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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

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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.

(post has been backdated for chronological clarity. post date: 6/2020)

Word document download: Prologue 4 The Holonet Has You

PDF download: Prologue 4 The Holonet Has You

Read in browser:

Tabletop Squadron Transcript, Prologue 4:
The Holonet Has You

Transcript by Harrison (Twitter: @unabletowhistle)

## Intro

[Cameron hums space music]

NICK: Hi everyone, and welcome to Tabletop Squadron, a Star Wars: Edge of the Empire actual play podcast. I’m Nick, your game master. For the past few years, my friends and I have been playing tabletop RPGs together and we decided to share our hijinks with you. For the first few podcasts, we’re doing small individual arcs for our characters so you can get a feel for them before they start bouncing off of each other in Star Wars. Enjoy.

[Cameron laughs]

NICK: Oh, and one more thing. There’s a little bit of interference on the back half of this episode. I tried to scrub as much of it out as I could, but there were a few problems that we weren’t able to get around. We’re still learning about recording a little bit but I hope you’ll bear with us. I think the episode turned out really well despite that. Enjoy.

##

NICK: Hi everybody! We’re on Prologue #4 of Tabletop Squadron. This week I’m here with Hudson. Hi, Hudson.

HUDSON: Hello.

NICK: How are you this fine day?

HUDSON: I’m doing OK. I’m happy to be there.

NICK: Oh boy, I’m sure this is going to be good. And you brought us sandwich stuff so you’re our new best friend so that’s always good too.

HUDSON: Yeah.

NICK: Tell me a little bit about your character.

HUDSON: My character is a tall Gigoran slicer, precisely 2.1 meters in high. He has this long cream hair all over his body. Black eyes. Large dude. Kind of reminds you of a Wookie.

NICK: Yeah, but white yeti-Wookie mix thing, right?

HUDSON: Yes.

NICK: OK, cool. Let’s go ahead and jump right into it then.

##

NICK: You are staring at a black screen with scrolling green text. As you click through the computer, you hear someone walking behind you. A quick keyboard shortcut changes to a dictionary page from the Holonet. You refocus your eyes on the reflection in the screen to see a librarian, a Corellian woman with sharp features and graying hair, glance at you, sniff, and return to her patrol. She’s barely a step past your study cubicle when you hit the key combination and the computer flicks back to the scrolling text.

You’re deep within the university database, looking for any skeletons in the proverbial closet for you to sell to the highest bidder. You find a file marked confidential. When you select it, the screen goes blank. You are left staring at a blinking cursor and then slowly a message types itself on the screen.

“Wake up, Tink.” There’s a long pause. “Collect the Rancor protocol. Upload to a data spike. Bring to the following coordinates.” There’s another long pause. “We will pay triple.”

The camera flashes from the screen to your face and then does a long sweep in a tight circle centered on you. You are hunched over a holoscreen while sitting on a cramped stool in a cubicle. It comes up to about your chest. You can see above it. And you’re in the middle of the Coronet University Library. It’s accessible to the public, but you have to pay a small fee to get in.

So you’ve got this message on your screen saying “Find the Rancor protocol. Upload to a data spike and bring it to these coordinates and we will pay you for it. That’s all you know.”

HUDSON: Hmm, I wonder if I can type back.

NICK: You can try.

HUDSON: Alright, I try to type back saying, “Who are you?”

NICK: OK. It does the three moving dots and it says, “Unimportant. Finish the job. You’ll find out more.” Then there’s another moving ellipsis and it says, “The Holonet has you.” And then the screen just dies.

HUDSON: [sighs] “This again. OK. Well, it is triple the amount of money. I think I’ll go ahead and do this,” I say in my inner monologue.

NICK: OK. So you have a couple of options. Why don’t you make me a—What knowledge skills do you have? Do you have any?

HUDSON: Knowledge… I have Underworld.

NICK: Yeah, make me a Knowledge Underworld roll. This one will be hard.

HUDSON: Oh OK.

NICK: So that will be three purples.

HUDSON: Three purples and my Knowledge which is Intellect which is 4.

NICK: So you get three greens and a yellow.

HUDSON: Oh, I have…

NICK: Oh, you fail.

HUDSON: I fail.

NICK: But with—how many advantages?

HUDSON: Two advantages.

NICK: So a failure with two advantages. Alright, so you’ve never heard of the Rancor Protocol before. You usually get hired—you do like small time hacking missions, right? That’s kind of what your job is?

HUDSON: Mhmm.

NICK: OK. So you do data retrieval for—I won’t say corporate espionage. It’s like ma & pop stores espionage.

HUDSON: Yeah, yeah, like the lower, lower echelons of the underworld.

NICK: Like Bill’s Discount Electronics Hut wants to know what Bob’s Discount Electronics Hut is putting on sale next week, and you go find out.

HUDSON: Yeah.

NICK: Rancor Protocol sounds like it would be either a database with a lot of information on it or like a pre-built program that would do something. You’re not sure. But with those advantages, you do know that you have a friend who might know more. You have a buddy who works in the underworld for one of the more successful mobsters in Corellia. His name is Ceily Mox. Generally you can find him in a nightclub that’s in the seedier part of town. That’s probably like five or six miles away from you.

HUDSON: OK. I make plans to go to that nightclub. I go get another coffee and then just look at my social media.

NICK: Hell yeah. We’ll just say in our version of Star Wars, everyone’s got a social media page.

HUDSON: Yeah!

NICK: What would Facebook for Star Wars be called? There’s got to be a good pun there.

HUDSON: Holo-er. Like Tumblr.

NICK: Holo-er. Yeah, so that’s the one like where you’re trying to get with an AI or a droid. Spacebook seems obvious.

HUDSON: Spacebook, yeah.

NICK: We’ll go with Spacebook. So you look up on his Spacebook page. He hasn’t checked in in anywhere for a while, but there are a lot of pictures of him in speeder-version of family sedans, like Honda Civic-looking cars, really boring, Neon Centra-type speeders, doing gangster poses in front of them. But you can’t figure out why he would be. You usually have met up with him in chatrooms. You met him IRL a couple of times. So you need to get to where he’s at. You could walk but like I said, it would be a long walk. You could hire a cab or however you want to get there.

HUDSON: Yeah, I think I’m going to hire a cab.

NICK: OK, so you walk outside of the library. The computer lab you’re in was in the basement so you have to go up these wide sweeping, marble white stairs. You trip on your way up and get another glare from a librarian as you go through. You’re not really welcomed here, but since you pay your membership fee, they can’t tell you you can’t come in and no one’s ever caught you doing anything that was against the terms of service but you like to use these computers because they’re really anonymous because they’re old. So that’s why you hang out here.

Because Coronet University—oh wait. You’re not a student there anymore, right?

HUDSON: I’m not a student there anymore. I dropped out.

NICK: Yeah, so you dropped out but since you still pay the membership fee, you get in. So you go up these stairs and get to the main floor and it’s just like meters and meters of waist-high shelves on you that go throughout the building on the main floor. And there are some desks where librarians are doing researchy things. And you see glass doors leading out front. And the shelves don’t have books on them. They have like glowing blue lights affixed to like sticks of some sort of metal because they’re like holobooks so it’s very pretty and futuristic-looking.

And so you go outside and it’s a cold day in Coronet on Corellia. Corellia being like the equivalent of space-Texas in Star Wars. It’s where Han Solo is from. And Coronet is the capital city. It’s on an island in the middle of a big old lake and it’s got a lot of big sweeping spire towers that go hundreds of stories into the air. And in the middle of the city is Coronet University, which is a lot of low dome buildings, a lot of white stone, green rolling grounds, oak trees that are losing their leaves. It’s really pretty and you see a lot of students, almost all of them human, hurrying back and forth between buildings and generally going to class or studying or chilling on the lawn. One person’s playing space-Frisbee with another person. It’s idyllic.

You head outside. You walk to the edge of the grounds and you hail a taxi and you have no problems there except it’s kind of hard to fit in the taxi. You have to crouch down. You have your knees by your ears. And you give the guy the address for this nightclub. Takes about 15 minutes to get there. Coronet’s not a big city.

You get to the small club on the other side of town. It’s a—looks like a one-, maybe two-story building. There aren’t any windows on the outside so it’s hard to tell. It’s made of brick, not nice like where you just came form.  There are some tenement buildings on either side that are a lot taller.

And standing out front is a really big bouncer guy and as you get out, he says, “Ah, Tink, what are you doing here? We told you not to come back.” And he flexes real hard.

HUDSON: “I know, I know. There’s just someone important I need to meet here.”

NICK: “You’re not supposed to see the boss. She doesn’t see anyone like you.”

And at this point, you see your friend Ceily poke his head out the door and kind of wave at you and he says, “I know he said someone important, but I think he’s talking about me. Just let him in, dude.”

HUDSON: “I hold my friends in high regard.”

NICK: “I appreciate that. That’s why we get along, man.” And he pushes past the bouncer who doesn’t move so he pushes on the bouncer and just kind of like pushes himself away. He comes out and gives you a secret handshake. What does your secret handshake with this guy look like?

HUDSON: It’s going to be a fist bump to an explosion to a turnaround.

NICK: Nice. Not bad. He doesn’t do very well on the turnaround part. He almost falls over. Besides that, you pull it off without a hitch. And he leads you inside this club. The weird thing about this club is it’s a thin hallway that goes to the back of the building, which isn’t that far. Maybe 40 meters. And to each side, there are a bunch of doorways with dancing lights. And as you walk down the hall, there are people in the rooms, even though it’s like the middle of the day. There’s people in there having a rave but you can’t hear the music. Well, you can hear one song but the lights are all going at different paces and timing and people are dancing different ways so you can only hear one tune, even though there’s obviously different music playing everywhere else. It’s pretty loud and hard to talk.

And Ceily says, “What are you—what are you doing here? Why—why did you come to see me?” And you can’t really hear very well. And he goes, “Hang on.” And he leads you into one of the rooms towards the back and it’s just quiet again. It’s a lounge. There’s just some leather chairs and like a table with some drinks that are pretty old, like someone had been in here and left. And he says, “Alright, yeah, I told you not to bother me at work, but what are you looking for? What are you trying to do?”

HUDSON: So I don’t want to completely explain to him that the entire story in case he can swoop in and take this job from me. But I do explain that I’m looking for something called the Rancor Protocol and I can pay handsomely if I’m given that information.

NICK: “Alright, well, um standard fee, I guess. You can buy me lunch or something. You’ve helped me enough. I’m not going to charge you like crazy.”

HUDSON: “Oh, that’s great of you.”

NICK: “Yeah, we’re good buddies. It’s pretty awesome.” You take a moment to look at this guy. He’s a blond, pretty scrawny-looking kid. He’s got glasses on and a black vest and he fidgets a lot. And he puts his hands together and says, “So going after the Rancor Protocol, huh? That’s pretty gutsy. I’ve heard of it. It’s one of those things like…” Well, can’t say holy grail, but “It’s like the space holy grail of slicers. It says they’ve got a bunch of stuff on it that may be about the Empire. I heard it could have old transponder codes for the Jedi Order which is ridiculous ‘cause that’s like saying you could hack yourself to breathe in space. Jedi don’t exist. I don’t know what people are talking about. But I did hear a rumor that there’s an old databank somewhere deep in the tunnels below the city. It’s supposed to be full of all sorts of cool data. Maybe you could try there. They say it’s in the deepest part of the tunnels.”

HUDSON: “Hmm, that sounds great. Thanks so much for the information.”

NICK: “You’re welcome, friend.” And you guys do your handshake.

At that point, you turn to leave and as you go out into the hall, the music’s different. There’s actually people in the hallway kind of changing rooms, jostling around, having a good time. You hear from the back of the building a mechanical voice say, “Ceily Mox, please report to the boss. Ceily Mox.” And he goes like deadly pale. He looks to the backroom where there’s a beaded hippie curtain over the door and that’s it. And you can see a shadowy figure sitting on a big chair that looks almost throne like. He says, “Well, you’d better go. I have to look into this.” And he kind of straightens his vest and looks like he’s putting on a good show, but you can tell he’s very, very nervous. He says, “So I guess I’ll see you around.” And he mumbles, “I hope.” And he turns to go through the beaded curtain thing.

HUDSON: I walk away pretty quickly. Yeah, brisk pace.

NICK: You go back outside and as you are leaving, the bouncer refuses to move and he like shoulder-checks you on the way by and he goes, “Hey, look out, you alien jerk,” and kind of glares at you.

HUDSON: “I respect that you have the right to tell me that I’m an alien jerk, but I don’t appreciate that, sir.”

NICK: “I don’t know why you’re talking to me about rights and things. I just know that you’re ugly and you should get the heck out of here.” And he like shoves you a little bit.

HUDSON: [sigh] “Alright.” I walk away.

NICK: [laughs] Just so you know, every other character the first time someone has said “jerk” to them has shot that person so good job.

HUDSON: Yeah, I think I’m going to take a different path.

NICK: I’m sure that’ll go well while you’re with them. That’s gonna go great.

As you’re walking away, you hear the bouncer grumble under their breath, sounds something like, “Albino Wookie,” and he goes back to what he was doing.

So you are vaguely aware that there are tunnels under the city of Coronet that are ancient. Built by an aquatic species that live in this system. So there’s Corellians that are humans. There’s a couple of different species that live on different planets nearby that like water and swim and stuff and at some point in the ancient path, they built tunnels under the city. You know those exists. You’re not sure exactly where they are and being told the “deepest parts of the tunnels” is not super specific, so how would you like to gather some information to figure out where you’re going?

HUDSON: I think I’m going to go to this back alleyway I know about where there are some people where you can go there and find the information that you need.

NICK: Cool, so you’re going to like the illegal gossips club situation.

HUDSON: Pretty much.

NICK: So make me a Streetwise check.

HUDSON: Streetwise, alright.

NICK: Do you have Streetwise?

HUDSON: I do not. I have Underworld Knowledge.

NICK: You can use Knowledge. So Streetwise would be to ask people. Underworld Knowledge would be do you know it already?

HUDSON: Got it.

NICK: So you could do an Underworld check first.

HUDSON: I’m going to do Underworld first just to get there.

NICK: OK.

HUDSON: So that’s going to be one in Underworld, four in Intellect.

NICK: This one will just be average so two purples.

HUDSON: OK. Alright, I have…

NICK: Hey.

HUDSON:  Two…

NICK: Two successes and an advantage? No.

HUDSON: Yes.

NICK: Wait, no advantages. They cancel out.

HUDSON: Yup, that’s right.

NICK: So two successes. So you do know where the tunnels are. You do know where this gossip club is. And you have a decent idea of if your whole idea is to go down, there’s parts in the middle of the city, which you’re near, that you know would be a decent place to start. You could also go to the gossips club to see if you could get some more information if you wanted to.

HUDSON: Um… actually, I think I’m just going to pull out my datapad.

NICK: OK.

HUDSON: And I thought I was going to go to the gossipy club, but as it turns out, I start to get the feeling that I can just find out what I need through chat rooms on the dark web.

NICK: OK. The stark web? No. The…

HUDSON: I felt like it would just be called the dark web.

NICK: The dark web works.

HUDSON: The dark, dark…

NICK: The dark hole web?

HUDSON: Dark net?

NICK: Dark net? OK, so you want to—you’re just going to do a Computers check then and see how deep you can go.

HUDSON: Yes.

NICK: And so since you’re just doing this through a datapad through city Wi-Fi, it’ll be an average check but you’ll have a black die because you’re kind of holed up and you’re trying to do this on the fly. Do you have any abilities that might remove a black die?

HUDSON: That’s what I was about to say. Codebreaker to decrypt communications, break codes. No, just codebreaker. That doesn’t remove Computer. That just removes it if I’m decrypting something.

NICK: So we’ll say it removes the black die, though, since you’re not paying for the Wi-Fi you’re using.

HUDSON: Ah, I see.

NICK: That was kind of what the black die was for.

HUDSON: A small chuckle that I was able to get around the Wi-Fi. Just a little victory.

NICK: Hey, that WAP2 thing that happens still has me nervous. Ooh… you fail.

HUDSON: I failed.

NICK: You failed bad. Two failures.

HUDSON: Two failures and no advantages.

NICK: Yep. So your web search doesn’t really work. The websites that like to pass around urban myths about the tunnels or about items are hidden in them all run on Flash and your datapad can’t run Flash. So you hack around it really well and you get to exactly where you need to be and it’s just a blank screen  with a little red X in the corner that shows you don’t have the right hardware for it.

HUDSON: Yeah, well, I feel pretty defeated. I’m going to go get whatever the equivalent of an ice cream cone is.

NICK: [chuckles] OK. So you’re just walking down the street thinking and you find a push cart with an umbrella with a guy—they’re not like ice cream. They’re like frozen… imagine a snow cone that’s not made out of broken ice, it’s just a solid piece of ice but it’s flavored. So they’re like little frozen ice sculptures shaped like different things in different flavors on like a stick.

HUDSON: Oooh. I go over there.

NICK: The guy just kind of nods at you and you’ve got what kind of flavors? So I guess you’ve got Jogan fruit and apples because that’s a thing in Star Wars and mystery flavor and black. Black is a flavor. And they’re all just shaped like different animals that are native to the planet.

HUDSON: I’ll go with mystery flavor.

NICK: Mystery flavor? OK, it’s a clear one. You take it and give the guy some credits and he rolls his cart off along the way and it tastes–

HUDSON: It’s always pink lemonade.

NICK: It’s always pink lemonade. [laughs] Yeah, mystery flavor is clear so you wonder “How do they get the flavor in there? It just looks like ice!”

HUDSON: It’s going to be beyond my intelligence forever.

NICK: So you’ve got yourself an ice cream cone. What are you going to do next?

HUDSON: Walking down the street thinking to myself about what I’m going to do next, I decide I’m going to go back to that gossipy club area. Just try my luck there.

NICK: Sure, so turns out, you’re in the right area anyway. Most of your local hangouts involve not walking too far. How convenient.

HUDSON: Although I’m enjoying this ice cream cone, I have to down it because it’s not the kind of thing you walk into this area with.

NICK: How do you eat your ice cream cone through your weird breather mask thing that you’ve got?

HUDSON: What I do is lift it up and very quickly take a bite. And it kind of like hurts but the mask is used to being on me and I just like put it back on.

NICK: [laughs] OK, so you like mildly suffocate each time you want to each something.

HUDSON: Pretty much unless I configure it to where I don’t need to breathe, but for right now I do.

NICK: That’s awesome. So you stand on the edge of this alleyway. There’s only like a couple of people in there. You know that if you’d gone at, say, at night or before or after a major news event, there’d be eight or nine people hanging out in this alley. Right now there’s just two. There’s a Corellian with black hair like slicked back, in a leather jacket, smoking a death stick. Then there’s a small Corellian woman with like dark bobbed hair and she’s kind of crouched in the corner and she looks like she’s fiddling with some little piece of technology against the wall. You don’t know either of their names but you’ve seen them before. Like they’re people who know things. Which one would you like to talk to?

HUDSON: I’ll talk to the… you said Corellian?

NICK: Yeah, just human. You’re on Corellia. They’re human people.

HUDSON: Yeah, I go up and talk to the human.

NICK: OK, they’re both human.

HUDSON: Oh, sorry.

NICK: The boy or the girl?

HUDSON: The girl.

NICK: OK, so the guy with the leather jacket, you walk past him. He’s like, “Hey, what do you want to know?” You just shove him out of the way and he’s like, “Hey!”  and you just keep going to the lady.

HUDSON: “Nothing right now!”

NICK: [laughs] And the lady looks up and says, “What can I do you for?”

HUDSON: “I’m looking for some information on getting to the underground tunnels.”

NICK: OK, so you need to roll me a Streetwise check.

HUDSON: Streetwise, got it.

NICK: Because the very definition of Streetwise is being able to ask people on the street for information without looking suspicious.

HUDSON: Alright, great, and what’s the difficulty?

NICK: We’ll say… hard. No, we’ll say average. But you have a black die because it’s the middle of the day and you just shoved somebody.

HUDSON: Yeah, that was not a smart move on my part. Alright, I…

NICK: Hey, you made it.

HUDSON: I made it but with two disadvantages.

NICK: With two threats.

HUDSON: Or threats.

NICK: So she says, “Well, I could probably help you out for a nominal fee.” And you two haggle back and forth for a while about money or favors. You end up owing her a favor she says she’ll call in at some point.

HUDSON: Yeah.

NICK: You learn that her name is Jo. That’s it.

HUDSON: Jo.

NICK: Just Jo. J-O. She’s very careful to spell it for you.

HUDSON: OK.

NICK: And you see that the piece of technology that she’s been playing with is a thermal detonator that’s been cracked open and she’s playing with the explosives and changing the trigger device around. It’s very dangerous and scary looking.

HUDSON: Have I introduced myself yet?

NICK: No, I don’t know. Have you?

HUDSON: I don’t think I have, but when I do, I give a fake name but I’m not very good at fake names so I say my name’s “Rink.”

NICK: [laughs] “Well, nice to meet you Rink. That’s fine. I don’t normally ask for my client’s names, but I’ll bear that in mind.”

HUDSON: “I mean, you’ll need to find me if you want a favor.”

NICK: “That’s fair. So the tunnels. There’s a lot of things going on down there right now. Some of the swoop gangs have started trying to hide there.” Swoop gangs are like biker gangs but their bikes fly. That’s like the only difference. “There’s some swoop gangs hiding down there right now. Some of them are trying to make glitterstim and CorSec…” That’s Corellian Security, this planet’s police. That’s me talking, not her. She would assume you know what CorSec is.

HUDSON: [chuckles] Like, “I know what this is!”

NICK: Yeah. “CorSec has been launching sting operations down there so it’s really kind of turned into a running turf war while they try to maneuver around who’s going to own the tunnel, but I know a route you can take where you can avoid most of that. And you said you’re just… Why are you going down there? What do you need?”

HUDSON: “I don’t like to reveal my business.”

NICK: “OK. Well, there are some entrances nearby that you could go in one and navigate, I guess. There’s one main tunnel that stretches pretty much the length of the city and lots of off-shoots from there. I don’t know what else what you would want to know specifically.”

HUDSON: “Hmm, you know, what are you doing right now? Would you want to join me for this?”

NICK: “Absolutely not! I don’t know what you’re doing down there but I’m busy and I don’t want to get shot so…”

HUDSON:  “I mean, it is a little bit risky. I completely understand. Yeah, just point me in the direction of what you think is the best entrance and I’ll be on my way.”

NICK: “Alright so if you go down this alleyway and back behind that building…” And she gives you some directions. It’s probably about a ten-minute walk and you leave and you follow the directions. And you end up, it looks like it would be an entrance into a sketch shop that’s been closed for a while. And you open the door which isn’t locked and there’s just like a ladder leading down a manhole straight down where this storefront would be. So are you going to climb down?

HUDSON: I look every direction twice including up and down, even though there’s just floor there, and then climb down.

NICK: If we were playing Deadlands, I’d make you make a sanity check right now but we’re not so yeah, no one appears to be following—actually, make me a Perception check.

HUDSON: OK. Just in case.

NICK: Just in case.

HUDSON: Alright, so that’s my… And what level?

NICK: Average is fine.

HUDSON: I need to reroll this one. It was on a thing. Oh no.

NICK: You passed. You just have some threats.

HUDSON: Some threats.

NICK: Wait. Did you?

HUDSON: Uh…

NICK: No, you failed.

HUDSON: I failed.

NICK: You failed. One failure. You don’t see anything. I’m sure it’ll be fine.

HUDSON: Great. I go down the ladder.

NICK: So the ladder goes a lot further down than you would expect. You’ve been in the tunnels just near entrances, looking for stuff. Occasionally building security will be tucked down there so you have to go down and a block over to get to their electronics panel or whatever. But this one goes a lot deeper. Normally they start out just below street-level. And you climb down that ladder for a good three or four minutes and you get to the bottom, and the air is cold and damp and dark.

HUDSON: And there’s no one around.

NICK: Not yet. It’s also extremely dark. Do you have anything that lets you see in the dark? Or any lights?

HUDSON: I do. I have a… wait, wrong sheet. I have a light stick. I’m trying to find it on my sheet.

NICK: I mean, I believe you. If you have a glow stick, that’s basically a flashlight.

HUDSON: I have a glow stick.

NICK: Great, so you turn the flashlight on and you look around. So the tunnel is almost low enough to be scraping your head because how tall are you? You said…

HUDSON: 6.1 meters so that’s about 7 feet.

NICK: Yeah, 7 feet. You have to duck your head a little. If you stood up straight, it’d brush the ceiling and there’s spiderwebs and things.

There’s a thin walkway and then the rest of it would be filled with running water, but it’s just got a tiny trickle at the bottom so there’s like a four-foot down to the rest of it. You could walk down there or walk on the runway. That’s up to you.

And that goes on for a ways and then the tunnel splits left and right.

HUDSON: Mhmm. I do the walkway. And after I go through the walkway, I don’t really know whether to go left or right, so I have this—

NICK: Do you have Survival?

HUDSON: Let me see. I don’t, but I have—sorry, I’m trying to think of the word. What are those dice?

NICK: Chance cubes!

HUDSON: I have chance cubes.

NICK: Oh, that’s awesome.

HUDSON: And generally when I can’t make a decision, I use chance cubes.

NICK: OK. So a chance cube is like a d6 basically with different color sides. We know this from Star Wars: Episode 1. And we also know the chance cube we see is like super unfair. It has like two blue sides and four red sides or like five red sides and one blue side. Is yours a fair chance cube or not?

HUDSON: It’s a fair chance cube.

NICK: It’s a fair one, OK.

HUDSON: It’s deciding the fate of myself so I don’t want to…

NICK: Right, right, that seems fair. So it’s got a red side and a blue side and you roll it and it comes up—well, let’s actually roll a force die, would you?

HUDSON: Sure. Oh my goodness. It just went diagonal on one of these. Let’s try that again.

NICK: A dark side! So you get red and decide to go right. And as you walk, make me a Perception check please. This one will be average but with one black die because it’s dark and damp and scary.

HUDSON: OK. I have a…

NICK: So it’s a wash with a threat.

HUDSON: Yes, with a threat. That’s what I was trying to think of.

NICK: Got it. So you’re walking along thinking about… I don’t know. What do you think about when you’re on the job?

HUDSON: I think about if anyone’s around me. I think about, yeah, just like the next step.

NICK: OK. So you’re thinking about, OK, I got to find some way to go down. You’ve decided down is the direction you’re trying to go because everyone, all of your information you’ve gathered said it’s deep so you’re looking for down.  And as you walk, you walk straight into some swoop bike members who were crouched over a small fire on this walkway around the corner. So you turn this corner and you smack into them, physically bump one, and they look up and say, “What the heck are you doing here?” And they immediately go for blasters and you need to go for initiative.

HUDSON: Oh my… How do you roll initiative?

