad things on. You hear them go ‘hey!’ and then the speeder is gone. In the snow flurries behind you you see flashes of red light, and the speeder takes off. Whoosh!

The taxi with Seeley Mox goes through a lot of unnecessary aerial acrobatics, and in between alley ways sideways, and you get there very quick. You go past the landing strip, loop around for a while, and then come back. He drops you off and he says, “Well, uh, good luck I guess. I guess this is the place. There’s no other landing pads around here, so.”

CAMERON: “Thanks.”

HUDSON: I pay him.

CAMERON: Do you tip him?

HUDSON: Absolutely.

NICK: Okay. You hand him what?

HUDSON: “What’s the fare?”

NICK: “Uh, 40 credits and a favor will be fine.”

HUDSON: “Alright.” I don’t tip then.

CAMERON: (laughs)

NICK: Okay. He charges you a lot, but he saved your life, so, yeah. He goes speeding off and does a barrel roll, and just keeps going. It’s basically a Honda Civic but a speeder, like it’s not an impressive speeder.

HUDSON: And flying it like the Millennium Falcon.

NICK: Yeah, pretty much. He drives it like he stole it, all the time. He goes around a corner and you hear that stereotypical car  crash and rolling hubcap noise, and then it keeps going.

LAURA: “Huh.”

NICK: You are sitting in a landing strip in a clearing between buildings. It’s basically, imagine like a basketball court in a city where it’s just a concrete area raised up a little bit, and there’s a ship sitting there. So, it is a Starwind pleasure yacht.

CAMERON: Ooh.

NICK: A little bit of background: The Starwind class pleasure yacht was originally Kuat driveyard’s attempt to create a competitor for Corellian Engineering Corporation’s YT series. However, before the project even launched KDY changed their mind and repackaged the ship as a luxury yacht. Any of you pilots or ship enthusiasts?

STEVEN: I am indeed a pilot.

CAMERON: I have flown things.

LAURA: No.

HUDSON: I’m a planetary pilot.

CAMERON: I used to have a ship.

NICK: Yeah? Okay, so none of y’all are like really big into this, but what—

STEVEN: Oh, that’s what I do.

NICK: What?

STEVEN: Pilot.

NICK: Pilot?

(laughter)

STEVEN: I am a fringer and explore things.

LAURA: Well, do you have Piloting?

CAMERON: He does, actually.

STEVEN: I do have both Piloting in planetary and space.

NICK: Okay, so you’re a pilot. This ship is kind of like a flying saucer looking ship with a turret above and below, and it has two little fins sticking off of the sides that are storage, and then there’s a little cockpit that sticks out of the front. It’s not particularly pretty, it doesn’t fly particularly well, but it can hold a bunch of stuff and it is also very comfortable.

STEVEN: Perfect.

NICK: Have you ever been in a pleasure yacht? A Starwind pleasure yacht?

STEVEN: I think I might’ve seen one or two on Osaron, but I try to stay away from there. So, no.

CAMERON: Those are just the pesky tourists.

STEVEN: Yeah.

NICK: Okay. So then you would know that the trident shaped starship has two side sections mounted along each side of the ship’s main hull. One side contains a pretty good sized cargo hold, and the other side contains the crew quarters, so it’s like a bunk house thing. Then in the middle, this is the reason you all have this ship, it has the bridge, the guest quarters, the state-room, the lounge, the galley, the conference room, the holo-theater, and even a zero-G relaxation table.

HUDSON: No bowling alley?

CAMERON: No movie theater?

NICK: No bowling alley, no. there’s a holo-theater. That’s literally a movie theater.

CAMERON: Okay, yeah.

LAURA: That is, yeah, a movie theater.

