Tabletop Squadron Transcript, Season 1 Episode 20:
Loot and Scoot

Transcript by Tyler (Twitter: @Tyler_MoonSage)

## Intro

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

Welcome back to our regular release schedule. We’ll be coming out with our next goal in a few weeks, but for now I just want to say Laura’s working on a secret project with some friends, and it’s going to be adorable and perfect. Keep an eye out for it soon. Until our next social goal, tell a friend about the show. It’s a great way to share our story, and if what we do is something you like I’m sure you know a friend who’d like it too.

Well, without further ado, we hope you enjoy the episode.

[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: Hello! Welcome to Tabletop Squadron, flying the friendly skies with the Afternoon Delight. Your cruising altitude will be 20 episodes. Yeah, so we’ll go around the table, say who you are, who you’re playing, and if you spent any experience since the last time we spoke let our listeners know what you spent it on. We’ll go to Cameron first.

CAMERON: hello!

NICK: Hi.

CAMERON: I’m Cameron, and I’m playing Karma Nailo the Nautolan bounty hunter. I purchased the third rank in Ranged: Heavy.

NICK: Ooh.

CAMERON: So I can shoot guns real good now.

NICK: Cool. Very neat. Up next we’ve got Laura.

LAURA: I’m Laura. Yes. That is who I am… and I am playing Xianna’fan, a Twi’lek smuggler. I bought Shortcut. During a chase, I can add a boost die to any checks made to catch or escape an opponent. So I can run away now.

NICK: Neat. I’m sure that won’t ever come up.

CAMERON: Well, it’s just her, though, so… (laughs)

LAURA: (smiling) It’s just me, which is fitting. I wasn’t gonna bring the rest of you with.

NICK: Alright. Last up we’ve got Hudson.

HUDSON: Hi, I’m last. I’m playing Tink, also known as full name Rallltinkraatatat, a Gigoran slicer~

NICK: Is it –raatatat or -raatakat?

HUDSON: … Rallltinkraatakat, thank you.

(laughter)

NICK: Ah…

HUDSON: No, Ratatat is a really good music group.

LAURA: Yeah!

NICK: Oh. Okay. Have you spent any experience this time?

HUDSON: No, I’m hoarding that shit so I can get something that’s worth 20.

NICK: Great, just like real life.

HUDSON: Yes!

CAMERON: (laughing) I wish people could see your facial expressions.

LAURA: We’re gonna have a Twitch stream where it’s just a Hudson camera, no sound because we don’t wanna give spoilers, just a Hudson camera.

CAMERON: You could just see what’s happening, though.

NICK: And I’ll GM like this…

HUDSON: (laughs)

LAURA: And we’ll have a little sign that we put on the chair that says… Oh, it has to be some stupid bathroom pun. “Gone to feed the Sarlacc” is an actual one they have used in books.

NICK: Yeah, that means you’re pooping.

LAURA: It means you’re poopin’.

CAMERON: (laughs)

NICK: Before we get started, let’s do the Destiny Roll.

CAMERON: One light side.

HUDSON: Two light side.

LAURA: One light side.

CAMERON: (gasps)

NICK: Ooh. Not giving me a ton to work with.

CAMERON: Four light side!

NICK: Alright. When we last left off you all had just finished a very large gunfight against the Black Sun Corporation. You were both after a droid. Sentinel had sent you to fetch it and warned you that some other people may also be attempting to do the same thing. When you arrived at the base you discovered that things were not going as you had expected. There were a lot of dead people, a lot of explosions, and the droid had actually been damaged in some way. You ambushed these poor fools and blew them apart. Tink, you got shot quite a bit, and we last left off with Tink saying, ‘I got your boots, Xianna.’ They were not good boots, but then Karma found very nice boots in your size. So, that was what you spent your light side points on last time.

LAURA: Yes.

CAMERON: It felt pretty safe at the end of the episode to do that. (laughs)

NICK: So, the boots were not the right size, but karma found someone wearing very nice boots that were a galactic standard 6 ½. The facility is smoking with blaster fire and the scent of char and blood fills your nostrils. Describe these boots.

LAURA: Ooh. SO they can’t have any buttons or things like that, because that’s not allowed in Star Wars, but they’re shiny, and they’re black, and they have a little bit of a heel. Not too much though, like riding boot level of heel. They’re knee high, and they probably have little bits of a snakeskin pattern that’s a slightly oil slick pattern.

CAMERON: Ooh.

LAURA: So not true metallic rainbow, but if the light catches it there’s a little bit of a rainbow gleam.

NICK: Nice. So you pull these boots off of this corpse. Do you just slap them on right there, put on your new boots, get rid of your old ones?

LAURA: Well I mean, do they have blood on them?

CAMERON: No, they wouldn’t, because it’s not off of a corpse, it’s off of one of the ones that I stunned, because I found them in my hallway.

NICK: Oh yeah. That’s fair.

LAURA: Oh, then yeah.

CAMERON: So they’re perfectly clean unless the guy stepped in something earlier.

LAURA: I just trade out the boots.

NICK: Cool. So you’re basically in the entry hallway of this facility. You made your way most of the way back to the main entrance when you were ambushing these people. Karma is towards the back in a hallway with a couple of stunned people that she took down. There are another five thugs in various states of disrepair scattered around this hallway. The walls are scattered with blaster fire. There’s smoke, remnants of explosions that were there before you came in, overall there’s just a haze in the air. People are dead on the ground. Tink, you are bleeding pretty heavily from the wounds that you took. Your leg is just a mess. Your kneecap is pretty much blown off at this point.

HUDSON: “(groans in pain)”

NICK: The droid that you came to collect is laying in the middle of the hallway with the body of a Black Sun gunman sprawled over it from where he dropped. What do you do?

LAURA: “Tink… Are you okay?”

HUDSON: “(groans)”

LAURA: “So no… Okay.”

CAMERON: “Your leg looks really messed up.”

LAURA: “We are going to have to get him to some sort of medic, pretty sure, because I don’t know what to do for that.”

CAMERON: “Tink? Hun? Can you stand?”

HUDSON: “I think I c—(groans) … No.”

CAMERON: (laughing) How are we getting him out of this?

LAURA: “So Tink… I know you said you are straightedge, but—“

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: “So hear me out. If I give you some impact, you will have the energy to get out and get to the ship, and then, you know, you won’t be on the floor, because I cannot pick you up.”

CAMERON: “We can also try some medical stuff beforehand, with no pain meds or anything, just tourniquets basically, I think, at this point.”

LAURA: “Oh, I will not.”

CAMERON: “Actually, hold on.” Karma starts looting all the dead people.

NICK: Okay. So, you did last time, you pulled patches off of everybody.

CAMERON: Yes. I have all of their patches, and I take the patches from the guys still living too, but I leave them with like… their stuff. I’m just now totally looting the dead guys.

NICK: So, you leave your friend bleeding in the hall, and you are looking for what? Weapons, pockets? How deep of a search are you doing here?

CAMERON: I am trying to find stim packs, basically.

NICK: Alright. I would say looting the bodies would be a Skulduggery kind of move, don’t you think?

CAMERON: “Hey Xianna, come help!” (laughs)

LAURA: “Okie! I was going to loot the bodies as well, not looking for stim packs.”

CAMERON: “Oh. Well, if you find any stim packs—“

LAURA: “(huffs) Sabos owed me three stim packs.”

CAMERON: “Those would be real handy right now…”

HUDSON: (whining) “Sabos~?”

LAURA: “They would—No! No one said anything!”

HUDSON: (whining) “Okay… Did you say impact?”

LAURA: “Oh! Do you want the impact right now?”

HUDSON: “No. No… Come closer. I can’t- I don’t have the energy…”

LAURA: She does the thing where she kneels down next to him and is doing that deathbed thing. “(solemnly) Yes…? What is it?”

HUDSON: (weakly) “I gotta keep the edge…”

(laughter)

LAURA: “Okay, but like, it will make you feel good. In a fun way. Heh.”

HUDSON: “No. I’ll just rely on the stim packs.”

LAURA: “I think I might have some whiskey.”

CAMERON: “We have to find them first. Hold on. Xianna, come on.” (laughs)

LAURA: “Okie.”

HUDSON: “I believe in you~!”

CAMERON: ‘Tink, can you tie a tourniquet around your leg?”

HUDSON: “yeah. I learned about that.”

CAMERON: “I figured your medical book probably taught you.”

HUDSON: “Yeah, it’s called a tourniquet because you turn it… on your leg.”

CAMERON: “… Uh-huh. Yes.”

NICK: Well, technically French doesn’t exist in Star Wars, so…

CAMERON: That is why it’s called a tourniquet, because you turn it… on your leg.

LAURA: Difficulty?

NICK: Average. Are you both doing individual or are you helping each other?

CAMERON: If I help you can have another yellow.

LAURA: yeah.

CAMERON: Let’s do that. I’m assisting.

NICK: Cool.

LAURA: Also, Xianna would be looking for more than just stim packs. She’s looking for binders, and weapons, and drugs, and any like fun snacks they have, like if they have some cool granola bars, like if one of them was the mom of the group and definitely had a bag full of baby wipes and snacks.

CAMERON: (giggles) We want that bag.

LAURA: Oh, and Band-Aids. There’s always the mom of the group. We want to find the mom of the group. (laughs)

NICK: Well, now I’m picturing this team as like an eight year old soccer team, so that’s great.

CAMERON: Ooh. If they have Capri-Sun, I want one.

NICK: Great.

LAURA: So, one success, one advantage.

NICK: Interesting. You find a couple of things. They have guns, because they were shooting you with them.

CAMERON: (laughing) exactly.

LAURA: Yes.

NICK: They all have light blasters except for the head honcho guy who had a carbine rifle.

CAMERON: I’m taking every single gun that these guys have. Not the stunned ones, they still have a life to live.

NICK: Three of them were stunned, and there were nine total, so you get five light blasters and one carbine.

CAMERON: And you want a light?

LAURA: Oh no, Xianna’s gonna take one from one of the stunned guys. She doesn’t care.

CAMERON: Oh, okay.

NICK: Okay, so you can have those. They’re just standard, nothing fancy. You do a pretty cursory job patting them down with a success and an advantage. You’re not really getting up in there or anything. I would imagine that patting down blaster killed corpses is not the most pleasant of experiences. How used to doing this are Xianna and Karma?

CAMERON: (laughs) Some of them are axed.

NICK: Yeah…

CAMERON: (laughing) Some of them were worse.

LAURA: Again, Karma is ONLY searching through the dead ones, for some reason. Xianna’s also going through the living ones. She steals from people. She doesn’t care. If anything she thinks it’s weird that Karma’s only taking from the dead ones. Like, ‘they’re dead, ew.’

CAMERON: Karma’s pretty okay with the death and gory stuff, because stuff happens when you’re bounty hunting. You know, like the person you’re chasing goes off of a chasm and you have to go down there, and it’s real nasty when you get down there, but you have to bring them back, so… She’s probably very clinical about it, and is trying to not get super dirty, but if she has to move a limb she isn’t very concerned.

NICK: Okay.

LAURA: Xianna probably would care too much either, being from an Empire occupied planet where there is an active resistance. Stormtroopers just kind of patrol and shoot people when they feel like it.

HUDSON: Just real quick, out of character, this whole time I’ve been trying to think of a Black Hole Sun pun and it just hasn’t been working.

NICK: Wash away the pain?

HUDSON: I was thinking Black Hole Sun, wake them up, and they better not complain. That was as close as I got, but that’s not…

LAURA: No, that’s nothing.

HUDSON: Nope. Never mind, I give up.

NICK: It was a good effort.

CAMERON: How many total badges did I get? There’s nine with the dudes right here…

NICK: Plus there were the additional…

CAMERON: There were three or four last time?

NICK: Four. Yeah.

CAMERON: So there’s 13 total?

NICK: Yep, 13 anonymous Black Sun badges. You get two stim packs, you get those assorted blasters, that’s about it. They traveled pretty light.

CAMERON: Wound-wise, what are you at, Hudson?

HUDSON: Five.

LAURA: Out of what?

HUDSON: Seventeen. Five left, sorry.

CAMERON: Okay. we will stab you with one of the stim packs and get you back up to 10.

HUDSON: Alright.

CAMERON: Your leg is still gonna be messed up because of the crit.

HUDSON: Okay.

CAMERON: Feeling better…?

NICK: Just to remind our listeners, what is the damage to your leg?

HUDSON: Sure. So my leg is jacked up. It got shot up, and kriffed up, and it’s just all kinds of mess. As far as my critical injury chart goes, I’m crippled. One limb is impaired until healed or replaced. Increase difficulty to all checks using that limb.

NICK: Great. You’re injured. You all found some stim packs. What are you gonna do?

LAURA: We gave Tink a stim pack.

CAMERON: Gonna stab him with the stim pack.

HUDSON: (pain noises)

CAMERON: So, you gain 5 wounds back. “Xianna, you can have the other stim pack, because you seem to need it more.”

LAURA: Yes~ “I do. I am, how you say, squishy…”

CAMERON: “Fragile?”

LAURA: “Squishy!”

CAMERON: I load up all my guns and my patches.

HUDSON: I crawl over to assassin bot.

NICK: Mm-hmm?

HUDSON: After I crawl to assassin bot, I check to see how many restraining bolts it has.

NICK: What an interesting idea to check the droid that you came to see. So, the droid is the size of an average man, about 5’11” or 1.8 meters tall. The torso is heavily armored with rounded shoulders and well-defined limbs. I realize that this is not what you asked, but I wrote this description and I’m gonna read it, damn it. The entire thing is covered in rusty, red-colored armor plating. The face has an upright rectangular panel where the mouth would be on a human with a sloping forehead and skull-like sunken cheeks. There are two short, thick antennas sticking out of the back of the head. There’s a lot of carbon scoring on the armor of the droid, evidence of the battle it had with the Black Sun syndicate. One thing particularly stands out—well, two things. There are no restraining bolts on it, and can you make me a Mechanics check, please? You should be good at that.

HUDSON: I’m okay at it.

CAMERON: You’re real smart, though.

HUDSON: I’m real smart, though. What’s the difficulty?

NICK: It’s gonna be average.

HUDSON: Oh. Three successes.

NICK: Lovely. One thing particularly stands out. There is a neat hole in the left side of the chest. You crack open the armor plating and pull it open, and you see that the central processor on this unit is actually kept in the torso—most of the time it’s in the head, this one has it in the torso—and there is a smoking hole in the middle of the central processing unit. Basically that’s the brain of the droid, most of its memories and personality are kept in there, and that thing is totally blown. With that amount of successes you would know that you either need to find an identical central processing unit, which would be pretty difficult to do since you’ve never seen a droid like this before, or some sort of powerful program AI type thing that you could plug into it to run.

HUDSON: Oh… I look down at my Rancore Protocol.

NICK: (laughs)

CAMERON: (laughing) Do not plug that in right now!

HUDSON: By the way, out of character, I know you just made an awesome description for that robot, but all I can think about it looking like is that droid from Hoth that goes and inspects things and has all the really skinny legs and the round head.

CAMERON: So nothing like that.

LAURA: But nothing like he described.

NICK: (laughs)

HUDSON: Exactly. That’s all I can think of, because that’s how I pictured it before.

NICK: Think like a red metal dude.

HUDSON: Yeah, I…

NICK: Do you want me to pull up a picture of him so you can see?

HUDSON: Oh, do you have a picture of it?

NICK: Yeah.

CAMERON: Think HK47 from KOTOR.

CAMERON: He doesn’t play KOTOR. That doesn’t mean anything.

HUDSON: I played it when I was a kid. I don’t remember very well.

CAMERON: It looks like a scary, red robot man.

HUDSON: Cool. Okay.

NICK: Now that you’ve seen the picture, wasn’t my description great?

HUDSON: Yeah, I liked it.

NICK: Yeah, I thought it was awesome. So, Tink, you pull out your Rancore Protocol and you’re holding it in one hand and part of the droid in the other, and favoring one leg that isn’t bleeding, and Karma says—

CAMERON: “Do not plug that in right now.”

LAURA: “Tink, what are you doing?”

HUDSON: “I mean, the operative phrase that she just mentioned was right now.”

CAMERON: “Yeah, later. Later.”

LAURA: “Okie. Tink, you are bleeding out everywhere. Maybe we should just get things on the ship, get out of here in case more people come.”

HUDSON: “Listen—“

CAMERON: “Do you remember how the last time you plugged that into a droid it turned into a [murder robot? Murder droid?” (laughs)

HUDSON: “Vaguely, but to be honest I’ve lost a lot of blood, so I’m just gonna go with what you guys say, because I don’t remember any murder droids.”

CAMERON: “Okay. Cool. Don’t plug it in. we will do that later.”

HUDSON: “Alright.”

CAMERON: “Let’s get back to our ship.”

HUDSON: “Okay. we’ll go back to the ship. Can I crawl?”

CAMERON: “I think you—Hmm.”

LAURA: “Whoa. How are we going to do this?”

HUDSON: “I know I can crawl, but should I crawl?”

CAMERON: “Okay. Xianna, if you grab the gun and let Tink put an arm around your shoulder…”

LAURA: “I will fall to the ground. (laughs)”

CAMERON: “Yeah. Tink, do not put a ton of weight on her. I can carry the droid. I can’t carry the droid and be a crutch for Tink.”

HUDSON: “Why are you avoiding the most obvious solution, which is finding a mine cart for the track?”

LAURA: “Oh, that would help.”

CAMERON: “Hold on!” Karma turns around and goes back into that big room, because there was a speeder in there.

NICK: That’s true. There was a speeder in there.

CAMERON: I go back in there.

NICK: So, the speeder… The thing about this place is the speeder is too big to come through those hallways. There is a garage door that swings up, but when you look it actually goes out on the far side of a hill, further than you would expect. You would need to swing it around to get it back to the front, if you could find the keys to turn it on. There is a little hover cart full of tools, because this is a mechanics place.

CAMERON: Is it like a hover cart that say, I don’t know, Tink and a droid would fit on?

NICK: One or the other, it’s probably not big enough for both.

HUDSON: What if I hold it in my arms?

CAMERON: (loudly) Is it a hover cart that maybe Tink, and the droid, and the gun would fit on?

NICK: Hey, listeners…

CAMERON: Flipping a light side point. (laughs)

NICK: Yeah, so, Cameron flipped a light side point. So, you see this little hover cart, it’s got some hydrospanners on it, and a hammer, and it’s pretty small. The camera zooms in on Karma scratching at one of her head tentacles, and then she kind of shrugs, and then the camera goes a foot to the left and there’s a much larger one with some padding that looks like it’s for a person. It’s like a medical gurney and it looks like it’s for two people with a cargo slot underneath. You have a perfect thing that could carry both Tink and the droid, and the gun.

CAMERON: Cool. While I’m in here, is there anything else that looks nifty? (laughs)

NICK: That would be a Skulduggery check. Your friend is bleeding out in the other room, but if you want to try and loot that is fine.

CAMERON: I gave him a stim pack. He’s fine. What’s the difficulty?

NICK: He’s “okay.” (chuckles) This one’s gonna be hard to find anything useful.

CAMERON: As I’m walking back… Wow, interesting. Two successes, three threats, and a triumph.

NICK: So, you fall prone while you’re searching. (dramatic bass noise)

CAMERON: I use my Jump Up talent to get back up as an incidental. (prone sound rewinds)

NICK: Ooh. Oh-hoh. Fancy.

CAMERON: (laughing) For no reason.

NICK: (laughing) So, we get this shot of Karma, the legs sticking out of a crate kind of kicking in the air, and there’s a loud bang as she falls forward into the crate, and then a really cool legs-first jump out of the crate on the other side. Super important. Besides that, with that triumph, I think you find a small case of weapons mod parts.

CAMERON: Nice.

NICK: Technically in Star Wars each modification, in this game, needs its own very specific equipment. What we’re going to say is this is kind of a wild card that you can plug into something. The only one I’m gonna say out of hand that you’re not gonna be able to turn that into is Masterwork, because that’s very expensive.

CAMERON: No Masterwork.

NICK: But that’s the parts for modding a weapon, if you would like to install a mod later on.

CAMERON: So one weapon?

NICK: Yeah. It’s just a little carrying case with some tools and some little doodads and things. It looks like a weapon maintenance kit you might be able to repurpose.

CAMERON: Cool. I pop it into the cargo section of the gurney and hover back over to my friends.

NICK: Sure. (whoosh noises)

HUDSON: “You got a hover bed!”

CAMERON: “I did, and it’s for you, Tink!”

HUDSON: “It’s exactly what I told you to get. I’m so smart.”

(snickering)

CAMERON: “Yup! Come on. Can you get in it, or do you need help?”

HUDSON: “I can roll…”

CAMERON: “Well, it is not on the ground, it is—“

HUDSON: “No, I can roll to it, and then I can climb.”

LAURA: “Okie.”

CAMERON: “Okay cool, okay. I’ll hold it right here. You go ahead and get in.”

HUDSON: “(groans) Do I take the robot?”