NICK: That would be Vigilance for you.

HUDSON: OK, so… Oh my. [laughs]

NICK: Not very Vigilant, are we?

HUDSON: Not very Vigilant.

NICK: That fits with the theme since Vigilant is like how well you respond to surprises and you walked into some people.

HUDSON: Yes.

NICK: Oh, you’re extremely not Vigilant.

HUDSON: I have an advantage.

NICK: An advantage, yeah. So they’re going to get to go first. One pulls a knife and the other one pulls a small blaster. And the guy with the knife is just going to swing a knife at you. So roll me two greens and two purples please.  And he sucks. He fails. You manage to… how do you dodge this guy trying to stab you?

HUDSON: I pull out my vibroaxe and shift to my left so he misses me.

NICK: OK. Geez, you have a vibroaxe? [laughs]

HUDSON: Yes. That’s actually pretty much the only weapon I have.

NICK: It’s a good weapon. It’s like bringing a bazooka to a fist fight but that’s fine. So the other guy is going to beat you because you’re struggling with the strap on your ax to pull it around, so he’s going to try to shoot you. Roll me a yellow and a green versus one purple. So…

HUDSON: So…

NICK: Hey, he hit you. So you’re going to take five damage minus your soak.

HUDSON: Minus my soak.

NICK: What’s your soak?

HUDSON: Three.

NICK: Three, so you take two damage. This shot hits you like straight in the chest. And it sizzles some of your fur. It’s uncomfortable but you’re fine and you see them both look very nervous as you’re standing there holding a vibroaxe and they just shot you and you’re still standing there. And there’s nowhere for them to run.

HUDSON: “Last chance to drop your weapons, gentleman.”

NICK: Roll me an Intimidate. That’s a skill. It should be.

HUDSON: I don’t—

NICK: Coercion? I think it’s called Coercion.

HUDSON: Coercion is here.

NICK: Yeah, roll me that. Against two purples.

HUDSON: Oh.

NICK: That looks like negative, ghost rider. That is a failure. So the guy with the knife says, “Last chance for YOU to drop YOUR weapon.” And it’s your turn so…

HUDSON: I’m going to have to vibroaxe the guy who just threatened me.

NICK: Sounds good. So that would be your Melee attack.

HUDSON: On this one, I think I forgot to ask you this, I think I only have a point in Brawl. Can I use Brawl instead?

NICK: Yeah, Laura asked me about that. That’s fine. So for listeners at home, Gigorans are not actually a race in the Edge of the Empire yet so we’re kind of reskinning the Wookie stats that should be pretty much the same except instead of giving them a point in Brawl, we gave them a point in Melee. That’s the only difference. So you should probably change that on your sheet.

HUDSON: Yep.

NICK: Melee attacks are always two purples.

HUDSON: That’s right.

NICK: Unless they’re not.

HUDSON: OK, so that cancels.

NICK: Well, you hit him.

HUDSON: Yep, I have a success and an—

NICK: Nope, just a success.

HUDSON: Just a success.

NICK: So you hit him. What is your damage on your vibroaxe?

HUDSON: My damage is Brawn +3.

NICK: So you do 6 damage to this sucker. You just bury your ax into his shoulder and he just drops. He’s not dead, but he’s bleeding a lot and he’s on the ground. He’s trying to scream but also trying not to be too loud. And you have a moment to think, “Huh? Why is he worried about making noise?”

And then the guy with the blaster is going to shoot you again. He runs up next to you and tries to put the blaster into your chest and he says—No, that would be stupid. He backs up from you because you have an ax. And he aims at you and says, “You killed my friend! And I’m going to kill you!” And he pulls the trigger. So that’s a green and a yellow against two purples. Ooh… he hits you good.

HUDSON: Yep.

NICK: So that’s three successes and a threat. So you can use the threat against this guy however you feel is appropriate, but the three successes are going to do—what’s 2 more damage than last time? 7 damage.

HUDSON: Minus soak.

NICK: Yeah, minus soak.

HUDSON: So that’s 4 more. I’m starting to get hurt here a little bit.

NICK: Yeah, you’re bleeding.

HUDSON: Got a 17 total.

NICK: You’re not in the best shape, but you’re still standing. He looks very nervous about the fact that he  shoot you twice and that you’re still coming at him.

HUDSON: Yeah. So I’m going to go at him again.

NICK: OK.

HUDSON: And add a blue die for that.

NICK: OK.

HUDSON: Yeah.

NICK: You can take a blue die because the threat will be that he is more scared of you now than he was.

HUDSON: Yes. And the blue didn’t help me at all with nothing.

NICK: You still rolled really well.

HUDSON: Yeah, that’s a good roll. How many? That’s two successes. I think that’s it. No, and an advantage.

NICK: And an advantage. OK. So with two successes, it’s the same as the other guy. How do you beat this guy?

HUDSON: I walk up to this guy and forward push my vibroaxe into his neck.

NICK: OK.  So just bloop and his head pops off. Your vibroaxe when it’s turned on makes this really high-pitched whining noise kind of like a dentist drill. It’s not really loud, but it’s—anyone who has ever dealt with vibro-weapons before, that noise makes them very noise.

HUDSON: Yeah.

NICK: That guy does not have time to be nervous because his head is now off and he plops to the ground and it’s quiet again. Can you make me a Perception check please?

HUDSON: Alright.

NICK: It’ll just be one purple.

HUDSON: Alright, a triumph. Oh. A triumph…

NICK: So a triumph is worth a triumph and a success. So you have a triumph, a success, and one advantage.

HUDSON: That’s right.

NICK: You hear, after the noise of the fight fades, the stomp of boots coming toward you. With the triumph, you know that they’re coming from the other direction where you went and you also recognize that those are CorSec boots. You have been chased by CorSec before. You recognize the sound. It’s very distinctive.

HUDSON: I run.

NICK: Alright. You run. Are you trying to be sneaky or are you just trying to like book it?

HUDSON: Just trying to book it.

NICK: Alright, make me an Athletics roll to see if you can outrun CorSec people before they identify you.

HUDSON: And that roll is a…?

NICK: It’ll be average, but you’ll have a blue die because of the triumph. You heard them very early.

HUDSON: Wow, all of the… There we go. I have a…

NICK: Two successes and a threat.

HUDSON: Two successes and a threat.

NICK: Two successes and a threat. OK. So you make it off down the hallway. The threat is that you get lost while you’re running because you’re not paying attention to where you’re going.

HUDSON: Oh no.

NICK: So you’re not exactly sure how to get out of here now, but you absolutely out-distance them. As you turn a corner and another corner, behind you, you hear exclamations of surprise as these police officers find someone bleeding out and someone beheaded in the corridor. But they stop to investigate that and you get away.

So you are now deeper in the tunnels and no one is chasing you as far as you know.

HUDSON: I slow down a little bit.

NICK: OK.

HUDSON:  Try to get myself together.

NICK: Sounds good. So you continue down this corridor and seemingly by luck or happenstance or some guy named Forest, you notice a spiral staircase inset in the wall. And you take that staircase down and you come out in this actually much larger corridor. It’s probably ten meters across? No, probably twenty meters across. It’s got like four 1.2 meter-wide walkways on either side and in the middle there’s a large like canal full of water that’s flowing, just not very fast. The water looks black and really smooth and you can see a little bit of current in it, but you can’t see anything below so it’s just water.

HUDSON: It looks deep.

NICK: Yeah, it looks deep. And you walk down that way for a while. Make me either a Perception or a Knowledge: Underworld check.

HUDSON: I’ll do Perception.

NICK: OK, so make me a Perception check. As you’re walking, you’re being kind of hyper-focused on where you are. You found some stairs down. You figure there may be more.

HUDSON: Yeah, average?

NICK: Yeah, average is fine. Hey, you did it. Good for you.

HUDSON: Yeah.

NICK: So a success and a threat. Don’t worry about the threat. I’ve got it covered. So as you’re walking, you come to kind of an open area. That canal is still flowing. And you take a minute to lean against the wall and you realize that there’s a very hidden kind of doorway right next to you. It’s like if you took a normal doorway and rotated it into the wall like 60 degrees so you could only see a sliver of it, so there’s a little notch and you can slide through and there’s another spiral staircase down.

You take that spiral staircase for quite a while and when you get to the bottom, you’re in a big cavern. And set up against the wall, you see an old databank. It looks like it’s tucked into an alcove and it looks like a standard utilities databank. You’ve used things like this before to like mess with buildings, cut security power, reroute sewer systems to mess with people, all sorts of little things. But you see this one has some strange markings on the side and looks probably 100 years old. It’s kind of covered in like cobwebs and so it’s like a big, six-foot-tall box that looks kind of like a standing closet and it’s got the two big film wheels on the front with magnetic tape between the two and they’ve got cobwebs in there. And then there’s a bunch of toggle buttons and switches. And then a small mechanical keyboard pops out of the metal you know and then there’s a dusty, monotone… Monochrome? Is that what it’s called?

HUDSON: Yeah.

NICK: One-color screen. That’s set into it but the whole thing looks like it doesn’t have power right now. So you walk over and analyze it. You see that stuff. Make me a Mechanics roll to see if you can get it running again.

HUDSON: Alright, that would be… an average?

NICK: Yeah. Oh, you’re good at Mechanics.

HUDSON: Alright. We have one, two… two, wait, three successes and an advantage.

NICK: Alright. Yeah, that’s a pretty good roll. So three successes and an advantage. You are pretty easily able—it wasn’t plugged in so you plug it in and you’re able to clear some of the dust out and those two wheels start to spin and groan to life and the screen pops on and you’ve got access. So what do you do now?

HUDSON: I explore through the files a little bit to see what’s in there, what all the fuss is about.

NICK: OK, so make me a Computer check please.

HUDSON: Alright, we have two advantages and a success.

NICK: Nice. So you’re able to get a pretty good feel for the architecture for this system very quickly. The system is a standard utilities archive, but very, very outdated. It’s like multiple operating systems back. He only reason you know how to navigate it is because you used to play with these systems like out of curiosity. You find some surface level stuff and you find—how many advantages did you say you had?

HUDSON: I had three advantages.

NICK: So with that many advantages, too, you find the ways to control the canal a little bit but most of those functions are shut down. Like it looks like this thing doesn’t have access to that anymore. You find a deeper archive that’s password-protected and you also find access to some security cameras that you didn’t know existed in these tunnels.

HUDSON: Mhmm.

NICK: So now what?

HUDSON: Well, no one told me I had to break this password so I’m just going to leave it here. I put a data spike in to take the data.

NICK: OK. Cool. So you just download the data encrypted still. Neat.  With the advantages you’ve accumulated so far, you even without encrypting it, you’re like 90% sure it’s the right thing.

HUDSON: Yeah, I mean, I just try the top five most commonly used passwords on there.

NICK: OK, so what are the top five most commonly used Star Wars passwords?

HUDSON: Alright, so we’re going to go with X-wing, TIE fighter, blaster, password, password1.

NICK: Password1. [chuckles] OK, those don’t do it. But yeah. you download the data onto the data spike. This data spike that you had had multiple adapters on it so you find the one that fits into the whatever the Star Wars version of a USB is and pull it out.

HUDSON: Yeah.

NICK: So you’ve got the data. You’ve got access to some security cameras. What are you going to do now?

HUDSON: I’m going to look at the security cameras, see what the best way out is or if I could go out the way I came in.

NICK: OK, so that’s a good idea since you’re still kind of lost. You’re not exactly sure how you came in. You use the cameras. You’re able to trace your path back. As you’re clicking through, you actually see a camera that is pointed on the door you found, that hidden door, and standing on that walkway next to that river, you see a Nautolan woman. She’s being held up by a Corellian lady with dark curly hair. She’s got a pistol pointed at the Nautolan woman and you can’t hear what they’re saying—there’s no audio—but they appear to be arguing and you also see a guy leaning against a wall, looking kind of out of it. The resolution isn’t great so you can’t exactly see what’s going on.

But as you watch, there’s a flash and like a quarter-second delay later, you hear the noise of a blaster going off. And then the Nautolan dodges the shot, grabs the lady, and like punches her. And they both go tumbling into the water.

HUDSON: Hmm, I run out to see what all that’s about.

NICK: OK. So the staircase is pretty long, but you head up. By the time you get there, the scene’s changed a little bit. The guy against the wall and the Nautolan woman are gone. When you look at the wall, you see that there’s a streak of blood against the wall and the woman who had tumbled into the water with the Nautolan woman—ooh, do you know Xenology? Is that a skill you have?

HUDSON: No.

NICK: Roll me Xenology.

HUDSON: OK!

NICK: [chuckles]

HUDSON: What difficulty?

NICK: This one’s going to be hard.

HUDSON: Oh my…

NICK: Dang, you’re smart.

HUDSON: Yeah, so I actually…

NICK: You completely wash out.

HUDSON: Yep.

NICK: It’s a failure. OK, well the Nautolan woman must have drowned because she was under water for that long and you haven’t seen her.

HUDSON: Yep.

NICK: And the guy must have gotten away.

HUDSON: I don’t know much about Nautolans. They probably can’t live underwater.

NICK: Yeah, those head-tentacles, what do those do?

HUDSON: Flotations devices? I don’t know.

NICK: [laughs] But the woman with curly hair, soaking wet. Her hair is plastered to her. She’s just laying face up on the ground. You can’t see her gun anywhere. What do you do?

HUDSON: I walk over to see if she’s dead.

NICK: You feel for a pulse. It’s fluttering. She seems kind of touch and go. Like she’s probably okay… maybe? But you could do a Medicine check if you want to try and double-check.

HUDSON: Yeah, I’ll double-check with a Medicine check.

NICK: Sure.

HUDSON: Which is a…?

NICK: Just average. Seeing how someone’s visible state is.

HUDSON: I have two advantages.

NICK: OK, so you know that she’s alive and with the advantages, so you fail. You’re not able to stabilize her. You’re not sure exactly how. But with the advantages, you’re like pretty sure there’s an 80% chance she’ll be fine.

HUDSON: Alright. I don’t really know much about medicine or saving someone’s life so I kind of just push on her chest a little bit and slap her a little bit to see if she can wake up.

NICK: So water kind of bubbles out of her mouth and her eyes flutter open and she kind of looks at you and she mumbles something and she passes back out.

HUDSON: Hmm, I’m curious what was said, but–

NICK: It didn’t sound like words.

HUDSON: Oh, mumbling?

NICK: Just grumbly, unconscious people words. Yeah.

HUDSON: I feel kind of bad because I don’t want to just leave her here so I pick her up, throw her over my shoulder, and kind of like—I saw on that camera where that guy was, right?

NICK: Mhmm.

HUDSON: So I go look and see if I can find him in case they know each other.

NICK: So looking at the guy, you see the streak of blood starts at where his chest would have been and slides down onto the ground. Like he was already bleeding. He leans into the wall. Then he like slumped to his feet. Then a little later, there’s a smear and a couple of little of dribbles of blood like he walked away.

HUDSON: Alright. Well, I guess this means I should be going then.

NICK: So you manage to retrace the way you came. On the cameras, you also saw riot squads of CorSec officers. You saw some more swoop bike gang members, kind of in little clusters. It looks like they’ve been playing cat-and-mouse through these tunnels for a while. They’re all armed. They all look very upset.

But also through the camera, you saw another way to get back to the surface pretty quickly. It’s actually in the direction that those little droplets of blood are. So you could rework your way back to the tunnel where you started or you could just try to find the nearest exit. It’s up to you.

HUDSON: I’m going to rework my way back through the tunnels, but I’ll still have her over my shoulder. I’m not going to just leave her there.

NICK: OK, that’s fine. Make me a Stealth check.

HUDSON: OK.

NICK: To try and get out of here without running into any guards. This one is just average. They’re not really looking for you and you’re very—oh, you can have a blue die because of knowing the layout of the tunnels pretty well at this point.

HUDSON: Alright, so that is a failure and three advantages.

NICK: Where’s the failure?

HUDSON: Oh, sorry. It’s actually a success and an advantage.

NICK: A success and an advantage. You’re able to pass everybody. The success is the lady… we’ll get to that in a sec. So you’ve got this person over your shoulder. You’re carrying her through the tunnels and you manage to make it back to the entrance you came in without any problems. There are a couple of tense moments with you ducked into an alcove and booted feet stomping by. Or there’s a point where you’re in and out a different hallway, like leaning against the wall in the shadows, which is not great for you because you’re like a giant, white hairy blob so stealth isn’t really your jam.

But you hear some swoop bike members say, “Yeah! And then someone cut Johnny’s head off! These CorSec guys are getting real serious.” Then they run off into the tunnel after that. So you’re now the ghost of the Coronet tunnels. Good job.

HUDSON: Alright.

NICK: And you make it back out to the surface. The advantage is that this person kind of wakes up as the cold air hits her face. You’re able to set her down and she can kind of stand. She looks very groggy.

HUDSON: “Who are you?”

NICK: “I’m not going to tell you that. Thank you for saving me, I’m assuming, because I’m alive. But no, I’m not telling you anything.”

HUDSON: “I mean, I’m no hero but I did save your life so I kind of am a hero. You should probably get going to wherever you need to go.”

NICK: “Well, thank you for saving me. If you ever need help, I guess I owe you.” And she slips you a card with a comm number on it. “So call me if you need something, I guess.” And she winks at you and she saunters off. She looks really cold because she’s very wet.

HUDSON: I think to myself, “I have that favor from earlier, so I wonder if there’s like a way that like if they ever ask me for a favor, I can transfer it to this favor.”

NICK: I don’t know. Maybe. We’ll see.

So you take your data spike and you get another taxi and you get them to drop you off at the coordinates you learned at the public computer earlier. So the taxi lets you out and drives away. Do you tip the taxi driver or no?

HUDSON: No, I do not.

NICK: Do you not tip? Important character facts about Tink everybody. He does not tip.

HUDSON: He does not tip.

NICK: So the taxi driver drives away. You hear him grumbling to himself as he peels out, although on a speeder I don’t know how you peel out because you don’t have wheels but it’s fine.

And you find yourself standing in front of a low, nondescript building that’s between two Corellian spires. So they’re these              tall, giant skyscrapers that go to a point and there’s another one and because they’re like hundreds of stories tall, these bases are like quarter of a mile wide and stuck between two of them there’s this small building. It looks kind of like a brick.

As you approach the building, you see that there’s a door, although all you can really make out is a faint outline. When you get close, a robot eye on a stick pokes out of the wall. It stares at you for several seconds before declaring, “E chuta,” and retreating back into the wall.

After a couple of seconds of waiting, the door slides open and you walk into a narrow, it’s just all brushed steel hallway with doors lining the halls and one door at the end. It’s probably a hundred yards away from you.

And as you walk in, the door to your immediate right is open and you see a protocol droid is standing in the door. He sets a small plasteel box inside a large transparisteel case. So these are Star Wars words. Plastic. Glass. OK. The lid slides shut automatically. As you watch, the box begins to rattle and a small paw punches through from the inside. The little gray box looks weak and cheap. You see a white rat-like creature about nine inches long with large fangs scramble out of the box. It immediately begins scratching at the case, leaving long white lines on the transparisteel.

The protocol droid shakes its head at the creature and says, “Oh my.” Then perks up as it turns around. “Ah yes, you’ve arrived. Wonderful to see you, sir. I trust you have the data spike.”

HUDSON: “Uh… I might.”

NICK: “Well, if you can give it to me, we can move onto the next step.” He like holds out a droid hand expectantly.

HUDSON: “First, who are you?”

NICK: “Oh, I am a protocol droid and I serve the person who hired you for this job.”

HUDSON: “Which person?”

NICK: “I’m not at liberty to say. Surely you would imagine from the anonymity of the message that he would not want me sharing his identity so easily.”

HUDSON: “Alright, I guess I’ll trust you on this one.” I hand over the data spike.

NICK: He takes the spike and just jams it into his neck. And there’s a little flash of light and his eyes dim and then he says, “Excellent. You appear to have the data, though it appears it’s still encrypted. We should be able to work with this.” He points to a door that’s at the end of the hallway. The last one and he says, “If you’ll follow me, you’ll be met with you compatriots.” And he eases past you and waddles down the hallway.

At the end of the hall, a door slides open and you see a warm, wood panel room with an expensive looking boardroom table in the center.  Sitting at the table is a Togrutan male and a Twi’lek female that appear to be in the middle of a discussion. Both are clutching tumblers of Corellian whiskey. They’re like beginning to argue and the Twi’lek woman looks very annoyed and the Togrutan guy looks like he’s really enjoying the conversation.

On the other side of the table, you see the same Nautolan woman as from the camera feed. And she’s sitting there. She looks a lot dryer than you would expect and she’s staring at the other two. Her expression is unreadable. You see a single empty chair at the table.

The protocol droid says, “Please have a seat and the master will begin shortly.”

HUDSON: I go and sit down but I’m a bit taken aback that I just saw this woman on camera fall into a river and now she’s here.

NICK: So as you sit, the Nautolan woman looks at you and nods politely. The other two are ignoring you. The door slides shut with an audible click.

The end. Ba-naaa~!

HUDSON: Ba-naaa~!

NICK: Cool.

[Hudson continues singing]

NICK: [chuckles] That’s not the song I was thinking, but it works.

## Outro

CAMERON: Thanks for listening to Tabletop Squadron. If you enjoyed our show, please consider logging into iTunes and giving us a 5 star review. 5 star reviews help new listeners find the show. You can find more about Tabletop Squadron on our website: tabletopsquadron.com, or on our Twitter and Instagram: @tabletop_squad.

The Star Wars: Edge of the Empire role-playing game is property of Fantasy Flight Games and Lucas Books. See you next time.

(post has been backdated for chronological clarity. post date: 6/2020)

Word document download: Prologue 3 Dont Open The Box

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Tabletop Squadron Transcript, Prologue 3:
Don’t Open the Box

Transcript by Harrison (Twitter: @unabletowhistle)

## Intro

[Cameron hums space music]

NICK: Hi everyone, and welcome to Tabletop Squadron, a Star Wars: Edge of the Empire actual play podcast. I’m Nick, your game master. For the past few years, my friends and I have been playing tabletop RPGs together and we decided to share our hijinks with you. For the first few podcasts, we’re doing small individual arcs for our characters so you can get a feel for them before they start bouncing off of each other in Star Wars. Enjoy.

[Cameron laughs]

[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]

NICK: Hi everyone! Welcome to Prologue #3 of the Tabletop Squadron Podcast. I am your GM Nick. With me today is Laura.

LAURA: Hello.

NICK: Hi Laura, how are you?

LAURA: I’m good. How are you?

NICK: I’m great! We’re going to kick this off. We’re going to see how you solve your things compared to how everyone else solved their things so far.

LAURA: Oh boy.

NICK: And who are you playing today?

LAURA: I will be playing Xianna’fan. She is a Twi’lek and has a very traditional Twi’lek name so that is all one word with an apostrophe in there.

NICK: Just one apostrophe though?

LAURA: Just one apostrophe. I didn’t want to get carried away.

NICK: Right. Everyone gets one apostrophe. I think that’s the Star Wars rule.

LAURA: Well, you have as many apostrophes as your species name has.

NICK: OK.

LAURA: And Twi’lek has one.

NICK: OK. Do Chiss have two apostrophes?

LAURA: No, but Chiss are special little snowflakes and they get as many apostrophes as they want.

NICK: Great! Yeah, that sounds about right. So we’ll go ahead and jump right into it. And we’ll go from there.

##

NICK: You find yourself in the dimly lit apartment where you holed up for the night. There’s a vent wheezing warm air in the corner and a worn desk across the room. Otherwise, the room is bare. Outside a dusty window, you can see the edge of a neon sign. The incessant buzzing must have been what woke you up. In the center of the otherwise bare floor is a small box with a note scribbled on it in Arabesh.

So walk me through what Xianna does waking up in this empty apartment?

LAURA: Do I know that I was in this apartment?

NICK: Yeah, you holed up here.

LAURA: Yeah, OK. But the box is not familiar?

NICK: No.

LAURA: I think I would look at the box from a distance. Just kind of inspect it to make sure it’s not a thermal detonator or anything of that sort. And if it doesn’t appear to be blinking, I would cautiously approach it, prod it a little bit, then read the note. Or whatever the writing is.

NICK: Alright, from a distance, you see this is a gray, looks like plasteel box. Looks very cheap. Shoddily put together. Kind of like what we would think of as a Chinese takeout box but made out of gray plastic. That’s what you can see from a distance.

As you get closer to the box, you see that that little note on it scribbled in Arabesh says, “Open me.” The box is made of thin gray plasteel. It doesn’t have a hinge, but one of the connected sections is lighter like it’s been bent back and forth a lot.

LAURA: I just kind of stare at it. Poke it a little bit more. “Well, this is unusual.” And then I open it.

NICK: Alright, inside, you find bundled on a little bundle of tissue paper is a comm unit. One that’s designed to wrap around an ear-cone for instance. You think if you slipped it on, it would be pretty inconspicuous.

LAURA: I slip it on.

NICK: Great. It fits perfectly. A voice crackles to life and says, “Go outside.”

LAURA: “Um, excuse me. Who is this?”

NICK: “Not important.”

LAURA: “Um, you left me a weird little box in my room. I think it is important.”

NICK: “I’m kind of trying to do the mysterious overwatch thing right now. So if you could go outside.”

LAURA: “You telling me that you are doing that does not make you doing that.”

NICK: “Well, maybe I’m also trying to put you at ease by being slightly comic in my approach.”

LAURA: “You could have left a longer note.”

NICK: “Well, yeah, I guess my agent could have done that. Basically, I just needed to get in touch with you.”

LAURA: “There were many more ways you could have done that.”

NICK: “But this one is mysterious.”

LAURA: “Well, I guess you have that.”

NICK: “Thank you. I’m glad you approve of my approach. Basically, I’m trying to hire you for a job but without exposing my identity or business interest because you have a bit of a reputation I’d rather not get involved with.”

LAURA: “Which reputation?”

NICK: “I don’t want to go into it right now. But I want to make sure you have the skills that I need before I become associated.”

LAURA: “OK.”

NICK: “Great. So go outside.”

LAURA: “I’m not going to get shot, am I?”

NICK: “Not immediately.”

LAURA: “OK.”

NICK: [laughs]

LAURA: Then I walk outside.

NICK: OK. So you’re on the fourth floor of this building. You’ve been holed up here for probably three or four days. As you go out of the apartment, the hallways has one glow light hanging from the ceiling and is otherwise completely dark. You know that there’s a lift at the end. The hallway has shabbily peeling painting. Some trash. You can’t see very well.

You want to make me a Perception check please.

LAURA: I have scanner goggles.

NICK: Oh, do you?

LAURA: I do.

NICK: What do those do?

LAURA: I can see in dark/obscured conditions.

NICK: [laughing] Well, that’s going to make part of this way easier for you.

LAURA: And I definitely I would sleep in that.