NICK: So it’s very nice. It has a thorough catalog of amenities and pretty good cargo holding. The thing is these are pretty rare. They don’t have a lot of drawbacks, but the thing is, because it’s a freighter and a yacht at the same time, it’s basically as expensive as if you bought one of each, so you don’t see a lot of them around because most people if they want a freighter will buy a freighter, if they want a nice yacht they’ll buy a nice yacht. There isn’t a lot of mixed together with that. So, you’ve seen them, you know sometimes people use them as like command centers if they’re a big corporation or something, but there’s not a lot of them. This ship is called the…

HUDSON: Pretty In Pink.

LAURA: No…

CAMERON: (laughs) Oh god.

STEVEN: That’s unfortunate.

LAURA: The Executor.

NICK: No. you can’t name it after Darth Vader’s.

LAURA: The Dreadnaught.

CAMERON: The Enterprise.

NICK: The Rose Tico.

HUDSON: Should call it My Pleasure. (noises of disgust) Yeah, let’s all cringe real quick. Afternoon Delight?

LAURA: Oh!

CAMERON: Ohhh. Can we name it the Afternoon Delight?

LAURA: It’s a pleasure yacht.

STEVEN & CAMERON: It is a pleasure yacht.

LAURA: If there’s not a button on it that shoots out fireworks yelling it’s my birthday I’m gonna be disappointed.

NICK: Okay. It’s the Afternoon Delight. It’s stenciled on the side. You can see that it was probably called something else before and that’s been lasered off and painted over. You can’t make out what it is.

So, the ramp drops and you’re able to get up and into the ship very easily. It’s very spacious. There’s a lot of synthetic white marble looking stuff, like really nice laminate that’s patterned to look like white marble or plasteel that’s very polished and nice. There’s a lot of red velvet, more than you would expect to see. There’s a lot of gold piping. Think of the decoration scheme as like expensive, yet very tacky movie theater. That’s what the interior of this thing looks like.

LAURA: No, that’s exactly what I’m expecting.

HUDSON: Tink loves it. He rubs his hand across some of the velvet.

LAURA: Like, is there a water bed? I’m expecting a water bed.

NICK: Yeah. All of the mattresses are water beds.

LAURA & CAMERON: Nice.

STEVEN: Excellent.

HUDSON: And you hit a switch and they like come out of the wall.

LAURA: And rotate? Because they’re circular water beds, right?

HUDSON: Circular.

CAMERON: (laughs)

NICK: So, the main crew quarters has several cabins. One of those has a rotating water bed, and there’s a couple of cabins in the main hull, and those have different bed setups than the rest of them. The rest are all like, they would be bunk rooms, in a normal ship that makes sense, it would be bunk beds stuck into the walls so that it could sleep 15 people, instead it’s like two queens per cabin. It can sleep a lot of people. I think it’s like 12, or something like that.

HUDSON: For parties.

CAMERON: For all of our friends we collect on our adventures.

LAURA: Yeah. Xianna would immediately be like, “I call a room with a water bed. I want one of those. In case we sleep here, I want a water bed. It seems fun.”

CAMERON: “Okay.”

NICK: So, it can take a pilot, a co-pilot, an engineer and two gunners to fly it.

STEVEN: Uh-oh.

NICK: You don’t have to have all that, though. This one doesn’t say what the passenger capacity is, but I’d say it’s probably like 12 or 15 people. It’s for like birthday parties. Yeah.

HUDSON: Just birthday parties.

CAMERON: Just birthday parties, only. (laughs)

NICK: So, that’s the Afternoon Delight. You all get on board and prepare to take off. So, who’s gonna do what on the ship? What are your stations going to be?

STEVEN: I’ll be the captain.

CAMERON: “Does anyone fly?”

STEVEN: “I fly, in fact.”

CAMERON: “Well? You do fly?”

STEVEN: “Over on the outer rim things get a little bit, you know, loosey goosey.”

CAMERON: “Alright.”

LAURA: “What does loosey goosey mean?”

STEVEN: “Very good. Things are nice.”

LAURA: I look at Karma. I’m like, “Is that—“

CAMERON: “That means something different.”

LAURA: “Okie. That’s what I thought.”