LAURA: “No, no, no.”

CAMERON: “No, leave the robot on the ground. I’ll put—(laughs) Leave the droid on the ground. I’ll put the droid in.”

HUDSON: “Alright, just like I’m putting out a fire… (whispering) That one time…” I roll, and roll…

LAURA: “Tink—What?”

(laughter)

HUDSON: And I just roll all the way to the gurney-mobile.

LAURA: “Did anyone else hear Tink say that?”

CAMERON: “Yeah, stop, drop and roll. Obviously he caught on fire at some point.”

LAURA: “No—What? (exhales) Oh… I think I’m just coming down in a very not-so-good way.”

CAMERON: (giggles)

LAURA: “Is there room in there for me, Tink? Because… Oh boy.”

HUDSON: “How much do you like getting blood on you?”

LAURA: “I mean, I would not say that I like it, but I was going to take a shower anyways.”

CAMERON: Karma puts the droid and the gun on it while they’re talking.

NICK: After Tink flops into the cart it noticeably sinks. It was hovering about three quarters of a meter off the ground, and it goes down to about half a meter. With the droid on, it goes down to about a third of a meter off the ground, so you have to actually lean over a little to push it. You could try and see if it would fit. Also, you do remember that big gun they were carrying, right?

CAMERON: Yeah. I put the gun and the droid on.

NICK: Okay. The gun is reasonably heavy. Taking a second to look at that more closely, it appears to be some sort of long distance blaster rifle. It doesn’t have any sort of electronic scope on it, though. It has iron sights, and it also has multiple barrels underslung on the bottom, kind of like a mini gun or something, attached under the sniper barrel that also appears to attach to the power source. This is a very strange gun you haven’t seen before.

CAMERON: Huh.

NICK: Yeah. Another thing you notice about the gun is it doesn’t have a trigger, which is very interesting. The place where  normally a trigger and a trigger guard would go is just a little slot in the side of the gun and that’s it.

HUDSON: Ooh, wireless.

CAMERON: “Huh. That’s interesting.” And I just pop it on the cart.

LAURA: For the droid.

HUDSON: Ohh…

CAMERON: Eyebrow wiggle.

NICK: Eyebrow wiggle. (laughs) Okay, so do you leave? Is there anything else you wanted to look at? You’ve got the droid and Tink loaded up into the cart…

CAMERON: “Should we get him medical attention, or do you want to go in that other room that the stunned guys came from?”

HUDSON: “I vote medical attention.”

LAURA: “(sighs) Yes.”

CAMERON: “I’m kind of feeling like that’s the better option.”

LAURA: ‘I vote medical attention as well.”

CAMERON: “Okay.”

HUDSON: “I’m offended you even had the choice.”

LAURA: “I mean, we did have a choice, like…”

HUDSON: “No, I mean that you explored the options.”

LAURA: “… Why?”

CAMERON: I start pushing the cart.

HUDSON: “I’m so hurt right now~!”

LAURA: “I mean, we picked You.”

NICK: So, we get Karma pushing the cart. It’s running pretty low. There’s a pretty bright glow coming from underneath it as it is working overtime with all the weight that’s been piled onto it.

LAURA: Xianna is trudging along, because it is after an encounter. Previously all post-impact encounters have just been sitting around talking so it hasn’t been an issue yet…

CAMERON: But now she has to move.

LAURA: …but I do have negatives after encounters if I take impact, so I’m just slow and sad.

NICK: Okay. Xianna is trudging along, harassing Tink, and we get a low shot from behind as little drips of blood are coming off of the cart from Tink. You go outside. The crew sees the blockade runner ship that had the face paint job and the lightning bolts on it lifting off and taking off for orbit really fast.

CAMERON: “Hmm.”

LAURA: “Oh… Huh.”

NICK: So that ship’s leaving.

CAMERON: Bye~

NICK: Besides that, you can see a few nerfs calmly grazing. A couple of them galloped away from the ship as it took off, and as soon as the ship got more than 50 meters into the air they just stopped and started eating again. You can see the low ridge which your ship is parked behind. Do you go to the ship?

CAMERON: Yup.

NICK: Alright. You go to the ship. When you say you’re seeking medical attention… what are you all thinking, exactly?

LAURA: I was assuming a city.

CAMERON: We’re gonna need to find a town or something, with other people more talented than us.

LAURA: I was picturing finding a true city, that would have a real doctor, and other shops, and possibly robotic pieces in case we decide he has to just lose the leg.

HUDSON: Um…

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: Okay. This is not in character.

(laughter)

HUDSON: I know.

CAMERON: Tink looks real concerned all of a sudden.

LAURA: In case you couldn’t tell by the voice difference.

NICK: Okay. Are you looking to leave Engibo 5 and go to a nearby planet, somewhere with some civilization on it? This one mostly has settlements. It doesn’t have anything particularly large.

CAMERON: Probably, yeah, then go to one that actually has people’s living on it.

NICK: Great. So you go back to the ship, you lift off, and you start flying to orbit.

CAMERON: Can we take our cart with us?

NICK: Sure. Yeah. Toss it in the cargo bay or whatever.

CAMERON: Yay! We have a cart in the cargo bay. I’m gonna write it on our ship sheet.

NICK:  got a holo-gurney.

CAMERON: Holo-gurney!

NICK: A hover gurney, I mean.

CAMERON: (laughs) it’s a holo-gurney. It’s just a blue image of a gurney.

LAURA: But it works. (laughs)

NICK: (laughs) If you believe.

CAMERON: How do you spell gurney? (laughs)

NICK: G-U-R-N-E-Y.

LAURA: That’s—I think that’s right.

HUDSON: That’s right. That’s what I was about to say.

CAMERON: Okay. My brain was just like… I don’t know!

NICK: We’ve had trouble with spelling today.

HUDSON: J-U-X-R…

NICK: (laughs) Don’t stop believing. So! We get a shot of the planet down below looking like a golden ball, the ship flying up, as you clear the atmosphere you see the blockade runner ship that belonged to the Black Suns jump to hyperspace. It was very much just booking it out. They didn’t know what happened, but most of the people who were in there were dead so whoever was still on the ship decided to cut their losses. You see there’s a couple of planets nearby, some of them with cities. There are some good options. As you’re starting to calculate it there’s a loud bang, and from outside the ship you see the ship actually lurch in space, and one of the emitters sputters and goes dark, and a big piece of paneling just floats off of it, and a bunch of alarms start going off in the cockpit.

CAMERON: “Tiiink!”

LAURA: Oh no.

HUDSON: “Waaah!”

NICK: (laughs)

CAMERON: (laughs) “I thought you fixed the ship.”

HUDSON: “You know, the operative word there is fixed, and I would say I thought it was fixed.”

CAMERON: “Okay… I’m seeing hull float away…”

NICK: (“woop” alarm noises)

CAMERON: “…and everything’s beeping at me!”

LAURA: “Tink, I’m just going to roll you in there. Okay?”

HUDSON: “Okay!”

CAMERON: “I’ma have to land again…”

LAURA: Xianna runs over to Tink’s room with the hover gurney, the hover cart, and helps toss him in there and then runs it up to the computer cockpit area. “Okay. You fix now.”

HUDSON: Do you walk away? Are you looking at me?

LAURA: I kind of just stand there expectantly. “You, you fix, okay you go.” (laughs)

HUDSON: Alright. I look left and right to see if anyone else is around.

CAMERON: I’m in the cockpit too.

HUDSON: You’re in the cockpit, and you’re like, beside me?

LAURA: Yeah.

HUDSON: I just like quickly press the mute button on the alarm, and that’s all I do right then.

NICK: (laughs)

CAMERON: “Tink, that is not helpful!”

LAURA: “Tink, you just pressed the mute button. I could see you. I am right here!”

NICK: (“woop” alarm noises)

HUDSON: “Alright. Alright. Wait, it’s—“

NICK: (noises abruptly stop)

HUDSON: –Oh.

(laughter)

LAURA: ‘Tink! Fix it!”

HUDSON: “Alright, fine.”

CAMERON: “I just saw plating float away. I don’t think that’s something he can fix with the computers. I’m landing.”

NICK: The ship is also lifting pretty hard to the port, as if half of it stopped {propulsing}, so it’s kind of doing a weird spinny thing.

CAMERON: Yeah, I’m going back down.

HUDSON: Yeah, there’s nothing I can do. (laughs)

NICK: Okay. A couple of things happen at that point. As you head back down you do a scan of the planet and you see that there is a decent sized settlement on the far side that y’all missed on the way in because you all failed your Planetary Knowledge check. Xianna super did not remember this place even though—

LAURA: Nope.

NICK: Maybe she didn’t go there.

LAURA: Who knows.

NICK: Maybe she… did something else. Hard to tell. Your data pad, Karma, that you have in a seat in the cockpit pings at you once.

CAMERON: I look at it.

NICK: It’s an Imperial missive.

CAMERON: Cool. I disregard for the moment, because it’s not good to look at your data pad while you’re flying.

NICK: What great advice. So, you start to head back towards the planet. The ship is struggling pretty hard. I’m gonna need a hard Piloting check from you to bring this in under control, as you are flying under half power trying to re-enter atmosphere.

CAMERON: (nervously) “Xianna…?”

LAURA: “yes?”

CAMERON: “Do you know how ships work?”

LAURA: “I mean, not really, but…”

CAMERON: “Can you follow instructions if I give them to you?”

LAURA: (cheerfully) “Maybe.”

CAMERON: (laughs) “Okay. Come sit up here.”

LAURA: “Okie.”

HUDSON: “I can fly it.”

CAMERON: “We don’t have time to get you into this seat.” (laughs)

HUDSON: “(huffs)”

LAURA: I slump down into the chair. “Okie. What do I press?”

CAMERON: “Pres that button.” Karma points at something, “and pull that lever.”

LAURA: “Okie.”

CAMERON: (laughing) I want a blue die for her helping.

NICK: Okay.

LAURA: Yeah, do we need to do any checks?

CAMERON: Yeah, probably Piloting: Space?

NICK: yeah.

CAMERON: Okay.

LAURA: Does it do anything if I would have a black die to that roll, since I’m just helping her?

NICK: There’s two ways that this can work. I’m open to either, it’s up to you. One, you can do a Co-Piloting check, which will let you add any successes to her roll which is pretty cool, or you can both contribute to the Piloting check which would give her a blue die.

LAURA: Because I’m pretty agile.

CAMERON: Yeah. Try a Co-Pilot check, and we’ll see how it goes. (laughs)

LAURA: You know what, I’m gonna flip a light side point.

NICK: Aw, you beat me to it.

LAURA: Ha-ha. What’s the difficulty?

NICK: Hard.

CAMERON: Oh no.

LAURA: Oh no.

NICK: (laughs)

LAURA: Shit. Yeah, so four failures. Just four failures. Yup.

CAMERON: You know what, I did so much better, and I only have one failure and one threat.

NICK: Alright, so we’re coming in hot.

CAMERON: Coming in hot!

LAURA: Oh wait! No! Four failures and an advantage. I can’t read.

CAMERON: Ha-ha! It improved so dramatically!

NICK: So, you can get rid of the threat.

LAURA: Cool.

CAMERON: So just five failures, total, between the two of us?

LAURA: Oh boy…

NICK: I’ll just say if you fail at a CO-Piloting check I’m not gonna do the thing where it does minuses.

CAMERON: Okay, so, a failure.

NICK: Yeah. (laughs) So, what does the scene look like as Xianna tries to help you and just does the opposite?

CAMERON: Both of our yellows were blank. That is bullshit.

LAURA: I imagine that Karma would say like, okay press that red button, and Xianna would press like a pink button way off to the side, like ‘Okie!’

CAMERON: Karma goes into full teen learning to drive mom mode and is like phantom pressing things as Xianna pushes the wrong things, and is doing the freak out bracing herself in the seat, and it’s just very distracting and does not go well.

NICK: There’s a lot of yelling. The ship goes rattling down.

LAURA: “If you keep reaching in front of me I can’t press the buttons that you tell me to press!”

CAMERON: “But you’re pressing the wrong ones!”

LAURA: “And I know that, I know I’m pressing the wrong buttons but I cannot help it! I do not know how to fly! The last time I flew I crashed the ship into a lake, and if you just, you just keep yelling at me, and I am very stressed out, and I am not having a good time. I’m coming down from the impact and I am so stressed out!”

HUDSON: “Uh… This doesn’t sound good. What’s going—“

LAURA: “You stay out of it, Tink! You stay out of it!”

HUDSON: (weakly) “Okay…”

CAMERON: “Tink, Tink, just breathe. We’re gonna be fine.”

HUDSON: (dramatic labored inhale)

CAMERON: “Yup. Good job, sweetie.”

NICK: (laughs)

LAURA: “I do not think that is how you breathe.”

(laughter)

HUDSON: (dramatic labored inhale)

CAMERON: “Tink, you’re breathing wrong.” (laughs)

LAURA: “Tink, please just let me give you some impact. I promise it is all fun.”

HUDSON: “Nooo. Keep, the, edge!”

(laughter)

NICK: So, we get an outside shot of the ship careening down out of the atmosphere. As you start to crash down you pass the terminus of the planet where the sun is rising, and you go to the night side, and you see this settlement lit up beneath you. It has two very distinct parts that you can see lit up. It looks like a wooden monster eating a durasteel snail. The space port that is the planet’s connection to the greater galaxy is nestled in the west, but you can see a majority of the settlement is made of wood and stucco buildings. It sprawls away from the space port in neighborhoods and slums, and the ramshackle part of the settlement stretches around the space port. Everyone can make me a Knowledge: Outer Rim check that’s looking at this place if they would so choose.

CAMERON: Is there difficulty?

NICK: Average.

CAMERON: Oh shit. A success and a threat. Karma knows something. This is crazy.

HUDSON: One advantage and five successes.

CAMERON: Okay. Karma doesn’t know that much.

NICK: Damn.

HUDSON: And this, I used all green.

LAURA: Two advantages, and two failures.

NICK: Whatever Xianna did on Engibo 5 she does not remember much of it. For those of you who succeeded, you actually have heard of this place before now that you see it. Tink, it really rings a bell, it’s something that’s come up as a place to hide out and recuperate in some of the underground circles. This settlement is called Nerftown.

We see the ship come streaking towards the space port. As you get closer to it your com starts to go off very stridently as someone attempts to hail the ship.

CAMERON: “Hello?”

NICK: Beep. Beep. Beep.

CAMERON: “Hello—Stop beeping ship! I pressed the button!”

LAURA: “I did not press anything!”

NICK: The ship comes streaking in. You hear, “Unidentified ship, you are approaching too quickly. Peel off and approach at a normal vector.”

CAMERON: (assertively) “We are trying, trust me.”

NICK: “Oh, is this some—“

CAMERON: “This is going down!”

NICK: ‘Emergency procedures in effect!”

CAMERON: “Thank you.”

NICK: And you can see the space port starts to scramble and some search lights hit the ship. You are coming in hot, and there are some snub fighters, they look like little X-wings with no guns on them that come up and start spraying fire retardant spray all over the outside of the Afternoon Delight. They scramble very quickly.

HUDSON: (laughs)

LAURA: (laughs)

CAMERON: (laughing) Tink makes a really excited face, because it looks like we’re going through a car wash on the windshield, and he’s very excited.

HUDSON: Yes. That’s exactly what happens.

NICK: The ship comes in and there’s a sickening crunch as it bottoms out. So, it’s a space port so there isn’t a runway, because ships land—

CAMERON: Ships shouldn’t come in like this!

HUDSON: (laughs)

NICK: But there’s a big, round parking space, and you smash into the ground and kind of start donut skidding through it, and you’re getting really close to another yacht, and the ship is grinding and there are sparks going everywhere and bits of metal are flying off, and it’s getting closer and closer to this other yacht… Can y’all roll me a force die, please?

CAMERON: (reluctantly) Yeah…

LAURA: All of us, or just one?

NICK: No, just one.

CAMERON: Two light side.

NICK: Ooh. So, the ship is skidding and starting to slow down. Some of the anti-fire spray is sticking to the ground. The ship’s leaving this big black streak behind it, and it gets to within a couple of inches of this other ship and stops. You can actually see the cockpit of the Afternoon Delight is right up next to the cockpit of this other ship. It’s got all these delicate spires coming off of it in this twisty architecture. It’s definitely a pleasure vessel. You see two Duroses staring open mouthed into your view screen as they are sitting in the cockpit of this vessel.

LAURA: Xianna pops up, because she definitely at some point fell onto the floor. “Oh, hello~!” and waves at them.

CAMERON: Karma puts up a tentative (laughs nervously) wave, and then just drops her head back in the seat. “Oh my gosh…”

NICK: There is a Duros sitting in the pilot seat who was doing stuff, and there’s a Duros standing behind the pilot seat who is leaning over, and the Duros that was standing looks really upset and angry, and the Duros that was sitting looks just shocked and tentatively waves back, and then gets slapped in the back of the head by the guy standing behind it. But the ship has landed.

LAURA: “Okay Tink, you said you fixed this.”

CAMERON: “Oh my gosh.”

HUDSON: “You know, what if it was something other than the thing I fixed? We’re not sure, are we?”

LAURA: “So, that is why you should be checking these things. You do the mechanics.”

HUDSON: “I can’t predict everything that could possibly go wrong.”

CAMERON: “I lost all power to the port side of the ship.”

HUDSON: “… That could have been a crazy coincidence.”

(laughter)

CAMERON: “Really?”

LAURA: “I mean, I think you just didn’t do something you are supposed to do.”

HUDSON: “We can point fingers all day, or we can get my fucking leg fixed.”

(laughter)

NICK: Alright. We’re gonna get a swipe cut on that line to you all stumbling down the access ramp. Is Tink still in the gurney or is he limping?

CAMERON: Yup.

LAURA: Yes.

NICK: Okay, we’re pushing Tink in the gurney.

CAMERON: We set up the droid in probably one of the lounge seats.

NICK: Okay, and you just left it?

CAMERON: yeah, we’re just leaving it on the ship. Well, are we gonna carry this droid around this whole time?

HUDSON: No, but…

LAURA: I mean, do we have any… Oh.

CAMERON: Can we lock it in one of the bedrooms?

NICK: Sure.

LAURA: Does the 0G relaxation table that this ship has, do you think that has restraints?

CAMERON: (laughing) Restraints for the 0G table?!

NICK: Uhhh…

LAURA: Because it’s a table! Okay, I’m imagining a table you strap yourself to.

CAMERON: Uh-huh…

LAURA: That’s what I’m picturing. Also, we do somewhere have a sex room, and I’m sure there are restraints in there.

HUDSON: So, with droids we have restraining bolts, and no one has asked me to put them on the droid yet.

LAURA: Wait, we have those?

HUDSON: I have some lying around.

NICK: Yeah. He pulled some off of another droid earlier.

LAURA: Okay.

HUDSON: Yeah. So before we go can I put some restraining bolts on this thing?

CAMERON: “Before we leave: Tink, is this droid going to get up?”

HUDSON: “I can’t predict the future, but in case it does I can put a bunch of restraining bolts on it so it wouldn’t be that violent.”

NICK: I will say, the droid’s brain is blown out. It looks super dead. If you’re worried about it coming back to life or having some sort of backup because it’s a combat droid then restraining bolts are an option. You could tie it up. The 0G table I’m picturing is like a square pad that you float above.

LAURA: Oh…

CAMERON: No, that’s not fun.

NICK: Well what else would it be?

HUDSON: (laughs)

LAURA: A table you strap yourself to.

CAMERON: You know what it is!

LAURA: And then the table floats!

HUDSON: Yeah, you know what it is.

NICK: … The table floats?

(laughter)

LAURA: Yeah!

NICK: God. For the listener, the book says that this ship has a 0G relaxation table. The internet does not know what that is. It’s not in Wikipedia. We can’t find it anywhere. So, the word is out. Maybe that will be some sort of stretch goal, we’ll draw the table, but for now we’re just gonna leave that delightfully ambiguous.

LAURA: I mean, if we draw the table there will be two different variations.

CAMERON: Yeah.

LAURA: One that everyone else agrees on, and then the version that Laura agrees on, and that’ll be a thing that will have to be censored in some way.

HUDSON: There’s two canons.

LAURA: … Yeah. Heh-heh. You know. (laughter) That’s how you strap yourself in.

NICK: Oh… I was gonna make a gunnery joke. I didn’t—

CAMERON: No, this ship does have two medium laser cannons.

HUDSON: Ohh.

CAMERON: yeah.

HUDSON: Learn something new every day. I should really know the ship better. (laughs)

CAMERON: Yeah, you should, mechanic!

NICK: So, do you install these restraining bolts on the droid?

HUDSON: Yes I do.

NICK: Roll me a Mechanics check, would you? Easy. They’re basically like sticking command hooks to a wall.

HUDSON: Three successes, two advantages.

NICK: Cool. How many do you want to stick to this thing? One should do it in any conceivable format.

HUDSON: Two!

NICK: Great.

(laughter)

HUDSON: If it wakes up it’s not gonna move.