NICK: Yeah, probably. OK. So you slip your scanner goggles on?

LAURA: Yes.

NICK: What do they look like?

LAURA: Oh, I haven’t thought about this.

NICK: Do they have three glowing dots?

LAURA: I imagine they’re slightly steampunky.

NICK: OK.

LAURA: With dark purple lenses. And they are two individual little lenses.

NICK: So are they like–

LAURA: Not one solid—So basically…

NICK: Like welder goggles that people use?

LAURA: Welder goggles similar to what Aphra wears.

NICK: OK. So they’re kind of big then?

LAURA: Yeah, they’re on the bigger side. Definitely full wrap around. They like suction to your face. Dark purple lenses. And there’s probably a little toggle on the side, some little buttons, because you don’t want to be looking in night vision with bright lights.

NICK: Yup, that makes sense. So as you slip these goggles down on your face, the camera zooms out and does a pan around Xianna. So what does she look like overall?

LAURA: She is a Twi’lek so she has two tentacle-like protrusions coming from her head. Don’t call them tentacles. I think that is considered a racial slur. They are lekku. They go down onto a little bit past her waist and has sort of a gray swirl pattern on the ends of them. She is about 1.7 meters tall, which is around 5’6”. She’s got purple eyes. She’s generally mostly purple.

NICK: Purple.

LAURA: Purple.

NICK: What’s she wearing?

LAURA: She wears—I’m assuming she put on before she left the house.

NICK: Yeah.

LAURA: She wears a black trench coat that goes down to her knees with a belt. There are pockets on the trench coat but there are more pockets than you can see. It just looks as if there’s the two standard hand pockets, but there’s a lot more.

NICK: So the coat’s bigger on the inside than it is on the outside?

LAURA: Yes, I have discovered that looking at the rules. The coat does not make sense. I can hide way more things in this coat than I should be able to.

NICK: OK. So you have a smuggler’s coat. Is that your only article of clothes? Do you have shoes?

LAURA: I do wear tall, black boots. A dark, very dark brown espresso leather headgear that Twi’leks typically wear. It just kind of goes around the ear cones, the lekku, and the top of the head. And also the scanner goggles. Anything else you cannot see.

NICK: OK. Great. So the camera does a slow circle around Xianna and kind of a like video game level 1 start motion and zooms into a first person view for a second as you click the goggles on for a second it makes the [powering on] noise, but just quietly enough that only you can hear it, not everyone can. And the otherwise dark hallway is illuminated in—I don’t know. Do you want to say it’s purple? Purple light?

LAURA: Maybe a little bit more blue. Let’s mix it up.

NICK: Blueish light? OK. And standing about halfway down the hallway in the darkest part of the hallway you see a Neimoidian and he is leaning against the wall. He looks very unsteady. He does look conscious, but he’s out of it. He’s probably pretty drunk. And he’s kind of lost in his own thoughts kind of fiddling with his own hands.

LAURA: Xianna very cautiously approaches him.

NICK: OK. As you walk towards the Neimoidian, he kind of makes eye contact with you and you feel that skeezy elevator eye kind of feeling. He’s mumbling to himself. You hear him saying things that are untoward, nothing that seems particularly relevant to you except for “Hey, she seems nice. Hey let’s bring her inside. I’ve got ideas.” That kind of stuff.

LAURA: I’m a Twi’lek. I hear that a lot.

NICK: Yeah, I would imagine so.

LAURA: I walk up to him and go, “Hello. Are you waiting for someone?”

NICK: “Uh… I think I’ve been waiting for you my whole life, darling.”

LAURA: “Well, probably not. Um, I mean someone specific?”

NICK: “Well, not unless you’re my drug dealer. I was waiting for him, but you don’t look like him.”

LAURA: “Well, what kind?”

NICK: “Ooh.”

LAURA: “No, no, I’m sorry. Are you trying to buy or sell?”

NICK: “Buy.”

LAURA: “Never mind then.”

NICK: “Are you trying to buy? Because I may have some things back in my apartment if you’re trying to get some.”

LAURA: “Well, if you have it right here, maybe. I am not going into your apartment.”

NICK: “Are you sure? Because I’ve got some glitter stim and some death sticks.”

LAURA: “Pretty sure.”

NICK: “You should really come into my apartment.”

LAURA: “I do not think so.”

NICK: “Um… fine.” And he tries to grab you. He’s going to make a roll. He’ll get two greens against whatever—do you have Defense or anything? Or do you have Brawl?

LAURA: I have a Brawl of one so no.

NICK: Ooh.

LAURA: I have Skulduggery or Stealth. I mean, I could do a straight Agility roll?

NICK: Yeah, you could try and do Agility to get away from this guy. It looks like you maybe should not have gotten so close to him. So what’s your Agility? Three?

LAURA: Three.

NICK: So he’ll roll two greens against three purple. Let’s throw that down and see what happens.  Oooh! He succeeded! With one threat.

LAURA: Oh no.

NICK: So he grabs you by the arm and you try to slip away, but he gets kind of a headlock on you and stars pulling you back to the apartment. The threat is your hands are still free.

LAURA: Oh, I’m going to reach into my coat, pull out my blaster, and shoot him.

NICK: OK. How much damage does your blaster do?

LAURA: Six.

NICK: Roll me an easy shot because he’s right next to you. Are you not trained in shooting at all?

LAURA: No, I put all my points into characteristics since you can’t really buy them in-game and I just figured I’d add stats as we go.

NICK: Great. Well, this is going to work out really well for you.

LAURA: I’m sure it will.

NICK: [chuckles] You missed the dice tray.

LAURA: It bounced out of the dice tray.

NICK: You didn’t hit him, did you?

LAURA: No, but I did get an advantage.

NICK: Great, he manages to slap the gun away from you. With the advantage, you don’t drop the gun, but you don’t hit him either. Did you have the blaster set to stun or not stun?

LAURA: No.

NICK: No, you were trying to murder this guy. So that kind of scares him a little bit. He manages to palm the door panel open. You see that his apartment is very similar to the one that you were crashed in except it’s got some piles of blankets in the corner. A couple of Neimoidians are unconscious on the ground. Looks like maybe an overdose, at least very high at the moment, not really into stuff. And he’s going to try and punch you in the face. So that would be two greens against the three purple again. Because he’s pretty mad that you just tried to kill him.

LAURA: Well, he shouldn’t have touched me.

NICK: I mean, I’m on your side with this. Oh, two success and three threats.

LAURA: [sighs]

NICK: So what happens is his Brawn a two so you take two damage. What’s your Soak?

LAURA: Two.

NICK: Great. So he doesn’t… Oh wait, two success so—

LAURA: Oh, I forgot. I have Defense. Both for range and melee.

NICK: OK. Well roll a black die then. But if he’s got two Brawn—another threat. Well that’ll still do what he’s going to do. So it’s actually you take two damage because it’s two Brawn plus the two successes. So that’s going to hurt. Then all of those threats are going to put it so he is drunk enough and out of it enough that he falls prone. Because that’s my favorite part of this system is that three threats equals falls prone.

LAURA: It is so easy to fall over in this system.

NICK: It is and fall damage is super dangerous. So he falls just flat on his face. And you are now standing over him with a gun. He does have some friends in the room, but they don’t appear to be paying attention. What are you going to do?

LAURA: I’m going to shoot him.

NICK: OK. Shoot him. It’s an easy shot. He’s on the ground, face down. And you can have a blue die because he is face down.

LAURA: How generous.

NICK: Yeah. I don’t like this guy, either, Laura. Hey! You hit him.

LAURA: One success, two advantages.

NICK: What’s your Crit rating on that pistol?

LAURA: Three.

NICK: Aw, bummer. OK, so you shoot him and it punches a hole through his back. Maybe hit him in the spine. You’re not paying that much attention. He goes limp. You took him out. He is done. So you are in a room with three unconscious Neimoidians and the voice on the comm crackles to life and says, “All I’m hearing is gunfire right now and you haven’t even gone outside yet.”

LAURA: “Don’t worry about it. I have this under control.”

NICK: “I’m not—”

LAURA: “Be there in a moment!”

NICK: “I’m not worried about you.” And it clicks off.

LAURA: I do a quick look around the room. What drugs are actually in here?

NICK: Make me a—you can do Streetwise or Skulduggery for finding someone’s drug stash. Up to you.

LAURA: I’m going to go with Skulduggery. What is that? Easy? Average?

NICK: Average.

LAURA: OK.

NICK: They’re pretty good at hiding drugs. They’ve been doing them for a long time.

LAURA: Well, that is five successes and an advantage.

NICK: [laughs] OK.

LAURA: I have lots of points in Cunning.

NICK: Yeah, so you find everything that they possibly have and it takes you under 30 seconds. So you pull a vial of glitterstim out of one of the unconscious guys’ hands. You go to the other guy, roll him over. You find six death sticks. You find some cans of Booster Blue under a ratty mattress. And on the guy that you shot, you rifle through his pockets and find one dose of impact.

LAURA: That’s what I’m talking about.

NICK: Space cocaine!

LAURA: I will take the impact and I’ll take the glitterstim.

NICK: Yeah, I mean, it’s worth money.

LAURA: It’s worth money.

NICK: OK. Write that down. And then you leave?

LAURA: And then I leave. Close the door very quietly behind me and then walk outside.

NICK: Alright. So you go to the lift. No one else tries to accost you. You go down four floors. The lobby of the apartment building that you’re in is basically just a small stairwell that leads to the lift. There’s no doorman or anything, which knowing your surroundings is not that surprising. And you go outside.

The cold air makes your breath come out in a cloud. You look behind you and see that the neon sign covering the windows of the apartment says, “Tatya’s Tatyas,” in painfully bright blue. You are in Coronet, the capital of Corellia. The sidewalk has a smattering of brown leaves from the sporadic small trees that line the road. Speeders pass 100 meters above your head. There’s a handful of human Corellian pedestrians, but no one pays you more than a passing glance. You’re on the rougher side of town and non-humans are more common here.

The voice comes through your comms again. “Good. Now I’m sure you have some questions—more questions, but there’s little time for that now. I have a job for you, like I said. It’s a difficult one but the pay is extremely good. The first step is to go to Zebwak’s Goods. Do you know the place?”

LAURA: Do I?

NICK: Make a Knowledge Underworld check.

LAURA: OK.

NICK: Do you have Knowledge Underworld?

LAURA: No, I don’t.

NICK: Bummer.

LAURA: Not yet. Again, characteristics, filling in skills later.

NICK: So this one’s going to be an average check.

LAURA: Average?

NICK: Yeah. Oh hey, you got it.

LAURA: Hey! Two successes.

NICK: Nice! Two successes. You actually know for a fact that Zebwak’s Goods, having worked with them before, is a front for a smuggling group. It’s about 5 blocks from you.

LAURA: I start walking that way.

NICK: As you start walking, the earpiece keeps talking. I guess you might consider him your handler at this point. Says, “Inside that shop is a particular box. It looks identical to the one that contained your comm unit. I need you to get that box from Zebwak’s Goods. Do not open the box.”

LAURA: “How do you want me to get the box?”

NICK: “That’s the part where this is an audition.”

LAURA: “Alright.”

NICK: “Procure the box. Try not to get arrested.”

LAURA: “And why do I not look in the box?”

NICK: “Just don’t open the box. Trust me on this one.”

LAURA: “Is there a head in the box?”

NICK: “There’s not—well… you know that’s not really important.”

LAURA: “So there is a head.”

NICK: “If you want to consider it a head, you just go right ahead and do that.”

LAURA: “How is that open for interpretation?”

NICK: “So there’s this alien named Schrodinger and his hypothesis was whatever you put in a box, so long as the box stayed closed, it didn’t matter what it was because it could be anything. B. Schrodinger.”

LAURA: “So if for some reason, I get arrested with the box, how much trouble am I in?”

NICK: “The box will put you in less trouble than the things I know are in your pockets.”

LAURA: “Well, they would have to find them in my pockets.”

NICK: “So I’m sensing a lot of resistance here. This is a test to do a job that is presumably not completely legal.”

LAURA: “You realize that I have done many jobs and most people just come up to me in a bar. Or slip a letter under my door. Or just straight up knock on my door and tell me.”

NICK: “So you should interpret this as if I’m taking this much precaution, how big a score is this going to be?”

LAURA: “Well, that is a good question to ask. How much credits am I looking at?”

NICK: “A lot. A whole bunch.”

LAURA: “Well, I can imagine quite a lot.”

NICK: [laughter] “Right, well, keep imagining and then multiply that by more than that. So go get the box.”

LAURA: “That is what I’m doing. It is five blocks away. I cannot get there immediately.”

NICK: “Great. Well, I’ve got things to do. Let me know how it goes.” Click.

So you continue down the street. As you walk, you think about the interaction you just had. You don’t feel any eyes on you. You don’t feel watched. But the voice on the comm is obviously aware of your progress. How does that make you feel?

LAURA: Uncomfortable.

NICK: Yeah.

LAURA: The whole thing is odd. Probably not the oddest job Xianna has ever done, but probably up there.

NICK: Ooh, what is one of the oddest jobs Xianna has ever done?

LAURA: I imagine it involves a Herglic in some way.

NICK: [laughter]

LAURA: Haven’t figured out exactly how but I know a Herglic is involved.

NICK: Giant whale aliens. The best Star Wars race.

LAURA: That are very self-conscious about their size.

NICK: Yeah, there won’t be any Herglics in this campaign. That’s not going to come up.

Anyway, so you’re there. You get to the storefront. Zebwak’s Goods is a small storefront on the ground floor of a high-rise tenement. It looks like the building used to be luxurious but hasn’t been maintained in years. The carvings on the spire-like high-rise are covered in grime and have pieces missing. The display window of Zebwak’s Goods is obscured by durasteel bars.

Can you make me a Skulduggery check please?

LAURA: Can do. Average? Easy?

NICK: Average. Do it.

LAURA: Three successes and one advantage.

NICK: You can still get in through the bars. They’re fairly wide. You’re thin enough that you can sneak through so the burglary bars look a little pointless, but looking closer, you notice some electronics lining the inside of the window and it looks like a ray shield generator. For you listeners, that’s those scary red laser walls that Star Wars uses to hold space ships in. Anyone who tampered with that window would get a painful and maybe deadly surprise.

As you go in, a small bell rings and the inside of the shop is small and crowded with merchandise. You see a lot of used tools and ship parts. The occasional off-world artifact but nothing looks valuable. Behind the display counter, you see the proprietor of the shop, a Corellian man with a dark tan and red hair. He has a scar under one eye that tugs on the corner of his mouth. He’s wearing a white leather jacket with a black vest under it.

LAURA: I walk up to him and go, “Hello, I would like to talk about doing something business.”

NICK: “So you’re trying to do some business?”

LAURA: I kind of smile and wink at him a little bit.

NICK: “Ah yes, the secret signal: a wink.”

LAURA: “Everyone knows that the secret signal is a wink. I feel like it is pretty universal.”

NICK: “Yes, but this one gets you into the back room.” And he opens the door. The glass counter actually slides open to the side to let you through. There’s one of those bead curtains that leads to a really rundown-looking backroom that you can see from the outside and he walks next to that through a wall and you see that it is a hologram projector.

Do you follow him in?

LAURA: Yes.

NICK: The backroom is completely different. Whereas the front had dusty glass cases and chipped tile floors, this room is all brushed durasteel and onyx pedestals holding individual items. There are about ten things, most obscured by weirdly selective shadows. There are cones of lights coming down from the ceiling.

I was going to ask you to do a Perception check, but if you just turn your goggles on, you can see everything.

LAURA: I’ll do a Perception check. I think it might be too conspicuous to just put goggles on in the middle of an interaction.

NICK: OK, great. So this one is an average Perception check. Ooh, you failed.

LAURA: Oh no. I did.

NICK: A failure and one advantage, is that what that is?

LAURA: That would be three advantages.

NICK: Three advantages, great. So you don’t see the box that you’re looking for but you see some other great items. You can even pick what they are if you want.

While you’re thinking about that, the shopkeeper turns around. He stands in the middle of the room. There’s a little raised pedestal that kind of looks like an auction block. He says, “So were you looking for something specific?”

LAURA: “Well I am actually hoping to sell.” And I take out the vial of glitter stim and hand it to him and go, “This is just a sample of the goods I am having. I’m just new to the area. Looking for a buyer.”

NICK: “So obviously you’re new here because we specialize in more interesting artifacts. That being said, how much of this do you have?”

LAURA: “How much do you need?”

NICK: “Well we buy in mass quantities, here at Zebwak.” [laughs]

Ooh, make a Knowledge check again on Zebwak.

LAURA: Underworld? I mean not that it really matters. They’re all the same for me.

NICK: Underworld, yeah. Zebwak’s Good.

LAURA: Average?

NICK: Yeah.

LAURA: Two successes and one threat.

NICK: OK. You know that this guy is not Zebwak. Zebwak is not a real person. He is basically the illegal version of a corporate mascot. And part of the reason you were familiar with this and knew where it was is there’s Zebwak’s Goods on a whole bunch of planets so they kind of specialize on nicer worlds, more mid and core worlds that have seedier parts of town so not really Coruscant, because Coruscant either has super nice government or scary third world slum. But this is like red light district in a medium sized city and that’s their comfort zone. So you’ve dealt with them before. But yeah, this is not Zebwak.

That’s what you learn from that. Don’t worry about the threats. I’m sure it’ll be fine.

LAURA: It’s always fine.

NICK: Yeah, it’ll be fine. This guy says, “I guess I should introduce myself if you’re looking for a more permanent business arrangement. My name is Cecil Zonfarmer. I’m from… local. Yes, I’m from around here. For sure.”

LAURA: I hold my hand out in a very dainty manner.

NICK: Oh, he grabs it. Immediately. And he doesn’t kiss the hand, but he bows over it. He’s very chivalrous. It’s hard to say that after doing a Sean Connery accent.

LAURA: And I smile at him, go, “I’m Bila.”

NICK: “Bila, yes, I have not heard of you but you seem familiar.”

LAURA: “I’m very new.”

NICK: “Yes, if you have a crate or more of this glitter stim, it’s something we could deal with. If it’s just a few vials, you should probably go find a street pusher somewhere.”

LAURA: “No, I can do crates.”

NICK: “Wonderful. We pay below market rates, but you’re guaranteed under the Zebwak name of no problems.”

LAURA: “And you mention that you mostly deal with more interesting items. Like what? My stock sometimes changes seasonal.”

NICK: “A seasonal smuggler? That’s not something I’ve heard for sometime.”

LAURA: “Well, sometimes I like to get away for the winters.”

NICK: “You just go to a planet that’s in a different part of it’s rotation?”

LAURA: “Well, yes.”

NICK: “I suppose that makes sense. Well, some things that we’ve got—take a look around.” And he flips a switch and all the lights come on. It’s uncomfortably bright. You can see as he goes to flip the switch, he actually closes his eyes because your eyes have gotten adjusted to kind of half-light.

You see some very interesting things. You see a brace of thermal detonators that seem to be attached together somehow so that–

LAURA: Nice.

NICK: Something very bad would happen if you set those off. You see some—Actually you would recognize some Twi’lek like family totems that are all in a pile.

LAURA: Yeah.

NICK: If you look closer, you see a couple of them have blood on them.

LAURA: Not cool.

NICK: Not cool. You know, illegal. You see a weird red pyramid that’s off in the corner. That one’s not even on a pedestal. It’s like in an inset in the wall with a glass case in front of it.

LAURA: I’m sure it’s fine.

NICK: Oh, I’m sure that’s nothing important.

LAURA: That’s nothing important.

NICK: You see a—it looks like it’s durasteel, but it reflects the light weird. It’s like a hemispherical mask with two eye slits and some red line patterns on it and little stylized horns coming off the front. And you see… well, are there any illegal things in the room that you think would be interesting?

LAURA: Oh, I don’t know. I’d say weapons probably. I’m assuming some very illegal, modded weapons.

NICK: Yeah, there is definitely a disruptor rifle with a flechette launcher like duct-taped to the bottom of it.

LAURA: Sounds about right.

NICK: Nothing is labeled but this one has tape over the pedestal that says, “The Atomizer” on it. Cecil looks at that one pretty proudly as your eyes glance over. Says, “Yes, that one’s one of mine. I fancy myself a bit of a weaponsmith.”

LAURA: “It is very nice.”

NICK: “Yes, it lobotomizes all sorts of things. That’s why I call it The Atomizer.”

LAURA: “That makes sense.”

NICK: “Yes. Makes a lot of sense.” And so, in one of the less prestigious positions of this display room, you do see a little plasteel box. This one, while obviously being of the same design, is a little different in a couple of ways. It has a little latch on the lid that appears to be closed. It also has little bulges on it like it’s been hit from the inside.  It looks more battered than the one you saw before.

So as your eyes look over that one, Cecil watches you looking through the room. He’s kind of doing a tour guide thing at this point. He’s gotten the impression that you’re going to come back to sell some things and you’re not going to buy right now so he’s just kind of showing off. He says, “Ah yes, that box. It seems unassuming and to be fair, it’s one of our cheaper items, but for 10,000 credits you could take it home right now.”

LAURA: “Well, what is it?”

NICK: “We like to think of it as a mystery package. But it’s an interesting thing. But we promise that there’s air holes in it.”

LAURA: “The thing inside of it is alive?”

NICK: “Yes, it’s an animal of some kind. I don’t know what it looks like because when it was sold to me, my superior told me, ‘Do not open this box.’”

LAURA: “So is it to be sent to an enemy for them to open and it to kill them? Or are you just not supposed to look at the goods?”

NICK: “So generally, I don’t look at stuff. I’m just the salesman and everyone knows a salesman doesn’t need to know what he’s selling.”

LAURA: “I’m just trying to figure out how I might use it best.”

NICK: “Well, from the manifest it came with, it would be useful for biological testing or… you know, I’m not really sure. It’s more of a collector’s item. But I doubt it would kill anybody. At least, it wouldn’t kill a single person.”

LAURA: “Well, maybe not that then.”

NICK: “Hmm, too bad. Eventually we’re going to have to figure out how to feed the little booger.”

LAURA: “You said there were air holes? You just push little bits of food through the holes.”

NICK: “That’s a great idea.” And he turns around and starts scribbling on a little notepad. “Thanks for that. For that, I’ll take 100 credits off the price. 9,900 credits.”

LAURA: “Well, I was not thinking to buy it right at the moment. And I’m not quite sure I have a use for it whatever it might be. The Atomizer, though, that seems much nicer.”

NICK: “Ah yes, you have an eye for quality.” And he preens up a little bit. You can see when he smiles that the scar under his eye like tugs his cheek a lot further and he winds up with a very asymmetrical smile.

LAURA: While I’m in here, I want to be looking to see are there air vents? Is there another door?

NICK: That would probably be a Skulduggery check to case the joint.

LAURA: I can do that.

NICK: You mean that’s the thing you’re good at?

LAURA: Yeah! Average? Hard?

NICK: This one’s going to be hard.

LAURA: OK.

NICK: But if you pass it, you’re pretty much going to get everything. Well, you got it.

LAURA: That would be two successes and one threat.

NICK: With two successes, you see that there is an air vent. It seems to lead down from somewhere on a higher floor. Knowing the way this building is arranged, you could probably find a way to get in there. You also see that there is a security camera, but it sweeps the room and it sweeps the room pretty slowly. It’s like one of the gears that helps it go back and forth is kind of worn down so there would be blind spots. What else were you looking for?

LAURA: Is the only door from the front of the shop?

NICK: No, there’s a backdoor. So looking at it, the backdoor is at a weird angle. You think it probably leads somewhere else in the building, not just straight to an alley. And even if it did lead straight to a backdoor, you also see another one of those ray shield contraptions. So it’s doable but…

LAURA: Is the air vent in the middle of the room? Side of the room?

NICK: So it’s coming in from an interior wall. It’s at the joint between the wall and the ceiling.

LAURA: OK.

NICK: It looks to be about—well, it’s Star Wars so it looks to be about small person size.

LAURA: OK. So like eight feet off the ground.

NICK: Hmm… six? They’re kind of low ceilings.

LAURA: OK. That works.

NICK: It’s a rundown shop.

LAURA: I want to know if I’m going to have to roll for fall damage.

NICK: I mean, probably not. Even from eight, so long as you lowered yourself, you’d be okay.

LAURA: I think for the most part it usually starts at 10.

NICK: So everything will be 11 feet tall and we’ll see how long it takes someone to die.

LAURA: Yes. Not that long. Fall damage is super deadly here.

NICK: Yeah, it’s really bad. So that’s what you see in the room. The threat is that while you’re casing the room, Cecil Zonnfarmer sees that you’re doing that, but he doesn’t think you’re casing the room; he thinks you got bored. So he’s kind of deflated. Says, “Well, so we are open until 6 o’clock. Any time after that would be by appointment. I can, of course, meet you here at any time but you would have to let me know when you would want to meet here.”

LAURA: “And what time in the morning do you open?”

NICK: “We open at 10 am. I like to get my beauty rest.”

LAURA: “Yes, well, how late do you typically stay up?”

NICK: “Like I said, we close at 6 and after that, I go home. I don’t live in this part of town. As you know, Zebwak takes good care of us and I can stay wherever I want, so I stay in the middle class suburbs.”

LAURA: “Alright. So I’m guessing a meeting in the morning when you open might the best option.”

NICK: “Sure, if you want to sell us glitter stim in broad daylight, who am I to complain?”

LAURA: “Well, you seem opposed to a late night meeting. I’m used to meeting in bars and getting drinks and going onto the business. But if that’s not going to work for you…”

NICK: “I mean, if you’re trying to buy me a drink, I won’t say no.”

LAURA: “Well, I have to go back and do some of my own business. Coordinate some things. 3 am? Is that too late for you?”

NICK: “Nothing’s too late for me. I am legally required to be available 26 hours a day. Corellia has a 26-hour day maybe. I don’t know.”

LAURA: I don’t know either.

NICK: I don’t want to look it up. It’s probably 24 but that doesn’t sound spacey enough.

LAURA: They’re almost always 24.

NICK: Yeah, it’s kind of lame really. [laughs]

LAURA: Yeah… “So I will meet you… Is there a good bar nearby that you know of?”

NICK: “Well, we could just do the deal here.”

LAURA: “Well, that is OK.”

NICK: “Unless you’re trying to buy me a drink. I mean, I would just carry it here anyway.”

LAURA: “You seemed opposed to that so I guess I will just meet you here. At 3 am?”

NICK: “Yes. 3 am. I will make sure the goods are here. And I will give you 80% of the going rate on glitter stim, which is… I don’t know what it is.”

LAURA: An amount.

NICK: “An amount. It’s unimportant.”

LAURA: “That works for me.”

NICK: “Great, then I guess I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

LAURA: “Yes.”

NICK: “Dark and early. Sounds lovely.”

LAURA: “I think it will be great doing business with you.”