CAMERON: “Yeah, that’s not—No.”

NICK: He means like balance-y bantha-y.

STEVEN: “Do y’all fly?”

LAURA: “No~”

CAMERON: “Probably better than you.”

STEVEN: “Alright then.”

CAMERON: “I’ll babysit. Alright, let’s go to the cockpit.”

LAURA: I mean, what is your Agility?

STEVEN: Two.

CAMERON: He does have a skill in pilot. I don’t have any, but my Agility is three.

LAURA: Because I have a three in Agility, but I just don’t have any skills.

HUDSON: “I’ll be the mechanic.”

CAMERON: Tink announces.

STEVEN: “That wasn’t a… I think you mean engineer.”

HUDSON: “I’ll be the engineer mechanic.”

STEVEN: “Wonderful. We were looking for one of those.”

LAURA: Is a ship gun Gunnery?

NICK & CAMERON: Yes.

LAURA: I can do that, because at least I have a three in Agility.

NICK: Yeah.

STEVEN: “Oh, are you a gunnery?”

LAURA: “I can take the guns. You know, make pew-pew-pews.”

CAMERON: “Hopefully we won’t need them yet.”

STEVEN: “You seem to be the type to use the guns.”

LAURA: “To make pew-pew noises? (giggles) yes.”

STEVEN: “Yes.”

CAMERON: “Alright. Can we get this moving, Mr. Togruta?”

STEVEN: “Let’s do this thing.”

NICK: So, who’s taking the pilot seat and who’s taking the co-pilot seat?

CAMERON: I take the co-pilot seat.

STEVEN: yeah, I’m the pilot.

NICK: Okay. You seem so confident.

STEVEN: Yup. It’s gonna go so well.

HUDSON: His lack of confidence is disturbing.

STEVEN: We might need the gunner to get off.

CAMERON: I have to be there to shoot him if—(laughs)

NICK: Oh yeah.

CAMERON: Because we were given instructions.

STEVEN: “I am Councilman Sako.”

CAMERON: “No you’re not.”

STEVEN: “Yup.”

NICK: I need Sabos to make a Piloting check, please. This one’s easy. This is just lifting off, getting used to the ship.

HUDSON: While he’s doing that I check all the knobs and doohickeys and make sure everything’s ready to go.

NICK: (grinning) Roll me a Mechanics check.

HUDSON: What difficulty?

NICK: Average, if you’re just poking at knobs and doohickeys.

STEVEN: It was a success and an advantage.

NICK: A success and an advantage, you’re able to lift off, seal it up for orbit, and take to the skies. It goes pretty well. That advantage will come into play in just a minute, so hang onto that.

STEVEN: Good.

LAURA: I imagine I would just get in one of the gunnery seats and just kind of poke around at stuff, not fire anything, but just make sure that okay, these buttons do this, this is my visibility, this is how much my chair moves. I’m probably going to have to like adjust the chair up and down to get to the right height.

HUDSON: I have five successes and a threat for Mechanics.

CAMERON: Dang, Hudson.

NICK: Wooow. Okay, so with five successes you are now intimately familiar with the ship, which has one dorsal and one ventral turret mounted medium laser cannon, so it can shoot in a circle either way, so you can pick which one you want. They don’t like, connect, but that’s a mod that could be installed at some point if you would so care to do so.

LAURA: Mm, I want the dorsal one.

NICK: You know that the passenger capacity is ten, because I found that stat while I was looking at this, and that the encumbrance capacity is 85, so it can carry a decent amount of stuff but it is by no means a tanker. Eighty-five would be like, you could fit a car in here, a couple of cars honestly. So, you know that, you know that the ship has some secrets.

PLAYERS: (in unison) Ooooh.