NICK: Yeah. No, that’s fine. You can set a restraining bolt to completely make a droid immobile.

HUDSON: If you put three does it wrap back around and become real violent?

(laughter)

LAURA: Yes.

NICK: You just very easily strap those restraining bolts on. Your muscle memory is going right now because you have lost a lot of blood, and you actually find yourself trying to stick a restraining bolt right where the hole in the droid is, and then go oh, and move it a couple inches to the left and stick it on.

CAMERON: Eh. Maybe we should just toss it in the closet.

NICK: You just did the equivalent basically of chaining a corpse down, but if it makes y’all feel better then go right ahead.

CAMERON: Well, I’m gonna take the droid and go pop it in our costume closet, just like underneath all the capes and stuff.

NICK: We get a funny shot of Karma, she has the droid in a fireman carry over her shoulders, and chucks it into the closet with a clang, and she walks away and right before the door slides shut you see a floppy, big hat on the droid’s head and a feather boa wrapped around its neck, and then the door slides shut over it.

CAMERON: Mm-hmm.

LAURA: Yes.

HUDSON: The reason for having the droid hidden is if someone has to come on the ship to repair it other than me.

CAMERON: To repair it. I just don’t want an assassin droid chilling out in the open.

NICK: Yeah, that’s a pretty good idea. Makes sense.

HUDSON: “Where’s your drugs, Xianna?”

LAURA: “I mean, on me?”

CAMERON: ‘Do you want some?”

HUDSON: “No, if someone comes into the ship to repair it.”

CAMERON: “Oh no, they’re on her.”

LAURA: ‘Oh, no, no. All I have in my room is some empty alcohol bottles, some Twi’lek totems, they probably won’t steal those, and some weird mask in a box. I don’t know, I’m keeping it. It’s mine now.”

HUDSON: “Is it haunted?”

LAURA: “Probably.”

HUDSON: “Okay.”

LAURA: “But no, I keep my drugs in my pockets.”

HUDSON: “We’re just gonna skip the mask thing. Let’s head out.”

LAURA: (laughs) “Cool.”

CAMERON: “Tink, do you want medical attention?”

HUDSON: “yeah, that would be real nice right now.”

CAMERON: “Okay. Let’s go.” Push the gurney off, pop the ramp down.

NICK: Yeah. You pop the ramp down and you push the gurney off. When normally your exits are accompanied by the cool atmosphere mist, this time there’s just a lot of smoke and foam. You can see one of the landing gear is snapped off, the ship’s canted at a weird angle. Actually, as you roll out, the camera pans up to one of the pit droids from Episode 1 with the little boopy noses, and there’s a fire on top of the ship in some wiring and it’s spraying it with a fire extinguisher. As you come down the ramp you see an Ardennian mechanic waving at you from the tarmac. Ardennians are the four-armed little aliens with the kind of monkey faces that are in Solo, the pilot guy is an Ardennian.

CAMERON: (hushed) Yeah!

NICK: He’s wearing a bright orange jumpsuit that leaves his arms bare, and he has a firefighter helmet on his head, but he has it pushed back now that the disaster is over. “Well, that was certainly an entrance. Hi, and welcome to Nerftown space port.”

CAMERON: “Thanks.”

NICK: “You’re gonna wanna leave your financial information with me.”

CAMERON: “Yeah…”

LAURA: “Um…”

NICK: “Looks like your ship needs some repairs.”

LAURA: “Yeah…”

CAMERON: “Yeah. See that part?” Karma points to the giant missing area that should have plating over it. “That just fell off.”

HUDSON: “And we have no idea why.”

LAURA: “He did not fix it.” And I point at Tink.

NICK: The Ardennian looks very patient, like he’s listened to crew argue about whose fault it was many times. The part of the ship that appears to be missing is some sort of rear stabilizer flap, but you can also see there’s a pretty decently sized crater blown in the rear hull plating as if it had taken a hit from a turbo laser at some point.

CAMERON: Weird. (laughs)

NICK: And the engine module on that side, the ship has multiple engines, but that part of it looks pretty bad. The Ardennian goes, ‘Ah. Well there’s your problem right there. It appears that you’ve been hit by some sort of turbo laser.”

LAURA: “yes. We know.”

NICK: “So, I’m guessing you’re looking for some mechanic work.”

CAMERON: (reluctantly) “Yes please.”

LAURA: “Uh-huh. Yes.”

NICK: “Alright. Well, if you step into the office I’ll do a quick inspection and I’ll get back to you with some estimates.”

CAMERON: “That would be fantastic, mister—Sorry, what’s your name?”

NICK: “The name’s Zubo. I’m the mechanic, well the head mechanic anyway.” One of the droids is chittering at him from on top of the ship. “Well hurry up and let’s get some estimates for these fine people!” He flips up into the underside of the ship with one arm and then flips over and climbs up on top. He flips down some glasses like Mozz wears in Return of the Jedi and starts—not Return of the Jedi.

LAURA: What?! (laughs)

NICK: The Force Awakens—and starts flipping different lenses down, but you can see some of them are electronic like he’s looking through the hull at some of the wiring and stuff. “I’ll be in there in a jiffy. Hang on.” He starts climbing all over the ship.”

LAURA: “Okay, so… How about I take Tink to go get medical attention, because you know he is bleeding…”

CAMERON: “Yeah, yeah.”

LAURA: “…and you stay with this Zubo and get the ship fixed, because you are the captain?”

CAMERON: “Okay.”

LAURA: “yes.”

HUDSON: “What if we find a real cool café that we all wanna eat at?”

LAURA: “We will hold a table, and then we will—“

CAMERON: “Everyone. Did you take your coms with you?”

LAURA: “yes!”

HUDSON: “yeah…”

CAMERON: “Okay.”

LAURA: “So, we will just get a table for three, and then com her, have her come by.”

HUDSON: “Okay. I guess that’ll work.”

LAURA: “There will probably be a wait anyway, so by the time she gets there our table will be ready.”

CAMERON: “And it’s probably going to take a while for them to fix your leg up, so by the time you’re wrapping up there I should be done here.”

LAURA: “yeah, and then we will find a lovely café to eat at and have, uh, brunch or something.”

HUDSON: “Everything you’re saying is working out, but everything’s getting real dark.”

LAURA: “yes. That is why I’m going to go take you to a doctor.”

CAMERON: “yeah. Okay.”

LAURA: “Okay.” I start wheeling Tink away, and once I’m out of earshot of Karma I lean down and go, “Okay Tink, after we get your leg fixed, let’s just go shopping instead! No café. We tell Karma the wait for the café is way longer than it actually is and instead we go shopping!”

HUDSON: “But, but, what if we want Karma to go shopping too?”

LAURA: “No. Heh. She does not go shopping with us. We do fun shopping!”

HUDSON: I say okay, but hold onto my com link and give myself a wink—(laughter) I don’t tell her why I just winked.

LAURA: And then I do try to find a doctor. I don’t know.

NICK: That would be a Streetwise check. I’m gonna go ahead and give you a black die to that, though, because you can’t remember this place. Also you may have a reputation here.

LAURA: I mean, okay… I’m going to remove the black die.

NICK: How come?

LAURA: Because I have Street Smarts!

OTHERS: Street Smarts!

LAURA: Okay, so let me see what roll that is.

NICK: This will be average. Are you looking for an underground street doctor kind of thing or like a hospital?

LAURA: I’m looking for more of a real doctor. I think at this point he needs true medical attention. If we already established where the town vet was that helps with mob injuries—you know, there’s always one of those. I don’t know why it’s vets in those mob movies that they always take them to.

NICK: Because they have, like, medical-ish.

CAMERON: Well, because they’re actually better doctors, right?

NICK: Yeah. What do you call a vet that only knows how to work on one species?

CAMERON: A doctor!

NICK: A doctor. Boom. I’m cutting out the part where I was mean to vets and instead we’re gonna talk about how great vets are.

LAURA: Suck it!

CAMERON: Oh, we’re just gonna be mean to doctors. (laughs)

NICK: I know at least one doctor.

CAMERON: … (laughs) That’s awful.

LAURA: I know at least one doctor.

CAMERON: No, it’s okay, I don’t hate doctors, one of my friends is a doctor.

HUDSON: I know Dr. Seuss.

NICK: (laughs) I have a friend who’s a doctor.

LAURA: Uh… So I still also have a black die because of the impact. I’m gonna still say I’m sad and all hung over.

NICK: Okay.

LAURA: yeah, so just three advantages. That’s it.

NICK: Oh. So you push your cart through these rather busy streets. The area immediately surrounding the space port where you’ve set off from is like a tarmac and an airport kind of look. It’s a lot of durasteel and, what is it called, is it called duracrete?

LAURA: Duracrete.

NICK: Duracrete buildings. It’s all very prefabricated. It looks like some big corporation dropped this here. As you progress away from there there’s a sudden line and it goes to dirt roads with wooden boardwalks and kind of ramshackle buildings that are put together, some nicer than others, and you’re wandering around. Tink starts by talking to you about shopping and being excited and then pretty quickly starts to trail off, looks pretty tired. That blood loss is getting pretty bad. There’s a point where his leg is hanging off the gurney at a really unnatural angle, and you grab it by the toe and put it back, like oh I’m sure it’s fine.

LAURA: “It’ll be fine.”

CAMERON: He has a tourniquet on.

NICK: yeah, that’s always great for long term health. Tourniquets, you know.

CAMERON: yeah. (laughs) The best.

NICK: You’re going around and around, and you realize you find a small drop of blood that’s probably still like a cup of blood, a decent amount of blood, and you’re like ‘hmm, that looks like Gigoran blood. I think I’m going in circles.’ At that point a street urchin appears next to you. It’s a small Human girl with really dirty pigtails. She says, “Uh, you look like you need a doctor.”

LAURA: “yes. I do.”

NICK: “For 30 Credits I’ll take you to one.”

LAURA: “Five.”

NICK: “Uh… 40 Credits.”

LAURA: “Five.”

NICK: That sounds like a Negotiation roll.

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: Okay! Let’s see. What do I have?

NICK: That’s gonna be hard. No… yes, hard.

HUDSON: (laughs)

CAMERON: This little girl knows her shit!

HUDSON: (laughing) It’s against a little girl.

CAMERON: yeah. This is her job, Hudson.

NICK: ‘Say that to my face, you big, hairy Wookie!’

HUDSON: (grumbles in nervousness and confusion)

CAMERON: (giggles)

LAURA: (mimics Hudson’s noises)

HUDSON: That’s me when I’m trying to talk to people while I’m out.

LAURA: Two threats.

NICK: “Like I said, 50 Credits.”

LAURA: “(huffs) Fine! This better be a good doctor. If this is a fake doctor—“ I point at her. “If this is a fake doctor I might stab you. I am at that point. I will stab a child. I will do it.”

NICK: (laughs) We get a shot of this little girl, and she’s got dirt smudged on her face, and she’s wearing sack cloth robes. She looks at you and does the most smug Lando Calrissian style smirk you’ve ever seen. “Yeah okay, sweetheart,” and leads you off down a very narrow and dark alley.

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: I whisper to Tink. ‘Tink, have you ever killed a small child before?”

HUDSON: “… I have a small child?”

(laughter)

NICK: We’re cutting away on that. We cut away from that. Karma.

CAMERON: Yeah?

NICK: You’re sitting in a waiting room.

CAMERON: I take out my data pad and I look at that ping that I got.

NICK: Great. It’s an Imperial missive. As you open it, it’s actually an invoice for services rendered, and you have been transferred 7,000 Credits for bounties returned. There’s also an inquest that you report to your nearest Imperial office to report anything you might know about the scuttling of the ISD Vengeance.

CAMERON: Cool. I do a quick holo search and see if that blockade is off of Ithor yet.

NICK: So, you are connected to the Star Wars Wi-Fi of a Star Wars mechanic’s office so it’s very slow. It first brings you to a page that’s like, “What do you need to know about getting your ship breaks checked?” Once you accept the terms and things it does eventually load. It looks like the blockade is gone, but the Empire has started ground patrols.

CAMERON: Cool.

NICK: Not big ones, but police action is currently going on.

CAMERON: Just wanted to make sure that me being off of the planet was an acceptable thing at this point.

NICK: Oh. Yeah. That makes sense.

CAMERON: Because if I went and reported to an Imperial office and they were like ‘but there’s still a blockade’ it would have been awkward.

NICK: Yeah. You also know from your experience that you can delay that kind of request for quite a while. They’re not gonna arrest you for not doing it. There is a different level of urgency that would happen if you were being summoned. Not arrested, but what’s the word when you get served? Subpoenaed. If you got subpoenaed for something it’d be a lot bigger. This one is like a professional inquiry kind of thing since you were near the area when it happened. But yeah, you’re 7,000 Credits richer now from your bounty.

CAMERON: Nice.

NICK: It looks like there’s a lot of legal jargon around them contemplating paying you less since the bounties are now dead, but there’s a lot of language that’s basically like ‘in light of your service to the Empire we have decided not to,’ and they’re trying to use that to leverage you to come in.

CAMERON: Okay.

NICK: So, you have more money. As you’re flicking through that the Ardennian comes walking into the office. The bell above the door dings. This is literally—There’s a holo-screen on the wall playing a thing about ship maintenance. There’s a little coffee table with really old holo-pads of old magazines. The chairs are uncomfortable. It’s dusty. There’s a counter with a really bored looking Gungan receptionist, and she’s polishing her nails and didn’t say anything to you as you came in.

CAMERON: I’m sitting in one of the chairs, I got my legs crossed, I’m looking at my data pad, and I have like a Styrofoam cup of the cheap, shitty caf that they have for free while you’re waiting.

NICK: It has the taste of caf that has been in that machine for at least a week longer than it was designed to do, but the caffeine is still good.

CAMERON: Yeah. At this point she just needs something, because that was a stressful landing.

NICK: For y’all, specifically just for y’all, I’m picturing the Jiffy Lube right up the street, like it’s that waiting room.

LAURA: Yeah!

HUDSON: (laughs)

CAMERON: Nice. Okay.

NICK: So, the Ardennian, Zubo, comes walking in. his arms are longer than his legs so he tends to keep them kind of {kiltered} out as he’s walking, which looks like he’s always gesturing like Jerry Seinfeld about like ‘what’s up with this?’

CAMERON: ‘Hello~ Welcome.’

NICK: Yeah. He says, “Well, it looks like your ship’s got a pretty decent amount of repairs to be done. We’re gonna have to fix that propulsion unit, we’re gonna have to replace some of the plating, your landing gear snapped off, and honestly most of the fluids in your hyperdrive needed to be cycled about, uh… a long time ago.”

HUDSON: Do they bring out the air filters and show you how dirty it is?

CAMERON: (laughs)

NICK: (smiling) Not on this one. The body shops don’t tend to do that.

CAMERON: They don’t do that if you got in a wreck.

HUDSON: (laughing) True.

CAMERON: (laughing) Which is what just happened to us.

NICK: I really like that, though. But yeah, so he says, “Well, you got a few things. One, the parking fee for this space port is 50 Credits a day. It’s pretty light. Repairing the ship’s damage will be 3,000 Credits for parts and labor, and then there’s another 1,000 Credits for damage to the space port.”

CAMERON: “yeah…”

NICK: “So that’s gonna be our rate. If you could go ahead and pay that, that would be awesome. Parts are gonna be about 2,000 Credits. I’m guessing labor is about 1,000, plus or minus a little, but that’s gonna be your best bet. I’d say you could go to a competitor, but honestly we’re the only people here.”

CAMERON: “And getting the ship to a competitor would probably not be worth my time at this point.”

NICK: ‘I can tell you the towing fees would be more than the repair.”

CAMERON: “Yea. You know, I’m not surprised by that.” Throughout the time that he was talking about the prices of stuff Karma was trying to make it look like, while she was sitting there thinking through it, okay this is fair, I’m not happy about paying this amount which is true, but wants to look slightly more stressed than she probably actually is. She just got 7K in bounties, she can cover the ship, it’s not a big deal, but doesn’t want to seem as if she has a lot and it’s no big deal that it’s that, because that’s still a substantial amount of money.

NICK: Right.

CAMERON: “Do the services include a ship wash for all of the foam?”

NICK: “So, it doesn’t, but considering you didn’t hit that other ship I’ll throw one in.”

CAMERON: “Awesome.”

NICK: “We’ll just take it off. Honestly, we’ll have to remove most of it to get to where we need to anyway.”

CAMERON: “Yeah. I figured you probably need to in order to get to the ship, so…”

NICK: “Yeah. We’ll just… I like you, so we’ll just make that happen.”

CAMERON: “Alright. Cool.”

NICK: “You know, for another 400 Credits we could give it a paint job too, if you want.”

CAMERON: “You know, I think my crew’s rather attached to it.”

NICK: “It being the ship?”

CAMERON: “No, it being—There’s… If you look on the other side, you can’t see it from here, but there is an artistic rendering on the ship.”

LAURA: (laughs)

NICK: We get a quick jump cut to that, and it’s the Afternoon Delight with the pin-up girl Imperial painted on it, but it’s smudged and there’s still some sparks all around it and it’s very battle damaged, and the smoke has smudged on it in such a way that the girl looks very frowny face right now.

CAMERON: Oh, well.

NICK: And then it jumps back to karma.

CAMERON: “I’d have to confer with my crew for color choices and stuff, so can I give you an answer on that after we get the wash and see what it looks like? Once it’s repaired, see how much it really needs it?”

NICK: “Yeah. There’s no rush. I also noted that several of the modules on that ship are pretty outdated. If you wanted to upgrade we could do that here too.”

CAMERON: “Hmm.”

NICK: “You know, it’s just services we offer.”

CAMERON: “I’m obviously going to get the ship repaired, all of the things you listed, yes I want those so that my ship flies. What timeframe would I need to get you any upgrades we wanted if I wanted to?”

NICK: “Well, they’ll take some time to install depending on what you want, but the repairs are probably gonna take about three days, so within 24 hours or so?”

CAMERON: “Okay, yeah. Okay. Yeah, we can do that.”

NICK: “Great.”

CAMERON: “So let’s move forward with the repairs and the wash right now, and then maybe add on some other stuff, depending.”

NICK: “Great, sounds good!” So, his top set of arms are all making very friendly gestures, his bottom set are rubbing the hands together right now. He doesn’t give off an air of someone who’s trying to screw you, just someone who’s excited to get that kind of work. He holds you out a data pad for you to make the credits transfer. “If you’ll just sign here please we can move on.” As Karma reaches to sign, it zooms in on the blue of the data pad, and then zooms out on a time wait estimate screen of a hospital as Xianna comes pushing Tink into a hospital.

HUDSON: So, you forgot the tree air freshener scent for her to pick one.

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: They do that at the end!

NICK: That’ll be when you pick it up.

HUDSON: That’s when you pick it up? Oh. Okay, you’re right. You’re right.

LAURA: yeah. Duh~

NICK: The street urchin says, “Well, thanks for the credits, sucker,” and just takes off into the street.

LAURA: “(huffs) I hope she gets run over. Okay, Tink.”

HUDSON: “Huh?”

LAURA: And I wheel him in. I’m assuming there’s like a front desk area with a reception droid.

CAMERON: (laughs) Tink, do you have your insurance card?

NICK: Yeah. It’s not a droid, it’s a Human.

LAURA: Okay.

NICK: It’s a Human guy. He’s pretty bulky. He’s got his head shaved. He’s wearing Star Wars scrubs, which are just normal scrubs. He has a data terminal in front of him and there’s a data pad sitting on the lip of the counter on the way in. this is a waiting room that looks oddly similar to the waiting room that Karma was in earlier, it’s just bigger, but the exact same uncomfortable chairs, exact same data screen which weirdly is giving tips about ship maintenance, there are data pads on the tables that are very dated that are talking about senatorial elections that happened decades ago.

The guy says, “Hey, just sign in. we’ll get to you in a minute.”

LAURA: “Okay, but uh…” And I just point into the cart. (laughs)

NICK: He stretches up to look over the counter. “Hey, if you could just make sure that no fluids are dripping into the waiting room, please.”

LAURA: “I mean, they are dripping into the cart, but…”

NICK: ‘I just noticed this trail on the way in,” and there’s a little mouse droid that’s just (squeaking).

LAURA: “Okay, well he is bleeding out, his knee is practically gone, what do you want me to do?!”

NICK: ‘Look. We do everything triage by order of severity of the wounds,” and he looks at the screen and there’s three names that are already on the screen that are bright red and then a bunch of names in Aurebesh that are blue…

LAURA: “(huffs)”

NICK: …and then two of the names get red Xs through them. “But it looks like two of the people ahead of you in severity have just died, so if you’ll just wait a little longer we’ll get you in to see the doctor in a minute.”

LAURA: (exhaling) “Okay. What forms do I need to fill out?”

NICK: Well, here in Star Wars we have a single payer system.

(laughter)

CAMERON: Okay. I guess I’ll list myself as his emergency contact.