NICK: “Yes, it will be great doing business with me.”

LAURA: “Yes.” And then I walk to leave and assuming he’s going to somewhat escort me back out.

NICK: Oh yes, he walks with you. It’s a weird feeling walking out of a wall. It’s just light but still coming through masonry and stuff. And the way this holoprojector is set up, there’s some depth to it so for just a second, you get just a face full of brick and mortar. But besides that, you’re back in the shabby storefront of Zebwak’s Goods and you are free to do whatever you want.

LAURA: I’m going to walk out.

NICK: OK.

LAURA: Walk down the block and then circle back into the building and try to find where the vent came from.

NICK: Alright. Zebwak’s like the ground floor.

LAURA: Yes.

NICK: And then has like the kind of like the Brownstone walk-up to the residential side.

LAURA: Yes.

NICK: So you’re going up to the residential area?

LAURA: so I want to be seen leaving and walking away. And then kind of circle back a little bit and go up the stairs that anyone on the inside of the building or the storefront couldn’t see me doing that.

NICK: OK. So it’s tucked behind the staircase and Cecil didn’t follow to the door so he can’t really see through the right side.

LAURA: OK.

NICK: So you’re able to make it up and back into the building pretty easily. That’s not a problem.

LAURA: Good.

NICK: So when you go into the apartment building, it looks very similar to yours just bigger. This one was like a 30-story kind of spire tenement. There is a small staircase that leads to a lift and there’s also a little maintenance hallway that wraps around to the right of the lift and seems to disappear into like the mechanics of the building.

LAURA: I would assume it’d probably be more in the maintenance hallway.

NICK: You can probably make a Skulduggery check.

LAURA: I can do that.

NICK: Having done some vent climbing in your day.

LAURA: Average?

NICK: Yeah.

LAURA: That would be three successes.

NICK: Alright. So yeah, you know that on the residential level, there’s air vents but it leads into a pretty confusing maze. You could go that way, but you also know that in the maintenance area, there’s usually like a main junction and sometimes if you’re really lucky, there’s a map of where the air vents all go for maintenance purposes. So if you go down the maintenance hallway, you can probably find your way through.

LAURA: That’s probably going to be where I go.

NICK: Alright. You know walk around the side of the elevator. You find yourself in… It’s probably 30 meters long this hallway. There’s a couple of closets on either side. When you look inside you see mops and tools. Nothing all that interesting.

And then walking further down the hall, you see one room that’s slightly ajar which, in Star Wars, means it’s broken because they have swooshy doors. So it’s about halfway open and you see some periodic sparks coming out of it. You also see some light coming out of the room. Want to make me a Perception check?

LAURA: Can do.

NICK: This one’s just easy.

LAURA: Four successes and one advantage.

NICK: So looking in through the room, even without your goggles turned on, you see there’s actually a maintenance employee in there. It looks like he jammed the edge of a hydrospanner in the door to get it stuck like that and he appears to be doing some sort of drug off of a shelf in there. But he is in there.

Behind him, through the crack in the door, you see the ventilation junction. It’s basically—it looks like a door but instead of a door, it’s got grating in front of it and you can hear the air whooshing by. It’s pretty standard. And you even see on the wall, a big blueprint that’s just vents and it has little notes on it like “Closed,” “Fan down,” “Running,” things like that.

LAURA: I walk up to the door.

NICK: OK.

LAURA: Knock a little bit and go, “Hello, um… what are you doing?”

NICK: “Wha? Ah, ooh, uh!” And he jumps a little and goes [sniff]. And  turns around and he’s got a little… What color is Impact? Is it blue? I always pictured it as blue.

LAURA: I’m assuming it’s white because I’ve just been assuming it’s cocaine. It’s just space coke.

NICK: Oh, I thought it was spacier, but that’s fine. It can be white.

LAURA: Well, I mean, maybe! I’ll look it up. I’m sure someone else has talked about this.

NICK: Maybe.

LAURA: It would not be the weirdest Star Wars thing I’ve ever googled.

NICK: I mean, that’s true. I’ve never actually read anything about Impact in the EU.

LAURA: I assume not blue, but I think that might just be because I don’t want to associate it with Booster Blue.

NICK: You mean the best drug?

LAURA: You mean sniffing paint?

NICK: Yeah, the best drug.

LAURA: No, Impact is the best drug.

NICK: OK, it’s one hell of a drug.

LAURA: It is one hell of a drug.

NICK: OK, he goes [confused sounds] and he sniffs his nose. He turns around and you see a little white stubble of white powder in his mustache. He’s a medium height Corellian man with like really greasy, lanky, shoulder-length hair and a glorious mustache that has little bits of white powder in it now. And he has a tool belt on and a dark green jumpsuit on that’s open to show a lot of chest hair and a gold chain and no shirt under the jumpsuit.

LAURA: Yeah.

NICK: And he says, “Oh, I was just—uh… what are you doing here?”

LAURA: “No, it’s okay. I was looking for one of my friend’s apartments and I think you might like to join us.” And I kind of reach into one of my hidden pockets and pull out a bag of Impact and kind of wave it while winking at him. And then put it back.

NICK: Make me a Charm–

LAURA: Charm? I do have Charm.

NICK: Yeah, make me a Charm check. It’s going to be easy and you’ll have a blue die to it because this guy’s not very smart and also you just waved drugs at him and he loves drugs so much.

LAURA: That would be three successes and one advantage.

NICK: Alright, so he doesn’t question you at all. He walks to the door and pulls the hydrospanner out and it goes shoomp into the wall, working perfectly fine now. He goes, “Well, sometimes I break the door so that it looks like I’m fixing the door but what I’m actually doing is Impact. Yeah, let’s go party!”

LAURA: “So I can give you the address of where my friends are and I will meet you there in a moment. I have to go get someone else first.”

NICK: “That sounds suspicious. OK!” And he runs out of the room, realizes he didn’t get an address from you and turns around and come back.

LAURA: I kind of like run after him like putting my hand up, like “Excuse me! I need to give you where to go.”

NICK: “Oh right! Yeah, I-I-I was just excited. Yeah, where am I going?”

LAURA: I give him a very random address that’s probably six blocks away.”

NICK: 432 Corellia Street.

LAURA: Yeah, 432 Corellia Street. And I just tell him to knock on Apartment #435. And he’s got to knock four times.

NICK: He nods to himself, turns to go, stops a few feet past, and goes, “I forgot all that. Let me write it down. What was it?”

LAURA: I write it down. I give him the fake address, the fake apartment number, tell him he has to knock four times, and when they ask, tell them Taureen sent you.”

NICK: “Taureen.”

LAURA: “That is my name.”

NICK: “Oh, well, it’s nice meeting you Taureen.”

LAURA: “Nice meeting you, too.”

NICK: And he goes to shake your hand and instead just snuffles at his mustache again. And he says, “Great, I’ll see you there.”

LAURA: “Yes, bye!”

NICK: And he turns and runs off. And you find yourself alone in the maintenance room.

LAURA: Yes, is there any way to lock the door from the inside?

NICK: Well, you did see that jamming a hydrospanner in a certain place does a pretty good job.

LAURA: So I do that.

NICK: There happens to be some lying around.

LAURA: Just in case he comes back.

NICK: OK.

LAURA: And then I want to study the map of the vents. And what time of day is it?

NICK: It’s probably 4 in the afternoon.

LAURA: Probably should’ve asked that before I started this, but OK. So I want to study the map and then go into the vents, see how loud they are, see how long it takes me to get there, and then basically I want to wait until 6:30-6:45.

NICK: OK. Going into the vents… Make me another Skulduggery check for that shopping list of things. This one’s going to be average.

LAURA: Two successes but two threats.

NICK: [laughs] So the vents are pretty quiet so long as you step lightly. If you try to move quickly through them, crawling, you’re going to have some rattle noises. You find some weak points in the paneling that could drop you into who knows where but they’re pretty easy to avoid. You get to the grating at the vent and the display room is dark. You can’t see through the holoprojector at all so it’s pretty much just a black space.

Were you going to wait in the vent or were you going to go back to the maintenance room to wait? It takes you about 10 minutes to get from where you started to there moving slowly and quietly.

LAURA: I’ll wait in the vent and watch how long it takes the camera to cross the room. And just kind of jotting down all the other items there. Definitely going to be taking the Twi’lek artifacts with me. And just kind of figuring out what I can carry back and what I will risk carrying back as well as a bonus.

NICK: Right, so there were three Twi’lek totems. You could fit those in your jacket. Like they’d rattle around. You wouldn’t be able to close a pocket on it.

LAURA: Yeah.

NICK: Unless you used like your giant pocket for it. Obviously you could get the box pretty easily. You could take the gun if you wanted, but it’d be pretty hard to get it up the vent.

LAURA: I figured.

NICK: Same with the thermal detonator cluster. That’s pretty heavy. You could take the Twi’lek stuff, the box. I guess you could technically take that mask if you wanted to but you’d have to wear it to keep your hands free. I’m sure it’ll be fine.

LAURA: I mean, Xianna’s first concern is whether or not it would fit on her seeing as she has two protrusions coming out of her head.

NICK: Oh, right. Lekku are a thing.

LAURA: Lekku are a thing.

NICK: Yeah, that wouldn’t fit well. It’s like a hemispherical thing. It looks like it’s designed to wrap around someone’s head. It would pinch pretty bad.

LAURA: I have a utility belt that things can be attached to. Would there be any way to hook it on the back while I’m crawling through the vents and then get a box out of the maintenance room and make it look like I’m carrying stuff out?

NICK: Hmm, the only thing you could probably tie that to, because it’s pretty much smooth, is you could tie a string through one of the eye holes or you could try to tie it to one of the horns, but it wouldn’t stick to the horns pretty well. So you could. It would be a little rattly. It’d be really hard to climb out silently with it on there, but you could do it.

So one of the things that you need to be thinking about, I’m talking about the weight and stuff, to get down to that level, because it is a floor down, there’s about a seven foot drop that you have to kind of like spider climb down so you can fit your hands and your feet and shimmy back down it. And you know you can get back down that way but it’s going to be really hard to do if your hands are full.

LAURA: What supplies and equipment were in the maintenance room?

NICK: So there were some standard hand tools. There were some lights. You think you saw a blow torch like a cutter. There’s a ladder.

LAURA: A ladder wouldn’t be super useful for a vent.

NICK: Probably not. You just asked what was in there, not what was useful.

LAURA: Yeah. Any rope, sheets, anything like that?

NICK: There’s probably some drop cloths. Yeah, there are. There’s some white sheets that you would lay down for painting.

LAURA: Alright, then I want to shimmy back up to the maintenance room and see if I can tie them together to make a long rope. You know the exact kind you make when you’re busting out of the window in some sort of sitcom or movie?

NICK: Yeah, I know that one pretty well.

LAURA: Yes.

NICK: It won’t be long enough unless you tear it into strips. It looks a little flimsy but it would probably be fine.

LAURA: So if it was about 4 when I started…

NICK: You’d have the time to do it.

LAURA: I’d have the time to do that. So I’m going to do that.

NICK: What are you going to tie it to?

LAURA: Is there another grate in the vent nearby the drop?

NICK: Not close enough that you could drop it down. The drop is close enough to where you start that that big door-like grate that if you set it sideways and tied it to that,  it would probably hold and it’d reach most of the way down to where you’d just have to hop a little to grab it again.

LAURA: I can work with that.

NICK: Yeah, it’s also going to be a little hard to climb a rope if you want stuff in your hands.

LAURA: Yeah, so being a maintenance room, are there any toolboxes or boxes or any extra little pieces of fabric or tarp that could be tied into a sack?

NICK: Oh yeah, you could make a sack out of some of the drop cloth. That’s fine.

LAURA: Then I would probably make a sack to tie it to the back of my utility belt for anything that can’t fit into my coat.

NICK: Can you make me another Perception check please?

LAURA: Easy? Average? Hard?

NICK: Average. Actually this one’s probably hard.

LAURA: So hard?

NICK: Yeah?

LAURA: OK.

NICK: Wow, so many threats.

LAURA: Oh no.

NICK: Did you not roll a single success?

LAURA: No, I just did. Sorry, this one was this one. But those cancel out.

NICK: Oh OK. From here, I thought they were all advantages and it was like, wow, three greens and a yellow and you roll only advantages.

LAURA: Everything is canceled out.

NICK: OK, so you don’t see anything.

LAURA: I don’t see anything.

NICK: The room seems fine. The lights appear to be working. The door is nice and jammed up. Should be fine. Everything’s great.

LAURA: Gonna be great.

NICK: Everything’s—look at this team! It’s gonna be great.

LAURA: I mean the best thing you can ever hear in a game is your GM saying, “It’ll be fine.” Oh boy.

NICK: Oh yeah, yeah. It’ll be fine. I’m actually realizing I say that to you more often than any of the other players.

LAURA: Yeah. Well, I mean, I say that to you a lot when I’m GMing.

NICK: Yeah, that makes sense. So you’ve done your preparations. You have a little sack. You’ve got a… [giggles] Little sack. You’ve got a rope that hangs down most of the drop so it should be easier to climb out. It gets to be around 6:30 – 6:45 as you finish up these preparations.

You spend a little time in the room, just looking around, seeing if there’s anything else useful. It’s not a terribly well-stocked maintenance room. They wouldn’t even have had those cloths except it looks like that your friend, the Impact head, probably would have been supposed to be painting but he hasn’t been, so the cloths are all spotless. He has not used them.

And it’s about the time when you were going to go do this little mini-heist so you’re down back in the vent near the grating. By the way, from observing the cameras, it looks like at the farthest point away, you probably have a minute to be in the room then back in the vent. Unless you want to mess with the camera.

LAURA: No, I think for knowing exactly what I’m grabbing and having a place to throw it all, I think a minute should be enough.

NICK: Mhmm. OK.

LAURA: Yes, assuming I’m going to throw the helmet and the box in the sack and stuff the totems in my pockets.

NICK: OK. Make me a Stealth check to do this quietly.

LAURA: Can do.

NICK: It’s just average. The camera does not appear to have a microphone on it so you don’t have to be that quiet.

LAURA: Oh boy!

NICK: Well, you passed. No, you didn’t.

LAURA: No, I didn’t!

NICK: Oh no.

LAURA: I have one advantage.

NICK:  Alright. The advantage is that nobody hears. The disadvantage is when you push the grate out, you thought that it was on a hinge and it wasn’t so the screws pull out of the wall and it falls and hits the ground. Makes a pretty clattery noise.

And then when you drop, you land on the grate and twist your ankle just a little. And you lose probably 10 to 15 seconds trying not to fall over, getting your feet back under you again. So you have less time to get this done than you did before.

LAURA: You said all the items are all on plinths.

NICK: Mhmm.

LAURA: Could I feasibly hide the grate behind one of those so the camera would not see it?

NICK: So not behind a plinth. They’re only about—the bases are only about two and a half feet wide and they narrow to about eight inches and then go back out again. So the grate would be visible. But you could put it like under where the camera is and it would never be in the arc.

LAURA: Yeah, I just kind of want to like quickly get it over there and do I think with the lost time that I could still grab all the items?

NICK: You wanted the totems—

LAURA: Totems, the helmet, box.

NICK: The box, and the mask? You could probably get two out of the three?

LAURA: Is the vent visible on the camera?

NICK:  No. Well, if someone was looking very closely at it, they might notice the grating was missing but it only catches the side of the vent.

LAURA: So I want to grab the totem and the box.

NICK: OK.

LAURA: And then get back up into the vent.

NICK: OK. So you grab the totem and the box. It takes you about 30 seconds. Gives you about 15 seconds left. And you get back to the wall and you realize that the grate is about six feet above you. Make me an Athletics check to climb back into the vent.

LAURA: Oh boy.

NICK: Yeah.

LAURA: Are the plinths movable?

NICK: Maybe. They look heavy. You could try that.

LAURA: How close is the vent to the wall?

NICK: The vent to the wall? Or the grating?

LAURA: So how easy would it be to parkour up versus straight jump? Like would that help at all.

NICK: Hmm, it’s in the middle of the wall so you could maybe parkour from the nearest plinth. It’d be a harder check, but you could use Agility instead to climb a plinth and jump across instead of just like Strength jump. But you would have to move the big heavy cluster of thermal detonators carefully to make space for you.

LAURA: Do I think I could stand underneath the camera and not be seen?

NICK: You think if you held your breath and sucked in real hard, it may only seen a little bit of you. You may get away with it. You could try and do a Stealth check to do that instead. Buy yourself some time.

LAURA: I think I’m going to do try and do that with the hope that no one is actively watching the camera. That this is more of a review thing. And maybe they just don’t notice that there’s a tiny little sliver of purple.

NICK: OK.

LAURA: And I’m going to hold my lekku down.

NICK: [laughs]

LAURA: Like flat to my head while I stand there.

NICK: OK. It’s going to be an average stealth. Oh no.

LAURA: Oh wow, I am not rolling well tonight. I did get an advantage.

NICK: Great. That advantage plus some of the other ones that we didn’t use right away will go into you’re right. It is a review thing. But as you’re trying to get to the wall and get yourself set so the camera can’t see you, you look up and see the camera’s already pointed at you. So it gets a good view of your face.

LAURA: I just stop and give a little wave to it. And smile.

NICK: Yeah.

LAURA: And I go get the mask because they already see me. So that’s what I’m going to do.

NICK: OK.

LAURA: Then I’m going to attempt to move a plinth and get into the vent.

NICK: So you’re able to move the plinth to stand on to get out. It just takes a while and it makes that really horrible like desk on a tile floor at work noise that [desk screeching sound effect] and this whole time–

LAURA: I’m already too far in.

NICK: And this whole time you’re pushing it, the camera’s just following you. So there’s this zoomed out shot from the camera’s perspective and it says record and it’s just Xianna pushing it [desk screeching sound effect] toward the wall. And she stops and rubs her brow for a second then goes back to [desk screeching sound effect]. The camera just slowly pans with you. And you scramble up onto the plinth and back into the vent.

LAURA: Yeah.

NICK: Yeah, mischief managed!

LAURA: In a way.

NICK: In a way. So you’re able to get back out of the vent system no problem. You’ve got that set up to where it’s not a big deal. You’ve got everything stashed away. You get into the maintenance room and you go to leave…

LAURA: And what happens?

NICK: And the door’s actually broken. You go to pull the hydrospanner out and it does not open. You go to press the button and it still doesn’t open.

LAURA: Oh no.

NICK: So good job. You broke the door.

LAURA: So looking back at the vent graph, is there a vent opening from the one I just came from that goes to a different floor or a different room?

NICK: Yeah, there is. You could do that pretty easily. You have to take a pretty roundabout way. It takes you about an hour to get through because there’s a lot of big drops and ups that you can’t really do with your loot. But you manage to get up three or four floors higher than you are by stair stepping through the system. There is one scary point where you come to a big open chasm because Star Wars is full of those. And you stop on the edge and little bits of dirt fall down because this is Star Wars and you have to have that camera shot.

LAURA: Well yeah.

NICK: And you turn around and go back. And you manage to come out on the fourth floor and you see, looking through the vent, there’s groups of people kind of going in and out. There’s a lot of tenement dwellers and people sleeping in the hallways. You could just walk right past them with your stuff or you could try to be sneaky. You think you could probably make it through without being seen, but it won’t be easy.

LAURA: I mean, how easy would it be to get out of the vent without being noticed?

NICK: To get out of the vent, if you timed it right, it would be pretty easy.

LAURA: Yeah, so I think I want to time it right to get out of the vent without being noticed and then just want to quickly take the sack off of my belt then just kind of nonchalantly hold it in my arms as if I’m just walking somewhere.

NICK: Walking somewhere with a sack of stuff.

LAURA: Yeah!

NICK: So that’s an easy Stealth check.

LAURA: And I have four successes and an advantage because that is when I roll well.

NICK: Yeah, of course. So you’re able to get out, close the vent, and arrange yourself before anybody comes back in the hallway. There’s one guy curled up in a pile of trash next to the vent, but you’re so quiet, he doesn’t even move. You’re silent. A ghost in the night.

LAURA: Yes.

NICK: For this easy Stealth check. Then I’m going to say it’s a hard Streetwise check to nonchalant your way out of this building in one piece because most of these people know each other pretty well, but you can have a blue die because your stealth was so good, you were able to artfully arrange yourself so that you look like the kind of person who would be here.

LAURA: Alright. And what did you say the difficulty was?

NICK: Hard.

LAURA: Hard. Let’s see how this goes. Four successes.

NICK: Great. You walk your way right out. No problem.

About the time you make it to the lobby, you see the mustached maintenance guy on the way back in. He looks really bummed out, but you’re able to step into some shadows and he just walks right past you. He’s holding a hydrospanner. Says, “Well, I think maybe I had the wrong apartment. I’m not sure but man, this is a bummer,” and he [sniffs] again and heads back into his little room. And as you’re waiting there, you hear him press the panel and walk head first straight into the door with a clang.  “What? The door’s broken!” And you duck outside before he can do anything.

LAURA: Not my problem.

NICK: Yeah. As you go outside, you have a chance to examine this box. Like I said, it’s got a latch, it’s got a little eye hole on the bottom part with a hook that goes through that holds the lid on.

LAURA: I want to get back to my apartment before doing any of that.

NICK: OK.

LAURA: And I would like to take a slightly more roundabout way, just in case anyone was watching or if there are CC cameras.

NICK: Mhm.

LAURA: Just so that it might be harder to follow my pattern.

NICK: So in this part of Coronet, the government doesn’t care so much.

LAURA: Yeah.

NICK: They don’t have the cameras here. CorSec does—well, it’s not the worst part of town. CorSec only comes through only once in a while. That’s Corellian Security for anyone who hasn’t listened to the first couple of episodes.

So you are able to get back. You’re pretty used to this area. You’ve scanned it before. You’ve only been here for a few days, but the first thing you do is look for escape routes and ways to move about unseen and you’re able to get back to your apartment pretty easily.

Yeah, so you’re back in your apartment. You have your stuff. The box has little latch on it. It has little bumps where it got pushed out. And if you listen really carefully, you can hear some scratching and a light mewling noise, like something on the inside is trying to get out.

LAURA: So there were mentions of little tiny air holes.

NICK: Mhmm.

LAURA: Can I look into them?

NICK: They’re like pinpricks.

LAURA: OK.

NICK: They’re very small. So you can get your eye up to it, but you can’t see much. If you use your goggles and press your goggles up, all you can see is like little splotches of white fur.

LAURA: Well, I set that aside and I look at the mask.

NICK: So the mask. You can’t really tell what its deal is. It’s completely smooth. It’s got the horns on it. It’s designed to wrap most of the way around the head and it’s got a red kind of vein pattern on the front. It looks creepy and when you touch it, your skin crawls a little bit. But besides that, it just looks like some expensive tribal artifact that they must have been selling.

LAURA: So does it look it has any sort of scanners built in or…

NICK: Nope! Looks like a piece of solid steel. Durasteel.

LAURA: Durasteel. What happens if I hold it up to my face?

NICK: So when you hold it up to your face, do you touch it to your face or just kind of look through the eye holes?

LAURA: Would it fit for someone who has lekku and ear cones?

NICK: Nope. So your ear cones wouldn’t get hit because it stops about mid-cheek bone, but the top part doesn’t really wrap around the lekku very well. You can kind of smush your face into it.

LAURA: I would just try to kind of hold it up and smush my face to see if anything turns on when I put it on. You know a lot of scanner goggles don’t activate until you put them on. Or seeing if it’s easy to look out of or is this mask decorative or ceremonial? How much can I sell it for?

NICK: Right. So you smush it a little bit into your face. It touches like your nose and some of your cheekbones. And the top part kind of pinches your lekku and you feel a sharp pain and a little warm spot where it cuts a little and you realize the top part was really, really sharp. And it gives you very extreme heebie-jeebies. But besides that, nothing happens. You don’t really want to keep this on your face.

LAURA: I put that down.

NICK: Yeah, it’s not a pleasant feeling.

LAURA: Looking at the Twi’lek totems? Because a lot of those are very specific to family tribes.

NICK: Hmm… do you recognize any of them? I would say, you recognize one of them. The other two, you have a good guess like within two or three tribes of what they are. Because they have more than one totem per tribe, right?

LAURA: Well, yeah.

NICK: Because it’s like the smaller family units have them, too.

LAURA: It’s usually per your family unit. So your immediate family has one but they’re often easy to link to the specific clan.

NICK: OK. So one is from Clan Luroon because why not? One is from Clan Syndulla and then one you recognize the family unit from. What one would that be?

LAURA: Do I get to pick or are you–

NICK: Yeah, you can pick.

LAURA: OK. What’s his?

NICK: It would be one that you would have a tie with.

LAURA: Yeah, what’s his?

NICK: Is this your boyfriend?

LAURA: No, I don’t have a boyfriend. Xiann does not like to use labels.

NICK: [laughs]

LAURA: But she does have a vaguely father-figure.

NICK: A-ha.

LAURA: Whose clan name is Olgkru.

NICK: Olgkru.

LAURA: O-L-G-K-R-U

NICK: Olg-kru.

LAURA: Olgkru.

NICK: OK, so yeah, that one is… I’m not going to say it’s his specific totem but it’s within the smallest circle of that and it’s the one with bloodstains on it so that’s a thing.

LAURA: Yeah, that’d concern me.

NICK: Yeah, you can be concerned about that. So that’s the totem and the mask. And you got this box.

LAURA: I kind of tap into my comm and go, “Hello, um, mysterious person?”

NICK: “Yes?”

LAURA: “I have your box.”

NICK: “Yes, I see that. I was perplexed as to why you decided to bring it back to your apartment instead of…”

LAURA: “Well, I do not plan on staying here after tonight. I think I have burned that bridge.”

NICK: “Yes, your stealth capabilities were surprisingly ineffective in this situation.”

LAURA: “I am having a bad day, you might say. Usually it is not quite this bad.”

NICK: “Well, the good news is if you take the job that you’re going to be doing, you won’t be here much longer. So it’s just more motivation to work with me.”

LAURA: “So how do you want to get your box?”

NICK: “Take your box to the coordinates that I will beam to your comm and we’ll handle it from there. It’ll be very straightforward.”

LAURA: “And maybe next time, you’ll give me the coordinates before.”

NICK: “Again…”

LAURA: “That might’ve been a better thing to do.”

NICK: “Trying to do that mysterious thing. I gave the coordinates to some other people and it didn’t work out so well. I wanted to see if you’d get the box first.”

LAURA: “So you just let me walk around for like 20 minutes with the box just going back to my own apartment?”

NICK: “Well, based on your profile, I assumed you’d call me and brag about it as soon as you were successful.”

LAURA: “You seem like the type who wants to contact me, not me contact you. And I may have taken some bonus items for myself.”

NICK: “Ah yes.”

LAURA: “Because again that bridge is already burned. Might as well.”