NICK: Whoa, that was really good. Good job, everybody. You know that there’s some stuff about it that’s probably a little different. With your threat you’re not sure exactly what, but that it bears further investigation. You also know it hasn’t really been upgraded at all, so it has a couple of hard points and things that you could, if you keep the ship for a while, you could change as it goes. So, you take to the skies, and it goes ‘bee-doo,’ and the ship flies up into the atmosphere, and it’s very exciting, and everyone is excited. Yay.

As you breech the atmosphere, you see a small Star Destroyer. Would anybody be versed in different Star Destroyers and stuff for Imperials?

LAURA: I have Underworld.

HUDSON: As do I.

LAURA: And Streetwise.

NICK: Eh, this would be like an inner rim kind of thing.

CAMERON: Skill wise no, but I’d have some familiarity with them being a bounty hunter, probably taking Empire bounties.

LAURA: I use to live on an Empire occupied planet, if that helps.

NICK: Ryloth won’t help, because they have just a big one. This is a small one. It looks weird.

LAURA: Yeah.

STEVEN: I can negotiate. Does Negotiation come in handy here?

CAMERON: (laughs) Not yet. Not yet.

STEVEN: We can just talk to the Star Destroyer. ‘Hey, we’re leaving.’

HUDSON: Talking does solve many problems.

NICK: It might. I need just a straight Intelligence check from I guess Karma and… Xianna, you can do one, too.

CAMERON: What’s the difficulty?

LAURA: Okay. I mean, I’m in the gunnery seat.

NICK: Hard.

CAMERON: You can see it from the gunnery seat. I turn on the ship coms. We can talk to each other now. … Hey! Success.

LAURA: Nope.

NICK: Okay, so you’ve never seen one of these before, which I said, so that’s pretty cool that the dice backed me up on that. Karma, looking out through the cockpit you know a couple things. One, you know that the Empire doesn’t really hang out around Corellia. Corellia’s…

CAMERON: Space Texas.

NICK: Space Texas. Yeah. They kind of run their own stuff. They’re a part of the Empire, and they do their own thing, so stormtroopers being here is weird. You also know that this ship, which you have seen before in some situation or another, you probably would have dropped a bounty off here at least once, is an Imperial Raider class corvette. It’s not that big. It’s only about 150 meters long, and it has fins sticking off the sides that look like giant versions of tie-fighter advanced wings on it, and they use it for like patrol routes and stuff. It’s not very big, it only has like 20 ties on it, but it has complements of troops, and apparently it has drop pods because they dropped stormtroopers on you to go try and stop whatever you were doing.

So, as you get to orbit your com beeps at you. Do you answer it?

CAMERON: Yes.

NICK: Do YOU answer it?

CAMERON: I answer it.

NICK: Okay. As you key it on you hear an imperious voice say, “Starship Afternoon Delight, what is your business and why are you leaving this orbit?”

CAMERON: “This is Karma Nailo. I just dropped off a bounty and I’m headed back out.”

NICK: “We don’t have you on the registration. What are you doing? There are fugitives fleeing the scene of a crime right now, and we need to have this planet on lockdown. Please return to your birth and wait for further instructions.”

CAMERON: I look over at Sabos.

STEVEN: “This is Councilman Sako.”

(laughter)

NICK: I want a Deception roll, please.

STEVEN: Sure.

LAURA: Can you do the Deception?

STEVEN: Yeah, why not.

STEVEN: How hard is it?

NICK: It’s gonna be hard.

STEVEN: Is that four or three?

NICK: Three.

STEVEN: Alright then.

NICK: Give you a 50/50 shot.

STEVEN: No, that didn’t go well.

CAMERON: Nope.

STEVEN: Three failures.

HUDSON: That’s like Sako’s right beside him. ‘Wait, no, that’s not me. I’m here.’

NICK: So, over the com you hear this voice say, “Oh really? Councilman Sako? It’s me, your cousin, Bert. How strange that you sound different than usual.” (laughter) You hear the voice turn away from the microphone and say, “Open fire,” and the com shuts out.

STEVEN: (sighs) “I meant Sabos!”

CAMERON: “I’m gonna need you to fly now.”