NICK: That was a shitty joke. I don’t like it. (laughs)

LAURA: Well, you’d still have to list emergency contact, name and species… You don’t have to fill out health insurance information, but you would need to put like known allergies, why are you here today. (laughs)

NICK: Yeah. He just kind of grunts and knocks a data pad towards you, and you get stuck trying to ask Tink these questions.

LAURA: “Okay Tink, do you have any allergies?”

HUDSON: “(grumbles) … Macadamia nuts.”

LAURA: “Okay. Macadamia nuts. Okay…”

NICK: Oh yes, Macadamia, that planet in Star Wars. (laughs)

LAURA: “Tink, are you on any medications?”

HUDSON: (winded) “No.”

LAURA: “Any drugs?”

HUDSON: “Heh. No.” I do an X.

(laughter)

LAURA: “I mean, I figured, but just making sure.”

CAMERON: Is there a history of heart disease on your father’s side? (laughs)

LAURA: “Do you have a history of heart disease on either side of your family?”

HUDSON: “A history of art disease? No, nothing about that disease.”

LAURA: “Heart! You know the thing that beats in your chest.”

HUDSON: “You just said art.”

LAURA: “I have problems with the Hs.”

HUDSON: “Oh, it’s a hurt degree…”

LAURA: “… Yes. Okay. Do you have any long term illnesses?”

HUDSON: “Uh… I’ve had bad dandruff for a while, all over my body.”

LAURA: “Okay, dandruff. Okay, reason why you are here, knee gone.” (laughs)

NICK: And on that, another red X appears on the screen. (buzzer noise) There’s a nurse that comes out of the back. It’s a Dugg. That’s the kind of alien that’s Sebulba that walks on its hands and uses its feet as hands, and it’s holding a data pad. “Well, that was Mr. Smith. I guess he won’t be needing our services anymore, so up next we have…” and you hit Enter on the data pad and your name shows up in flashing red. “I guess that would be a… hmm, I’m just gonna say Tink on that one. If you could come on back, the doctor will see you now.”

LAURA: “Oh! That is us. Okay Tink,” and I push him.

NICK: You roll back through the double doors, and as they slide shut that’s gonna be the end of the episode.

LAURA: Ba-naaa~!

OTHERS: Ba-naaa~!

LAURA: (singing) Waa-oh~

LAURA & HUDSON: (singing) For the longest time~

## Outro

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

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

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

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

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

Our intro song is Space Jam by Pablo Ribot.

Additional music by James Gunter.

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

Tabletop Squadron Transcript, Season 1 Episode 19:
Black Hole Sun

Transcript by Tyler (Twitter: @Tyler_MoonSage)

## Intro

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

Still not many announcements. We hope you enjoyed the Jedi Adventures with Moa and Rae, and look forward to our first set of bloopers next week.

Even though we’ve met our goal, come join the squad on Twitter at @Tabletop_Squad and talk to us about Star Wars, or leave us a review on iTunes. If you want to make people happy with five minutes of your time, it’s an easy way to make everyone on the squad smile.

We hope to talk to you soon, and we hope you enjoy the episode.

##

NICK: Hello! Welcome to Episode 19 of Tabletop Squadron! Thank you so much for joining us. We’re really glad to see you. Pull up a chair, metaphorically, because we’re in a podcast. We’re gonna go around the table real quick and talk to everybody. Introduce yourselves and say who you’re playing today, starting with… Laura.

LAURA: Hi. I play Xianna’fan, a Twi’lek smuggler… and I mean yeah, it’s gonna be fine. Gonna go great.

NICK: Yeah. Everything’s fine. Up next we’ve got Hudson.

HUDSON: Little tidbit here, even though I do this every single episode, I still turned over my sheet to make sure that I remembered everything about me.

CAMERON: (laughs)

HUDSON: So, I’m Hudson and I play Tink, the Gigoran slicer, it says right here.

NICK: (laughs) Great. You know, it’s that commitment to quality that’s gotten us all the way to Episode 19.

HUDSON: (sarcastic) Heh!

(laughter)

LAURA: You also had me write it down on your sheet so you could actually read it.

HUDSON: You have good handwriting.

NICK: (laughing) Up next we’ve got Cameron.

CAMERON: Hello!

NICK: Hi.

CAMERON: I play Karma Nailo, the Nautolan bounty hunter.

NICK: Wonderful. See, like that, Hudson.

(laughter)

CAMERON: It’s okay. Because Hudson brought it up, I glanced at my sheet as I was talking too.

HUDSON: There we go!

LAURA: Guys! Guys. I just now realized that there is actually a small section on our character sheets for Player Name.

CAMERON: Oh yeah. I have Cam written in it.

HUDSON: I don’t have anything in mine.

LAURA: Oh, I didn’t. I assumed I would recognize my own character sheet! (laughs)

CAMERON: I just wanted everyone to know that it was mine.

HUDSON: What if it gets lost when we’re out and about on the city?

NICK: I’ve always put my name on my character sheets. Now that we’ve updated everybody on our handwriting situation…

CAMERON: It’s important!

NICK: It’s very important. Let’s go ahead and do the Destiny Roll!

CAMERON: Two light side.

LAURA: One light side.

HUDSON: Two light side.

LAURA: (sings magical/angelic note)

HUDSON: Whoaaa~

CAMERON: Okay. we need to actually use these this time.

LAURA: We won~!

CAMERON: We have five light side points. (smiling)

HUDSON: What could we have possibly used these for last episode?

CAMERON: We could have just like made shit occur.

HUDSON: … Okay. (laughs)

LAURA: We could have just flipped it and had any room we wanted.

CAMERON: And been like, this is a thing now, Nick.

NICK: Sentinel farts.

HUDSON: (laughs)

LAURA: We’re not gonna make him fart. It would have been Tink.

HUDSON: Sentinel comes in for a deep kiss.

CAMERON: Whoa.

LAURA: I mean yeah, we should’ve done that.

NICK: Hey. Even with light side points you still need consent, guys. Come on.

HUDSON: What would be Tink and Sentinel shipped? That would be what?

NICK: (snorts) Tinkinel?

OTHERS: Tinkinel! (laughter)

LAURA: Um… Sink!

CAMERON: Sentinink.

NICK: Sink?

HUDSON: Sink! I just like Sink.

NICK: Alright fan artists, get at us. Sink, make it happen.

CAMERON: Oh no.

LAURA: (laughs)

NICK: Alright. Last episode, you flew away from a ball, got to know each other a little bit better, really touched base, really had a soul meeting I think. Then you went and you saw Sentinel, and he told you that he had found a murder droid, an assassin droid that you were going to need to boost your survivability, and that also Black Sun, the Star Wars crime syndicate, had also gotten a line on this assassin droid and had sent an entire enforcer squad to go and get it, so that you are in a race against the clock. You jumped to hyperspace, and that’s where we ended last time.

We’re gonna jump right in as the ship jumps right out of hyperspace above Engibo 5. Engibo 5 is a golden ball floating near its red giant sun. as you come in to land you see that most of the planet is covered it tall, golden grass. Gentle breezes rustle miles of the plains at a time. You scan from orbit and you can see that there are several small settlements and single homes spaced far around this quiet world. One thing especially catches your eye, some sort of heavy fortification  on the equator. It’s mostly underground, but the ship picks up heavy starship plating. Nothing else on the planet is built like that. Can I get a Perception check please?

CAMERON: Sure!

LAURA: Can do!

NICK: This would be from anyone in the cockpit, or being near sensors, or being on the lookout as you come out of hyperspace.

LAURA: Oh, then no.

HUDSON: I think I would be on sensors. Yeah.

CAMERON: What’s the difficulty?

NICK: Average.

CAMERON: Average…

LAURA: Heh…

NICK: It’s the first time we’ve rolled in three episodes.

HUDSON: Ooh! Two successes and three disadvantages.

LAURA: Threats.

HUDSON: Three threats! What is disadvantage from?

LAURA: Uh, D&D?

HUDSON: Oh. Okay.

CAMERON: Ooh, shit! Okay… A success and a triumph!

NICK: Nice. Think about what that triumph is. Tink, where are you that you make this Perception check? You see a ship that is also going through landing procedures. They’re ahead of you.

HUDSON: I’m watching a screen ear the electronics room.

NICK: Do we have a server room in this…?

LAURA: There could be a server room. Yeah.

HUDSON: I’ve been to it before to fix stuff…

CAMERON: The engine room!

NICK: Engine room.

LAURA: Okay. There we go.

NICK: It’s more makes it go-go, less computers, but…

HUDSON: Yeah, yeah.

NICK: Okay. you get a sensor alert that shows a ship. You turn to go inform the rest of the crew and you fall prone (dramatic bass noise), so that’s happening. You trip over the doorway. It has the like battleship doors in this part of the ship. The rest of it is all very nice, they’re swooshy doors, this one though has the metal door with the corkscrew wheel in the middle and you trip over the bottom of it.

HUDSON: “Oh kriff!”

LAURA: I mean, nothing really bad happens, you fell in non-combat, except Xianna saw it and starts laughing at you.

HUDSON: I just look embarrassed.

CAMERON: Aww.

LAURA: “Ha. You fell.”

NICK: I’m gonna tell you what you see, and then Karma if you wanna tell me how you want that triumph to go let me know. You see a blockade runner, like the Tantive IV from A New Hope, Episode 4 of Star Wars. It’s like a hammerhead shaped ship—wow, that’s hard to say—hammer head shaped ship that is about a third rocket boosters. It is faster than you and it got here before you, so you figure it’ll probably land about 20-30 minutes before you manage to set down even if you’re pushing the ship. It’s breaking the lower atmosphere, and then it drops off the sensors. It looks to be headed for that heavily armored fortress type thing.

CAMERON: I want them to not see us…

NICK: Sure. Done.

CAMERON: …and then monitor as they’re going down to try and make it so that I’m not landing in sight of them.

NICK: Sure. With the triumph we’ll say that as you get close to landing there’s kind of a divot in the land that’s about 50 yards away. You’re able to cut the thrusters so that the sound doesn’t go towards them, and you’re able to drop right out of sight.

CAMERON: I want to be a surprise.

NICK: Yeah. You’ll totally be a surprise. As you land in that hollow you see the grass has been flattened in a wide radius. The blockade runner has a grimacing face painted on the forward cockpit with red lightning bolts streaking over the hull. It’s been obviously patched and repaired dozens of times. This is a working ship, not some diplomatic pleasure cruiser. Ahead of you is a massive set of doors sunk into the side of a rolling hill. They are closed. You do not see any people around as far as you can tell. It looks like you landed without being detected.

CAMERON: Ha-ha! “Guys, I think we landed without being detected.”

LAURA: “What? Oh. Okay, cool.”

HUDSON: “Looks that way.”

CAMERON: “Oh, Xianna, there’s another ship here.”

LAURA: “Oh. I was not near a window.”

CAMERON: (laughing) ‘Yeah, that’s why I’m telling you.”

LAURA: “I know. I am just telling you why I did not see the other ship.”

CAMERON: “… Okay. we can wrap up this conversation. This is fine.”

HUDSON: (laughs)

LAURA: “Okay. I will get dressed.”

CAMERON: “Everybody gear up!”

HUDSON: (laughing) Has that ever been said before?

CAMERON: (laughing) Nope!

LAURA: Magical Girl Transformation!

CAMERON: Yeah~!

NICK: We get a cool quick shot montage of gun belts being snapped into place, vibro-swords and vibro-axes being slotted, coat being thrown on and buttoned up but just enough to look cool. Is there anything specifically you all do to prepare for this situation?

CAMERON: The vibro-axe looks very shiny and clean now.

HUDSON: I thank Karma for prettying up my vibro axe. “It looks beautiful.”

CAMERON: “Yeah, no problem. I sharpened it too.”

HUDSON: “Oh…”

NICK: That’s not how that works at all. (laughs)

CAMERON: (laughing) Yeah it is. I just said so.

LAURA: Would I know any pertinent information about this planet? Can I make an Underworld check, maybe with a boost die since we said I had been here before?

NICK: You can have the boost die, but it’s not gonna be Underworld. It’s going to be Outer Rim, because everything you would know about this planet doesn’t actually have much to do with crime.

LAURA: Okay… What difficulty?

NICK: Average. I’d flip a dark side point to make it harder, but (halting screech).

CAMERON: Ha-ha!

LAURA: What is that? So, two failures and three advantages.

NICK: Oookay. Do whatever you want with those advantages.

LAURA: I don’t know shit.

NICK: Yeah, you don’t.

LAURA: Only crime stuff!

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: Yeah, I just don’t remember much. I was too high, it was a while ago, someone else was leading the crew I was on at that time.

NICK: Well, and you remember this planet being particularly boring, you landed in one of the larger settlements, but even that is, like, think small Western town. Not a lot there. There whole planet is these sweeping grasslands. Anybody wanna do anything else before you leave the ship?

LAURA: No. I think Xianna would just put clothes on, boots on, that’s it.

NICK: So, you keep saying ‘I’ll put clothes on.’ Are you just mostly naked on the ship usually?

LAURA: Okay. I don’t know if I’ve ever figured out what’s on underneath the coat. She definitely doesn’t have pants on. It’s coat that goes down to like mid thighs and then boots.

NICK: Uh…

LAURA: No, no, no. She’s just usually in the hot tub. (laughs) It’s either she’s in the hot tub or she’s in her room napping, so that’s why.

NICK: I’ve just always pictured Xianna under the coat is wearing Lara Croft clothes, so like shorts with holsters and a tank top kind of situation.

LAURA: I’m sure there is tiny dance shorts, but then I’m picturing more of the really just standard, traditional Twi’lek wrap bra thing…

NICK: Oh… yeah.

LAURA: …that’s just not practical as an actual top, and should be worn as a bra, but for some reason is a top.

HUDSON: Does it look like Leeloo Dallas Multipass? Like the wraps?

LAURA: I was imagining more of what Aayla Secura wears.

NICK: It’s kind of like sports bra and lingerie had a baby.

HUDSON: Okay.

LAURA: But I would imagine Xianna would probably pick one a little bit more like the Leeloo Dallas Multipass, that has a bunch of useless straps that are just there for decoration

NICK: We can just say Twi’leks are aliens, and that kind of clothes is more comfortable for them. it makes perfect sense.

LAURA: Star Wars!

NICK & CAMERON: (half-enthused) Star Wars!

LAURA: Yay~ (musically) Practical female clothing!

CAMERON: Karma removes her headband.

NICK & HUDSON: Ohh…

LAURA: My scanner goggles are broken!

NICK & CAMERON: Oh yeah.

NICK: It’s a bummer you didn’t have a bunch of downtime with a mechanic to get that fixed.

CAMERON: (laughing) Yup!

LAURA: Shit! (groans)

NICK: (laughs)

CAMERON: You were too sleepy. You slept and forgot.

LAURA: I mean, you know what, thinking about it that’s just more in character, because Xianna would have stuffed them in a pocket… That’s probably what she did. She stuffed them in a pocket, and then was on the down side so she was not thinking about that, and then sleeping a bunch, and so she probably didn’t even remember again until she was getting dressed to get off planet here, and was like ‘aww, shit.’

CAMERON: Yup. So karma’s just a regular Nautolan now.

NICK: Hmm. Interesting. So, we get a shot of the ramp to the Afternoon Delight coming down. The crew exits. Nobody notices, nobody says anything, except for you see some nerfs that have already gathered under the ship and are eating grass. The first one that you notice is one that comes up behind Xianna and licks the back of her head. You see the lekku come up and then fall back down, and they look kind of slimy.

CAMERON: Eww.

LAURA: “(sighs) Eww… (groans)”

NICK: Nerfs, for people who don’t know Star Wars, are like yaks with five horns basically. They’re very hairy. People who herd them tend to be scruffy looking. You never see them in the movies, they just get talked about a lot, but it turns out that they just look like big old yaks. This planet, Engibo 5, is famous for their herds of nerfs.

LAURA: (smiling) It’s canon that Han Solo actually herded nerfs into the Millennium Falcon, and that’s why Leia calls them that.

NICK: When I researched it, the only picture is of Luke and Han in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon surrounded by these giant yak things.

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: (laughs) Yeah. It’s in the comics. Read the Star Wars comics. They get bonkers.

NICK: Yeah. So yeah, you get licked by a space cow.

CAMERON: Karma locks the ship, but not with the remote lock. She presses the button to lock it so it’s quiet.

NICK: So it goes… (quietly) boop-bweep.

CAMERON: (whispering) It goes… boop-boop.

NICK: (laughs) It does the quiet boop-boop.

LAURA: Oh. Xianna’s loudly going like, “Ew! Gross! Tink, come over here!”

HUDSON: “Shh!”

CAMERON: (whispering) “Xianna, shh!”

LAURA: She starts rubbing her lekku on Tink’s fur to try and get any of the slime off. (laughs)

HUDSON: “Ew. No, no, no. Get off.”

LAURA: “What? You never-? You pissed yourself a few days ago! Like you care.”

HUDSON: “Uhh… No. That never happened.”

CAMERON: (whispering) “Xianna! Xianna, we’re being sneaky right now.”

LAURA: “For who?”

CAMERON: (smiling) “The nerfs.”

LAURA: “The nerfs know we are here.”

CAMERON: ‘Remember I said there’s another ship?”

LAURA: “Okay. So the ship is going to hear us?”

CAMERON: ‘No, like the 20 bad guys who got off the ship are gonna hear.”

LAURA: “Ugh. Whatever. Okay, I’ll be quiet. Eh…”

CAMERON: “Okay. Thank you.”

LAURA: “You’re not my mom…”

(laughter)

NICK: You come up over the rise, you don’t see anyone, the other ship appears to be deserted, and these big doors that are going into the side of a low hill look to be closed. As you get closer you see that there is actually a panel placed into an alcove next to the door.

CAMERON: “Tink?”

LAURA: Oh. Xianna already is up and like pressing it.

NICK: Pressing it, it goes ‘bee-berp,’ and doesn’t do anything.

LAURA: Aw.

LAURA & CAMERON: “Tink?”

HUDSON: I go and inspect it.

NICK: (laughing) Okay. What are you looking for?

HUDSON: To see if I can do anything to make it open.

NICK: Yeah. You could probably slice it or something if you wanted to.

HUDSON: Yeah, let’s do that.

NICK: That would be a Computers roll.

HUDSON: Which I just upgraded, last time I was able to upgrade things.

CAMERON: Hey, hey!

LAURA: Nice~

NICK: This is gonna be easy, actually.

HUDSON: I have two successes and three advantages.

NICK: Great. I’m gonna go ahead and spend those advantages for you.

HUDSON: Great.

NICK: So, you see Tink, he goes over, he plugs his data pad into it and he presses some buttons. It goes boop-boop, and the door goes (heavy clunk, whooshing, long buzzing) and opens. It’s a very thick door. It’s probably three feet thick, solid durasteel. You look down and there’s a trench that goes down. The doors seems to fall flush. It’s like this thing was designed to survive a bombardment. Tink, with those advantages, you notice this door has been sliced. This was way easier than it should have been to get open. It was locked, but you just followed somebody else’s footprints electronically and got into it, no big deal, but you do know that the slicer did not close the doors again. Something else made the doors close behind them. So, that could be concerning.

CAMERON: It was one of the yaks.

NICK & LAURA: Nerfs.

CAMERON: (giggles)

NICK: The door opens, you get that kind of stale smell of a cave that’s been closed for a really long time without a lot of air circulation. There’s a little bit of dust on the ground, but you can see multiple boot prints going further in. the building gets kind of dark, and that’s all you can see from here. Do you go further in?

LAURA: Can Xianna just hold her scanner goggles up to her face? It was just the strap that was broken.

NICK: Yeah. It’s just a black die.

LAURA: Yeah. Okay.

NICK: You wanna do a perception?

LAURA: yeah. Is the black die for the strap being broken, or…?

NICK: We’ll say… We’ll do it this way, because weirdly the book doesn’t have anything for broken elastic.

(chuckling)

LAURA: Yeah.

NICK: We’ll say you won’t get a black die for the Perception check, but if you want to use them and do anything else it will give a black die to that action, like if you’re in combat or something trying to wear them.

LAURA: Yeah, if I have to hold it to my face with one hand that’ll be something. I just want to hold them up for this moment and look in.

NICK: Sure.

LAURA: Difficulty is…?

NICK: Average, with two black dice for darkness, which you ignore, so then take those away.

LAURA: yeah. That would be three successes and one advantage.

NICK: Great. About 50 meters down this hallway, it’s built like a bunker so you know there’s lots of long stretches in case there was an explosion or some sort of burning gun fight, you see two bodies lying face down and a crater blown in one of the walls. Beyond that you can see a couple of doors, and that’s it. That’s about the furthest you can see with your goggles.

LAURA: “Oh. There is some sort of crater, maybe from some explosion, and two bodies.”

HUDSON: “What kind of bodies?”

LAURA: “I don’t know, like on the floor? Just two bodies, probably dead.” Human-ish? Or at least humanoid.

NICK: Humanoid. Yeah.

LAURA: Okay, but not obviously something non-humany.