NICK: “Well, go to the coordinates and discuss this further.” [boop] The connection is cut but you hear a little Microsoft Sam voice give you an address and you know where it is.

LAURA: Yeah.

NICK: It’s kind of far. It’s like 5 to 6 miles away so you could walk but it’ll take you a while and it’ll take you through some of the bad parts of town or you could hire a taxi and just drive there. Or you could steal a car, I guess, a speeder.

LAURA: I don’t know how well it’s going to go for me based on how I’ve been rolling so I’m going to hire a taxi, but before I leave, while I’m in my apartment, I want to see if I have any bags or boxes to put the mask and totems in that might look a little bit less like a sack that I made out of a tarp.

NICK: So there’s—they’re flimsy, but there are like cardboard boxes that are open. There’s little bits of paper and trash in them. You could dump one of those out and it would just look like you cleared out your desk at a particularly interesting job. Put one of them in there. Or there’s some shopping bags, like plastic shopping bags, but with those, stuff would be kind of poking out.

LAURA: Yeah, well, I mean how much encumbrance would you say these totems or masks are? Because my hiding capabilities for this coat are based on encumbrance, not size.

NICK:  So I’d say… What’s a blaster pistol’s encumbrance? Like two?

LAURA: My quick trigger blaster pistol is one.

NICK: Yeah, so I’ll say these things are two then.

LAURA: Each two or total two?

NICK: The totems together are two and the mask is two.

LAURA: OK, I can then completely hide the totems in my coat.

NICK: OK.

LAURA: And I will put the mask in the box and any little like scrap papers I have will put on top.

NICK: OK.

LAURA: Well, it wouldn’t be paper but…

NICK: Flimsy.

LAURA: Flimsy. All the scrap flimsy on top.

NICK: The problem is just a really good adjective and now I can’t use it. It’s a bummer.

So great, you have your box of trash with a mask in it.

LAURA: Yes.

NICK: And your totems are hidden around your person. As you’re walking, the first time toward the door, they rattle a little bit like wooden wind chimes that clank together and you have to kind of stop and rearrange things and then they’re silent after that. So you go downstairs. You flag down a taxi. No problems there.

On your way towards the nicer side of town in this taxi, you pass by a burned down apartment building and you see a group of CorSec officers standing in a group outside the apartment and they appear to be arguing. One particularly large officer gripping a flechette launcher is hanging his head as if he’s being berated by a commanding officer who’s holding a megaphone.

And you see that scene and have just enough time to wonder about it before you go zipping by.

LAURA: I’m sure it’s nothing.

NICK: I’m sure it’s nothing. And the coordinates lead you to a squat and unassuming building in downtown Coronet. It is bordered by two large spire towers. There’s a door that’s a little more than an outline on the wall, but as you approach, a mechanical eye on a pole extends from the wall. It examines you for a moment then declares, “E chuta!” then retreats. There’s an awkward beat, then the door slides open.

Inside, you find yourself in a long hallway. There are more seamless doors on either side. As you head down the hallway, you hear someone knocking weakly on one of the panels. A protocol droid waddles down the hallway toward you just as you get even with that panel that’s getting knocked on. And he says, “Ah! Everyone is arriving in a timely fashion, I see. If I could just get your cargo from you please.” And he holds out his hands for the box.

LAURA: I reach into my coat and hand him the box.

NICK: It rattles a little bit and the protocol droid wraps his thumb around it and the box crushes slightly and he keeps it. And he says, “Please come with me.” And the droid leads you all way down the hallway to a door at the end.

The door slides back to reveal a warm, wood paneled room with a large conference desk in the center. Seated at the desk is a Nautolan woman who is idly fidgeting with a trinket in her head-tendrils and a Togruta man who has poured himself a drink. You seem to have come in in the middle of an awkward lull in conversation. The Togrutan shrugs and points to a comfortable-looking chair around the table. You notice there’s one other empty chair in the room.

LAURA: “Where did you get the alcohol? I would like that as well please.”

NICK: There’s a decanter and some crystal glasses on the middle of the table. You can reach it very easily.

LAURA: Yeah.

NICK: So you can pour yourself a drink.

LAURA: Well, yes because today did not go that well.

NICK: [laughs]

LAURA: A drink is needed.

NICK: Ba-naaa~! The end.

## Outro

CAMERON: Thanks for listening to Tabletop Squadron. If you enjoyed our show, please consider logging into iTunes and giving us a 5 star review. 5 star reviews help new listeners find the show. You can find more about Tabletop Squadron on our website: tabletopsquadron.com, or on our Twitter and Instagram: @tabletop_squad.

The Star Wars: Edge of the Empire role-playing game is property of Fantasy Flight Games and Lucas Books. See you next time.

(post has been backdated for chronological clarity. post date: 6/2020)

Word document download: Prologue 2 We Got Ourselves a Hostage

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Tabletop Squadron Transcript, Prologue 2:
We Got Ourselves a Hostage

Transcript by Harrison (Twitter: @unabletowhistle)

## Intro

[Cameron hums space music]

NICK: Hi everyone, and welcome to Tabletop Squadron, a Star Wars: Edge of the Empire actual play podcast. I’m Nick, your game master. For the past few years, my friends and I have been playing tabletop RPGs together and we decided to share our hijinks with you. For the first few podcasts, we’re doing small individual arcs for our characters so you can get a feel for them before they start bouncing off of each other in Star Wars. Enjoy.

[Cameron laughs]

NICK: Hey, so the good news is we have a name for our podcast now.

STEVEN:  Tabletop…

NICK: Tabletop Squadron! We didn’t have a name before. Made the first episode kind of weird. I’m fully expecting to record over this but I’m not worried about it now. So welcome to Tabletop Squadron. This is Prologue #2 out of 4 before the main campaign starts. I am your game master, Nick. And with me today is Steven. Say hello to people, Steven.

STEVEN: What’s up, people?

NICK: Yeah, that’s obviously how you speak.

STEVEN: It kind of is.

NICK: And Steven, you are playing the character…

STEVEN: Sabos Niks.

NICK: Sabos Niks. And tell me a little bit about Sabos.

STEVEN: Well, Sabos is Togruta, but he is a unqiue Togruta. He’s got four head-tails so he’s a little bit odd. But he wasn’t from the Togruta homeworld. He was actually a colonist. He was just a little bit different. He thought a little bit differently, didn’t really fit in with the Togruta group.

NICK: OK, so a Togruta loner is what you are.

STEVEN: Well, not a loner necessarily. No Togrutas are loners. Just we’re not the same as the main world Togrutas.

NICK: OK.

STEVEN: We act a little bit differently.

NICK: Different. Alright. So let’s jump into it.

##

NICK: You are standing in front of a three-story civic building. It is made of white stone and covered in intricate but eerie carving. You are there to meet councilman Sacko, a local politician for the Spora district for the city of Coronet on the planet of Corellia. He reached out to you recently expressing interest in developing a trade agreement with your colony. Would you like to go inside?

STEVEN: Yeah, let’s walk in and talk to Sacko.

NICK: Alright. So you walk in. It’s a white granite facade all through the building. It’s very sparse. There’s a desk with a receptionist and they motion you to a lift and it brings you up to the third floor. The entire third floor is a penthouse office for this guy. It’s very nice, but this guy is kind of small time. He’s a council member for a small district of Coronet. It shouldn’t be this nice. This guy has more influence than his rank would suggest, you gather from it.

So as you walk in, you see councilman Sacko. He stands up behind the desk and says, “Ah! I’m glad to have you here.” And he looks at his desk computer real quick.

STEVEN: “Sackos! Sabos!”

NICK: “Sabos!”

STEVEN: “You can drop the S if you want to. Sacko, Sabo.”

NICK: “Yeah, yeah. Right.”

STEVEN: “Buddy!”

NICK: “What a weird coincidence.”

STEVEN: “I know, right?”

NICK:  “Yeah!” So standing in front of you is a human because you’re on Corellia. He’s a tall guy with dark hair, goatee, and he’s wearing like politician’s robes, so kind of like the flowy big sleeves with lots of extra cloth wrapped around.

So he welcomes you and pulls you down to a seat and says, “So, well, Sabos, you are next on my agenda. I was told you had some skills that I could use and that you were trying to create a trade agreement. What was that name of your little colony again?”

STEVEN: “Ah, you mean Osaron.”

NICK: “Ah, yes, Osaron. Well, actually, I don’t know why I said ‘ah, yes.’ I have never heard of it before. Is it near anything I would?”

STEVEN:  “Not really. It’s not too far away from the Togruta homeworld.”

NICK: “OK. Well, great. So you’re trying to get some trade started. And as a small district representative, there’s only so much I can do. But I can get your foot in the door with the right people for sure.”

STEVEN:  “That would be wonderful. As you might know, I assume you’re a well researched man, us Togrutans on Osaron are kind of a hunter-gatherer people, but we specialize in weaponry.”

NICK: “Oh.”

STEVEN: “Now that’s not a threat.”

NICK: [nervous laughter] “Right…”

STEVEN: “That’s not a threat. We’re just a little bit different than the cliquey social groups over on the Togrutan homeworld and those weird artists on their own colony. Kind of developed a more primitive lifestyle. Some of us are looking to venture out, though.”

NICK: “Would you count yourself amongst that group?”

STEVEN: “I’m here, aren’t I?”

NICK: “That’s a fair point. So you’re looking to trade in weapons.”

STEVEN: “We’re very good at weapons. We’re looking to trade in more conventional supplies.”

NICK: “OK.”

STEVEN: “To kind of bring up our standard of living.”

NICK: “Makes sense. Well, Corellia creates a lot of those things and I’m sure we can open some sort of agreement on that line. We have need of your resources and what you offer and I’m willing to deal. I can turn the city council in your favor, but I’ve been kind of tied up recently with some other business.  If you take care of this for me, I will take care of your colony.”

STEVEN: “I could definitely take care of your business. What type of business was that that I need to take care of?”

NICK: “You already said you would! Ha!”

STEVEN: “Oh, I certainly will.”

NICK: “Well, you’ve had some reputation with other people that have dealt with somewhat of a fixer. Someone who just makes problems go away.”

STEVEN: “I can indeed.”

NICK: “Well, this is one of those.” And he hands you like a scroll and it’s sealed with green wax but the wax has been broken. You can make an Investigation check to look at it if you would like.

STEVEN: Yes, Investigation is Perception.

NICK: Oh, is Investigation not a skill on this game? Damn. I was looking for…

STEVEN: Astrogation.

NICK: No, not Astrogation. Let’s see… Perception will work. Yeah, so you get a yellow and two greens. And this is a hard check so it’s going to be three purples.

STEVEN: Purples. Do I get any of the blues?

NICK: Nope! You’re in a well-lit, comfortable room. Unless you’re on like drugs that enhance your vision.

STEVEN: I am indeed not.

NICK: Bummer. And you have an exact wash.

STEVEN: I don’t see a damn thing.

NICK: The seal has been scratched up enough when the letter was open that you can’t make out what was on it. I’m sure that won’t matter.

STEVEN: “Seems like a good scroll. I’ll take it.”

NICK: “Well, you may want to read the contents first.”

STEVEN: [chuckles] “Of course, of course.”

NICK: He sits back and pops a cigarillo in his mouth and lights it while you read through the letter.

The letter reads: Sacko, a mutual friend recommended you to me for your services. You have a reputation as a shrewd negotiator and a quick businessman. I need you to go to the enclosed address. There you will find a contact of mine who will bring you to the location of the deal. It will be marked in the usual manner. Tell them you need a bouquet. They will lead you on. After you’ve secured the goods, please bring them to the enclosed location nearby.

And after you finish and you roll up the scroll, Sacko says, “Yeah, the deal’s a little vague, but I’m sure you can figure out the details.”

STEVEN: “Well, as you know, independent thinking isn’t necessarily one of our strong suits with us Togrutan people. However, I am a specially skilled Togruta being from an independent-thinking colony.”

NICK: “Well, that’s good. That’s part of the reason I’ve enlisted you in this endeavor.”

STEVEN: “And I’m here.”

NICK: “And you’re here. Honestly, I don’t really like to buy into that specist thing about well, ‘Oh, all Rodians are bounty hunters and all Togrutans are just herd animals.’ That seems against what we go for here on Corellia. Independence. And self-sufficiency.”

STEVEN: “Strange.”

NICK: “I don’t think so.”

STEVEN: “It’s a strange quality among my people.”

NICK: “And that’s fine.” Cool. So you have the letter. Do you have any questions for him?

STEVEN: “Could you elaborate on this bouquet?”

NICK: “Oh, yeah. So the bouquet, from what I read in the letter, that’s just a signal phrase to tell…”

STEVEN: “Well, I assumed.”

NICK: “The thing you’re probably more curious about is them being marked in the usual manner. Usual manner is a green orchid that they’ll have stitched somewhere into their clothes.”

STEVEN: “I’m glad you specified. I was just assuming, blood like usual.”

NICK: “Oh! Blood, yeah, no. [nervously stutters] That’s—uh–so Corellia—you may not—have you been to Corellia before?”

STEVEN: “This is my first time on Corellia. It’s a quaint little planet you have here”

NICK: “Yeah, well, it’s like the third most developed planet in the Inner Rim.”

STEVEN: “I mean, one could say.”

NICK: “Yeah, I don’t know. Being from the untamed plains of your colony, I could see how you wouldn’t have much of a sense of scale. But this planet is pretty law-abiding. We have our own police force and military. It’s called CorSec. Maybe you’ve heard of them. Corellian Security.”

STEVEN: “I have.”

NICK: “Yeah.”

STEVEN: “This is what we structure our training after.”

NICK: “Wow, then it must be pretty good because they don’t put up with things so walking around with blood may not go real well on this planet.”

STEVEN: “I mean, everyone’s a little different.”

NICK: “I wouldn’t… If you were bleeding, you probably don’t want to be seen by the police.”

STEVEN: “No, you run into the forest.”

NICK: “Right. Well, the forest is across the lake that surrounds this entire city. So I hope you’re a good swimmer.”

STEVEN: “I don’t believe I am.”

NICK: [laughs] As you suddenly look at your character sheet…

STEVEN: Yes, the character sheet does not reflect swimming.

NICK: [laughs] It would be Athletics. Do you have Athletics?

STEVEN: Negative.

NICK: Oh, so then no, you are not a good swimmer.

STEVEN: Togrutans aren’t known for being especially strong.

NICK: [laughs] Oh yeah. They’re really not.

“Alright, so any other questions for him?”

STEVEN: “I think I’m good. I’m going to look for a green orchid.”

NICK: Green orchid, alright.

STEVEN: “Then I’ll pick the flower and bring it back as part of the bouquet.”

NICK: “So I can’t help but read into some undertones. I just want to be explicitly clear: Please don’t kill anyone involved in this negotiation if possible.”

STEVEN: “Oh, no, this is a no-kill negotiation.”

NICK: “OK. I’m not saying that things might not get rough. This is on the darker sides of things, but if you could avoid shooting any messengers or preferably civilians. I can’t help but notice you have an extremely large rifle on your back.”

STEVEN: “I think I understand where you’re coming from.”

NICK: “No, I mean there’s a literal gun on your back.”

STEVEN: “Oh, it’s common on my homeworld.”

NICK: “Oh OK. I thought we were talking about something else there for a second.”

STEVEN: “Oh, my fourth head-tail?”

NICK: “Oh, it’s a literal head-tail? I’ve heard Togrutans talk about the fourth head-tail before but it wasn’t usually… [giggles] OK. Well, I’ll be seeing you when this is over. Buh-bye!”

STEVEN: I do the head-tail flip.

NICK: You flip your head-tails haughtily.

STEVEN: Yes.

NICK: On your way out

STEVEN: All four.

NICK: So the address you get for the meet-up spot is only a couple of blocks away from here.

STEVEN: Oh, it’s on the same planet.

NICK: Yeah! This is all local stuff.

STEVEN: Oh this sounds wonderful.

NICK: So, yeah, it’s actually walking distance. So you head down the streets. If you could make me a Perception check please.

STEVEN: For sure.

NICK: Let’s make this one average.

STEVEN: That would be a two purple.

NICK: That would be a two purple.

STEVEN: I got a victory.

NICK: You got a triumph. That’s good.

STEVEN: Triumph, that’s the one.

NICK: Yes. Three failures, a triumph, a success, and an advantage.

STEVEN: I have a success in there.

NICK: So you fail because your failures outnumber your triumphs. Triumphs are worth the triumph and a success so you wind up with a triumph, a failure, and an advantage, which is a weird Cameron-style roll. So you don’t see the thing you’re supposed to see, but you get a triumph.

OK, so as you’re walking down the streets, you’ve got your hands in your pockets. It’s like a brisk, early winter day, so your breath’s kind of fogging. What are you wearing?

STEVEN: I have a standard padded armor.

NICK: OK, so like what does that look like?

STEVEN: Oh, you know, kind of a black vest.

NICK: A black vest, OK.

STEVEN: With some black pants.

NICK: Black vest, black pants.

STEVEN: Black boots.

NICK: Black boots. Are you shirtless under your vest?

STEVEN: Oh indeed. Togrutans are often depicted shirtless.

NICK: Oh cool, neat. So you’re pretty chilly then. Is your colony a warm place?

STEVEN: That’s a very good question.

NICK: [laughs] Now’s the time to figure it out.

STEVEN: Now’s the time to figure it out. My colony’s a very neutral place.

NICK: OK, so it has four seasons.

STEVEN: I’m not sure four. It has two.

NICK: Two and a half seasons?

STEVEN: It’s got warm and cold.

NICK: OK, so you’re walking down the street–

STEVEN: Sometimes our head-tails sweat.

NICK: [chuckles] Gross. That’s not an image I needed. Ugh.

So you’re walking down the street and you glance around, just your hunter-finder instincts going off. It feels like you’re being watched, but you can’t really find anything or anyone specifically acting suspicious and as you’re going, there’s a speeder-bus that lands and it lands perpendicular across the street and it blocks off all of the foot traffic. And traffic starts to backup. I wouldn’t worry about it. But if someone were following you, they would have a hard time doing it because there’s a bus in the way.

So the address leads you down an alleyway into a bar just on the edge of the respectable part of town. A tall dark man in a wide apron is polishing a glass behind a bar.

STEVEN: Ah!

NICK: You look around the room and see several tables with people huddling over drinks. The table in back has the chairs pushed back and abandoned drinks scattered over it. As you look at the room, a woman with dark curly hair shoulders past you.

“Excuse me, handsome, but I’ve got somewhere to be.” You see her draw a pistol as she heads further down the alleyway.

Looking around the room, you see the bartender and a couple of drunks. You don’t see your contacts. What would you like to do?

STEVEN: I’ll go talk to the bartender.

NICK: Gonna go talk to the bartender? So you walk in. The bartender is polishing a glass with a dirty rag. Says, “Well, how’s it going there?”

STEVEN: “Going pretty good. My first time visiting. What was her deal?”

NICK: “She’s a little high strung. Got showed up by another one of the patrons. I imagine she’s probably about to bite off more than she can chew.” He like chuckles to himself a little bit and goes back to polishing the glass.

STEVEN: “Bite off more than she can chew, you say.”

NICK: “Well I wouldn’t worry about it too much.”

STEVEN: “We’re a nosy people.”

NICK: “Oh are you? I don’t get a lot of Togrutans in here.”

STEVEN: “We’re pretty far away out on the Outer Rim there.”

NICK: “Yeah, well, she upset a friend of mine. I think she’s going to go find out when you get into confrontation with that kind of person.”

STEVEN: [chuckles] “I understand.”

NICK:  “She’ll be fine.”

STEVEN: “I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

NICK: “One way or the other.” He sets the glass down. “But enough about my former contacts. What can I get you for?”

STEVEN: “Well, I’ll have—well, what do you humans drink?”

NICK: “We have a tendency to go for things of the alcoholic persuasion. We’ve got—”

STEVEN: “I’m familiar with the alcoholic persuasion.”

NICK: “We’ve got Corellian beer. We’ve got Corellian whiskey. We’ve got mixed drinks.”

STEVEN: What was the lady having?”

NICK: “Oh, well, she was drinking nothing particularly interesting, but that friend of mine was drinking a fallen star.”

STEVEN: “A fallen star? That sounds unique.”

NICK: “It’s certainly fancy. You sure you want one of those?”

STEVEN: “Well, what does one of those run?”

NICK: “I don’t know. Like 5 credits.”

STEVEN: “Does it have any unique properties?”

NICK: “I mean, it’s alcoholic.”

STEVEN: “Sounds fine.”

NICK: “Alright.” He pulls out—he looks mildly irritated and you see why as he starts doing it because he pulls out 6 different bottles of liquor and three different shakers and he starts mixing them together.

STEVEN: [chuckle]

NICK: It’s a complicated beverage.

STEVEN: “I didn’t realize when you suggested it that it was such an involved drink.”

NICK: “No, it’s fine. Just remember to tip your waitstaff.” And he winks at you.

STEVEN: I will.

NICK: He starts mixing this drink and you get it and it’s in a glass that looks like a blooming flower and it’s like very sparkly fizzy and as you smell, it smells kind of like stimulants so it’s a pretty fancy, fancy drink.

STEVEN: “I enjoy my stimulants.”

NICK: Great. You have some sips of that.

STEVEN: I make sure to tip him another 5 credits.

NICK: Yeah, that would be smart. He nods to you and says, “Well thank you. I appreciate your appreciation as it were.” [chuckles]

STEVEN: “For sure, do you happen to have any time to lend your ear? This glass is very curious.”

NICK: “Oh the glass? It’s a traditional Corellian beverage glass for the fancier drinks.”

STEVEN: “I understand. this almost reminds of something I was looking for. Do you know anything of a green orchid?”

NICK: “A green orchid? Hmm. Green orchid…” And he looks around the room and he thinks about it. “Oh, you mean like that?”

And a guy comes walking in the door and he has a green orchid on his vest.

STEVEN: “Yeah, it’s a very pretty symbol.”

NICK: “Well, I don’t know a ton about that symbol. You may want to ask that guy.”

STEVEN: “I might inquire with the fellow. I appreciate your patronage—no, I appreciate my patronage to you!”

NICK: “Yeah. I appreciate your patronage, too.” Finger guns.

So the guy who walked in he’s a blond guy with black vest and pants with a white shirt. So similar to yours but with a shirt on.

STEVEN: “I like your vest,” I turn around and say.

NICK: He’s leaning up on the bar next to you and he looks up at you. The bartender like waggles his eyes at you and scoots further down the bar. And the guy in the vest goes, “Oh, thanks. You’ve got a nice vest, too.”

STEVEN: “I sure do. It looks like yours.”

NICK: “Yeah, hey, I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but I’m not really into aliens so…”

STEVEN: [chuckles] “I think you have the wrong idea, sir. I’m just here for the bouquet.”

NICK: “Oooh. Ah, that was awkward. I’m sorry.”

STEVEN: “Just a little small talk.”

NICK: “Yeah.”

STEVEN: “Sorry, this is a very good fallen star.”

NICK: “Oh yeah, you had one of Gerfrederick’s best, huh? Those are pretty good. I’m a fan.”

STEVEN: “As you might know, this is a little bit different from the ales we drink on the Togrutan homeworld and especially over on Osaron.”

NICK: “Oh so you’re…?”

STEVEN: “It kind of hit me right up in the head, if you know what I mean.”

NICK: “Yeah, I’ve been hit in the head enough to know myself. So you’re from one of those colonies, huh?”

STEVEN: “Yes.”

NICK: “What do you even do up on a colony? I’ve always lived in a city myself.”

STEVEN: “Well, it’s kind of a rural place. And those Togrutans that either don’t fit in or that are elected to go to a colony or are born on a colony of course end up on a colony. I was a little bit too, oh, unique to fit in on the Togrutan homeworld.”

NICK: “Interesting. Well, rather than any further questions, let’s go!”

STEVEN: “Let’s do this.”

NICK: And he turns and walks out the door. So the man nods to the bartender and heads down and out of the way. As you walk outside, you hear some indistinct yelling and a speeder crashes at the end of the alley. It begins to smoke and you see two armed men climb out of the speeder. The contact says, “I think it’s time to be going. There’s an air speeder down the other way.” And you all run.

STEVEN: Yes.

NICK:  So you run to the end of the alley and there’s another guy in a—it’s like a four-seater sedan speeder. It’s the Ford Taurus of Star Wars. Whatever that would be. And he slides in the back with you and he says, “Let’s get going right now.” And you are in the speeder on your way to where you were going. And he says, “So you don’t really strike me as the type who would do these sort of deals on a normal basis. What brings you here?”

STEVEN: “Well, to be honest, I’m not entirely sure what the deal is. I’m very capable. I’m just helping out a friend.”

NICK: “Interesting. Not really sure what this deal is specifically. I’m just kind of the between guy. But I hope it works out for you. You seem nice.”

STEVEN: “I appreciate it. I’m just looking to better my people back on Osaron.

NICK: “Yeah, well, not sure how doing underworld dealings…” As you look out the window you see you’re going to the worse and worse parts of town. “Not sure how doing underworld dealings will help with your colony, but I hope that works out for—you don’t grow drugs on your place, do you?”

STEVEN: [chuckles] “Oh no, but you know, it helps to stay connected with the right people and every now and then, you have to get your hands a bit dirty.”

NICK: “Oh OK. Now you sound like the kind of people I’m used to picking up.”

STEVEN: “So you pick up a lot of politicians?”

NICK: “Well, maybe. I really can’t say.”

STEVEN: “I see.”

NICK: And he just kind of like awkwardly clutches his hand together as you all continue on the ride. By the time, the speeder slows to a stop, you find yourself deep in what should be the red light district. It really looks like it. There’s a lot of people on street corners,  either holding little baggies of unidentifiable  stuff or not wearing much clothes depending.

The speeder stops in front of a low dark building with strobing lights coming from within. As you step to the door, a huge man with slabs of muscles blocks your way. He looks you up and down. “You’re here for the bouquet?”

STEVEN: “I am.”

NICK: “Great. Well, head on in.” And he steps off to the side.

STEVEN: I walk inside enthusiastically. I think I’m picking up flowers.

NICK: [laughs] As you enter the building, there are bright flashing lights and music. A narrow hallway. You see dancing in several rooms to the left and right.

STEVEN: “Ah, flashing lights. Conducive to flower growing.”

NICK: [laughs] At the end of the room is a beaded curtain. As you pass through, you find total silence. The music cut off as if someone flipped a switch. Sitting comfortably on a couch in the otherwise bare room is a Geonosian. A Geonosian is like the weird bug people from Episode 2. She is of average height. She has brown, wrinkled skin and crisscross scars and one of her wings is tattered. Her head is kind of like bean-shaped and her eyes are kind of stuck out to the side on stalks. She’s fiddling with a strange tube with a green light at the end. You see what might be a trigger mechanism. The tube beeps and the Geonosian shakes her head sadly before looking up at you.