LAURA: I yell down the hall. “When you are pretending to be a person make sure it is not a real person that might know people. Just a tip!”

STEVEN: I just tap on the mic and say, “I meant Sabos. Sabos, Councilman Sabos.”

CAMERON: “Sweetie, they hung up.”

LAURA: “It is too late. I am going to have to shoot people now.”

NICK: A turbo laser grazes the shields on the ship and the whole ship rattles. I am going to need a Vigilance check from Sabos because he is the pilot.

STEVEN: Yeah, sure. Perfect. How hard is it?

NICK: It’s just the roll.

CAMERON: Three advantages.

NICK: (sarcastically) Great. So, two tie-fighters come from the back side of this planet up and flank you, and begin shooting at you. I need you to roll two greens against two purples for me, please.

STEVEN: Sure.

NICK: And also, you’re being bombarded with turbo lasers right now, which is also not good.

STEVEN: I yell out to Xianna. “Open fire.”

LAURA: “That is what I am doing!” I’m just in the process of like getting that weird 70s screen lined up, so I have my yellow grid, and I’m just trying to line my yellow grid up with their red dot.

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: That’s the issue, I’m just like figuring it out. The ships I’ve previously used have a red grid, and you line it up on a yellow dot, and that’s throwing me off.

(laughter)

NICK: Okay. And so also, this isn’t like the turret for the Millennium Falcon. This is like a movie theater recliner chair, so it has the grid and as you rotate the joysticks and everything it doesn’t actually rotate the chair, the dome above you just spins around.

LAURA: That’s the confusing part for me! I’m used to the chair rotating, so I’m a little discombobulated, which is why it just takes me a few extra seconds to shoot, and why I’m not actively shooting while Steven is rolling.

NICK: But the chair is real comfortable, that’s that advantage from earlier.

LAURA: Ooh, comfy chair. Nope, wash.

STEVEN: Literally nothing happens.

NICK: Okay, so, we won’t worry about specific damage numbers, but the ship takes a pretty good hit. The ship starts to rattle and claxons start going off.

STEVEN: “Engineer?”

HUDSON: I actually look to see if there’s any type of device where I can forge communication to the other ship.

NICK: Yeah, absolutely. You can patch into the com system.

LAURA: I mean, it’s probably a little late for that.

HUDSON: Well no, I’m not patching in to deceive. I’m patching in to pretend like I’m their headquarters and say to call it off.

LAURA: Oh.

CAMERON: So, to deceive.

(laughter)

HUDSON: So, would that be Deception or Engineering?

NICK: Okay. So, if you’re trying to just send a signal that would be Code Breaking, so it’s gonna be daunting, so that’s four, and a black die.

HUDSON: I lose the black die because of the skill I have.

NICK: There you go. The black die is because you’re trying to steal their wi-fi password.

HUDSON: Yes. What am I rolling for again? Computers?

NICK: Yeah, Computers.

HUDSON: Okay, so I have a success and a threat.

NICK: Oh-ho-ho. Okay. The success, so you send them a signal that’s basically a distress signal from a nearby system and they’re the only ones close enough to get there. It’s a specific Imperial code. You’ve seen it before. You patch it in, and they buy it immediately. The tie-fighters immediately take off because they’re informed they will get left here, and they can’t enter atmosphere and they don’t have enough life support to wait until they get back, so they need to get on that ship.

HUDSON: “I got this everybody!”

NICK: So, what you all see from the cockpit is you see the tie-fighters swoosh past you, not loop around for another pass, just B-line for the ship, and the corvette starts to peel off in that slow motion starship thing, and as soon as the tie-fighters go out of vision, like they’re too far, you see the ship (snap) blink into light speed and it’s gone. You’re not sure if the tie-fighters made it or not, but ship’s gone. Threat is, next time you try to pull some hijinks like this, you left your little hacker signature in there, like they were able to see that it came from like your IP Address, so there’s gonna be more defenses next time.