NICK: You see like an ear cone sticking up out of one of them. They’re lying down.

LAURA: “Um, fairly human-ish? I mean, I can’t really tell from here.”

HUDSON: “That’s enough information.”

LAURA: “So, I mean, we should be extra sneaky then. Like actually sneaky.”

CAMERON: “(whispers) Okay. Let’s sneak.”

LAURA: “So, stick to the wall, crouch, be quiet, and look for traps. Okie?”

HUDSON: “I’m not the one who was yelling around nerfs.”

(laughter)

NICK: With that, it sounds like you all want to make a Stealth check, probably?

CAMERON: Yeah.

LAURA: Yes.

HUDSON: What’s the difficulty?

NICK: This one’s gonna be average.

HUDSON: Two advantages.

NICK: Mm.

CAMERON: Karma got two successes and an advantage.

NICK: Great.

LAURA: One success, a triumph with its success, and one advantage.

NICK: Okay. I have a thing for y’all’s advantages we’ll use in a minute. Xianna and karma, you’re able to blend into the shadows and traipse down the hallway without any problems. Tink, you’re not super quiet but you’re not super loud, you’re just kinda following, making some noise, kicking stuff, running into some things, but you’re not yelling or anything. You make it to the bodies. There is a Human and a Rodian. One of them is face down, the Human is face down on the ground, and then the Rodian has been clearly smashed into a wall. There’s a red splatter of blood into a crater that was obviously made by the body, and on the opposite wall it looks like there’s a crater that’s been blown in the wall like there was a mine or something there, some sort of booby trap that took at least that one out.

HUDSON: I check for signs of life.

NICK: (laughs) Okay. The Rodian’s super dead. You roll it over and you see most of the face is missing from where it smooshed into the wall. It’s real gross. It makes a shlorpy noise. You roll the Human over and you see that it’s a Human man with dark hair, and his torso is just completely riddled with blaster bolts.

HUDSON: You don’t need all that in there. I check for a pulse.

NICK: (smiling) Okay. Make me a Medicine check.

LAURA: “(whispering) Tink! What are you doing? They are dead.”

HUDSON: “(whispering) I’m the doctor here.”

LAURA: “You do not need to check them.”

HUDSON: “(angrily) I’m the doctor here!”

LAURA: “They are obviously dead!”

HUDSON: “Shh!”

LAURA: “you get back here right this moment.”

HUDSON: What’s the difficulty?

NICK: (smiling) Easy.

LAURA: ‘I will leave you in this hallway!” (laughs)

CAMERON: It would be so funny if you weren’t successful.

(laughter)

LAURA: He’s not! Wow.

HUDSON: (laughing) Five advantages.

LAURA: (laughing) Jesus. What?!

CAMERON: (laughing) Oh no…

HUDSON: Everything… I don’t know what they are, but I have so much other good stuff happening.

NICK: Yeah. You’re able to stop the bleeding. The pulse is faint, but you’re pretty sure you can feel one. Yeah, you have this patient. Are you gonna leave them here? You’re not sure if he’s stable yet.

HUDSON: You don’t leave anyone behind.

CAMERON: Oh god.

NICK: (laughs)

LAURA: (through gritted teeth) “Tink! That man is obviously dead. Get, back, here!”

HUDSON: “I feel a pulse. I feel a pulse. I’m bringing him with.”

LAURA: “No you do not!”

HUDSON: “I’m bringing him with.”

LAURA: ‘He has no chest anymore! (laughs) He is so dead! Tink, do not make me go over there.”

HUDSON: I pick him up and I start carrying him along. “No. I fixed the bleeding. Let’s go.”

CAMERON: While they’re having this argument, since I guess Tink picked up the Human, Karma goes over and checks the Rodian for an ID badge or something.

NICK: They’re wearing orange jumpsuits with brown vests over them. on the vest you can see, it’s like the only part of the Human that’s not been obliterated, the Black Sun symbol. Besides that there’s no ID.

CAMERON: Okay. I’m gonna rip the patch off, and I’ll walk over to the Human and take the Human’s patch too. I’m just gonna start collecting Black Sun patches to turn in for bounties.

NICK: Hey! Good idea. You take those. Yeah. Y’all wanna move on? You’re carrying your new Human friend.

CAMERON: Our new pet.

LAURA: Xianna’s just shaking her head and just continuing to argue with Tink in whispers as we move forward.

HUDSON: Yeah.

NICK: Okay. So, as you continue on from there, there is a section of wall on your right that has been hit with some very heavy blaster fire. You can see a lot of dents and scorches on it. It looks like somebody just really laid into it. Off to your left you see a swooshy door that has been propped open. It looks like it was sliced and then someone jammed something into the track.

HUDSON: Okay… I’ve had a general purpose scanner this whole time. Sure.

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: You ever wanna use that? (laughs)

NICK: What does that do?

LAURA: It says what it does right there.

HUDSON: Motion sensor, lifeform tracking, up to 0.5 kilometers. Metal detection and intercepting standard frequency com transmissions, up to 1.5 kilometers.

NICK: That’s super useful.

CAMERON: We’ve had this the whole time?!

NICK: (laughs)

HUDSON: I’ll remember that this time.

CAMERON: Do you wanna scan for life signs?

HUDSON: Lifeform tracking… I guess it would be able to, but I already checked and it’s alive.

CAMERON: No, no, we’re not worried about your dude.

HUDSON: Oh.

NICK: Just the building in general?

CAMERON: We’re worried about the other 18 people.

LAURA: I imagine this happens, Tink walks a little bit ahead of Xianna, and Xianna’s like, “Tink… What is- Is that a scanner in your…”

CAMERON: (laughing) Sticking out of his backpack.

LAURA: “…in your little backpack?”

HUDSON: “Yeah. It’s just a general purpose scanner.”

LAURA: “We should use that! Does it not pick up lifeform sensor or something?”

HUDSON: “Ah. Yes, that is one of its many features.”

LAURA: “(huffs) So use it~”

HUDSON: “Great. Great. Hold on.” I take it out and I use it.

NICK: Sure. You find about nine lifeforms further into the area. You’re not sure exactly where, because you’re in a metal-lined underground bunker. It does mess with the sensor a little bit, but you can see a good pile of blips, looks to be about nine of them further in.

HUDSON: “There’s about nine figures further in to this hallway.”

CAMERON: “Okay. Keep us appraised.”

LAURA: “Yes. That is useful.”

HUDSON: “Alright. I mean, I’m dealing with, you know, this person right now, and the general purpose scanner, there’s a lot going on…”

LAURA: “He is so dead.”

CAMERON: “I’m not concerned about this person.”

LAURA: “So dead.”

NICK: I’m picturing this sensor as like the heartbeat scanner from Aliens. That’s what I think it looks like.

LAURA: Okay. Yeah.

NICK: It looks like a store scanner with little BBs.

LAURA: Yeah. I would imagine it’s that really standard Star Wars 70s-ish tech, so it’s not a digital readout screen, it is just…

NICK: Lights.

LAURA: …a few lights that light up on a little grid or something, so it’s not super informative.

NICK: Yep. Anyway, so you see the blaster fire on the walls. You can continue onward and you see a door that looks like they sliced it open electronically and then wedged something into it so it would stay open. In that room you see another body laying down, kind of around the corner, and then it looks to be some sort of lab. You can go and look in there, or you can continue onward.

CAMERON: I wanna get that badge.

NICK: Okay.

CAMERON: “I gotta go check out this body.”

LAURA: “Okay. Tink, you stay at the door, you keep watch, and then we will go in and get the badge I guess.”

HUDSON: “So, if this guy comes back to life, he’s our new squad mate, right??

LAURA: “Sure, why not. Uh-huh.”

CAMERON: “Mm-hmm.”

HUDSON: Alright. I’ll make sure that he’s kept safe, and I protect you guys too.”

CAMERON: “Great. Thanks.”

LAURA: “Got it. Okie.”

CAMERON: Sneak, sneak, sneak.

LAURA: And, sneak.

NICK: Yeah. As you enter through the doorway you see that the body is actually sliced in half. It looks fully cauterized, so the part of the body that you saw was torso to head and the legs are on the other side of the door. It is another Black Sun operative. I’m gonna go ahead and spend all those advantages you had earlier to just tell you, hey, this room is trapped. There’s traps in it.

CAMERON: Whaaat? Oh shiiit.

NICK: We’ll say, Karma, off of your advantages and probably Xianna, this looks to be some sort of motion detecting laser situation.

CAMERON: This looks to be a murder room.

NICK: Could be, yeah. Actually, when you look at it, it looks like a robotics lab. (laughs)

CAMERON: “A murder room.”

LAURA: “Is a murder room. Yes. Okie.”

CAMERON: So, for traps, do we make Perception checks as we go?

NICK: yeah, or Skulduggery. Probably Skulduggery for traps.

CAMERON: Oh. That’s not that much worse than my Perception.

LAURA: (musically) What is my thing for Skulduggery…? Skulduggery… What do I have in Coordination…?

CAMERON: What was the difficulty check?

NICK: This one’s gonna be hard.

CAMERON: Err, okay. Can I have—So this isn’t exactly what my talent does, but I want to argue for a blue die for it.

NICK: Okay.

CAMERON: Okay. For my Expert Tracker talent, I can remove black dice from checks to find tracks or track targets. I want to try and track the cut in half person’s path through the room to try and help me identify where the trap sprung.

NICK: Okay. I buy that, except that removes black dice.

CAMERON: yes, I know. I’m saying it doesn’t exactly fit, (laughs) but I’m looking for traps, and I’m trying to use the fact that I’m an Expert Tracker to do that.

NICK: Yeah, sure. If the blue die is your only success I’m gonna throw a monkey wrench in there, but otherwise go ahead.

CAMERON: (deep breath) Okay… It’s not my only success.

NICK: Okie-dokie. For our listeners at home, that’s absolutely not how that works, but I’m doing it anyway. Eh.

LAURA: Ooh. One success.

CAMERON: One success, one threat.

NICK: You’re able to see that the laser emitter isn’t in the walls like you expected. It’s a small box that’s actually sitting on one of these work stations. In this laboratory there’s a bunch of cybernetic parts in a rack along the wall, and you can see a kind of pillbox looking head sitting in a glass locked case up against another wall. There’s a computer terminal, and there is a small box with a laser emitter sitting on one of these work benches. There’s four work benches. It appears to be slowly tracking back and forth. It looks to be some sort of high powered weapon of sorts. You found it. Good job.

CAMERON: “(whispering) It’s that box.”

LAURA: “(whispering) Yes, it is that box. So, yes? You wanted the patch off the body?”

CAMERON: “I do. Yeah.” I want to try to get to where I’m behind its field of vision when it tracks to the other side, if it’s tracking back and forth.

NICK: Okay. it’s tracking back and forth. As you enter the room, the body is probably about two meters inside the room, and as you enter… I’m gonna need a Coordination check.

CAMERON: Ooh. Okay.

NICK: This one’s gonna be hard.

CAMERON: That’s okay. I have two blue dice on my Coordination checks.

NICK: Due to your Stalker talent!

CAMERON: Yup. I’m sure it’ll be fine.

LAURA: (musically) It’ll be fine.

CAMERON: yeah! Ys, wait… Ha-ha! One success. (laughs)

NICK: As you enter the room, you reach for the patch, you’re able to grab it, and then you see that laser emitter is a motion sensor, and the motion sensor must be in the box somewhere not on the laser emitter part, because as soon as you enter the arc where the body was cut in half it snaps to you and shoots a purple laser beam at you. It’s about as thick as your forearm. You snap your hand back and it blows a hole in the corpse, and it smells really bad. As you scramble backwards, using your threat from earlier, it actually fires again at you and goes over your head and hits the computer terminal, and the computer terminal catches on fire and shuts down. So, yup, but you got the patch. Good job.

CAMERON: Ah-ha!

LAURA: “Okie. Let’s get out of here… Let’s go! Okie!”

NICK: Tink, from where you’re sitting you hear them kind of crawl and then you hear a really loud BZZT, BZZZT, and then they come walking out. Karma is crouching pretty low on her way out of the room.

HUDSON: “What? What happened?”

CAMERON: “There’s a laser.”

LAURA: “There was a laser.”

HUDSON: “Oh. Oh… You know, I really should have mentioned that I actually have a mode for motion sensors on my general purpose scanner. It could have been useful, maybe. This has a lot of features.”

CAMERON: “But…”

LAURA: “I don’t think that’s how that works…”

HUDSON: Wait. Did they not go through a motion sensor?

CAMERON: No, we did, but…

NICK: It senses motion.

CAMERON: Does your motion sensor sense motion sensors?

LAURA: It’s motion sensor / lifeform tracking.

HUDSON: Oh!

(laughter)

NICK: It senses motion.

LAURA: It doesn’t sense motion sensors. It senses motion! (laughs)

HUDSON: (laughing) I thought it sensed motion sensors and I got really excited.

NICK: Actually, nope, canon. His senses motion sensors. He got the weird off-brand one from Tatooine.

HUDSON: (laughs)

NICK: Yeah. That’s official. That is now what that does.

CAMERON: You should walk in front with that then.

HUDSON: (laughing) The problem is now it doesn’t actually sense motion.

NICK: (laughing) yup.

HUDSON: It just senses motion sensors. (laughs) That’s so much less useful.

NICK: (laughs)

CAMERON: (laughing) It still senses life signs though, so that’s okay.

LAURA: It senses life signs, but it doesn’t tell you exactly where they are. It just tells you like a number, but it will sense motion sensors.

NICK: I love that so much.

CAMERON: Gosh.

NICK: Whatever electromagnetic pulse comes off of those, yours senses it.

HUDSON: Yup.

LAURA: I mean, it’s written on his character sheet now.

NICK: Yeah. I can’t wait until you walk into somewhere with technology. That’s gonna go great. It’s just gonna shut down.

LAURA: Okay. We continue down the hallway.

NICK: Great! So, as you continue down the hall you come to a small alcove. There is another Black Sun member. He has his back up against the wall. He’s a male Twi’lek, looks like he was gut shot, there’s a wound and he’s got one arm wrapped around it, and he’s leaning back, maybe unconscious, maybe dead. It looks like he took cover there and his compatriots left him. Looking into the alcove you can see some security monitors and what looks like some janitor stuff. It’s like a security monitor / janitor closet situation.

CAMERON: “Alright. The dude who was cut in half makes sense: lasers; all the people being shot are confusing and concerning me.”

LAURA: “No, no, no. So like, someone came in here with the exact same intent we have, just ahead of us, so they are killing the Black Sun members they encounter.”

HUDSON: “What if it’s someTHING?”

CAMERON: “I thought they WERE the Black Sun members?”

LAURA: “No, no, no. Somebody else.”

CAMERON: “There’s multiple groups in here?!” (laughs)

LAURA: “So, from what I think is happening, another group came in here and is killing the Black Sun members they encounter. I’m going to call them the B Team. The B Team is the ones who are sneaking into here. They are the intruders. The Black Sun members are just the collateral damage for them trying to get to the assassin droid as well.”

HUDSON: “Alternate theory.” I raise my hand.

CAMERON: “Okay. Yes? Yes Tink, please share.”

HUDSON: “Alternate theory: So, what if it’s the assassin droid with a gun?”

LAURA: “No.”

CAMERON: “See, that’s what I was thinking.”

LAURA: “But why would the assassin droid be going further into the building?”

HUDSON: “What’s its one function?”

LAURA: “I don’t know!”

CAMERON: “Assassinating!”

HUDSON: “Assassinating things.”

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: ‘I think it might actually have more than one function.”

HUDSON: “It’s the only one we know about right now.”

CAMERON: “We don’t know what its programming is.”

LAURA: “I mean, assassin, but…”

CAMERON: “Well, yes, but like skill-wise. Obviously assassinating, but what else? We don’t know what its programming is, if it’s supposed to defend the base. Is this a base? I don’t know.”

HUDSON: “What if it really doesn’t like Black Sun?”

CAMERON: “That’s true. Yeah.”

HUDSON: “Maybe it like, I don’t know, hurt its family. You know what, this is all speculation at this point, but I’m pretty much 100% sure it’s the assassin bot.”

LAURA: “Okay, so it is the assassin bot. What? I don’t… (groans)”

HUDSON: “let’s just keep going, and then we’ll find out.”

CAMERON: “Okay. I’ma take this badge.” (laughs)

NICK: You grab the badge. The body slides to the ground with a thump leaving a thick red streak behind it on the wall.

CAMERON: Do they have a blaster?

NICK: No, actually.

CAMERON: Dang! Guys, none of these guys have had weapons.

LAURA: “Actually, that makes no sense.”

CAMERON: “Yeah.”

HUDSON: How’s my buddy doing?

NICK: Um, kinda soggy. You did stop the bleeding, you used  a lot of tourniquets and things, no more blood is coming out, but pretty blood drenched in general. You can make a Medicine check to check on him again if you’d like.

CAMERON: We’re adopting a gang member. (laughs)

LAURA: “Tink! That body is dead!”

HUDSON: “It’s not dead.”

LAURA: “Even if not, they are Black Sun.”

NICK: It’s going to be easy again, but with two black dice because you’re very convinced at this point.

LAURA: “We do not need this in our lives.”

HUDSON: “They’ll be so relieved that they’re alive that they’ll have to join us.”

CAMERON: “Hmm…”

HUDSON: Three successes, one … threat?

LAURA: Yes.

NICK: So, while they’re busy trying to loot this dead Twi’lek, you sit your buddy down and you feel for a pulse. You don’t feel anything. You get concerned. You check for other life signs. He’s not breathing. He’s got no pulse. It seems that he slipped away since you saved him earlier.

HUDSON: Without yelling or anything, because that would be too emotional, I do the actions like I’m yelling and slam my fist onto his chest.

CAMERON: (laughs) In agony.

LAURA: “Tink! We told you. He was already dead!”

NICK: There’s a soft crunching noise…

CAMERON: Ew.

NICK: …because you’re real strong. The body jerks a little, but yeah.

LAURA: “Tink, I swear to the goddess, I fi have to come over there and just shoot you I will.”

HUDSON: I take my two fingers and close their eyelids.

NICK: They go down and then they pop back open, because that’s super not how that works.

HUDSON: (laughs)

LAURA: yeah, that is not how that works in real life. It’s difficult.

NICK: Yeah. Eyes, once they stay open they’re open.

HUDSON: It didn’t work, so I’m just like “Okay,” and then I leave the body.

NICK: (laughs) Okay. there’s a crunched, no longer bleeding corpse in the hallway.

CAMERON: “That was an admirable job you did there, Tink.”

HUDSON: “Thank you. I wish more people appreciated my work and long hours to become a doctor.”

LAURA: (through gritted teeth) ‘He was already dead, and you are most certainly not a doctor! You didn’t even graduate from just computer school.”

HUDSON: “Whoa. Hit me at the core here.”

LAURA: “Yes! You have to go to school and get some sort of license to become a doctor!”

CAMERON: “Not if he’s a con artist doctor. I mean, he knows his medicine. That much is obvious.”

HUDSON: “I do know my medicine. I read a book.”

CAMERON: “He knows that if you’re trying to remove glass, if you push on the skin around it the glass just pops out.”

LAURA: “(sighs) I mean, Tink, are you an… Okay. We used to have this conversation with Sabos. Are you a con artist as well?”

CAMERON: I feel like it’s very obvious to Xianna that Karma’s being sarcastic, and I feel like Tink does not get it. (smiling)

HUDSON: No. (laughs) “Con artist? Depends on your definition. (exhales)”

LAURA: “Okay, so no.” Xianna just turns around and starts walking away. “I am so done with this.” You can just hear her, like… ‘I don’t understand why this keeps happening to me. No. Just, why can’t I get competent crew members?”

CAMERON: Um, excuse me. (laughs)

NICK: So, you continue down the hallway. The hallway branches in kind of a Y shape. You hear some blaster fire, and you hear someone yell “Get it! Get it! Get it!” There’s gunfire as you’re approaching. You’re not sure which direction it came from, but you can make me a Perception check if you want.

LAURA & CAMERON: Okay!

NICK: This one’s gonna be hard because of the acoustics of the room. That’s not really a thing I thought I would say.

CAMERON: Karma got a success and two threats.

LAURA: Two failures and three advantages.

HUDSON: Three successes and three threats.

NICK: Okay… Here’s what happens. Xianna, you’re pretty sure that the gunfire must have come from the left. It’s a more narrow corridor. There’s a lot of crates and stuff lining it for cover. If there was a gunfight it must have come from that way. Karma and Tink, you’re pretty sure that the gunfire must have come from the right direction which is a wider empty hallway that curves around a corner and you can’t really see what’s further that way.

LAURA: “Okay, so it is the left.”

CAMERON: “Right.”

HUDSON: “Mm… Right.”

CAMERON: “No, no, not left.”

LAURA: “Yes. Correct.” (laughs)

CAMERON: “No. Not correct. It is the right hallway.”

HUDSON: “I agree with Karma.”

CAMERON: “Not the left hallway.”

LAURA: “yes, the left hallway is the right hallway.”