“So, Sacko. You finally gave up on that high and mighty attitude of yours and you’ve come to deal.”

STEVEN: “Yes, yes. I’ve come for Sacko.”

NICK: “Right. If you want the goods, I want proof you can keep CorSec off my back for the next few weeks while things fall into place. Either you pay us the 10,000 credits or you offer me something else.”

STEVEN: “Proof?”

NICK: “Yeah. So either you pay us so that we can deal with it, or you prove that you can keep CorSec off our back.”

STEVEN: “Well, what do I need to do to prove that I can keep CorSec off your back, huh? I’m a pretty well-connected man as you might know, me, Sacko.”

NICK: “Yes, you, Sacko. Obviously. With the way you are referring to yourself, you must be the person Sacko.”

STEVEN: “Yes.”

NICK: “Right, well, to be honest, I was hoping you would have just brought the credits. It’d be easier.”

STEVEN: “Credits are a little bit hard to come by these days.”

NICK: “I guess since you’re making a deal for us to pay you, that would make sense. Well, tell you what. So you don’t have any ideas on how to prove this, huh? So if I come up with the suggestion, it’s not going to be fun.”

STEVEN: “Oh, I wasn’t looking for leisure.”

NICK: “Well, that’s good. I’ve got a couple of associates holed up down the streets. They’re currently boxed-in by some CorSec people in a standoff. Get them out of the building and get them back here. I don’t care who you hire to do it.”

STEVEN: “Are you not a CorSec person yourself?”

NICK: “Oh, I think you might want to consider me the opposite of that.”

STEVEN: “I see. Now your associates, could you describe them to me?”

NICK: “Well, yeah. They’re both Corellian. There’s a short guy with gray hair. He goes by Mouse. He’s got a tattoo of a Sarlacc on his right shoulder—that’s a pit monster with teeth. And there’s a bigger guy that they call Morak and he’s pretty—he’s the big bald guy.”

STEVEN: “Mouse and Morak.”

NICK: “Mouse and Morak.”

STEVEN: “So Morak is such a big feller, how are two small CorSecs keeping him in?”

NICK: “No, it’s a squad of CorSecs, but you know, being big just makes it easier to get hit by a blaster. They’re two of my best pushers but they’re not the smartest guys.”

STEVEN: “Oh, it’s a squad of CorSecs.”

NICK: “Yeah. The building’s surrounding. We’ve got sort of what you might call a hostage situation going on.”

STEVEN: “Is there anything your people are wanted for? I always try to prefer the negotiation attempts, if you will.”

NICK: “Well, I mean, you could try that. It’d be pretty difficult to do, but I don’t really care how you go about it. They’re not wanted yet. If they get caught and searched, they probably will be.”

STEVEN: “I understand. I’ll protect their persons.”

NICK: “Also if they get identified, they will be since they did shoot at some police officers just a minute ago.”

STEVEN: “That might do it.”

NICK: “Great. Well, go do that. Hire whoever you got to hire to get it taken care of.”

STEVEN: “Alright.”

NICK: “I know you, the esteemed councilman Sacko, wouldn’t do anything yourself.”

STEVEN: “I, the esteemed councilman Sacko, indeed do not do anything myself.”

NICK: [laughs]

STEVEN: “I might even hire a Togrutan.”

NICK: “Yeah, that is kind of weird that you’re a Togrutan, isn’t it?”

STEVEN: “Councilman come in many different forms.”

NICK: “Yeah, well, whatever.”

STEVEN: “It’s a diverse day and age.”

NICK: “I guess. I didn’t ever really bother to look at who you were so that’s fine.”

STEVEN: “Nor I you.”

NICK: ‘Well, that’s good. Because it’s pretty hard. I’m pretty identifiable here, you know, with my personage.”

STEVEN: “As am I with my fourth head-tail.” I flip it around and stroke it.

NICK: She goes, “Ugh! You can’t just wobble that thing at people.”

STEVEN: “I apologize.”

NICK: [laugh] “Great, well get going. Marty out front will give you a ride down the street to where this is.”

STEVEN: “Thank you.”

NICK: “I’ll have him send you far enough away that you can walk in or buy a phone if you’re calling people.”

STEVEN: “That sounds fine.”

NICK: “Great.”

So you head back out. As soon as you cross through the curtain, pounding music is still going. She stays in the room. And you head back out and Marty, the scrawny guy with the green orchid, is sitting by the car and goes, “Oh wow, you’re back already?”

STEVEN: “Yeah, that was pretty good, wasn’t it?”

NICK: “I mean… what did—never mind. I don’t need to know.” And he puts his hand up to his ear where he’s got an earpiece in and says, “Yes ma’am. Yes ma’am, I’ll take him. Well, get in the car. Tell me where we’re going.”

STEVEN: “Guess we’re going to the building that she had specified.”

NICK: “She seemed to think you’d be going back to your office.”

STEVEN: “Well, I’m going to, well you know, see if I can get this handled.”

NICK: “Alright. She just wants this done. Doesn’t really care either way.”

STEVEN: “I understand.”

NICK: So you drive down the street. This time Marty is driving. You realize that he’s not the best pilot. Like maybe there’s a reason he’s the guy that walks into the places to get people. He’s kind of swerving. Cuts people off a couple of time. Stays way too long at a green light. People honk at him. It’s not great.

But he sits you down probably fifty yards away from a dilapidated, it looks like an apartment building. There are several police speeders. They’re green and white painted in CorSec colors. There are two in the front and you see the lights of at least one more in the alleyway behind this building and there are several CorSec officers. They’re wearing body armor and they have blaster pistols out and pointed. One of them has a bullhorn and is yelling, “Come out! There’s no reason to stay in there.”

And you hear someone from inside say, “Come and get us, coppers!” And there’s like blaster fire from inside the window. But it doesn’t go outside the window so it’s like they were far back in the room and they shot the wall. They didn’t actually clear the window sill.

So there’s that standoff going on. The building has alleys on either side and to the back. And a main street out front. There isn’t like a cordon set. It’s just the two cars and everyone else is just finding new ways to walk. This is the worst part of town so people know how to stay away from active police fights.

STEVEN: Is there an officer in control of the situation?

NICK: You would probably assume the guy with the megaphone is the one in charge.

STEVEN: Yeah, I’m going to walk up to the officer with the megaphone speaking Togrutan.

NICK: [laughs] OK.

STEVEN: Just saying, “Officer,” over and over in Togrutan.

NICK: “Sir, this is CorSec business. Please stand back.”

STEVEN: “Oh, do you speak Basic?” I say in Basic.

NICK: “Clearly, sir, I speak Basic.”

STEVEN: “I’m sorry. This is my first time on this here planet.”

NICK: “That’s great. We’re in the middle of something, sir.”

STEVEN: “I think I might be here for what you’re in the middle of.” I show him my very official Osaronian diplomat ID.

NICK: [laughing] OK.

STEVEN: “I think I’m here for the same characters you are. We have an issue with him back on Osaron.”

NICK: “Right, I don’t see how you would have jurisdiction here, sir.”

STEVEN: “Well, you understand I’ve just been sent to collect these two evildoers who have also done evil on Osaron.”

NICK: “Right, well…”

STEVEN: “I don’t have jurisdiction. I’m just trying to negotiate a deal.”

NICK: “Alright, well, here’s where I’m coming from.”

STEVEN: “Sure, I don’t doubt your jurisdiction. I see your blaster.”

NICK: “Yes, I do call it Jurisdiction.”

STEVEN: “Your megaphone.” [chuckles] “Well I call mine Bob.”

NICK: “Oh, what a great—Yeah, how did you get a permit for that? That is–”

STEVEN: “I’m a diplomat.”

NICK: “Oh, yeah, I guess that makes sense, I guess. So I’m an officer of the law.”

STEVEN: “Indeed you are.”

NICK: “You’re coming into my backyard. And you’re telling me that you want to take away my perpetrators.”

STEVEN: “I’m just saying if they’re causing a problem, I could probably help you out.”

NICK: “And how exactly do you purport to do that?”

STEVEN: “Well, we just have orders that we can take him back in maybe a different state if you catch my drift.”

NICK: OK, go ahead and roll me either a Charm or a Deception.

STEVEN: Can I do a Negotiation?

NICK: Yeah, you can do a—well, if it’s Negotiation, you have to offer him something.

STEVEN: I’m offering to fix his problems. I’m going to extract the perpetrators from the building.

NICK: OK. OK. Roll me a Negotiation. Let’s see how this go.

STEVEN: This’ll probably be hard, huh?

NICK: Yeah, we’ll say it’s hard.

STEVEN: Seems like a dumb thing to ask but I’ll give it a go.

NICK: Walking up to a police officer and saying, “Hey, can I take that guy you’re shooting at?”

STEVEN: Yeah.

NICK: Yeah. Wow, you succeeded.

STEVEN: It’s weird, isn’t it?

NICK: Yeah, with two threats. OK. I’m surprised.

STEVEN: “If you just allow me into the building, I think I can probably help you out.”

NICK: “Alright, we’ll let you into the building, but—” One of those threats is going to be, “you have to take Officer Schmidty with you.” And there’s a giant guy with a flechette rifle that shoots—it’s basically like a space shotgun.

STEVEN: “I can do that.”

NICK: And Schmidty goes, “Just get me the shot.”

STEVEN: “Schmidty, pleased to meet you.” I offer him one of my head-tails to shake his hand.

NICK: He does not do that. Because that’s weird.

[laughter]

STEVEN: I apologize and reach out with a hand instead.

NICK: He very questioningly shakes your hand and says, “Sergeant, are you sure about this?”

And Sergeant says, “Well, you know…”

STEVEN: “Why else would I have come all this way to your fine planet?

NICK: “Yeah, why else would this diplomat have come all the way to our fine planet but to try and get two drug dealers out of a building?”

STEVEN: “I’m just trying to resolve your issues.”

NICK: Schmidty says, “Yeah, makes sense to me.”

And the sergeant gets on the bullhorn and says, “Perpetrators, we have a negotiator coming up. A Togrutan. Don’t shoot him please.”

And they like stand back and let you go to the front door.

STEVEN: “Yeah, it would be fine if you didn’t shoot. I’m really not even here to shoot anybody. Not sure about Schmidty, but trust me, I’m good.”

NICK: “Don’t tell them about me and Jurisprudence.” [cocking sound]

STEVEN: “Oh, Schmidty is what I call my head-tail. I apologize.”

NICK: “Uh… That’s uncomfortable.”

STEVEN: “Just the fourth one.”

NICK: “So this is going to be the joke we make the whole time, huh? It’s like a head-dick joke?”

STEVEN: “I believe so.”

NICK: “Roger, I’ll try to keep it in play.”

STEVEN: Let’s walk through this. What floor are they on? Are they on the first floor?

NICK: They’re on the third floor.

STEVEN: The third. Is it a three story building? Well, let’s walk into the first floor.

NICK: OK. The first floor. It’s a pretty empty building. It’s abandoned so where normally you would expect a small entryway and then a bunch of apartments off the first floor, it’s actually just an open space. It looks like there was a fire in here at one point. The staircase does appear to be mostly intact and leads pretty much all the way up. The location you would expect the lifts to be is pretty just hollow tubes all the way up. It looks like on the second floor some of the rooms are more intact and on the third floor most of them are. Probably why they went up there is because there was more cover.

STEVEN: Well, I’m just going to wander around and look while doing so. Just wander around, look at the shaft button. “Mhmm, mhmm.” Kind of observe nothing. But I’m going to use the time to try and get in Schmidty’s head. So I’m going to do a cool. I’m going to try to be a little bit cool.

NICK: OK.

STEVEN: You know, “How’d you get on the force? Tell me about that nice gun of yours? You can see I’ve also got my weaponry.”

NICK: “Oh, you mean Jurisprudence?

STEVEN: “Oh, is that Jurisprudence?”

NICK: “Yeah.”

STEVEN: “His was Jurisdiction.”

NICK: “Yeah, Jurisprudence.

STEVEN: “Jurisprudence.”

NICK: “You have to use her prudently. It’s pretty important.”

STEVEN: “Is that a shotgun blaster?”

NICK: “It’s a flechetty? Flechette?”

STEVEN: “Yes.”

NICK: “Is that how it’s pronounced? Flechette? Probably, I don’t know.”

STEVEN: “We Togrutan are pretty trilly so I’m not really sure.”

NICK: “We’ll just call it flechetty for now.”

STEVEN: “That’ll work.”

NICK: “Yeah, Jurisprudence. Yeah, been on the force for a while. Generally show up in these kinds of situations.”

STEVEN: I’m still walking around looking up elevator shafts.

NICK: “So are we gonna go up there?”

STEVEN: “I mean, they’re not shooting at us right now, but I’m trying to make sure we have a good understanding of the best way to get out of here if we have to get out fast.”

NICK: “Well, I guess that makes sense. We’ve got stairs. We’ve got—”

STEVEN: “We do have stairs. We’ve got those elevator shafts. Those are interesting.”

NICK: “Yeah, looks like…” He leans over. “Looks like there’s a basement down there, though.”

STEVEN: “What did these people do? They had some drug problems on my colony. Was that the same issue here?”

NICK: “Oh yeah, two-bit pushers. Drug runners. Dealers.”

STEVEN: “I wonder if they hid anything in the basement.”

NICK: “You know they might have.”

STEVEN: “Let’s go to the basement.”

NICK: “O-OK…”

STEVEN: “I think we should go to the basement.”

NICK: “OK, let’s go.”

Roll me a Charm or a Deception.

STEVEN: I have neither. I’m Cool. Can I Cool my way in to thinking we can go to the basement?

NICK: Sure.

STEVEN: That seems reasonable. I’m trying to be a police officer on the force.

NICK: OK. Schmidty’s not that smart so this’ll be an easy check. Are those all advantages? Oh no, you have a success.

STEVEN: A couple of advantages.

NICK: OK. So the success and two advantages means it does work. You guys go to the basement. You can use those advantages for any extra scene painting stuff you want, for anything extra you want him to do.

STEVEN: Yes, so here’s what’s going to happen. We’re going to go down. Yeah, I’m going to hear a noise very convincingly.

NICK: OK.

STEVEN: Alright, so we walk down the stairs. “Shit, I think I heard something.”

NICK: “Yeah! I think I heard it, too.”

STEVEN: “I hope nothing in this basement is rigged to explode. What if they’re trying to destroy the evidence? They did that back… Threw it out of their ship.”

NICK: “We’d better back out of here and get the bomb squad.”

STEVEN: “Oh no, not that type of bomb. They’re not trying to blow anyone up. I think they’re just trying to destroy the evidence.”

NICK: “Oh.”

STEVEN: “You know, like dye packets and things.”

NICK: “OK, so that makes a lot of sense.”

STEVEN: “What if their evidence is credits?”

NICK: “Oh?”

STEVEN: “What if they’ve hidden tons and tons of illicit credits.”

NICK: “You’re right. We should go secure any valuables first.”

STEVEN: “That’s right. So here’s what I propose. I’m going to go check out what that noise was. You make sure there ain’t nothing that’s going to get out of this basement.”

NICK: “Alright, I’ll guard the basement.”

STEVEN: “Well look—bro. Bro. Look around. Make sure no credits are disappearing.”

NICK: “Oh, of course. If anything were to…”

STEVEN: “And I’m going to go check the first floor again.”

NICK: “If anything were to be found, of course I’d report it to the evidence locker immediately.”

STEVEN: “And your name’s Schmidty?”

NICK: “Yeah.”

STEVEN: “Sabos by the way. If you hear anything, I’ll be just a floor away. Yell.”

NICK: “Alright, Sabos. I’ll give you a call.”

STEVEN: “Perfect.”

NICK: And he goes barreling down the stairs. [shotgun cocking noise] “Yeah, credits!” And he’s peeking above and below everything.

STEVEN: Alright, well I’m going to use this time to haul ass up to the third floor.

NICK: [laughs] OK, so you go pounding up to the third floor. Up on the third floor, it actually is pretty much standard apartments. A bunch of the doors are fused open and there’s black wiring hanging down because remember, this is Star Wars so they’re not wooden swingy opening doors. They’re all swooshy doors. Towards the corner to the right hand side, the side that’d be facing where the most police officers were, you see a door that’s only about half open. And you hear some indistinct grumbling on the inside.

STEVEN: I’m going to go through the door.

NICK: OK. So you poke your head through. You see Mouse and Morak. You see them leaning up against the wall. They both have blaster carbines in their hands.

STEVEN: I come in, just my hands up. “I’m the Togrutan.”

NICK: They point their guns at you for just a second.

STEVEN: I show them my head-tails. “I’m the Togrutan.”

NICK: “OK, so why are you here?”

STEVEN: “Do you mind if we step away from the windows for a little bit? We’ve got a little bit of different business to take care of?”

NICK: “Well, I mean, that sounds nice and all…” This is Mouse talking.

STEVEN: Mouse.

NICK: “That sounds nice and all, but how do I know you don’t have a whole squad of CorSec out there in that hallway?”

STEVEN: “Are you familiar with the bouquet?”

NICK: “Oooh!”

STEVEN: “I was sent on behalf of one of your compatriots.”

NICK: “Right.”

STEVEN: “Really I needed to prove to her that I was capable of taking care of some problems. You happen to be the problems, being surrounded in this building and all.”

NICK: “The queen called us problems?”

STEVEN: “No, no, no, the problems are the CorSecs outside.”

NICK: “OK, that’s good. Because normally when she has problems those people end up on the bottom of the lake.”

STEVEN: “That’s the plan for the CorSecs outside. Our plan for you is to get out.”

NICK: “Well, lead the way, Mr. Bouquet.”

STEVEN: “Well, I might have gotten in here via a little bit of deceive some CorSecs per se.”

NICK: “OK.”

STEVEN: “So I’m not sure they’re necessarily going to be happy to turn you all over to me.”

NICK: “Probably not.”

STEVEN: “I think I have a plan.”

NICK: “Very confidence-inspiring.”

STEVEN: “Well, here’s what y’all are gonna do. I’m gonna walk in front of y’all and y’all are going to pretend that I’m your hostage. Something went terribly awry. Blasters pointed at me—put them on stun, though. And don’t shoot me.”

NICK: “Don’t shoot you? Alright.”

STEVEN: “And we’re gonna walk out and see if we can get out that way. See if we can use a little bit of trickery to convince the officers they don’t want a dead Togrutan diplomat on their hands.”

NICK: “OK. I’m not a great actor, but Morak here’s very convincing.”

He just nods solemnly at you.

STEVEN: “You seem a very convincingly sized fellow.”

NICK: He cracks his knuckles.

“Alright.” They point their blasters at you and say, “Move it, scumbag!”

STEVEN: “Alright. Also, let’s keep it quiet on the first floor.”

NICK: “Alright, quiet on the first floor.”

STEVEN: “Just trust me as I’m going out.”

NICK: “Got it.”

STEVEN: “And then we need to start playing as we leave the door.”

NICK: So we’ll do one of those side swipes to you’re standing at the front door of this apartment building with Mouse and Morak pointing guns at you.

STEVEN: “Shh, shh!” I tell them.

NICK: And they’re coming down the front stoop heading outside and the–

STEVEN: “Schmidty? Everything fine down there?”

NICK: “Oh yeah, everything’s real good.”

STEVEN: “Perfect. Keep looking.”

NICK: “Alright, I’ll keep looking.”

STEVEN: “I’ll be down in just a minute, Schmidty.”

NICK: “Sounds great.”

And as you walk outside–

STEVEN: “OK.”

NICK: Yeah. As you walk outside, the sergeant has his bullhorn. You’re about 30 feet from him. And he turns it on and–

STEVEN: “Sergeant, don’t shoot!”

NICK: “Well, we’re not gonna shoot but you don’t appear to have fetched them particularly well. Where’s Schmidty?”

STEVEN: “Schmidty’s helping. He found some evidence.”

NICK: “Great, but you’re currently being held hostage.”

STEVEN: “Togrutans aren’t the strongest of fellows.”

NICK: “Yeah, you’re sure not strong,” says Mouse.

STEVEN: “Yeah, well, I thought I’m a skilled negotiator.”

NICK: “Clearly your negotiations have not gone that well.”

STEVEN: “I would concur. Now these two fine gentleman, large gentleman–”

NICK: “Yeah, I’m real large!”

STEVEN: “Say they don’t mean me anything harm, but they need to go talk to an acquaintance first. And I don’t want to die and I don’t think you want a dead Togrutan diplomat either.”

NICK: “No, to be honest, I’ve been thinking about it since you went in there and this whole thing seems like a bad idea.”

STEVEN: “I—uh, yeah, this was a bad idea. He’s big.”

NICK: Morak just nods solemnly and puts the blaster up against your head and kind of like dinks you in the back of the head with it. You get a glance and see his gun is absolutely not set to stun. Actually on the gun it has “Stun” and I guess it would say “Kill,” but the Stun setting is Xed out. And it says like “Sissy” on it.

Moose says, “So this is how it’s going to go. You’re going to let us walk off down the street and you’re going to give us a 15-minute head start or we kill this guy. And then we kill all of you.”

STEVEN: “Don’t kill me.”

NICK: “And all of your friends.”

STEVEN: “Officer, I assure you, they won’t be hard to find. They are– [laughs] Turns out they’re a little bit…”

NICK: “Yeah, we’ll be following at a safe distance.”

STEVEN: “15 minutes.”

NICK: OK, roll me a Negotiation.

STEVEN: “Just stay close on me, coppers, as close as they’ll let you but don’t shoot me.”

NICK: “Hey, stop giving them ideas!” says Mouse.

Easy Negotiation since you’ve spent this entire scene setting this up. Yup, so it just succeeds.

So the sergeant waves everybody to holster their weapons. He takes his blaster and says, “Sorry, Jurisdiction.” They say, “15 minutes,” and he winks broadly at you.

STEVEN: “Sarge, Schmidty was last on the third floor.”

NICK: “Right. We’ll go fetch him and we’ll be having a strong conversation about what it means to work with a partner.”

STEVEN: “Yes, yes, his teamwork was not very good. He let me down.”

NICK: “That’s really disappointing. Schmidty’s usually so on top of things.”

STEVEN: “He seems like a very capable, physically capable officer of the law.”

NICK: [giggles] Mouse says, “Shut up, hostage!” and hits you in the head.

STEVEN: “Ow!”

NICK: And starts shoving you down the street.

STEVEN: We can go to the car.

NICK: You’re right. So as you’re going, you about a block and everyone’s watching you and you actually notice that there’s like a sharpshooter that’s been set-up on the roof and you can see a laser sight at the back of Morak’s head. You turn a corner and the car is right there. And you see your contact from before and he’s like, “Oh my gosh, I don’t know what you did, but get in the car. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.”

So you speed off and then there is–

STEVEN: “Mouse, Morak, good acting. Morak, that was on kill.”

NICK: Morak just nods at you and hits you in the head with the gun again and keeps it pointed at you.

STEVEN: “So to be clear, I was the one that got you out of this situation. Just saying.”

NICK: Mouse like looks at Morak, looks at you, and is like, “You know, Morak’s usually a good judge of character.”

STEVEN: “He looks like a judge of character.”

NICK: “Yeah, he doesn’t trust you very much.”

STEVEN: “I mean, isn’t it natural not to trust someone who looks different than you, me with my four head-tails.”

NICK: “Look, I don’t really need a lecture on being accepting of different people, but that whole plan was pretty sketch. I’m very surprised it worked.”

STEVEN: “Do you know how hard it is to get a squad of CorSec off your back? In that part of town? With two people that look like y’all?”

NICK: “Yeah, and we’re still working on it.” You look around and there are like three CorSec squad speeders chasing you.

STEVEN: “Ugh!”

NICK: And your original escort, the green orchid kid, goes, “Alright, well, it’s time for me to earn my pay.” And he punches it. There’s a harrowing montage of cutting around corners, and flying under bazaars, and through lines of laundry hung out across alleyways. Both side view mirrors get knocked off of the speeder on the way. But he manages to lose them and then swing back to the club.

You walk in and there’s the tall guy who asked about the bouquet. And you say, “Yeah, yeah, the bouquet.” You walk in and you make it all the way to the back where the queen is. You bring Mouse and Morak with you.

She goes, “Well, Mouse and Morak, what a surprise. To be honest, I wasn’t really expecting that to go as well as it did. I expected y’all to end up dead, which is kind of what I sent him to do, but great work. I don’t have to train up any new people.”

STEVEN: “I wouldn’t exactly say it went well, but we are here.”

NICK: “Yeah, well, Mouse, you and Morak go away. I’ll deal with y’all later.”

“Yes ma’am.” They walk off. They go out the beads and as soon as they hit the part where the music starts playing, Morak starts to bob his head to the tunes and they take a hard left into one of the dancing rooms. So they’re going to enjoy what time they have left.

Your business associate says, “Well, this probably won’t be the last time we deal together, Sacko or Sacko’s representative, I suppose. I was thinking about it. I don’t think you’re Sacko.”

STEVEN: “Sacko never does his own bidding.”

NICK: “Yeah.”

STEVEN: “I’m pretty close.”

NICK: “Yeah, I’d imagine. He’s definitely sent someone who was good. Doesn’t even look like you used your gun. That’s impressive.”

STEVEN: “The gun is cool.”

NICK: “Here’s the deal. Take the box. Deliver it to the location. We’re good. We’ll take care of things Sacko needed. This is the last step. No problem.”

STEVEN: “Where is the location?”

NICK: You had it on your little note.

STEVEN: Oh yes!

NICK: It was another thing. So you had to pick it up and bring it somewhere else.

“Now take this and get the heck out of my office.”

STEVEN: “I will.”

NICK: “By the way, for the next time that we meet, my name is Kettle.”

STEVEN: “Kettle.”

NICK: “They know me around here as The Queen.”

STEVEN: “Queen Kettle.”

NICK: “Yeah. No. Just Kettle, or The Queen.”

STEVEN: “Ah, I see.”

NICK: “It’s one of those like name in quotation marks kind of things.”

STEVEN: “Yes, The Queen.”

NICK: “Yeah, that’s good. I like that a lot. Now get the heck out of here.”

STEVEN: “Yes, Queen.”

NICK: You leave and take a taxi to wherever the next place you’re going is. So this is actually back toward the nicer part of the city. The building that the coordinates or address leads you to is a low one-story building nestled between two high Corellian towers. As you approach, a robot eye on a stick pops out of the wall and it looks at you, looks at the box you’re carrying and says, “E juta.” And then slides backwards in. And the door, which is really more of a square seam than anything else, slides open.

You find yourself walking down an unadorned, durasteel hallway. A silver protocol droid that appears to be carrying a portly Selonian greets you. A Selonian is like an otter person-type thing. It says, “Oh, hello, sir.” He takes the guy and tosses him bodily into a nearby room and codes a key on the wall and it slides shut. “It’s good that you’ve made it. By the item you are carrying, I must assume you are Councilman Sacko. Wonderful that you carried out the master’s request. As he hinted, this was an audition for a job. If you come with me, I can introduce you to the rest of your team.”