HUDSON: ROFL leet hacker was on there. I couldn’t help myself.

(laughter)

LAURA: Oh no.

NICK: Okay. You have the coordinates for Unroola Dawn. I just need somebody to put in a hyperspace calculation.

LAURA: I do not have Astrogation.

CAMERON: I’ma look at you, buddy. Sabos knows Astrogation.

STEVEN: Oh yeah, we can Astrogate.

LAURA: Oh, yeah, you have points in that.

HUDSON: You seem real good at it.

STEVEN: How hard is it?

NICK: It’s average, but you have a black die because something’s going on with your hardware right now.

STEVEN: Sure.

CAMERON: None of your skills, or whatever they’re called, on your tree… Do you have any of those?

STEVEN: Mm. ‘Remove black die from \inaudible\ galaxy mapper—‘

CAMERON: Hey! I thought you had that one.

NICK: Good for you!

STEVEN: I’ll go ahead and get rid of that.

NICK: So, you’re able to work around whatever is throwing off your ship.

STEVEN: It did not go well.

CAMERON: (snorts, laughs) It doesn’t matter.

NICK: Oh, jeez.

CAMERON: Three failures and an advantage.

NICK: Okay. So, you punch in the coordinates, and push that little lever forward that everyone has and looks the same no matter what ship you’re on, and the star field in front of you stretches out into white lines, and you vanish into the darkness of space. That’s where we’ll end this episode.

(all make dramatic noises)

PLAYERS: (singing) For the longest time!

NICK: No! No! That’s not the thing!

(laughter)

## 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.

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.

Sabos Nix was played by Steven Schroeder. He… does not exist on the internet.

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.

In an effort to make the podcast as accessible as possible we will begin releasing transcripts of each episode.

Starting today we will release transcripts for episodes 1 and 2. We will then start releasing transcripts of the regular episodes until we catch up, hopefully at a rate of one episode transcript per week.

Once we have caught up with regular episodes we will go back and begin to transcribe the prologues. We produce our transcripts by running them through transcription software and then manually editing incorrect text or anything that didn’t get caught (usually Star Wars words and overlapping speech). Due to the lower audio quality of the prologues much, much more of them will have to be manually edited. We do not have any sort of time line for this at the moment.

 

Transcripts will be available by following the link in the show notes and under the new “Transcripts” menu option under “Episodes”.

If you have corrections for any of the transcripts please do not hesitate to contact us and let us know. We also appreciate any comments, questions, or concerns you may have. We want to make this show as accessible as possible, so if we can do better we would like to know.

The opening scene of our recent Jedi Adventures arc features the Jedi eating noodles at a street vendor on Coruscant. For these noodles we wanted a fast and easy recipe, since these would have needed to be dished out quickly as people ordered them. The sauce requires no cooking and can be made while the water for the noodles are boiling.

Noodles, with extra sambal oelek for serving

 

These noodles are seriously delicious and so easy. They’re great for weeknight dinners when you want something fast with as little effort as possible. They are also quite tasty cold, making them wonderful to pack for lunch.

 

Noodles!

 

The sauce is rich, creamy, and just a little spicy. It starts with sesame paste (sometimes called tahini) and peanut butter. Together these create the rich, luscious base of the sauce. Soy sauce and rice vinegar are added for flavor, sugar for a touch of sweetness, and sambal oelek for just a bit of heat. Then hot vegetable broth is added to thin out the sauce.

 

 

Tabletop One’s Tips:

  • Almost any type of round, Asian noodles work for this dish.
    • At normal grocery stores, look for fresh noodles in the Asian section. They will often have vacuum-sealed packets of noodles.
    • If buying dried noodles, look for “white noodles”; noodles made with white flour instead of semolina. Italian pasta is made with semolina wheat flour, which gives it its distinctive yellow color, but imparts a flavor that is not ideal for this dish.
  • Tahini can be found either with the other nut butters, or the “international” aisle, specifically the Greek or Mediterranean section.
  • Sambal oelek is a Southeast Asian chili paste and can usually be found where ever your store sells sriracha (probably the most famous maker of sriracha, Huy Fong, also makes a sambal oelek. It also has a rooster on the jar.)
  • This recipe is easily scaled up to make more than one serving.