CAMERON: “No. No, no, no. Not the left hallway.”

LAURA: “But yes, the left hallway…”

CAMERON: “Nope. We’re gonna go down the correct hallway which is the right hallway.”

LAURA: “Tink!”

NICK: Tink falls prone. (dramatic bass noise)

(laughter)

LAURA: No!

NICK: He had three threats. He falls prone.

LAURA: “Tink.”

HUDSON: ‘Whoa!”

LAURA: “Okay. Which direction did you hear?”

CAMERON: “What are you doing, Tink? Get up.”

LAURA: “What are you even doing?”

HUDSON: “I… I fell. Listen, I—“

LAURA: “How are you-? Why do you fall all the time?!”

CAMERON: “We were just standing here!”

HUDSON: “Coordination…” I literally have nothing in Coordination.

(laughter)

LAURA: “Just stand up! It is not that difficult! Which direction did you hear?”

HUDSON: ‘Right.”

CAMERON: “Right!”

LAURA: “(sighs) Okay, right.”

HUDSON: “Right!”

CAMERON: “yeah! Correct.”

NICK: Alright. So you go the right fork?

CAMERON: Yes.

LAURA: Whatever the successful people were told.

CAMERON: (laughs) The right fork.

LAURA: The right fork.

NICK: Okay. You continue down that hallway. It’s surprisingly long before it turns. The corridor makes about a 45 degree turn to the left. You see two corpses littered with blaster fire right there, like stuff stuck in a grease trap in a sink, just kind of smooshed up against the wall. You hear a loud explosion, and you turn around the corner and you see what looks like a motor pool. It’s a wide open room, it’s got a speeder in the far left corner, and then large toolboxes with a lot of tools and parts on it. There’s about four of those scattered around. You see five Black Sun members. One of them is standing over a fallen droid. It’s rust colored, it’s kind of spindly, but has an armored front chest plate and has kind of a bug-like looking head with little slits for eyes and two antennae sticking off the back that are kind of short. The droid is smashed up against the wall and appears to be down. The guy kicks it and says, “Well, it’s no good to us dead.” That’s the scene that you walk up to.

CAMERON: I’m gonna say we don’t step around the corner. (laughs)

HUDSON: Yeah, let’s chill here for a second.

CAMERON: Yeah. (laughs)

NICK: Do you guys get the three heads peeking around the corner Scooby Doo style?

LAURA: Oh yes, certainly.

CAMERON: yes, but Tink is on the bottom.

HUDSON: Yeah.

CAMERON: It doesn’t make sense what order our heads are in.

LAURA: Yeah, it goes Tink, karma, Xianna.

CAMERON: yeah.

LAURA: That’s how that works.

NICK: Well that’s what I was picturing.

LAURA: Yeah!

CAMERON: yeah. I mean, that’s the only way we could have done it.

NICK: Okay. So you look around the corner, you see that, and the guy who was poking at the droid… They’re all wearing those orange jumpsuits with the brown vests. He is a Human with blonde hair that’s kind of spiked up. He turns around and they start arguing with each other about what they’re gonna do now.

LAURA: How close is the nearest pile of boxes? In my head I’m imagining like… crates?

NICK: Yeah, but they’re like the really big, metal ones that don’t make a lot of sense.

LAURA: Yeah, but so like a large 5 by 5, kind of?

NICK: From where you are in the corner you’ve got probably 30 meters into the actual room and then another 10 meters to the first set of boxes to hide behind. It’s a decent distance.

LAURA: A decent trek to the boxes.

NICK: yeah. One might even say you are at a long range band from them right now.

CAMERON: Ooh.

LAURA: “Okay, so…”

HUDSON: “I have an idea.”

LAURA: “My gun does not shoot very far. Tink, you do mostly the close quarters combat. So Karma is the only one really who does the long range.”

HUDSON: ‘I have a thought.”

LAURA: “yes?”

CAMERON: “yes? What’s your thing?”

HUDSON: “So, my idea is that we actually don’t engage yet for once, and we just wait and see if they come to us or if they keep going down the corridor and leave the robot.”

CAMERON: ‘if it’s no use to them dead, it is use to us dead.”

HUDSON: “What’s a robot? They leave the droid.”

NICK: (laughs)

CAMERON: ‘I was just gonna bypass that weird term you used, but yes.”

LAURA: “yes, I’m not sure what a robot is. If they just said it is no use to us dead, that is probably the droid they were trying to get, meaning the droid we were trying to get.”

HUDSON: “What if we wait until they walk away?”

LAURA: “But they probably won’t walk away if that is the droid they are here for.”

HUDSON: “Ohh.”

LAURA: “Do you understand that they are probably arguing over what to do now that they think it is broken? So, I was thinking we would sneak to the boxes, they are pretty far away but it would be cover, and then we shoot them.”

CAMERON: Does there look to be an exit from this room, or are they gonna have to come back down this hallway?

NICK: It’s hard to tell, because you’re in a narrow corridor and the room spreads out. You can’t see any doors from where you’re at. It’s pretty obvious from the trail of bodies at this point that they came this way.

HUDSON: “What if we cause a distraction by throwing something down the hallway so they have to come this way, and then I just get them all with my vibro-axe, like bang, boom, bang.”

LAURA: “Okay, so there are five of them. Maybe if we made a slight distraction we can pick them off one by one, but all five would probably be a bit of a difficult situation.”

CAMERON: “If we want to hide, we think they’re gonna come back this way, we can duck back into that other hallway that had the boxes in it where they wouldn’t see us. Then they’d walk past us to get to the exit. Their ship’s over by that exit, so they’re probably gonna walk back this way. Running into this giant room when they all have blasters and we’re not the most heavily equipped blaster-wise just doesn’t seem all that bright to me. It’s something Sabos would have done, so I’m kind of cautious against it.”

HUDSON: “I may have been distracted for part of that, so I’ll follow Karma to the end of the earth.”

CAMERON: (laughs) Perfect.

LAURA: “Okay. So let’s go back to that like janitor closet, go in there, maybe there will be something useful, and then wait for them there? Is that it?”

CAMERON: “Somewhere back along the hallway where they’re gonna have to walk past us, behind a crate or something. If we can get cover and be in cover as they come towards us this is ideal.”

LAURA: “Assuming they come back this way. Yes.”

CAMERON: ‘Yes.”

NICK: So, you’re going towards the hallway with the crates, or you’re going to the janitor closet?

CAMERON: Probably janitor closet first.

NICK: That’s further away. Is that okay?

HUDSON: Oh, it is?

NICK: Yeah. The janitor closet was before the fork. The hallway with the crates is at the fork.

HUDSON: Oh.

LAURA: “Assuming they have to come back here, if we go now before they come back it probably won’t matter too much which.”

CAMERON: “Okay, here. I’ma go setup behind one of the crates in the other hallway so that I’m here at this fork in the hallway. If y’all wanna go look at the janitor closet and then melee it up, Tink, you can do that.”

HUDSON: “Alright.”

CAMERON: “I’m gonna have my blaster out though and just be sitting here and wait.”

HUDSON: “Alright. I can go with this plan.”

CAMERON: “And I can com y’all when I hear them coming.”

LAURA: “Okay, so yeah. You can flank them! Wait for them to walk a little bit, and then you are behind them… and then you can shoot them, in the back. Yes! Okay. Tink, you and I, janitor closet.”

HUDSON: “Janitor closet!”

LAURA: “Janitor closet. Go!”

NICK: As you take off down the hall, Karma you’re a little bit behind them, you hear the leader of the group go, “Well, I guess we’ll take it with us. Maybe they’ll be able to salvage something.”

Two of them try and pick it up and go, “Aw man, it’s heavier than it looks.”

The leader says, “Well, grab that weird gun too, because I think that’s important.” And they start to head down the hallway.

CAMERON: Since I’m at the corner, and you said it’s a fair distance to get to where we were at the corner, I probably waited until they started moving to head to the other hallway to get cover so that we had more of a range of knowing closer to when the time was.

NICK: Sure. You come to the fork…

CAMERON: “They’re coming down the hallway now.”

LAURA: “Okie!”

NICK: The first crate is about 15 meters from the fork. You can see it’s a narrow hallway with crates. They’re just wooden crates full of (mumbles). They stagger left and right down the hallway so it’s kind of a windy path. You set up. Can I get a Stealth check, please? This one’s gonna be average.

HUDSON: Who’s doing the Stealth check?

NICK: karma is. Don’t worry about it.

CAMERON: I’m sure it’s fine… One success, four advantages.

NICK: Alright. I’ll say you can use those advantages to boost your potential initiative roll after you ambush them, so remember that. You’re able to duck quietly behind some of the crates, and you hear something further down the hallway but whatever it is doesn’t seem to notice you.

CAMERON: (whispering) “Guys, I think there’s something in this hallway.” (laughs)

LAURA: ‘I mean, you are in the hallway.”

CAMERON: “I mean, obviously it’s not me.” (laughs)

LAURA: ‘Is it the Black Sun? You know they are here.” (laughs)

CAMERON: “I don’t know~ We’ll see. I’m just gonna watch both directions.”

LAURA: “Okay~” (laughs)

NICK: Around then you start hearing the clip-clomp of gangster feet as people come around the hallway.

CAMERON: (whispered) “They’re coming!”

NICK: They make it to the fork. You can hear them arguing about who has to carry this stupid droid, it’s so heavy, they stop and trade out. Everybody seems to be carrying either the droid, or you see a long looking rifle but it has a lot of different barrels on the front and they’re not all the same length, and it appears to be fed with a different kind of power pack. It’s a very weird looking gun. It also looks kind of like a prototype, like it’s not a finished product, it’s just a thing. They stop there for a minute. Do you do anything, or do you let them continue on?

CAMERON: I let them continue on until they all have their backs to me.

NICK: Okay. They continue down the hallway. I’m gonna need Cool checks from everybody.

LAURA: Cool!

CAMERON: Hey.

HUDSON: Oh no…

(laughter)

NICK: This is how well you do ambushes.

LAURA: Any difficulty?

NICK: A Cool check, it’s just initiative.

CAMERON: Karma got three successes and two advantages.

NICK: Nice.

LAURA: Xianna got three successes and two advantages.

NICK: Wow.

LAURA: I’m cool~

HUDSON: Rolling two green, I got two successes and two advantages.

NICK: Wow.

CAMERON: Nice!

NICK: Can you roll me two yellows and a green?

CAMERON: Two successes, two advantages.

NICK: Can you roll me a yellow and a green?

CAMERON: One success, two advantages.

NICK: And two green?

CAMERON: A success and an advantage.

NICK: Alright. Let me throw this initiative order together real quick. We got Player, Player, NPC, Player, NPC, NPC. That’s how it’s gonna work. Y’all have about five advantages to work with here. Is there anything you would like to add to this setting or scene that you would like to use in your favor.

HUDSON: Can I happen to have something, maybe like a robot defibrillator?

CAMERON: (giggles)

HUDSON: Sorry, a droid defibrillator, something to revive a droid.

LAURA: I mean, that would just be like a toolkit.

HUDSON: yeah. I feel like I just would have that. Right?

CAMERON: Yeah, you just have that.

LAURA: If we get to the janitorial closet…

NICK: There’s probably  a bunch of tools and stuff in there. Yeah.

LAURA: …there’s gonna be toolkits.

HUDSON: Perfect. Okay.

LAURA: I would like there to be some sort of can of grease or oil that we can pop back out of the closet and throw further down the hallway so that when they walk that way it’s slippery.

NICK: (smiling) Sure. There’s a big can that says Star Wars Lube.

CAMERON: Yes!

LAURA: (laughs) Just an industrial tub of KY jelly.

NICK: It says Star Wars Lube, Danger: Flammable.

HUDSON: (laughs)

LAURA: Yes!

NICK: Okay. That’s probably three of them. you got two left. Want to spend something, Cameron?

CAMERON: Um… I have cover already. What range are they at from me now, having walked a little bit past me to be in front of me?

NICK: Medium.

CAMERON: Okay.

NICK: The other thing you’re gonna run into is if they make it all the way to the janitor closet there’s gonna be a wall in the way, you’re not gonna be able to see them from the crates, so you may have to move up. Right now you can still see them. they’re about half way between your hallway and the closet.

CAMERON: I guess if there’s some sort of pipe we could shoot to have steam go everywhere or something.

NICK: Oh yeah. The whole facility has those all over the ceilings.

HUDSON: (laughs)

CAMERON: Yeah. I just want some pipes that we can make steam go to make visibility a little more difficult for them.

NICK: Sure. That’s there. You identify it quite handily from your experience. So, there’s a player slot first. They’re about half way between the two of you, probably at medium range to each. Who wants to go first.

LAURA: Tink and Xianna are in the janitor closet waiting. Before this all goes down as we’re just on the com setting things up, Xianna’s just sitting there shaking her leg up and down. ‘Uh… Okay. I’m just gonna go ahead and do this.” She reaches into her pockets and pulls out a bag of impact, and takes it, and is just… “Okie. Heh. I’m a lot better. That is, uh, going to help.”

HUDSON: “Good for you.”

LAURA: “yes. You want any?”

HUDSON: “No. you should know by now. No.”

LAURA: “I mean, I also have some glitterstim. That will really mess you up. Yes.”

HUDSON: “Ugh. I need to be focused. I need to be on my game.”

LAURA: “yeah, so the impact.”

HUDSON: “No…”

LAURA: “it really helps you focus. It does.”

HUDSON: “Uh… N- I’m- … I am drug-free, I’m proud to say.”

LAURA: “I mean, okay.”

CAMERON: Dare to be drug-free!

HUDSON: (laughs)

LAURA: ‘I will respect that, but you know, if you want it I have it. Cool.”

HUDSON: “Cool.”

LAURA: “Okie. Let’s kill some people!” (laughs)

CAMERON: Probably since they’re in the closet and Karma can see the Black Sun members, she probably goes first so that her blaster shot lets them know hey they’re in position.

NICK: Okay.

LAURA: I would imagine that.

HUDSON: And if they turn around I can come from behind.

CAMERON: And then they turn around to face me, and Tink can axe them in the back.

NICK: Sure.

CAMERON: Since Karma’s already in cover, she’s going to use her maneuver to take aim at the gang member who’s carrying the big, weird-looking gun.

NICK: Okay. You’re at medium range, so that would be average.

CAMERON: Mm-hmm! And I got my blue die. That is two successes, two advantages.

NICK: How much damage does that do?

CAMERON: Eleven~

NICK: Phew. Okay. Yeah, so you pop up from cover and shoot that guy. You hit him right between the shoulder blades and he just drops. Yeah. He goes down, the gun goes skittering down the hallway in front of him, and people start to turn around and try to see where the gunfire came from. Yeah, so that guy is down, good work.

CAMERON: I did shoot with stun. My gun is default to stun.

NICK: Right, so you stun that guy. Okay.

CAMERON: And my advantages, I want them to be that everyone turns to look at where the blaster came from, so whichever one of Tink or Xianna goes next gets a blue die, because they’re now coming from behind.

NICK: Yeah, that makes sense. You confuse them. Up next is another player slot.

LAURA: Xianna will go next since we are shooting. She’s gonna lean outside the janitor closet and… medium range?

NICK: Yup.

LAURA: Okay, and shoot just whichever one is closest.

NICK: So mechanically there’s the grunts, there’s three of them, and then there’s the leader guy. He’s got his own slot. Do you want to shoot at the group or the leader?

LAURA: I’ll do the group.

NICK: Okay.

LAURA: That’s two?

NICK: Should be, unless yours is short range. If it’s short range then it’s…

LAURA: The range of my gun is medium, but I do increase the difficulty by one for beyond short range.

NICK: Okay, so then it’s three I guess.

CAMERON: I thought it was within short range, or less.

NICK: Hers is because it’s a short range gun, or it’s a medium range but she filed it up.

CAMERON: Oh, okay.

LAURA: Yeah. I have a filed frontsight so I get innate Quickdraw, but it means anything beyond short range is increased in difficulty.

CAMERON: Okay. I thought it was flipped. I thought it was anything less than short range was increased difficulty.

NICK: No, that’s you. Your gun gets harder if you’re closer.

CAMERON: Well yeah, it’s big. (chuckles)

LAURA: I would also aim since I’m not taking any other maneuvers.

NICK: Sure.

LAURA: Oh shit. Heh… There’s a triumph but no success, one failure, and three advantages. (pause) yeah.

(laughter)

NICK: So… Since it’s group combat I’ll say you can use the triumph to take one down, because that’s how that works. If you’d like to do that you can.

LAURA: Yeah. I’ll do that for the group, and then I’d like those advantages to be passed, that my laser blaster kind of ricochets so they don’t actually look back at the janitor’s closet, they’re kind of looking the other direction because they think that’s where it came from.

NICK: Sure. They’re confused.

HUDSON: (laughs)

LAURA: Yeah. They’re just confused about where the laser fire actually came from, which would give Tink a blue die, because they might not expect him to come from that direction.

NICK: Sure, makes sense to me, and I don’t have any dark side points to play with so this ambush is going very well for y’all so far.

CAMERON: Ha-ha!

LAURA: Ha-ha.

NICK: So yeah, you drop him, Tink’s gonna have a blue die on whatever he chooses to do, but it’s an NPC slot right now. The leader of the group is going to pull a blaster rifle off of his back and he’s going to see that Karma has leaned out from behind cover and taken a shot at him. He is going to do a really cool action roll forward. ‘They’re trying to shoot us!” And takes a shot at Karma.

CAMERON: How observant. (laughs)

NICK: He is two yellows and a green, and it’s medium range so it’ll be two, but he’ll get a black die because you’re in cover.

CAMERON: Hey, good job, Cameron. That’s two failures and one advantage.

NICK: Great. The advantage… don’t worry about it. The failure, he shoots at you but his action roll was so cool that he didn’t actually aim particularly well. His maneuver is he is moving towards you, but he misses, so that’s his turn. Now we’re up to another player slot. Tink, whatcha gonna do?

HUDSON:  Alright. I haven’t fought in a while. Maneuver, and then I get to do an action?

NICK: Yeah. You can do an attack or a main action, you have a maneuver, you can do little things no big deal, and if you take a strain you can do an extra maneuver if you want.

HUDSON: Got it. My maneuver’s gonna be running towards them.

NICK: Yeah. For medium range, if you maneuver and then take a strain to do another maneuver you can close with them, you can be in melee range in one go and hit them.

HUDSON: Okay. I’ll do that, actually.

NICK: Okay, so take a strain, because it’s one to get from medium to short and another to get from short to engaged.

HUDSON: Okay. I’m going to go to the group and just try to axe one of them in the back. I don’t think they were facing me.

NICK: (smiling) Everybody made their advantages that people weren’t going to wonder what was going on with the janitor closet, so you’re able to basically just activate your axe, run right up to them, nobody knows you’re there… which is a little messed up.

CAMERON: And you get a blue die.

HUDSON: Ooh, yeah, I do. And the difficulty is?

NICK: Two.

CAMERON: Always two.

NICK: Always two, but they’re not exactly wearing body armor, so…

HUDSON: Oh my. Three successes, three threats.

NICK: How much damage does your axe do? I think it’s three plus your Brawn.

HUDSON: Yes, so six.

NICK: Plus the successes, so nine?

CAMERON: Plus another three.

HUDSON: Yeah.

NICK: Cool. The two guys from the group who are still standing are carrying the droid. How do you want to cut one of these guys up? What are you aiming for?

HUDSON: I only get to cut one?

NICK: Yeah. You only kill one of them. They have a decent amount of health.

HUDSON: Dang it. Alright. I do this cool anime jump with both of my legs in the air, knees bent, and come downwards and cross it across the top right corner of his head all the way down through his torso.

CAMERON: (laughing) Oh gosh.

NICK: Okay. You bisect this guy pretty cleanly. We get that horrible shot of the body sliding a little before it collapses.

HUDSON: Just like from that Star Wars movie when the ship’s like cut open.

(laughter)

CAMERON: I gotcha. Yeah.

NICK: And then the legs of the droid get dropped, there’s a really loud clang, that guy is very down, and this group is having a rough time. Good ambush, y’all.

CAMERON: We did so good at planning! (smiling)

NICK: Yeah! You do that. The final guy holding the droid says, “Kriff this!” and drops the droid, and pulls out a blaster pistol. He is very close to Tink, but he is going to try and shoot him in the face real quick.

HUDSON: (feigned fright) “Nooo…”

NICK: That is one green die. It’s only one purple though, because he’s at short range and he’s got a pistol.

CAMERON: Okay. Do you wanna roll it, Hudson?

NICK: Yeah, that’s it.

HUDSON: Really?

NICK: Yup.

HUDSON: One advantage.

NICK: Yeah, great. So, he shoots and the head honcho man sees that you are there, Tink, and he is now thinking quickly and tactically. Also, down to the next slot, three people from further into the box hallway having been alerted by all the gunfire and the threats that my characters have rolled, poke their heads up and go… “What the kriff?!” and they start to shoot at Karma. They’ll have cover this time. They’re going to spend their maneuver to get up to the first row of cover. They’re running and gunning so we won’t mess with that, but next time you’ll have to pick who you’re gonna have cover between.