And so he leads you down a hallway and a door slides open. You find yourself in a warm, wood paneled room. There’s a Nautolan woman sitting in a chair, wringing out her head-tendrils. As she turns to look at you, she squeaks in her leather chair. She nods to you and gestures for you to have a seat.

STEVEN: “Yes, Nautolan.”

NICK: And that’s where we’ll end it. Ba-naaa~!

STEVEN: Sweet.

NICK: Yeah, so there. That was good.

## Outro

CAMERON: Thanks for listening to Tabletop Squadron. If you enjoyed our show, please consider logging into iTunes and giving us a 5 star review. 5 star reviews help new listeners find the show. You can find more about Tabletop Squadron on our website: tabletopsquadron.com, or on our Twitter and Instagram: @tabletop_squad.

The Star Wars: Edge of the Empire role-playing game is property of Fantasy Flight Games and Lucas Books. See you next time.

(post has been backdated for chronological clarity. post date: 6/2020)

Word document download: Prologue 1 Making New Friends

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Tabletop Squadron Transcript, Prologue 1:
Making New Friends

Transcript by Harrison (Twitter: @unabletowhistle)

## Intro

[Cameron hums space music]

NICK: Hi everyone, and welcome to Tabletop Squadron, a Star Wars: Edge of the Empire actual play podcast. I’m Nick, your game master. For the past few years, my friends and I have been playing tabletop RPGs together and we decided to share our hijinks with you. For the first few podcasts, we’re doing small individual arcs for our characters so you can get a feel for them before they start bouncing off of each other in Star Wars. Enjoy.

[Cameron laughs]

NICK: Hello. I’m Nick. I’m going to be the game master. Star master. I’m sitting at the table here with Cameron.

CAMERON: Hello.

NICK: Hi Cameron, how are you?

CAMERON: I’m doing well, Nick. How are you?

NICK: That’s good. Thanks for coming all the way out here.

CAMERON: It was a long a trek.

NICK: Yeah, that traffic you know?

CAMERON: Oh yeah.

NICK: It’s rough. Tell me a little about your character before we get started.

CAMERON: Alright, so I’m playing Karma Nailo. She is a Nautolan bounty hunter. She’s green and has many head tentacles. She’s in her late 30s. She’s got a couple of kids who are off on their own doing their own bounty hunter adventures at the moment, so she is still adjusting to being on her own again, and having to do all the handy skills that they had developed over the years—having to do those again.

NICK: Sounds good. Well, I’m sure we’ll hopefully learn a little bit more about that here in a minute. Let’s get into it.

##

NICK: Before you is a wooden door. It was once painted green, but little of that remains. The grain is dark and exposed. It’s an old door. It’s probably been here longer than most of the buildings in the area. There’s a control panel next to it, but the lights are out. In flaking chalk is an inscription in Aurebesh that says, “Just push.”

CAMERON: I push the door.

NICK: Walking into a dark bar, you have Karma. So give me a description of Karma.

CAMERON: Karma is wearing a lovely metallic gold evening gown, which goes very nicely with her green skin tone and really sets off her eyes. Her hair-tentacles have a bunch of gold kind of like arm-bracelets but on tentacles instead all throughout her hair and they are—the tentacles are all up in an elaborate basket-type weave on her head. They’re kind of in-and-out in a Nautolan form of an up-do, but kind of picturing it ends up looking more like Tangela.

NICK:  Alright, Pokemon reference #1.

CAMERON: Pokemon reference #1. But all of the gold bands seem to be attached to each other and that’s what’s holding the tentacles in place. She looks ravishing.

NICK: Of course.

CAMERON: Yes. Very slinky.

NICK: Sounds good.

So the door creaks open to a familiar scene. There are low dark wood tables with people hunched over, drinking whiskey and staying quiet.

A couple in the back corner are standing close, whispering to each other.

At the bar, you see a tall dark human man. He’s bald and wearing a white apron. He uses an old rag to dry the inside of a glass he’s holding with a ringing motion.

There are two other people at the bar. One, an old man with a beard has his face in his hands. You’re not sure if he’s conscious. But no one seems to be bothering him at the end of the bar.

The other person at the bar is a thin woman. She has a medium tan, short curly hair, a heavy blaster pistol on her hip, and sits on a stool near the bartender. She’s the only one who turns to look at you as you push open the door.

The bartender leans in and says something to her. She eyes you again and slides to the far side of the bar. The bartender waves you towards them. “What’ll you be having?”

CAMERON: “I’ll take a sparkling star.”

NICK: “Sparkling star. Your favorite. Coming right up.”

CAMERON: “Thanks.”

NICK: So he busies himself making the drink. It involves at least three shakers.

CAMERON: [snickers] Of course.

NICK: And four or five bottles of alcohol. Space-cohol.

CAMERON: [snickers] I think it’s still alcohol. It’s fine.

NICK: No, that can’t be right.

CAMERON: Not everything has to be space

NICK: I hope it’s space–

CAMERON: Space-cohol.

NICK: Space-cohol.

CAMERON: So Karma’s at the bar. Kind of leans sideways a little bit and rests one elbow on the bar and kind of surveys the room nonchalantly. And very elegantly.

NICK: As he finishes making the drink, he slides you a thin stemmed branching glass that looks kind of like a flower to you, and says, “I owe you so I figure you could appreciate this hot tip. The mark I called you about is named Felton Mox. He’s a drug-runner in Coronet. And CorSec–” That’s Corellian Security.

CAMERON: Ah, okay.

NICK: “–has been after him for months. He killed a CorSec officer.”

CAMERON: [gasp]

NICK: “And they’re desperate enough to put a bounty on his head. I know it’s probably not your usual game but I heard you’re starting over. He’s coming in later tonight to meet someone. That’d be your shot.”

CAMERON: “Lovely.”

NICK: He looks you in the eyes and says, “The bounty is 4,000 credits alive, a thousand dead.”

CAMERON: “And delivery to where?”

NICK: “CorSec headquarters, of course.”

CAMERON: “Of course.”

NICK: “Just a few miles from here.”

CAMERON: “Sounds easy enough.” I take a sip of my drink.

NICK: Is it delicious?

CAMERON: It is. And it’s very sparkly.

NICK: Yes, it’s more sparkles than beverage. That’s all the hydrogen they filter through it. Makes it bubbly. So you know that normally, you’d give a 10% finder’s fee to a bartender who’d give you a call like this, so that’s part of the reason he was making eyes at you. The bartender goes back to polishing his glass and says, “So how have you been doing since you split up with your partners?”

CAMERON: “It’s been an adjustment. You know that you get really used to having people at your back and then they’re not there anymore. You can kind of find yourself in some situations.”

NICK: “Yeah, I know how that goes. Times are tough.” You get the feeling that this is like his canned response to most people who tell him about their problems.

CAMERON: “Thanks for always really listening to me, Freddy.”

NICK: “Oh, you’re welcome. Jerfrederick Douglas is everything about customer service.”

CAMERON: “Oh yep, that’s what I tell everyone.”

NICK: And the bartender turns and walks away. He sets the glass down and starts rooting in a cabinet for another one.

And as you’re sitting there, the thin woman from before slides her way back over to you and says, “So you’re a friend of Jerfrederick. You don’t look like a regular here. What brings you by?”

CAMERON: I’m just stopping through. Getting some work done on my ship.

NICK: You see that her hand is sitting comfortably on her hip, right by the blaster. “Really? You know, most people don’t come to the Leaning Eagle just when they’re waiting for maintenance. You’ve come a long way from the ship depot.”

CAMERON: “Like you’ve mentioned, I’m a friend of Jerfrederick’s.”

NICK: “Yeah.”

CAMERON: “So it’s worth it for this.” I hold up my very sparkly flower glass and take another sip.

NICK: “I mean, the sparkling stars are good. I don’t know if I’d come all this way.” And Jerfrederick looks down the bar at her and kind of glares at her. She gets the message and kind of backs off a little bit.

CAMERON: “You know, it’s the company, too. It’s always just so pleasant here.”

NICK: “Oh, I know exactly what you mean.” And you her hand wrap pretty firmly around the grip of her blaster and then she looks pointedly at a sign that says “No shooting” on the back wall in shining neon.

CAMERON: Karma just kind of looks her up and down and it’s not as noticeable as it would be for someone with pupils since she just has the expansive, black galaxy eyes. So she moves her head a little bit more than one would normally to look her up and down. And then just kind of looks at herself very pointedly as she does not have a weapon. Kind of to make it to appear she does not need one. And does not look intimidated and takes another sip of her drink.

NICK: She seems pretty nonplussed, but knowing the laws of where you’re at, she backs down a little bit. She goes back to her corner of the bar away from you and motions at Gerfrederick and says, “I’ll have a sparkling star but make it a double.” And he rolls his eyes and pulls out of all the drinks that goes into this and starts making the drink.

So after a while of you sitting around. You probably get through half of your drink.

CAMERON: I am sipping slowly as I do not want it to affect me.

NICK: Yeah. Well, a sparkling star, half of the ingredients are stims so you’re not to the point where you can see sounds.

CAMERON: [snickers]

NICK: But it definitely gets your heart racing. I wonder how many hearts Nautolans have. Like seven?

CAMERON: I believe only one, but I don’t know if they have ears.

NICK: I don’t think they do.

CAMERON: So seeing sound, I don’t know if that’s any different than how I normally experience life.

NICK: I think they’re like Togrutas where they have the like vibration sensors.

Felton Mox pushes through the defunct door and enters the Leaning Eagle. He’s a bulky Selonian. Selonians are like otter-looking aliens. Imagine like furry, ottery type people. He has a bit of a belly and hitches up his belt around his sagging waist as he walks into the bar. He goes to a table towards the back and sits facing the door. He glares at the amorous couple in the corner until they get uncomfortable and leave. After that, he seems to relax a bit. He continually fidgets and sweeps the room. You can feel his eyes linger on you before he goes back to his observations. What do you do?

CAMERON: When I feel his eyes lingering, I shift slightly so I stick my hip out more.

NICK: Yeah, you can feel the temperature of the room go up a couple of degrees.

CAMERON: Lovely.

NICK: You’re working it.

So, the mark is in the bar. Whatcha doing?

CAMERON: Did he look armed as he walked past?

NICK: Oh, yeah, he has a heavy blaster on his waist as well. A big, old honking pistol. As he’s fidgeting, he pulls out a blaster power pack and sets it on the table and starts idly flicking it so it spins on the table.

CAMERON: Have I noticed a difference in the curly-haired woman’s behavior since he walked in?

NICK: Well, roll me a check. Roll me a Perception check. This’ll be probably red and purple.

CAMERON: Red and purple. I am pretty cunning so… Oh. Oh my goodness gracious!

NICK: That’s very interesting.

CAMERON: Fascinating. Alright, so I have two advantages and a triumph and a despair.

NICK: Great. Awesome.

CAMERON: The success and the failure cancel out.

NICK: Yeah. That sounds really good. So I’m gonna take just a second in case anyone who’s listening to this hasn’t played Star Wars: Edge of the Empire before. There’s a custom set of dice. There are green dice and yellow dice for skills, for your abilities, so they have advantages and successes on them. And there are purple die and red die which are bad things so they have failures and threats.

CAMERON: Threats.

NICK: Yes, threats, thank you. Threats on them. Then there are blue and black die for like boosts and minuses, but basically what you’re trying to do is you build a pool of dice based on your skills and what the situation is. And they cancel each other out and whatever you have left is either success or failures, threats or advantages, so you can fail something if you get failures, but you can get advantages, so you can fail what you’re trying to do, but find something else extra.

Then on top of that if you are using yellow and red dice, you can get super good successes or failures which are called triumphs and despairs, which sort of operate outside of everything else. And they have like extra super good effects.

So that’s a very interesting roll.

CAMERON: But I fail triumphantly and despairingly.

NICK: So you can’t tell if—man, you rolled dice weird.

CAMERON: [laughter] I know. What happened?

NICK: So you can’t tell if she’s changed at all. She seems to just be sitting there, drinking a drink, making small talk with Gerfrederick. The advantages you can see that Felton Mox has more than just his heavy blaster. He also has his vibroknife that’s under the table. You see it’s sticking out of the boot.

Is there something you want the triumph to be for?

CAMERON: I’m trying to think of something.

NICK: I’ve got the triumph. Don’t worry about it. I’ve got the despair, too, so we’ll go from there. But yeah, you can’t tell with her what’s going on.

So you look at curly hair lady and she appears to be talking to Gerfrederick and doing her own thing. And you feel, even though you were pretty careful with drinking the drink, Gerfrederick seems to have put a lot more into it than he normally would because he likes you and you’re feeling a little light-headed. It’s a little bit harder to focus than usual.

CAMERON: Great. I set my drink down and kind of push it away from me a little bit. “Alright.” I’m kind of leaning on the side of the bar to make the side view very appealing. And while pretending to be totally disinterested, just keep like flashing looks at Felton. I’m just like in the way that it looks like I don’t want to get caught looking at him. But then if he does notice, I look down quickly. What color would I blush? I’m going to blush a little darker green.

NICK: Yeah, I think that works.

Felton notices what you’re doing and eventually, he pulls out a datapad and he starts tapping away at it. And a little while later, a little indicator lights up under the bar and you can see from Jerfrederick. He walks over and he presses some buttons and he looks down, shrugs, and walks over to Felton. And you see them whispering for a little bit. Jerfrederick doesn’t bother to cover his mouth or anything so you pick out the words “Lady,” and “Nautolan,” and “Drink,” and “Lucky,” and Jerfrederick just like keeps trying to get him to back off. Saying it’s whatever. He finally throws up his hands in mock despair—he’s not a great actor—throws up his hands in mock despair. And walks back behind the bar and starts mixing a drink. This is a half sparkling star, so it’s only like two kinds of alcohol and some fizzy water. It’s not nearly as fancy. And it’s in a tumbler.

CAMERON: It’d have to be a falling star.

NICK: Ooh.

CAMERON: Ooh, yeah, because it’s less sparkly.

NICK: Yes, that’s better.

CAMERON: A lot more alcohol, though.

NICK: Yes, the falling star is just straight space vodka and some sparkling water and they drop a cherry in it that sinks to the bottom. And when it does, the syrup kind of streams off it and leaves a cool streak through the very clear glass. And he sets it down gently in front of you so as not to mess up the contrail, as it’s known in drinking circles.

He says, “The gentleman over there wanted me to make you a drink. And asks if you would join him.”

CAMERON: I look at Gerfrederick while he’s talking to me then glance down at the drink. Blush again. And kind of like side-eye in a flirtation way, not like in a judging way, just kind of looking out, sigh like “Aw,” over at Felton’s table. And then just kind of like nod toward Gerfrederick, as if we’re not friends. I’m just accepting a drink from this random bartender that I don’t know.

NICK: He goes back to polishing a glass with a dirty rag and just nods at you and turns away, but you can see him watching you in the mirror behind the back of the bar.

CAMERON: I’m going to pick up the drink and saunter over to Mr. Felton’s table.

NICK: OK. As you get to the table, he stretches back and puts his arm on the back of the chair. You can see that he’s pretty comfortable, spread out, but he looks a little wary of you, but not in a way that it seems like he’s threatened by you, just like he’s not sure how this is going to go.

He says, “Well, couldn’t help but notice you’re here in my bar. It’s my favorite place. I know everyone who stays here.”

CAMERON: “Yeah, I’m just stopping through.”

NICK: “What brings you to Coronet?”

CAMERON: “Visiting family, then had some ship problems. My ship’s in the yard right now, getting repaired. One of the yard workers recommended this place. It was kind of a trek, but drinks are very good. And I’m liking the company so far.”

NICK: He like leans back and you can see him puff up and stretch his shoulders. He’s like, “Well, most of the scum and villainy around here aren’t much to talk to, but I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself, sweetness.”

Roll me a Deception check, because you’re lying to this dude.

CAMERON: [laughs] Noo. Oh dear, I don’t have Deception skills.

NICK: Uh-oh.

CAMERON: Whoops! What’s the difficulty?

NICK: It’s average, but you have a blue die and a black die. The black die’s because you’re kind of drunk and the blue die is for reasons you can probably get out of him eventually.

CAMERON: Reasons.

NICK: Yes!

CAMERON: He’s got a thing for tentacles.

NICK: Uh…

CAMERON: I mean, what guy doesn’t?

TOGETHER: What guy doesn’t have a thing for tentacles?

CAMERON: Exactly! I succeed with an advantage.

NICK: Nice! No problems there.

He nods to himself. He nods to you. And he takes a swig of a Corellian whiskey and he kind of looks down for a little bit and says, “Well, I mean I’ve had some bad experiences with Nautolans before. But I sure hope you’ll join me.” He pats at the chair next to him.

CAMERON:  Important question: is this a booth? Or is this a normal table?

NICK: I’ve said chair twice so–

CAMERON: Okay.

NICK: It’s a table. It’s back against the wall so it’s wall, chair with him in it, small round table, and there’s a chair next to him and two chairs on the opposite side of the round table.

CAMERON: I’m-a go and sit next to him

NICK: As he wanted.

CAMERON: Yes, that is the chair that he patted.

NICK: Uh-huh.

CAMERON: I walk over and slide into the chair. Set my drink down. And I’m not going to drink it because I’m learning things again.

[both laugh]

It’s been a while since I’ve had drinks while on the job. Normally, I don’t like to show my boys that it’s an okay thing to do. Because you need to be responsible. Still getting back into the swing of things.

However, I am going to reach into the glass and fish the cherry out. Which I assume still has the stem on it.

NICK: Oh yeah.

CAMERON: I’m just going to put that into my mouth and eat that.

NICK:  OK.

CAMERON:  And eat that. And just kind of play with the stem.

NICK: OK, are you like trying to tie a knot with it?

CAMERON: No, I’m more using it to accentuate my lips, not using it in a look-how-skilled-my-tongue-is-type of way.

NICK: Great. That’s good. He looked like he was about to go into a speech about how cool he was and what a top player he is and he gets very distracted and just kind of ends up trailing off. Starts with, “Well, you know, in this city, I’m a pretty big… deal… and… you know. Rancors… and…”

CAMERON: “Rancors? Fascinating.”

NICK: “What? Yeah. Oh yeah! They call me the Rancor of Cor—oh stupid! Why did I…? Gah!”

He’s pretty–

CAMERON: I giggle adorably.

NICK: He kind of smiles to himself, but he still looks pretty concerned with how this is going. It isn’t going great. He doesn’t know what to do at this point.

CAMERON: Then I’m going to drop this stem back into my cup but having removed the cherry, it looks like I’ve drank some of it.

NICK: Mhmm.

CAMERON: Because the liquid drops.

NICK: Mhmm,

CAMERON: That was my goal.

NICK: Great! So what’s your plan for this guy?

CAMERON: So I’m trying to get him comfortable with me through listening to his inane conversation and saying things like, “Rancor! Fascinating,” which always works with the men.

TOGETHER: Whether they’re talking about rancors or not.

CAMERON: Exactly! Like, “I hear you’re called the rancor.” It just always works.

NICK: Rancor? Fascinating.

CAMERON: Basic goal: trying to get him to kind of come back towards the table. Not be thinking about his weaponry at all anymore. Just very focused on me and how attractive I am and how much he wants this to work.

NICK: Great, so roll me a Charm check to make friends with the jerk drug dealer.

CAMERON: What is the difficulty?

NICK: Average and you can have a blue die because you have described the situation very well. Your Charm’s only a two?

CAMERON: Yeah! I’m not charming. I do not have the Charm skill and my Presence is a two.

NICK: Oh OK.

CAMERON: Nope. I fail with two advantages.

NICK: OK, so the advantages are he’s pretty comfortable with you but not in the way that you want. So he’s getting kind of like aggressively flirtatious. He keeps like accidentally brushing your leg with his hands and keeps leaning in closer. You realize he’s definitely pre-gamed before this. He’s pretty drunk and he’s just getting more and more up in your personal space talking to you. And so you keep trying to engage his interest and get him to be kind of self-indulgent and rather than talking about himself or kind of like relaxing, he’s instead just making it all about and getting all up in your business.

CAMERON: Alright, so I would like to, at this time, take a look around the bar and see if anyone beside Gerfrederick—since Gerfrederick knows that Felton is my mark—look to see if anyone else is paying particularly close attention to us at our table.

NICK: Sure, go ahead and roll a Perception. I need you to do it twice. Once at average and once at a red and two purples.

CAMERON: OK.

NICK: So once with a red and once without a red.

CAMERON: Doing the red first. Alright, so I succeed. I have two successes but three threats.

NICK: Two successes but three threats. So you notice the drunk man at the bar with the beard has been looking through his fingers at you this entire time so he’s not unconscious. He’s just been sitting there very quietly. He hasn’t had anything to drink since you got there. He hasn’t sipped the drink next to him. The threats are he saw you see him, so he knows that you know that you know, you know?

CAMERON: Alright, now that he is kind of like looking up slightly, do I recognize him at all?

NICK: I don’t know. Do you? He’s a bounty hunter.

CAMERON: Then yes.

NICK: Yeah, so you’ve probably heard of him. This is Fozzik Squee.

CAMERON: Squee?

NICK: Squee. He’s kind of a low-ranking bounty hunter. A 4,000-credit bounty would be pretty much upper end for him. He especially likes working around Corellia. He used to be a member of CorSec, but got kicked out for being an alcoholic and overly violent with interrogations. So you’re kind of on his home turf.

CAMERON: Alright. I’m not particularly concerned as my skills are obviously superior.

NICK: For the non-red.

CAMERON: Two advantages.

NICK: Yeah, so your alcohol is wearing off.

CAMERON: Well good.

NICK: And you feel a little more with it. Really ready. Everyone else just seems to be just bar-goers.

CAMERON: Cool.

NICK: Hanging out on a Thursday.

CAMERON: Great bar crowds on Thursdays.

NICK: Yeah, Thursday. It’s like the new Friday.

CAMERON: Yup. Alright, having noticed that Felton’s not small and likely would be difficult for me to surreptitiously carry out of this bar full of people, I’m going to re-engage in whatever conversation he’s been having while I’ve been looking around the room.

NICK: “Well, like I was saying, I really do enjoy jizz music.”

CAMERON: “Oh yes.”

NICK: “I really think it speaks to the Corellian underculture. If you take a good bump of some impact, you can really get into the groove.”

CAMERON: “Oh, that’s amazing. I’ve never considered using impact specifically with jizz music.”

NICK: “Yeah, jizz and impact go hand-in-hand.”

CAMERON: “So do you have any music we can listen to? Maybe back at your place?”

NICK: “Uhh…” So as you said that, you can see him looking at his datapad. He looks kind of disappointed. “Well, no, I don’t have any—oh! At—yeah! We could do that. We could make that happen.”

And he stands up immediately and drops some credits on the table and kind of does a half-hearted salute to Gerfrederick. And starts to lead you out of the bar. He puts his hand around your waist and as you walk, it starts to slip a little bit lower. A little bit lower. And you can see he kind of looks up at you.

CAMERON: Oh, he’s shorter than me?

NICK: Yeah, he’s shorter than you. Well, how tall are you? I imagined you were like six foot.

CAMERON: I don’t think so. I think I’m probably–

NICK: What’s average Nautolan height?

CAMERON: See, I was looking and it actually doesn’t say.

NICK: How tall would you like to be?

CAMERON: I would like to be like, let’s say 5’7”. A lot of my height currently is my head tentacle up-do.

NICK: Right. So he doesn’t look up at you then. He looks down at you. He’s like 5’9”, 5’10”. He’s not that tall.

CAMERON: And I’m not wearing heels. I’m wearing sturdy, sensible shoes.

NICK: Sturdy, sensible shoes.

CAMERON: But my dress is long enough that you can’t tell. So it doesn’t throw off the outfit.

NICK: So you’re wearing like Tom’s or something.

CAMERON: I mean, I’m probably like wearing my boots.

NICK: You’re wearing your boots.

CAMERON: Yeah.

NICK: When you walk, do they clomp?

CAMERON: No!

NICK: Oh OK. That’d be funny.

CAMERON: I’m going to invoke my stealth skills. They do not clomp when I walk!

NICK: OK. He squeezes your butt on the way out. Do you do anything?

CAMERON: No.

NICK: OK. You get to the door. You push your way through the door. If you glance behind you, you notice that Fezzik Squee drops a credit chip on the counter and stands up and turns to go. He grabs a big coat and wraps it around himself. Puts on a floppy misshapen hat. Starts to stumble his way out of the bar.

CAMERON: Alright, so seeing this, I speed us up slightly. Kind of giggle and fall into the side of the building once we’re out the door and walked a little bit down.

NICK: Let me describe what outside the bar looks like. As you exit the bar, you look into the Corellian night. You’re in Corellia’s capital city of Coronet. It’s famous for its sweeping spires and its capital building as well as its galactic-class university. What is less known is the seedy underbelly of the city including a literal underbelly. A tunnel system carved under the streets by the Selonian thousands of years ago.

It’s cold outside. A stiff wind rustles your head tails and your breath comes out in a cloud. Small flurries of snow fall around you. The street is wet and glistening from the street lights above. The small alleyway that leads to the bar leads to busy streets in either direction. There’s another smaller alley off to your left, going around the back of the bar. There’s also a heavy grating against one of the walls, disappearing into a tunnel.

As you collect yourself, you have probably a few seconds before something happens.

CAMERON: Cool, so I’m aiming towards the side alley that goes to the back of the bar, pretending to be more drunk than I actually am, so giggling and just that, “This is just so spontaneous that we’re actually doing this. It’s hilarious.” Then I kind of falls sideways into the alley so that he has his hand on my butt, he’s kind of drawn with me.

NICK: “Whoa!”

CAMERON: Then I want to slam his head against the wall.

NICK: OK. [laughs] Roll me a Brawl attack and have a blue die because this guy is super not expecting to get punched in the head.

CAMERON: So Melee difficulty is always two. Is Brawl always two as well?

NICK: Melee range attacks.

CAMERON: Hey!

NICK: Oh geez.

CAMERON: Alright, so that is four successes and three advantages.

NICK: Cool. Were you trying to knock him out?

CAMERON: Yeah, so my goal was to knock him out so that I can pull in through the back door of the bar.

NICK: Oh you’re trying to re-enter the bar.

CAMERON: Through the back, because that’s where I have my gear.

NICK: Oh OK.

CAMERON: Because I’m in a formal gown right now. Like I don’t have my gun with me or anything. Though I suppose I have his gun right now. But I’d rather have be warmer.

NICK: OK. So you start dragging him to the back of the bar. You hear some footsteps coming out of the bar, kind of stumbling, then you hear someone say, “Shit!” under their breath, and start looking around.

You just barely make it around the corner before they get to you. Felton is very heavy and as you’re dragging him through the wet streets, he’s starting to soak up some water and he’s getting heavier.