 

Coruscant Street Noodles [serves 1]

6 ounces fresh wheat noodles (or 3 ounces of dried noodles)
1 tablespoon sesame paste/tahini
2 tablespoons peanut butter
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 teaspoons rice vinegar
1 teaspoon sambal oelek chili paste, or more to taste
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/4 cup hot vegetable broth
1 tablespoon chopped green onions

Cook the noodles according to the instructions on the package.

While the noodles are cooking, make the sauce by combining the remaining ingredients, except the green onions. Stir until it forms a smooth, even sauce.

When the noodles are cooked, drain them and toss with the sauce, and place into a bowl.

Top with the chopped green onions and serve immediately.

 

Today we bring you the Naboo Sky. It appears in episode 6 during a meeting with Falx. This cocktail is a beautiful shade of blue and packs quite a punch. Based on the classic Water Lily cocktail, the Naboo Sky is a combination of triple sec, lemon juice, gin, and violet liqueur. The brand of violet liqueur used gives it the wonderful blue color, as well as a delightful floral note.

We used a locally distilled gin with heavy citrus and fruity notes that we felt paired well with the violet liqueur. You can use whatever gin you’d like. If you aren’t sure where to start, we recommend a London dry gin.

The Naboo Sky

 

Naboo Sky [serves 6]

5 ounces triple sec
5 ounces fresh lemon juice
5 ounces gin 
5 ounces The Bitter Truth Violet Liqueur, or any other blue violet liqueur 

For best results: Combine and pour in a decanter. Chill for at least one hour. Serve in martini or coupe glasses.

For authenticity: Combine and pour into a decanter. Keep the decanter on your desk for some amount of time. Serve in whatever glasses are available.

 

The Naboo Sky

 

Bug-monkeys, also known as monkey-bugs or “those gross things.” Served to the crew in episode 3, they were described as “little diced-up bits of meat with toothpicks” and were in a square, fuzzy bowl.

This one took a while to figure out. Were they chunks of whole meat? Were the diced-up bits formed together to make bigger pieces? What does a bug-monkey even taste like?

After some discussion we decided they were small meatballs that had a slight fish taste. We spent some time figuring out exactly what that meant. At one point we even threw out the idea of frog legs! But eventually a pork-fish blend was settled on. We picked flounder for its light flavor, thinking it would blend well with the pork.  The rest of the dish was based on a favorite cocktail meatball recipe of ours.

The final product!

We didn’t have any square, fuzzy bowls, but we did have this adorable Chewbacca bowl!

 

First, let’s start with the aromatics and seasoning. Garlic, ginger, and Chinese chives build the foundation of this recipe. Chinese chives have a wonderful garlic taste to them that works great in this dish.

Garlic, ginger, and chives

Next comes the Sichuan peppercorns. This spice has a unique “mouth numbing” property that’s hard to describe until you’ve tried it. We like ours with a fairly course ground, but you can grind yours as finely as you like. We used a mortar and pestle, but feel free to use a spice grinder.

Sichuan peppercorns

Ground Sichuan peppercorns

After that we add salt, sugar, sesame oil, and soy sauce for added flavor, and cornstarch and breadcrumbs to help bind the meatballs together.

The meatball mixture before mixing (not shown: breadcrumbs)

 

Once the mixture is well combined, we roll them into balls using about 1 tablespoon of the mix. They are then placed on lined baking sheets and placed in the fridge for an hour to firm up. The recipe says to use parchment paper, but silicone baking liners like the one in our photo will work as well.