CAMERON: Okay.

NICK: They are going to shoot at Karma. I need you to roll one yellow and two green. For those at home, I’m using the Mass Combat rules for groups of henchmen. It’s pretty great.

CAMERON: They’re at medium, so it’s two?

NICK: Yup.

CAMERON: Two advantages.

NICK: (huffs) So much for my high-stakes fight, huh? They shoot some more, there’s some lovely pyrotechnics, you all are protected by your plot armor…

HUDSON: (laughs)

NICK: …and the head honcho boss guy is wondering what he pays these people for.

CAMERON: We’re being protected by our great planning skills.

NICK: Well, that too.

LAURA: And the dice.

CAMERON: (smiling) And the dice, the dice liked us.

NICK: In fact, the head honcho boss man says, “What am I even paying you all for?” And we’re back to the top of the initiative with a player slot.

LAURA: Xianna will shoot the head guy this time.

NICK: Okay. He’s at medium range.

LAURA: She’s gonna aim, and I’m gonna go ahead and flip a light side point for that.

NICK: Might as well.

LAURA: Because might as well.

NICK: Ah-ha-ha. … Oh, swap one of those purples out for a red. He has Adversary 1. I forgot to mention that. You can pick which one you want to get rid of since I didn’t tell you soon enough.

CAMERON: A despair. (laughs)

LAURA: Thank you!

(laughter)

LAURA: Two successes and a despair that has no failure.

NICK: Okay. Hey, one of the despair things I can do is ‘ranged weapons run out of ammunition.’ Isn’t that interesting?

LAURA: Cool…

NICK: Another one is ‘ranged attack hits character engaged with target.’ He’s not technically engaged.

CAMERON: No one is currently engaged with him. (laughs) They’re still in the courting phase, not engaged yet.

LAURA: Yes.

NICK: Yeah… So, what I’m going to do is, that initiative slot is now being used last in the initiative order. That’s one off the sheet. Isn’t that cool? That doesn’t mean you get to reuse it. It means if it goes to another round it’ll go down. What that looks like is, Xianna pops around the corner and she takes a shot. How much damage does she do?

LAURA: That would be eight damage.

NICK: Woo-hoo. He does not like that. It hits him pretty good. It hits him in the back of the arm and he drops. Xianna starts to get real, real, real jittery, and kind of has some muscle spasms going on and some double vision, and has to duck back around the corner and collect herself, and loses some time trying to get back in the zone.

CAMERON: Auto Zone.

LAURA: (laughs) Yeah.

HUDSON: God.

CAMERON: (giggles)

NICK: But yeah, that fun side effect brought to you buy Fantasy Flight Game, Star Wars: Edge of the Empire roleplaying game. You hit him, he did not like it, it appeared to do some pretty solid damage to him… and we’re to another player slot.

CAMERON: “Y’all got this, right?” Karma says, turning away from the fight that she was fighting in and facing the guys coming down her hallway now.

HUDSON: “Yeah.”

LAURA: ‘Maybe. I think so! Maybe. (giggles) Sure!”

HUDSON: “Of course.”

CAMERON: She’s gonna run from the crate she was at to the one in front of her so that she’s still shooting over a crate and has cover, but is now just having cover the other way.

NICK: Sure.

CAMERON: And she’s going to shoot at those dudes.

NICK: Okay. You’re at close range, because they’re also running towards those same crates. Is that going to negatively affect you?

CAMERON: I don’t know. Hold on.

NICK: What are your weapon’s trait things?

CAMERON: Ranged heavy, medium, stun setting.

NICK: Yeah. I think you can just shoot them, so it should be easy.

CAMERON: Okay, but do they have cover currently if they’re running towards the boxes, or are they in between at the moment?

NICK: We’ll say they’re up in the air.

CAMERON: If I ran up to get cover again, that was my maneuver. Right?

NICK: Yup. You could take a strain to still aim if you wanted to.

CAMERON: Nah. I’ll flip a light side point though to really upgrade this.

NICK: Great.

CAMERON: (laughs) Three yellows against one purple. Four successes.

NICK: How much damage is that?

CAMERON: Thirteen.

NICK: Ooh. Yeah, you got enough to roll out. You take out two of the dudes.

CAMERON: Ha-ha!

NICK: What does that look like? You shoot them in the face with your stun setting?

CAMERON: Well I shoot one of them, as he’s running towards me he kind of does a thing where his upper body falls backwards but his legs keep moving for a second, and his blaster comes up and he just smacks his friend in the face and it breaks his nose into his brain and he dies.

NICK: Oh. Great.

HUDSON: (laughs)

NICK: That’s pretty intense.

CAMERON: Yup! (laughs) But it wasn’t Karma that killed him, his friend killed him, so it’s okay!

NICK: I think Karma probably killed the drug lord.

CAMERON: Eh, it’s fine.

NICK: Get it? Like karma, like karmic justice. I made a joke. (smiling)

LAURA: No.

HUDSON: Nuh-uh.

CAMERON: What?!

NICK: No?

CAMERON: I don’t think that was a joke, babe.

HUDSON: (laughs)

NICK: Oh… Okay. Anyway! That brings us to an NPC slot. Boss guy is going to level his gun at Tink who is at close range and try to shoot him while Tink is busy dealing with the guys standing over the fallen assassin droid. That is two yellows and a green. Can you flip me a dark side point to upgrade that to three yellows, please?

CAMERON: It’s one purple, because you said close?

NICK: Yes. This might hurt real bad.

CAMERON: I’m sure it’ll be fine. … Oh shit, no. That is three successes and a triumph.

HUDSON: Egh…

NICK: So that’s 13 damage, because he’s using Karma’s gun.

CAMERON: You get soak.

HUDSON: Yeah.

NICK: And I would like to roll a crit please, with my triumph.

LAURA: We have a chart.

CAMERON: It’s a 96.

NICK: OOH!

LAURA: OOH! Bye Tink! (laughs)

HUDSON: Nooo!

CAMERON: No, it’s not 140-something.

NICK: Crippled: One limb is impaired until healed/replaced.

HUDSON: Not my typing arm!

CAMERON: Shit! (laughs)

NICK: Plus one difficulty to all checks using that limb. I’ll let you pick. What limb do you want to be impaired?

HUDSON: My left leg.

NICK: Your left leg. Any kind of moving that you’re doing, and I’m gonna say attacking with your axe you probably attack with your legs for more strength, so it applies to attacks too. He rolls towards you, and from very close range he sets the gun to burst, and he says, “I’ve always hated Wookies!” He shoots a three-blast into your kneecap and just tears it up real bad.

LAURA: (shouting) That is racist!”

CAMERON: (shouting) “He is not a Wookie!”

NICK: “Uh- Oh, really?” And then we’re gonna go to the next initiative slot. (laughs)

CAMERON: “Learn yourself!”

NICK: I guess it’s Tink, actually.

HUDSON: Yep. Give me a second, I’m writing down ‘left leg goners.’

CAMERON: Yup. (laughs)

NICK: Crippled. You didn’t actually lose it. It’s savable.

HUDSON: So, I’m like, “(shouts and groans in pain).”

NICK: “See, a Wookie!”

CAMERON: (smiling) ‘No!”

HUDSON: “No, I’m a Gigoran you kriffin’… (grumbling snarl).” Alright. Am I close? Am I like short range to him?

NICK: You can do a maneuver to get to that guy if you want.

HUDSON: Yeah, I want to get to that guy in particular.

CAMERON: (laughs) He’s got a purple and a red, right? Because he’s Adversary?

NICK: Yeah, one of those purples is a red.

HUDSON: Oh. That’s right, because from now it’s that way.

NICK: Well, yours is an extra purple, so it’s two purples and a red, because it adds a difficulty and the red is because he has Adversary which means it’s harder to attack him. Those are for like big bads. He’s just not that big or bad.

HUDSON: Three threats and two successes.

NICK: Okay… You hit him, it does eight damage. Ooh. He takes it in the shoulder, he looks like he’s in very bad shape and he’s not doing well. There’s a lot of blood and he gets a look on his face of someone who’s thinking, ‘I’m at least gonna take one of these suckers with me.’ He kicks out at you as the axe bites into his shoulder and hits you in your injured knee, and you fall prone. (dramatic bass noise)

HUDSON: “Ow! This always happens to me!”

LAURA: “Your center of gravity is just off.”

CAMERON: (laughs)

HUDSON: “No, this was a leg this time!”

LAURA: “I know, but I think your center of gravity is also off! Maybe you should try some yoga or something, maybe center yourself!”

HUDSON: “Where’s the lube?! Knock them prone, all of them!”

NICK: (laughs)

CAMERON: “We do have that yoga studio if you sink the hot tub!”

LAURA: ‘Wait, are we inviting them back? Is that why the lube is…?”

CAMERON: “No!” (laughs)

LAURA: “Oh no! Yes! We were going to throw it down the hallway! It is too late for that!” (laughs)

CAMERON: ((laughs)

HUDSON: (weakly) “Alright…”

NICK: We are up to an NPC slot. We’re going to do the one dude left facing Karma. He’s going to actually get up close and pull out a vibro-knife and try and stab Karma. “You shot Morty!”

CAMERON: (snorts, giggles)

NICK: He only has one green, because you took out all his buddies.

CAMERON: Aww. Nada.

NICK: Yeah. How do you stop him from stabbing you, like a cool person?

CAMERON: So, I have my carbine on a harness, so I’m gonna let go of my carbine for a second and I want to turn and pull out my vibro-sword slightly and catch his knife on my vibro-sword.

NICK: Ooh, very cool.

HUDSON: Ooh.

CAMERON: Yep.

NICK: Then do you re-sheath it or do you draw it?

CAMERON: I re-sheathe it.

NICK: (laughs) Okay. You just (sound effects of unsheathing, blocking, and re-sheathing), and then grab your gun again?

CAMERON: Yeah.

NICK: Cool. Well, he’s useless. We’re back to the top of the order with a player slot. Right now we have one guy engaged with Karma, one guy standing over the assassin droid just waving his gun around looking useless, and the big boss man who just kicked Tink down to the ground and is standing over him with an assault rifle.

LAURA: Xianna’s gonna lean out of the closet and shoot the big baddie by Tink, help him out. She’s gonna aim and everything. Let’s see…

CAMERON: Two purples for the distance.

LAURA: Yeah.

NICK: Yes! Yes!

LAURA: (nervously) Okay!

(laughter)

NICK: Here we go.

LAURA: So what I have is a despair and a triumph. I don’t… I would assume the success of the triumph cancels out the failure of the despair.

CAMERON: Yes.

LAURA: So I have a failure-less despair and a success-less triumph.

NICK: Here’s what the despair is going to be. I was reading it earlier. Ranged attack hits character engaged with target. So you’re gonna hit Tink. You didn’t have any successes so it’s just going to be the base damage.

HUDSON: Nooo.

NICK: What’s the base damage on your pistol, Xianna?

LAURA: Six.

NICK: That’s six damage going at Tink. Are you still conscious?

HUDSON: Oh yeah. I have five left.

NICK: Oh bummer.

CAMERON: He’s strong.

HUDSON: I’m stronk.

NICK: Oh I know, he can take it.

CAMERON: (mimicking Xianna’s accent) ‘Oh sheet! You are just so beeg!’ (giggles)

LAURA: “Tink! Stop being so big. You are in the way. It is your fault.” (laughs) “Sorry Tink! Sorry~!”

HUDSON: “Ow!”

LAURA: “I did not think you were going to be there!” (laughs)

HUDSON: “I was literally- How did you not think that?”

LAURA: “I don’t know, honestly.” (laughs)

NICK: At this point you can just hear the boss guy going, “Heheheheheh.” That was a player slot, now we’re to an NPC slot, and it’s going to be him. He is just going to shoot Tink. He gets a black die because Tink is prone. He is two yellows and a green.

CAMERON: One advantage.

NICK: Okay. He misses.

HUDSON: Ha-ha!

NICK: I’ll give a blue die to Knifey McKnife or whoever goes next. How do you dodge this guy shooting you at point blank?

HUDSON: I do a roll and roll over my very, very injured left leg and go, “Aghhh~!”

NICK: “See! A Wookie!”

CAMERON: “Still no! That’s incredibly … speciest?”

HUDSON: (growling through pain) “I’m. A. Gigoran!”

NICK: With that, we are to a player slot.

CAMERON: Alright. Karma’s gonna take it. I want to look at the guy who just tried to stab me. “Sorry babe, you’re not worth my time,” and turn around and walk away and go shoot the boss man. (laughs)

NICK: Okay. We’ll say you use a maneuver to get out of the hallway and back to where you can see him. It probably puts you at medium range.

CAMERON: Cool. That’s a red and a purple?

NICK: Yep.

CAMERON: (laughs) That’s just a threat. (heavy exhale)

NICK: Okay. You do that. I think the guy goes, “Hey!” and shoves you from behind as you’re shooting, and your shot goes wide.

CAMERON: Two of my dice came up blank.

NICK: That’s a bummer.

LAURA: Why are we like this?

NICK: (laughs) I don’t know.

CAMERON: I was doing real good before I tried to help y’all.

LAURA: I mean, I just keep rolling the weirdest shit, just… a triumph and a despair! Because why not.

NICK: No, that was fun. That was a player slot, so we are to an NPC slot. We’re gonna say the guy who shoved Karma is going to stab her again since she faced away. He was able to bump into you so that you couldn’t shoot his boss, Karma, and now he’s going to try to follow that up with a stab. He gets a blue die, because you were obviously ignoring him.

CAMERON: One success.

NICK: Yay! A vibro-knife does two, he has two Brawn, and one success, so that’s five damage.

CAMERON: (smiling) Karma soaks all of it. (laughs)

NICK: Yeah, so he drives a knife into you and… you’re the combat character, and it does nothing.

CAMERON: I look over my shoulder. “Oh, are you still here?”

HUDSON: (scoffs) Oh dang.

CAMERON: (giggles)

NICK: (laughs) Roll for sad.

CAMERON: (laughing) Alright. What’s that gonna be?

NICK: The last one is the guy standing over the assassin droid who is still up because everyone has decided he’s not important. He’s actually going to use his maneuver to get to close range with Xianna, and he is going to shoot Xianna.

LAURA: Okay. I have some cover from the closet. I also have one defense for ranged.

NICK: Great. That’s two black dice, and he only has one green.

CAMERON: So it’s a green, a purple, and two black?

NICK: Yeah. Let’s flip a dark side point though. He’s really motivated.

CAMERON: Ooh, it’s a yellow.

NICK: I only need one crit. I’m gonna shoot her in the foot again.

(laughter)

LAURA: If you take my foot! (laughs) I will only come back more powerful!

CAMERON: One failure.

LAURA: (quietly) yes!

NICK: Alright, so he comes running around the corner, and he sees you. “Ha!” Then he reenacts that scene from Pulp Fiction where he empties the clip of his blaster pistol, even though they don’t have clips, and it goes all around you and does not hit you at all, and you end up just kind of staring at each other awkwardly for a second. Now we are at the bottom of the initiative order where the player slot that used to be at the top is. That’s Tink.

HUDSON: Yeah, I’ll go. I’m lying there. I just dodged a bullet, or a laser blast, a sblaser.

CAMERON: Blaster shot.

HUDSON: A blaster shot.

NICK: A sblaser. (laughs)

HUDSON: A sblaser. So, I grab my vibro-axe and I go after boss man.

NICK: Okay. Do you stand up?

HUDSON: I could just do it from the ground. Does that give me a disadvantage?

NICK: Yeah. That would give you a black die to do it.

HUDSON: For the theatrics, sure.

NICK: Sure.

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: Do you want to flip a light side point?

CAMERON: Yeah!

HUDSON: Yes.

LAURA: That adds a green.

NICK: I will say, it won’t add another purple, because if you’re swinging from the ground you’re not using your legs so you won’t get that crit issue. All upper body.

HUDSON: Three successes.

NICK: Whoa… Alright. How do you wanna kill this guy?

HUDSON: Oh. I don’t even need to give you damage, do I?

NICK: No, you got him.

HUDSON: I’m on the floor, and I swing around and I cut him off at the knees and watch him scream in pain, and then cut him off the middle.

NICK: Phew. Tink has a vendetta there. Yeah, you silence him. He is done. If you, with that description, can you roll me a green versus two purples please?

CAMERON: A threat.

NICK: Just a threat?

CAMERON: Just a threat.

NICK: Okay. They’ll have a black die, but they’re not gonna totally break. I was thinking these two henchmen were probably like super done, they don’t get paid enough for this, but apparently they’re very loyal to mister now has a hole in his chest. Up next is a player slot. We’ve got a goon standing near Xianna, we’ve got a goon standing near Karma.

LAURA: Yeah, Xianna will shoot the goon.

NICK: Okie-dokie.

LAURA: The goon is at what range?

NICK: Close range.

LAURA: Close range? Okay. I don’t have to upgrade~

NICK: Yeah, he came to you.

LAURA: I’m gonna also aim, since…

NICK: Weird.

LAURA: …I can.

NICK: (musically) Playing Star Wars.

LAURA: Yes. Two successes and two advantages.

NICK: That’s how much damage?

LAURA: Eight damage.

NICK: Yeah, you kill him.

LAURA: yeah!

NICK: You just shoot him in the face?

LAURA: Oh, I shoot him in the neck.

NICK: You shoot him in the neck? Oh, so we get that lovely—

LAURA: oh. There’s that gigantic just Monty Python level blood spurt, where it just goes, and he falls, and it keeps going. (giggles)

NICK: So, for the listeners at home who wonder why our combat usually ends pretty quick, it’s because when I let this team get going it gets real bad. He drops, you get his boot heels rattling on the ground as he suffocates under his own blood. Thank you so much for that. My mom listens to this show.

LAURA: Hi Nick’s mom!

NICK: Hi~!

LAURA: (smiling) I shot a dude in the neck. I’m sorry.

NICK & CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: Not really. (laughs)

NICK: Yeah, me neither. Well, that was his thing, so another player slot.

CAMERON: Can I have a blue die from your advantages?

LAURA: Sure! I’ll say that the blood spurt was so dramatic that it just was going so much, and the guy made a horrible yelping noise that it distracted the goon that Karma is facing, and he did that wide-eyed stare giving Karma a bit of an advantage.

CAMERON: (laughs) Alright. I’m gonna flip another light side point to upgrade again, because we got them so might as well.

LAURA: (musically) We wanna kill them.

CAMERON: I’m going to back up from the dude again, “You can do better than this,” and shoot him. (laughs)

NICK: (sad laughs)

CAMERON: Because my gun’s on stun, so he’s gonna be okay.

NICK: Maybe.

CAMERON: We’ll see. That is one success, one advantage.

NICK: That’s what, 10 damage?

CAMERON: Ten damage.

NICK: Yeah. You shoot him with that blue, weird ringy thing. He does a fun electrocuted hand gesture and collapses to the ground, and the building falls silent.

CAMERON: I stand up and start collecting badges.

NICK: Alright. You get badges from all of them.

CAMERON: Ah-ha!

HUDSON: I crawl with my broken leg over to the one that’s really bloody that Xianna shot in the neck and I just slowly pull off their boots. “I got boots for you, Xianna.”

(laughter)

LAURA: “Those boots are not my size.”

HUDSON: ‘You haven’t even looked at them yet. What is your size?”

CAMERON: “Yeah. What size do you need? I’ve got three guys over here.”

LAURA: “I wear a galactic 6 ½ women’s.” (laughs)

CAMERON: Can I flip a light side point for one of the guys to be wearing a galactic 6 ½ women’s, and they’re very nice boots?

NICK: Sure… and that’s how we’re gonna end the episode.

CAMERON: “Oh hey! This guy’s got a pair!” (laughs)

LAURA: “Oh! Fuck yes!” (laughs)

CAMERON: ‘They’re nice, too!” (laughs)

NICK: End of episode!

ALL: Ba-naaa~!

CAMERON: Yay~!

NICK: Gosh.

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: (singing) …ooh-ooh, for the longest time.

## Outro

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

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

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

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

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

Our intro song is Space Jam by Pablo Ribot.

Additional music by James Gunter.

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

Tabletop Squadron Transcript, Season 1 Episode 18:
A Performance Review

Transcript by Tyler (Twitter: @Tyler_MoonSage)

## Intro

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

We don’t have many announcements this week. Next week will be the last episode of this set of Jedi Adventures. After that we’ll have one more bonus episode: a chunk of bloopers. They’re pretty funny, and really open a window into what it’s like recording with the squad. Spoiler Alert: We’re all very interesting and funny people.

Even though we’ve met our goal, come join the squad on Twitter at @Tabletop_Squad and talk to us about Star Wars, or why houndstooth is a bad pattern. We hope to talk to you soon, and we hope you enjoy the episode.