As you get around the corner, the supply entrance is open already. It’s the backroom of the bar. It’s probably 10 feet by 10 feet. There’s some mop buckets. There’s some crates and cleaning supplies, a couple of cases of alcohol and a small metal briefcase that when you open it up has all of your gear in it.

So describe what Karma’s action gear is.

CAMERON: She pushes a button on one of her tentacle bangles and all of her tentacles just drop down. They fall to a little bit above the small of her back and are kind of in layers with the ones starting at the top of her forehead being slightly shorter as they go down the back than the ones that start at the base of her neck.

She slips into a mostly black suit of body armor that has gold accents on it. And then pulls on a red kind of headband/bandanna-type scarf that pulls up over her forehead and it has a small chain of charms hanging down on it that ends in the Gemini zodiac symbol. Then kind of just like shakes her tentacles out so they fall with one coming over each side of her shoulders and the others just kind of like falling behind her. Then reaches back in the case and pulls out a blaster carbine.

NICK: Alright. Nice rifle.

CAMERON: And hooks it on her back.

NICK: Great. So you’re armed. You’re ready to go. You’ve got an unconscious bounty with you.

CAMERON: So I’m going to remove his vibroknife from his boot. I saw it earlier. I’m going to attach it to my belt. Then also take his blaster, attach it to my hip.

NICK: Alright.

CAMERON: Then put a pair of binders on his wrists.

NICK: Are his wrists in front of him or behind him?

CAMERON: We’re going to put his wrists—we’ll do behind him.

NICK: Behind him?

CAMERON: Mhmm.

NICK: OK. So are you dragging him? Carrying him? What are you doing?

CAMERON: So I put my dress back into the suitcase folded nicely. Close the clasp. I’ll come back for it. Then I’ll attempt to hoist him up. And we’ll see how it goes.

NICK: You want to make me an Athletics check?

CAMERON: An Athletics check.

NICK: And actually before you do that, the door behind you bursts open and a bearded, alcoholic smelling man in a big coat and floppy misshapen hat—you may recognize him as Fezzik Squee.

CAMERON: Squee!

NICK: Steps into the room. He has his hand in the pocket of his coat, but you can see something pressing the inside of the pocket, probably like a gun. And he says, “Now you should probably be leaving my bounty alone.”

CAMERON: Because I’m a bounty hunter and because my marks are worth more alive than dead, my gun is already set to stun.

NICK: OK.

CAMERON: And so I flick around and then realize my gun is on my back and I’m going to shoot him with Felton’s gun and we’re going to see if it’s set to stun or not. [chuckles]

NICK: Alright, roll me a Cool check with a red and a purple difficulty to see if you can quick draw on this guy before he can quick draw on you. You can have a blue die because he’s kind of drunk.

CAMERON: Cool. I’m not very cool. Hey! But it works. Two successes and two threats.

NICK: OK, so you draw on him and you shoot him and you plug him right in the chest. One of your threats is that the gun was not set to stun and you punch a pretty good size hole in his chest. It doesn’t kill him, but he’s not in great shape. He falls to the ground.

The other threat is that he manages to get a shot off and he is also not set to stun. And he hits Felton in the shoulder.

CAMERON: Uh-oh.

NICK: And you feel like you were—you were still holding him with one hand when you started to draw, and you feel the bolt go through him and he kind of shudders with it. That’s probably not good. He’s starting to bleed a little. It’s not great.

CAMERON: Rough buddy.

NICK: He moans a little. “Uhhh!”

CAMERON: Kay, so did–

NICK: So, yeah, you shoot Fezzik Squee. He drops. You hit him in the gun shoulder and he drops the gun and he’s clutching at his shoulder. And he says, “Now, you may think you’re gonna get away with this, but I can tell you my partners are coming and this bounty than you are, lady.”

CAMERON: “Sorry, buddy, I was really hoping it was set to stun.” And I switch it to stun and I shoot him again.

NICK: “Wait, I got a–” [impact sound effect] He falls unconscious.

CAMERON: [chuckles]

NICK: He is out. So you’ve got your unconscious and bleeding mark and your unconscious and bleed competition.

CAMERON: Cool. I’m going to go over to Squee and grab his shirt and tear a piece off of his shirt. And just wrap Felton’s shoulder to try and put some compression on it so he doesn’t bleed out before I get him.

NICK: You want to make me an easy Medicine check.

CAMERON: An easy Medicine check.

NICK: To see if you can do a bandage correctly.

CAMERON: Sure. I’m reasonably intelligent. Uh, yeah. So a success and an advantage.

NICK: OK. Yeah, you wrap up his shoulder and things seem hunky-dory.

CAMERON: “Accidents like this happen all the time. Sorry.”

NICK: He’s half-conscious, but he’s not gonna put up a fight or anything.

CAMERON: Alright, now his blaster—does he have a blaster carbine as well?

NICK: Who?

CAMERON: Felton. You said he had a heavy rifle.

NICK: No, a heavy pistol.

CAMERON: A heavy pistol? OK.

NICK: Squee had like a light blaster in his pocket.

CAMERON: OK.

NICK: Felton had a heavy blaster pistol on his waist that you already took from him.

CAMERON: Cool.

NICK: And then you shot Squee with.

CAMERON: Cool. Alright.

NICK: Yes.

CAMERON: Cool. I’m going to remove Squee’s pistol from him as well. I’m not going to take it, however, because that’s just rude. You don’t take other bounty hunters’ guns. But I’m going to hide it in a crate.

NICK: OK.

CAMERON: So he’s not going to know where it is, but I didn’t take it.

NICK: Yeah, fair enough.

CAMERON:  Then hoist Felton up again and start trudging. And supporting him in a way that looks like I’m trying to help a drunk friend down the streets.

NICK:  OK. So his legs are dragging more than they’re walking. He’s very out of it, but you can kind of keep him pointed upright. He mumbles some things to himself. “Price of impact down 4%.”

CAMERON:  “Oh dear.”

NICK:  “Rancor of Coronet.”

CAMERON:  “Rancors? Fascinating!”

Karma is continuing whatever conversation he is having so it looks like they’re just having a conversation while they walk down the street even though it’s mostly nonsense. She does learn a lot about the impact trade.

NICK:  Yeah. I mean, mostly in grumble. It’s more about the money side of things than about how you sell or buy.

CAMERON: Oh yeah. But if I had impact to sell, I’d know how much to sell it for.

NICK:  Yup! Absolutely.

CAMERON: But I don’t.

NICK:  This guy was clearly an economics minor at Coronet University.

So your ship is parked at a small shipyard built a few kilometers from here. And the CorSec facility where the bounty is supposed to be is about five kilometers in the opposite direction of your ship. Where do you want to go?

CAMERON: We’re going to head towards the bounty office.

NICK:  OK. So as you head towards one of the busier streets.

CAMERON: Because I think I lied. I don’t think I have a ship.

NICK:  Oh.

CAMERON: I took a space-Uber. [laughs] So I don’t have a ship here.

NICK:  You don’t have a ship.

CAMERON: No.

NICK:  I figured you had like a rental.

CAMERON: I’ve just been using space-Uber or space-Lyft depending on which one will come get me faster.

NICK: Faster response time.

CAMERON: Yeah, and which one’s cheaper.

NICK: OK. So as you start heading toward the front of the bar, you are blinded by a spotlight overhead. Speeders have been hovering 20 meters above you and you hear an audio speaker click on with a hiss of static. “Toss down your bounty and you can go!”

CAMERON:  I kind of just look up.

NICK: As you’re squinting into the light, you hear a [blaster cocking and charging sound effect] of a blaster being charged.

CAMERON: I’m going to—are we on one of the main roads? Still in the alley?

NICK:  You’re still in the alley that leads to the bar. You’re about 100 meters that leads to the busy streets.

CAMERON: OK. Are there any other doorways off of this alley besides the one that leads into the Eagle?

NICK:  So there’s the doorway into the Eagle. There’s that back tunnel where you left. There is a door probably 50 meters down that you passed on the way in. It was boarded up. It looked abandoned. Then there’s the passageway, the grated gate that leads into the tunnels below the city.

CAMERON: I’m going to kind of throw Felton down in the direction of the grate. And then, like you do in Star Wars, I’m going to shoot the grate out. [chuckles] Because that’s how grates work with blaster shots.

NICK:  Yeah!

CAMERON:  Yeah.

NICK:  Yeah!

CAMERON: And I’m going to dive in first. And then I’ll pull him in behind me.

NICK: So you throw him at the grate. Shoot the grate. Pew pew!

CAMERON: Pew pew!

NICK: And then pull him in behind you.

CAMERON: Yeah.

NICK: Make me a ranged attack to shoot the grate and we’ll just blend it altogether into that.

CAMERON: Three successes and a threat.

NICK:  So you shoot the grate. It blows open. It won’t be any sort of impediment at all. But the enemy is going to get a shot off on you. I need you to roll me a two-green attack against two purple and a black. Because you’re moving moving and it’s hard to see and they don’t want to shoot Felton.

They fail the shit out of that.

CAMERON: Five failures and three advantages.

NICK:  Great. Their gun doesn’t go off at all! You hear a ka-chuk noise and that’s it and you don’t know what that is.

CAMERON: “Ah, forgot to charge your battery pack.”

NICK:  Yeah, that’s what happened. So you dive in with Felton into the tunnel. And behind you with the loud speaker, you hear, “What? How they got into the sewer tunnel? Don’t know what we’re gonna do about that! Ah the speaker’s still on? This is—Land the ship! No, not over there. Land the ship.”

And you can hear the ship flying around behind and the crunch of something grazing the side and some more cursing as it clicks off with the feedback loop. You’ve got a little bit of a head start.

CAMERON: OK. I’m going to pull up Felton again.

NICK:  Let me describe the tunnel for you.

CAMERON: I pull him up and look around the tunnels. What do I see?

NICK:  There you go. Yeah, so the tunnels on the inside of the gate are stone tunnels but not like cobbled or paved. It’s like carved through bedrock. There’s a probably 10-to-20-foot wide in different places river flowing through it with about a three-foot wide walkway on either side that you can walk on. The ground is slick and muddy. A little treacherous to step on. The water doesn’t look dirty, but it doesn’t look inviting either. It’s like that black, inky, oily look that you get from water with no light on it because it’s very dark in here. Even if you shine one of your glow lights on it, it still just like kind of absorbs the light. But it is flowing and flowing away from you.

The tunnel goes forward for about 20 meters then forks left and right. And you know from your time in the city before that it pretty much grates everywhere. You can get to pretty much anywhere from these tunnels. So whatcha gonna do?

CAMERON: Based on my knowledge of where the drop point is above me, I’m going to head in the direction toward it underground, pulling Felton along.

NICK: OK.

CAMERON: But I’ve moved my heavy blaster and I’m holding it. It is set to stun.

NICK:  OK. So as you’re pulling Felton along, he starts to kind of regain his feet and he’s going with you. He struggles against you and you press your gun into him so he doesn’t do that.

CAMERON: “Hey, buddy, there’s people after you that are trying to kill you. If you could come with me please, that would be greatly appreciated.”

NICK:  “I mean, that’s nice of you and all, but it didn’t really feel like it when you shot me.”

CAMERON: “First of all, that was not me. That was Squee. He is a kriffing terrible bounty hunter.”

NICK:  “I mean, good enough to get the drop on you.”

CAMERON: “But he shot you.”

NICK:  “Yeah, but…”

CAMERON: “He missed me so I mean, there’s the skill right there. You’re his mark. You’re probably not who he was trying to shoot.”

NICK:  “Why are you even doing this? I never hurt anyone.”

CAMERON: “No, I know. But see, so…” We’re still walking down.

NICK:  Yeah, as you’re walking.

CAMERON: “See, so recently, my kids set out on their own, so I’m kind of taking on you lower bounties to get back to into the swing of things and you just happen to be one of the unlucky ones who had me come find you.”

NICK:  “Wait, so you’re a bounty hunter too?”

CAMERON: “No.”

NICK:  “Oh. You implied that you’re a bounty hunter just now.”

CAMERON: “Well, I’m trying to be one.”

NICK: “What do you mean ‘try?’ OK. I’m very confused. I’ve lost a lot of blood.”

CAMERON: “Yeah, you’re adorable when you’re confused.”

NICK:  “Well that’s nice of you. Wait—wait!”

CAMERON: [laughs]

NICK:  “I’m trying to get through… so where are you taking me right now?”

CAMERON: “I don’t really understand these tunnels at all. So we’re going this way.”

NICK:  “Oh…”

CAMERON: “Because people who were shooting at you are behind us.”

NICK:  OK. Roll me a Deception. You can have a blue die because he’s mildly convinced.

CAMERON: What’s the average?

NICK:  He’s not a smart man. Wow, Cameron.

CAMERON: I don’t roll good. It’s a failure and three advantages.

NICK:  “So you’re clearly lying to me right now, but I have a huge headache and you maybe haven’t shot me.”

CAMERON: “Your shoulder probably hurts, too, huh?”

NICK:  “I mean, yeah. I think the headache is like a tension headache from the shoulder pain.”

CAMERON: “Ooh, yeah, it could just go like right up your neck. I can see how that’d be really uncomfortable.”

NICK:  “I mean, if you want to rub my neck a little bit, maybe it would help relieve it.”

CAMERON: “Honestly, at this point, I think I would just do more damage because you got shot really high up on your shoulder so it’s basically your neck. So I think that would just hurt worse actually.”

NICK:  “I got shot in the neck?!” And he starts to panic a little bit.

CAMERON: “Buddy. Buddy. It’s fine. I tied it up. Still technically shoulder classification but it’s high up there and all those muscles  connect, you know. Or I assume they do for you.”

NICK:  “I’m a Selonian. We’re like otter people.”

CAMERON: “Yep.”

NICK:  [giggles]

CAMERON: “But you know, I haven’t—not many of my course back on Glee Anselm covered all anatomy so it was mostly just Nautolan. So I’m guessing if you’re set up like me, all those muscles connect up there.”

NICK:  “Mostly about head-tails, huh?”

CAMERON: “Oh, yeah! Years of study about head-tails.”

NICK:  “Head-tails. Like a year per tail.”

CAMERON: “And really—that’s like—yeah, so 14 years. So fun fact: 14. It’s also really the Twi’leks who prefer to call them head-tails. For Nautolans, you can call them tentacles or tendrils. It’s all really the same.”

NICK:  “Oh.”

CAMERON: “I don’t know why Twi’leks have such an issue with tentacles. I think it sounds way more fascinating.”

NICK:  “Tentacles. You know, I’m kind of into tentacles.”

CAMERON: “You know most guys are!” We continue down the hallway. [laughs]

NICK:  Can you roll me—good point, shit. Can you roll me a Perception check please?

CAMERON: Yeah. Difficulty?

NICK:  Hard. With a black die. Because you’ve been talking.

CAMERON: Oh my goodness gracious.

NICK:  You’re bad at this game.

CAMERON: That’s just one failure.

NICK: One failure.

CAMERON: Everything else cancels out.

NICK: Alright. So as you’re limping down the corridor, you’ve gone several kilometers. You figure you’re pretty close to the coordinates that the bar-friender—bar-friender? That the bartender Gerfrederick gave you.

CAMERON: That’s what you call friendly bartenders: bar-frienders.

NICK: Yeah, bar-frienders. It’s like Tinder but for people who just want to hang out in bars.

CAMERON: And you want a really good bartender to listen to you.

NICK: Yeah.

CAMERON: Bar-friender.

NICK: So you and Felton are limping down the corridor. Water is sliding by silently. You’re talking about tentacles. Feeling like you’re really bonding with this guy.

CAMERON: Um…

NICK: He feels like he’s really bonding with you.

CAMERON: There you go.

NICK: And you feel the familiar sensation of a blaster nuzzle being pressed into your back. And Felton lolls his head back over your shoulders and you hear him say, “Well, that was pretty sneaky. I’m impressed. I’m just gonna sit here.”

And he leans against the wall and slides down and you see a streak of blood go up behind him. He’s been bleeding a little more than you figured he would. The bandage didn’t quite seal all the way because he’s furry so it kind of wicked the blood away and kept the flow going.

CAMERON: Yeah, not having any hair, I did not take that into account.

NICK:  Yeah, your mark is sitting on the ground, slowly bleeding, and there’s a blaster pressed into your back. And you hear a familiar voice saying, “Well thank you for getting him most of the way here. But I think I’m gonna go ahead and take over if you don’t mind.”

CAMERON: “Oh, hello.”

NICK:  “Hi. I’m gonna need you to cross to the other side of the tunnel please so I don’t have to shoot you.”

CAMERON: “Like across—across which direction? The water?”

NICK:  “Across the water to the other wall please.”

CAMERON: “Oh OK.” I step away and walk toward the water. How wide is this water?

NICK:  It’s only like three or four feet here so you can take a step toward the water but you’re pretty much right next to the water already.

CAMERON: Cool, so I take a step towards the water and then prep to jump and then spin and shoot her.

NICK: OK, so that’s going to be a Cool check against a purple and a red.

CAMERON: I should really work on how cool I am.

NICK: It’s really useful for this kind of situation.

CAMERON: Yeah. I am quite vigilant.

NICK:  Nope.

CAMERON: Nope and two threats.

NICK: So she’s going to get to shoot you first, so it’s two green and a yellow versus average. Oh, she—no, she got it.

CAMERON: Two successes.

NICK: Two successes. So you’re going to take 6 stun damage as she plugs you in the back.

CAMERON: So I take 1 stun damage.

NICK: Oh man, you’re slick.

CAMERON: I soak 5.

NICK: Wow! You are stronk.

CAMERON: I am stronk.

NICK: So you whip around, your head-tentacles splaying out really cool in bullet time, and you go for your gun and she sees this—

CAMERON: I already have my gun in my hand.

NICK: Oh, well you whip and you start to—

CAMERON: Because I was holding it to him.

NICK: Ah! And you start to point it at her. And you see her eyes widen and she pulls the trigger. It hits you in the shoulder but you’re combat suit absorbs most of it. It stings a little. And you can do a thing.

CAMERON: I’m-a shoot her.

NICK: OK.

CAMERON: That is three successes and an advantage. So that is 12 stun damage.

NICK: OK. Well that hits her in the chest. She’s wearing the same kind of undercover operator clothes that she was wearing in the bar. It’s like a leather jacket. Underneath, you see there’s some like ablative plating so it hits. She staggers back pretty far and she shakes her head, then she lunges at you and tackles you. And you guys both plunge into the river and start to float away. She’s going to try and punch you.

So that’ll be three greens against two purples.

CAMERON: Two greens against three purples?

NICK: Three greens against two purples with a black die because you’re underwater.

So you’re floating through the current. It’s moving a little faster than you expected. She’s got you by the neck of your suit and she’s going to try to punch you in the face.

CAMERON: Nope. Two failures.

NICK: Yeah, so you sink to the bottom. It’s deeper than you would expect. It’s probably like 20 feet deep. You go straight to the bottom because you’re both armed and wearing heavy clothes. And she rears back to punch you, and with surprising speed for a creature that is 20 feet underwater, you just grab her fist and stop it. And just shake your head at her and smile a little bit.

Whatcha gonna do?

CAMERON: I’m not going to do anything. I’m just going to sit here and hold onto her because I can breathe underwater, and she can’t.

NICK: Yeah.

CAMERON: So I’m just going to hold her until she stops moving.

NICK: Hoo!

CAMERON: Not dies! Just passes out. And then we’ll all swim back up to the top.

NICK: So do you just have her by the front of her clothes too?

CAMERON: Yep.

NICK: So she punches at you a few more times. It either glances off or you just bat her hands away and after 10 or 15 seconds, she tries to push away from you. And you don’t let go. And she tries to push away from you harder, and you don’t let go. She’s starts kicking against you and swim.

CAMERON: I just smile at her.

NICK: Yeah, she obviously starts panicking and flailing. It only takes about 30 seconds with the amount she’s moving around. She passes out with a “Bloop” of air.

CAMERON: Alright, I grab her and swim up to the top and pop above air.

NICK: Yup. You pop right up.

CAMERON: I kind of toss her onto the side.

NICK: You’ve drifted maybe 10 meters down the river because you were sitting on the bottom. So you pop up. I’m assuming the same side as Felton.

CAMERON: Yep.

NICK: And you toss her onto the side. Felton hasn’t moved. He looks over at you and points with one finger and goes, “Hey! You were under there for a little while.”

CAMERON: “I was.”

NICK: “Hey, I like the way you talk.”

CAMERON: “Water’s kind of my thing if you know what I mean.”

NICK: “I do know what you mean. So are we still headed to my place or what?”

CAMERON: “Oh definitely.” So I’m going to rifle through chicky bird’s pockets.

NICK: OK. You find the heavy blaster she had on her waist. You find ten credits. And you find a data-stick.

CAMERON: Cool. So I’m going to take the data-stick and the credits, and I’m going to toss the blaster into the water because you don’t steal other people’s blasters!

NICK: You just toss them where no one will find them.

CAMERON: Hiding them, though, is fine. She could if she swam down there. It’s heavy. It just sinks to the bottom. It’s going to be right there, if a little bit waterlogged. She’ll need a new battery pack, but it’ll be fine.

She doesn’t have any like stimpacks or anything?

NICK: No. She was traveling pretty light.

CAMERON: I was going to stimpack Felton.

NICK: Well, no, she doesn’t have any.

CAMERON: OK, cool. I saunter back over. Or actually, did she have binders with her?

NICK: Yeah. She had a set of binders.

CAMERON: OK. I’m going to put her in her binders but I’m going to put her hands in front of her so that she can get herself out of it.

NICK: OK.

CAMERON: But just so it slows her down a little bit to try and maneuver around with it. And I’m going to help Felton up to his feet and, “Alright. Come on. Let’s get going.”

NICK: “Back to my place. I feel like our conversation was a lot more intense not that long ago but I can’t really remember why.”

CAMERON: “We were talking about tentacles.”

NICK: “Oh yeah! You know, I’m kind of into tentacles.”

CAMERON: “You know, most guys say that.”

NICK: So you continue down the tunnel. It doesn’t take that much longer to get there. There’s a spiral stone staircase that leads back to the street level. And you find yourself in front of a dark, non-descript building. It’s got no windows. It’s between two much taller spires. Corellia is one of those places that has  the thousand-meter towers that go up crazy high in the Star Wars universe.

But this building is stuck between two of those. The bases are probably 3–400 meter wide each on the big buildings. This building looks like it’s maybe 40 meters wide. It’s low. One story. Just kind of goes back.

If you didn’t see the door and hadn’t been told to report here, you would have expected it to be a generator station or something. There’s an unmarked door that’s basically just a seam in the wall with no labeling on it.

CAMERON: Walk over to it and I rap on the door.

NICK: Clank-clank. A little circular indentation opens up and a robot eye pokes out and looks at you.

CAMERON: “Oh, hello.”

NICK: And it says, “E juta? Ooh-ah-ah-ah.” And it pulls back in. Star Wars references, guys! The best!

CAMERON: [chuckles]

NICK: The best! Anyway, the eye thing looks at you both and then pulls back into the wall and then you hear [thrumming sound effect] and the door slides open.

There’s a stainless steel, sparsely lit hallway leading back into the building.

CAMERON: I kind of hoist Felton up a little bit higher. “Alright, so we just have to pick up my keys before we go.”

NICK: “Oh yeah! I was gonna say, this doesn’t really look like my place. Although, we’re close! We could just go right—we could get your keys later.”

CAMERON: “Well but no, see I want to get there early when they open tomorrow. So if I have them, when I sneakily slip out the door tomorrow morning, then I don’t have to stop here and can just get going.”

NICK: “Right. Makes perfect sense.”

CAMERON: “Yeah.”

NICK: Alright, so you walk in. There’s a—the hallway system branches. But only one of the routes lights. So you follow the lights and you come to another nondescript door. And it slides open. And you find yourself in a warmly wood panel room with a boardroom table and leather chairs. And as you walk in, from an opposite door, this one wood panel and very nice, it slides into the wall, and a silver protocol droid walks through and says, “Ah yes, Mr. Felton. I’ll be taking him if you don’t mind.”

CAMERON: “Do you have your own binders? Because I need these back.”

NICK: “I don’t suspect that Mr. Felton will be a problem.” So the droid touches the binders and they pop up and he hands them to you.

CAMERON: I slide them back up my head-tentacles.

NICK: [laughs] What a great accessory.

CAMERON: Yeah! They’re so useful.

NICK: And the protocol droid says, “Mr. Felton, this way.”

And Felton says, “Hey, I’m just trying to stay with the lady. I feel like we could do a lot with this table.”

And the protocol droid says, “Oh no, that won’t do.” And he pats him on the shoulder and you hear a loud ZAP! And Felton like locks up and the protocol droid basically grabs him from under each elbow and just lifts him slightly off the ground and shuffles him out of the room. And the door slides shut.

So in this room, like I said, there’s a board table and four leather chairs. There’s a decanter of Corellian whiskey and four tumblers with ice cubes already sitting on a runner in the middle of the table. Do you make yourself comfortable? Do you stay standing?

CAMERON:  I just wander around the room looking at the décor. This is a lot of wood. I’m used to spaceships. Not a lot of wood on spaceships so it’s really pretty.

NICK: It’s very pretty but then at the same time, fairly plain. It’s just the paneling. Not a lot of decoration so comfortable, yet utilitarian seems to be how I would describe the room.

CAMERON: I walk around a little bit then go over to one of the chairs and fwomp into it.

NICK: As you fwomp into the chair, it’s very comfortable.

CAMERON: I squeak a little bit because I’m a little wet.

NICK: Yeah. [audibly cringes] Well, you find yourself steaming a little. The room’s pretty warm so you’ve been drying as you walked a little but you’re still a little soggy.

CAMERON: I flick my head-tentacles a little to like dry out between them.

NICK: And as you squeak into the chair, a voice clicks on the intercom system. “Thank you for completing your task so handily. I’m afraid the bounty for Mr. Mox is less than our mutual friend made it out to be. I will transfer the 750 credits to your account, of course. I have no need for them. In exchange, I can offer you something else. A chance at a job—a real job. One that would benefit from someone of your experience. Please wait here until the rest of your team arrives. Thank you.”

And the intercom clicks off, leaving you alone in the board room.

CAMERON: Hmm. I lean back in the chair and cross my legs and say, “I guess Gerfrederick didn’t need the money.”

NICK: Ba-naaa~!

## Outro

CAMERON: Thanks for listening to Tabletop Squadron. Please consider logging into iTunes and giving us a 5 star review. 5 star reviews help new listeners find the show. You can find more about Tabletop Squadron on our website: tabletopsquadron.com, or on our Twitter and Instagram: @tabletop_squad.

The Star Wars: Edge of the Empire role-playing game is property of Fantasy Flight Games and Lucas Books. See you next time.

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