Meatballs on a lined baking tray

 

When the meatballs are ready to be cooked, heat up some oil in a heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Cook the meatballs on all sides until they are deep brown. Don’t worry if your skillet or pan doesn’t hold all the meatballs at once. Work in batches and keep the cooked meatballs on a plate while you cook the remaining ones.

Our first batch of meatballs

 

Once the meatballs are cooked we’ll begin making the sauce. In the same pan you cooked the meatballs you’ll add minced garlic, Sichuan peppercorns, and red pepper flakes. Cook for 30 seconds until fragrant, stirring the whole time to make sure the garlic doesn’t  burn.

Garlic, peppercorns, and red pepper flakes

 

Then we’ll add the fish sauce, stock, Shaoxing wine, soy sauce, vinegar, and sugar. Stir well, making sure to scrape up any browned bits left in the pan from the meatballs.

Waiting for the sauce to simmer

 

Once the sauce begins to simmer, add the cornstarch slurry and stir until thickened.

Adding the cornstarch, then whisking

 

 

Once the sauce has thickened add the meatballs back in and stir to coat.

Meatballs being coated in sauce

 

Pour into your square, fuzzy bowl (or whatever you have lying around), garnish with some sliced green onions, and serve!

The final product

 

Tabletop One’s Tips:

  • Make sure the flounder is ground well. Using a food processor is highly recommended.
  • Not sure your guest’s will like the fish? Don’t worry, it can be substituted with ground chicken, turkey, beef, or even more pork.
  • We highly recommend heading to your local Asian grocer to get Sichuan peppercorns and Chinkiang vinegar (or buying from an online source). They really make this dish. If you can’t get them the Sichuan peppercorns can be substituted with ground black pepper. The Chinkiang vinegar can be substituted for 2 parts rice wine vinegar, 1 part balsamic (1 tablespoon Chinkiang vinegar= 2 teaspoons rice wine vinegar, 1 teaspoon balsamic).
  • Shaoxing wine can be replaced by a dry sherry or a dry Chinese rice wine. It can also be replaced by more broth if you do not want to use alcohol.

 

Bug-Monkey or Monkey-Bug Meatballs (makes about 40 meatballs)

16 ounces ground pork
12 ounces ground flounder flesh (may substitute sole, haddock, or cod)
4 cloves finely minced garlic
1 tablespoon minced or grated ginger
4 tablespoons Chinese garlic chives, finely chopped (or a mix of the green part of scallions and regular chives)
1/2 teaspoon ground Sichuan peppercorns
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons sesame oil
3 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 cup breadcrumbs
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Add all ingredients except vegetable oil to a large mixing bowl. Stir until completely combined.

Form into small meatballs, about 1 tablespoon each. Place the meatballs on a parchment-lined baking sheet, cover with plastic wrap, and place in the refrigerator for an hour.

Heat the oil in a cast iron or stainless steel skillet over medium-high heat. Pan-fry the meatballs until browned on all sides and cooked through. Remove from the pan and set aside on paper towels to drain.

 

For the sauce:

1 clove minced garlic
1/4-1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/4-1 teaspoon ground Sichuan peppercorns
2 teaspoons fish sauce
3/4 cup low-sodium chicken stock or water
3 tablespoons Shaoxing wine
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 tablespoons Chinkiang vinegar
1 tablespoon sugar
Cornstarch slurry (2 teaspoons cornstarch dissolved into 1 tablespoon water)

To the skillet add the garlic, red peppers flakes, and Sichuan peppercorns. Stir for about 30 seconds, until the garlic is fragrant.

Add the fish sauce, stock, Shaoxing wine, soy sauce, vinegar, and sugar. Stir to combine, making sure to scrape up any browned bits on the bottom of the skillet left from the meatballs. Bring to a simmer.

Add the cornstarch slurry and continue to simmer for about 2 minutes, whisking constantly, until the sauce has thickened. Add the meatballs to the sauce, and stir to coat them.

 

Garnish with sliced green onions and serve with toothpicks.

The finished meatballs, complete with toothpicks.

 

 

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