##

NICK: Hello! Welcome to Episode 18 of Tabletop Squadron! Here we are, back again, doing the same old stuff… except different! We’re gonna go around the table real quick, talk to everybody, introduce yourselves and who you’re playing this week, starting with Cameron.

CAMERON: Hello! I am Cameron, as Nick just said, and I am playing Karma Nailo the Nautolan bounty hunter.

NICK: Have you spent any experience since the last time we played?

CAMERON: Oh, I spent a lot. Let’s see. What did I do? I upped my Negotiation skill to Rank 1. I bought the Good Cop talent on my bounty hunter Skiptracer tree which allows me to spend two advantages from a Charm or Negotiation check to upgrade the ability of an ally’s subsequent social check against the same target a number of times equal to the ranks in Good Cop. I bought Expert Tracker on that same tree, so I can remove a black die per rank of Expert Tracker from checks to find tracks or track targets, and I can decrease the time to track a target by half. And, I bought another rank in Stalker on my Assassin skill tree, so I can add another blue die for all my Stealth and Coordination checks.

NICK: Wow. Alright, well up next we’ve got Hudson.

HUDSON: Hi. I’m Hudson, and I’m playing Tink, a Gigoran slicer, which is kind of like a Wookie slicer but a Gigoran. I ranked up in Computers to Rank 3, Deception to Rank 2, and Melee: Brawl to Rank 3.

NICK & CAMERON: Ooh.

NICK: Nice. That will probably come in handy.

HUDSON: Oh yeah.

NICK: Oh yeah. Up next we’ve got Laura.

LAURA: Hello. I play Xianna’fan, a Twi’lek smuggler, and I only remember what I purchased today. I don’t remember what I purchased with points in the past.

CAMERON: (laughs)

NICK: That’s fine.

LAURA: I bought a rank in Stalker, and then I also moved up to Rank 2 in Ranged: Light so that I can shoot good.

NICK: Good plan! Alright. Before we get started, let’s go ahead and do our Destiny Roll.

CAMERON: Two light side!

LAURA: (gasps) Two light side!

CAMERON: (gasps)

HUDSON: Cocked, right?

LAURA: Um…

CAMERON: Mm… Yeah, it’s sideways.

HUDSON: Yeah, definitely.

CAMERON: Unless it’s two this time.

HUDSON: Same result pretty much. One dark side.

CAMERON: Four light side, one dark side!

NICK: Alright. With that all lined up and ready to go, we’ll jump right into it.

When we last left off you all had just hightailed it out of a fancy party pretty quickly. All of you have sort of varying knowledge of what happened at that formal ball as you all split up and collected different information. long story short, Falx invited the three of y’all—and by invited I mean blackmailed you into—attending an Imperial event. You attended, he claimed that you were supposed to be protecting him from potential assassins, but when the violence happened instead other people ended up dead: a specific Governor Silpin, someone who had a run-in with Xianna in the past, and… a lot of things happened. Tink almost got arrested by an Imperial Inspector. Xianna got noticed by a System Marshal who was out to arrest her. You all fled into the distance fleeing a platoon of stormtroopers and various law-abiding agents at this point. Yeah?

HUDSON: I think it’s a murder of stormtroopers.

CAMERON: (laughs)

NICK: I do not think it’s a murder of stormtroopers. (laughs)

LAURA: I don’t think that’s it.

CAMERON: I like that though. Can it be that?

NICK: Those are the deathtroopers, the ones with the shiny iridescent armor.

CAMERON: Oh, okay.

LAURA & HUDSON: Yeah.

NICK: Those are a murder.

CAMERON: So, you have to have the black, shiny armor so that it looks like crows.

NICK: If anything, a stormtrooper is a gaggle of stormtroopers.

CAMERON: (laughs)

HUDSON: Makes it sillier.

CAMERON: A flock, it’s a flock of stormtroopers.

HUDSON: Yes.

CAMERON: A memory of stormtroopers?

LAURA: No…

HUDSON: What? Is a memory an actual-?

LAURA & CAMERON: Of elephants.

HUDSON: Oh.

CAMERON: Yeah. How stupid is that?

LAURA: I mean, a lot of them are real stupid.

CAMERON: A school of stormtroopers?

NICK: Uh… We’re getting there. I think platoon fits pretty well.

HUDSON: Platoon fits fine.

(laughter)

CAMERON: It’s not nearly as fun.

LAURA: Squadron and platoon, and… you know, all of the words they used in the actual shows.

NICK: Practically a regiment. Yeah. The camera snaps to the Afternoon Delight flying away from the planet of Mustafar backlit with flowing lava. You are rapidly preparing the ship to go to light speed, and the camera behind you shows a U-wing, a large tuning fork-shaped ship with a cool red and yellow custom paint job also rising up through the atmosphere trying to meet you. We get a quick over the shoulder shot of Karma flipping switches getting ready to jump with proximity alarms going off, and just as target locks start showing up on the main screen karma throws the ship into hyperspace and you snap away.

The first question I have for y’all is where are you going?

CAMERON: Probably back to Sentinel.

LAURA: Yeah, that would be a question for Karma.

CAMERON: I probably didn’t really think about it a lot and just flipped to the most recently searched place in the navicomputer, which would’ve been the place that we met Sentinel at, and just jumped there, because I knew that Jorus was chasing us.

NICK: Okay. That’s fine. It’ll probably take about five hours to get back to where you’re going. It’s about as long as it took you to get where you were. How do you spend your time?

HUDSON: I catch everyone up on my little adventures back where I grabbed the droid and accidentally stuck the Rancore Protocol into it causing it to become a murder bot very quickly.

CAMERON: (laughs)

HUDSON: “I escaped the inspector.”

CAMERON: “Yeah, we saw you run off. Well, I did, I don’t know if you did, Xianna.”

LAURA: Oh, Xianna is certainly sitting there pretending like she’s listening but is every so often just falling asleep.

CAMERON: Great. (laughs)

LAURA: And then wakes up like, “(sleepy groans) No, I was listening, yes. Okay…”

HUDSON: “You need a nap, Xianna?”

LAURA: (weakly) “yes…”

HUDSON: “You look like you had all the adrenaline chemically drained out of you or something.”

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: “No, yes, I am how you say… hung over. Yes.”

HUDSON: “Ah.”

LAURA: “On the downward slope. Yes.”

CAMERON: “From the drugs.”

LAURA: “Oh yes, uh… the drugs.”

HUDSON: “Whatever you wanna do, it’s none of my business.”

LAURA: “I mean yeah.”

CAMERON: “Maybe next time just don’t tell an inspector that you’re on drugs. Did you say that you did that?”

LAURA: “I mean, I never interacted with an inspector. I believe I’m… I do not think I said anything specific to the marshal. I might have though. I don’t know.”

CAMERON: “This was before Jorus showed up. You told me the stormtroopers weren’t gonna let you leave.”

LAURA: “I mean yes, but he died, so it does not matter. Heh.”

CAMERON: (laughing) Do we know he died? We never saw the body.

HUDSON: No, Xianna saw the body.

NICK: Sila did drag the body out to look at it and everything, so it would be possible.

CAMERON: I don’t know what we all know independently.

HUDSON: It’s not like Xianna’s not on the run already from a million other things, so this would just be another little blip.

LAURA: “I think I did tell… I don’t know if he was an inspector. It was someone in the Empire. He had ranks. I think I did tell him I was doing drugs, but to be fair I thought he was also doing drugs. He was in a way, just for actual medical purposes. But yeah, he died, so it doesn’t matter.”

HUDSON: “I thought you were a good judge of character. I guess I’m wrong.”

CAMERON: “What gave you that impression, Tink?” (laughs)

HUDSON: “I just might trust people too much. I don’t know. I need to be a little introspective after this whole ordeal.”

NICK: Great, so…

LAURA & CAMERON: … ‘Kay.

(laughter)

NICK: You still have some time. You touch base. You all become very rapidly aware that there was more going on at that shindig than you probably know about. You piece bits and pieces of it together, and you probably know as follows:

Governor Silpin is dead. He got stabbed.

CAMERON: (gasps dramatically)

NICK: Yeah, everybody knew that. Falx probably had something to do with it since you saw him run out of the ballroom wearing handcuffs being chased by an Imperial Inspector. The inspector that Xianna talked to at the bar is also dead. You saw him dragged out from under the table by Imperial Inspector Sila Rowe. The Rancore Protocol is perhaps a little less stable than you originally thought seeing as you plugged it into a droid and it started shooting everywhere. You also were able to recover the Rancore Protocol, which is good. Tink, did you tell them that you gave the inspector your “I did it and here’s how” notebook?

HUDSON: No, I didn’t mention that. ‘Hey guys…”

LAURA: (weakly) “Yes?”

HUDSON: “So I may have lost my personal diary with a lot of our previous endeavors written inside of it in a lot of detail, including very personal thoughts and feelings I’ve had, which I mean the value of that is immense to myself but maybe not others. Either way, I gave away something important.”

CAMERON: (smiling) “You keep a diary?”

LAURA: “Okay… Did you use real names?”

HUDSON: ‘I mean yes, until I came up with nicknames for you guys.”

CAMERON: “Okay. What are our nicknames?” (laughs)

NICK: (laughs)

LAURA: “Okay, so you put Xianna, and then later put a fake name?”

HUDSON: “Yeah, like Xixi.”

LAURA: “Ohh… fuck.”

CAMERON: (smiling) “Oh, I like that one.”

HUDSON: (chuckles)

LAURA: “Okay, so… (sighs) Next time you decide to start a journal, use fake names from the start.”

HUDSON: “I mean, it’s less personal that way, but I’ll do it.”

LAURA: ‘Yeah!”

CAMERON: “Less personal is good if it’s an object that can be lost like that.”

LAURA: “That is the point.”

HUDSON: “Why don’t we just all use code names all the time? I mean, I have a suspicion that you already do, Xianna, but…”

LAURA: “Have you not noticed that I’m always giving fake names to people?”

HUDSON: “True. How do I know Xianna’s your real name?”

LAURA: “I don’t know. You can just trust me? It is a very Twi’lek name.”

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: “If we want to get really into it, technically my name is not even Xianna. that is just a name I use, because for some reason humans always think it is Xianna when they see it written down, because of the apostrophe. It is really Xiann.”

HUDSON: “Ohh. Y’all don’t actually know my real name, do you?”

CAMERON: “I believe you’ve said it once, but honestly it was long and I forgot and just went back to Tink.”

LAURA: ‘Yeah, I think someone said it, and it was very long.”

HUDSON: “It’s Rallltinkraatakat.”

CAMERON: “Yeah, that’s why I stuck with Tink.”

LAURA: “Yeah. I am not saying that. Nope.”

HUDSON: “I mean, it’s a mouthful, but it is my birth name.”

CAMERON: “That’s fine. If you want me to try and call you that, Tink, I will, but it’s gonna be a struggle.”

HUDSON: “You know… I’ll save you the trouble.”

CAMERON: “Okay. I appreciate that.”

LAURA: “Good. I was not going to call you that even if you wanted me to.”

HUDSON: “Hmm.”

CAMERON: “I was really gonna try, and I was gonna be wrong every single time. (laughs) You said all of the information was in the journal?”

HUDSON: “Our previous adventures from the last few weeks.”

CAMERON: “Did you include anything about Sentinel in the journal, or did you not write it because we only had a five hour jump before the party?”

HUDSON: “Yeah, I hadn’t gotten that far yet.”

CAMERON: “Okay, that’s good.”

HUDSON: “These things get delayed by a number of days.”

CAMERON: “Oh, okay. Well you need time to reflect on it. That makes sense.”

HUDSON: “yeah!”

LAURA: “(sighs)”

HUDSON: “Hey, why are you sighing? That’s a good thing.”

CAMERON: “That is a good thing! But the whole fact that it’s an issue altogether, it’s just that you wrote stuff down and now it’s no longer on your person.”

LAURA: “You not having Sentinel in the journal is like saying you stepped in shit, but oh well, you can clean your shoes off later in the day. It doesn’t really help too much at the moment.”

HUDSON: “On a different note, do y’all wanna know what Rallltinkraatakat actually means in my home language?”

CAMERON: “yes.”

LAURA: (simultaneously) “No!”

NICK: (laughs uncontrollably)

HUDSON: (laughs)

CAMERON: “Xianna, don’t ruin this for me. Yes.”

HUDSON: ‘It means bringer of peace and food. Actually, just kidding, not the food part.”

CAMERON: (laughs) “Oh, I loved the food part, though.”

HUDSON: “No, no, it’s just bringer of peace and harmony.”

CAMERON: “Oh. Aw…”

LAURA: “Oh… Uh, I mean, that is wonderful character building and all—(laughter) I am more interested in exactly what was in your journal, you know, everything that incriminates us. Like, did you have the name the Afternoon Delight in the journal?”

HUDSON: “Yeah, because it’s a great name.”

CAMERON: “Oh god.”

LAURA: “Okay, but now our ship name is known, and they know everything about it.”

HUDSON: “Like we ever go into an actual landing pad giving the real name.”

CAMERON: “It’s painted on the side of the ship!”

LAURA: “Have you not seen it? There is a half-naked woman on it and everything.”

HUDSON: “Yeah, I mean… Listen. You don’t have to say half-naked. It’s classy. It’s not half-nekkid, it’s like…”

CAMERON: “Half clothed?”

HUDSON: “Half clothed.”

LAURA: “It is a pin-up girl. It is not THAT classy.”

HUDSON: “If it was pinned up we’d have actual pins in it. It’s painted.”

CAMERON: Oh my GOSH… (laughs)

LAURA: Oh… (groans, sighs)

CAMERON: “Anyway. Yes, we don’t necessarily use our ship’s name as we’re landing but once we get there it is very obvious that we are the Afternoon Delight.”

HUDSON: “Well, we just have to hope that this doesn’t come up later.”

NICK: (laughs)

CAMERON: ‘I’m sure it’ll be fine~’

NICK: As everyone turns and just looks at me. Great. Yeah.

CAMERON: Yeah, make sure that doesn’t come up, Nick.

NICK: Or the opposite of that.

CAMERON: “So…” (sighs) Oh gosh.

LAURA: “So anyways… Karma.”

CAMERON: “yes?”

LAURA: “You knew that marshal.”

CAMERON: “Yes, and the marshal knew you.”

LAURA: “I mean, I do not KNOW him in any of those senses, but he may have been trying to get me for some sort of bounty? I don’t know how that works.”

CAMERON: “He was 100% trying to get you, not necessarily for a bounty, but probably for an—“

LAURA: “Oh! Is he single?”

CAMERON: “Uh… Actually, he told me he was married. That was one of the conversation points we had.”

LAURA: “I mean, that has not stopped me in the past.”

CAMERON: “But he was probably trying to bring you in for an arrest warrant wherever the hell he’s marshaling. So it probably wasn’t a bounty, as he’s ‘gone official.’”

LAURA: “I mean, that does not narrow it down.”

CAMERON: “He did not know your name.”

LAURA: “I’ve been arrested at least five times, that I remember.”

CAMERON: “Okay, hold on.”

LAURA: (laughs)

CAMERON: I look up Jorus Kreel on bounty hunter Facebook.

NICK: HuntersOnly?

LAURA: HuntersOnly!

CAMERON: HuntersOnly.com, yes.

NICK: (smiling) HuntersOnly.com. Alright. I was imagining this conversation took place in the main lobby of the ship. The hot tub is closed, but you all have like nice couches and chairs and stuff kind of scattered around.

LAURA: Yeah. Xianna is lounged in a whole couch, one that is definitely supposed to seat three people, and she’s holding a cup of caf and very much trying not to spill it because she’s real shaky probably.

NICK: Do you pull out a data pad, or head to the cockpit?

CAMERON: I just take out my data pad.

NICK: You pull out your data pad and you search for (emphatically) Jorus Kreel, System Marshal. You’re able to find him in your mutual friends list, because of course you’ve electronically kept in touch.

CAMERON: Yeah. We’re definitely friends.

NICK: But like the ones where it doesn’t really suggest them in the search very often, I would imagine, since he was able to tell you things you didn’t know.

CAMERON: Yeah. I mean, he’s on my friend list. I probably just got annoyed and unfollowed him a while ago, but we’re still bounty friends.

NICK: Bounty buddies!

CAMERON: Bounty buddies. Yes! (smiling) We’re bounty buddies.

NICK: That’s what the friends list is called in HuntersOnly.com, bounty buddies. Great. Yeah, what are you looking for with him?

CAMERON: So, wanting to know where he’s marshaling…

NICK: Ooh.

CAMERON: …to try and figure out which one of Xianna’s arrests he could be going after specifically.

LAURA: yeah, pretty much where the source of this possible arrest came from.

NICK: So, we know he’s a System Marshal on the outer rim…

CAMERON: Mm-hmm.

NICK: Coral 2, it’s the system of Coral, the main planet is Coral 2.

HUDSON: T-O-O or T-W-O?

CAMERON: (giggles)

NICK: (laughs) T-W-O.

HUDSON: Oh.

NICK: Generally the number in a planet, and this isn’t just Star Wars this is like sci-fi in general, means how many planets away from the star it is.

HUDSON: Oh, didn’t know that.

NICK: Yeah. So, now you do.

LAURA: Or it could be a moon.

NICK: Or it could be—if it’s named after the main planet, yeah. He is the System Marshal for the system of Coral. It’s a ten planet system way out on the outer rim, and it’s the second planet so it’s a dry, kind of dusty world. Karma, you’ve heard of it before. It’s a place where a lot of criminals like to go to ground because it doesn’t have a lot of law enforcement, the Empire’s not particularly interested in it, but that has kind of slacked off a little in the last few years as Jorus has taken over that area. He’s really made a name for himself as a marshal.

CAMERON: “Xianna, have you ever been to the Coral system, or anywhere there about”

LAURA: “I think so… Was that…”

CAMERON: I realized as I said that I went slightly country with my voice. (laughs)

NICK: (laughs) You super did. Thinking of Jorus is contagious.

CAMERON: This was a big problem I had when I was doing my apprenticeship with Deathfetti and Jorus was my buddy, was that we would just go on missions and I would just slowly acquire his accent, and it’s catching back up to me looking him up.

NICK: Just a little dash of southern comfort.

CAMERON: Yup. Karma’s not a fan. (laughs)

NICK: (laughs)

LAURA: “Um… I think that might have been the doorway incident… Yes. Yes.”

CAMERON: “I think you’ve talked about this one before.”

LAURA: “Oh yes! It is a wonderful story. So, my partner and I decided to do a robbery, as you do, for some very nice jewels and gems. We had mapped out the route that the security droids took, and everything was going great until we figured out that the droids had changed their route earlier that day, which means we could not go out the same door that we had come in, which was a problem because my partner was an Herglic, and they are very large. The front doors were very wide, she could make it through, the back door not as wide. So, we try and go out the back door, she gets stuck, I try to push her through the door… I get stuck. So then we are both stuck in the door.

We get stuck at like 11 in the evening. The store does not open up until like 8 in the morning. By like 1:00 we had broken up, then by 3 we were back together. (giggles) Then again by the time they found us we had broken up again. Uh, yeah, and that is how I got arrested, I think for the third time. Yes. Some of them blur together, some of them are a little hard to remember, you know, heh, impact.”

CAMERON: “Yup. Yup…”

LAURA: “A little bit of glitterstim. Lots of alcohol, too. Yes. Uh-huh.”

HUDSON: “Your life is a trip.”

LAURA: “yes. If you ever want to have a very fun party go find a Hut. (laughs) Their palaces are crazy. There’s just people sleeping on the floor every single night. It is really weird. I mean, they do like do the whole slavery thing and they eat weird little frog creatures… very weird, but fun.”

HUDSON: “I like to keep a clean, simple lifestyle.”

NICK: Oh fuck.

(laughter)

LAURA: Oh my god. Ahhh…

HUDSON: (laughing) No one’s gonna know what that means when you do this later.

NICK: Note for our listeners: Hudson did the straightedge hand gesture. (laughs)

HUDSON: (laughing) What are you writing down after I did that?

(laughter)

LAURA: I’m not specifically writing down anything you did.

NICK: It says “Tink – straightedge.”

HUDSON: (laughs)

LAURA: No, I have a list of all the times I’ve been arrested, because I figured that probably should be a thing I have.

CAMERON: (laughing) It’s a thing you should keep track of.

LAURA: It’s a thing I should keep track of. I at least have the Herglic ordeal, and then there was a generic burglary that I described at some other point.

CAMERON: Then there was the Silpin and his wife.

NICK: Except she didn’t get caught on that one.

CAMERON: Oh.

LAURA: I didn’t get arrested for that. I got found out, but I wasn’t—

CAMERON: Yeah. They put a bounty out for it, but she didn’t get arrested.

LAURA: I don’t believe I was fully arrested.

NICK: You weren’t.

LAURA: The other one was a generic burglary where they just came home half way through, and then the other three I don’t have anything for yet.

CAMERON: We shall see~!

LAURA: We’ll see!

NICK: Yeah. Did you have anything else you wanted to look up about Jorus besides where he marshals?

CAMERON: I’m just gonna read his last couple status updates, get a look into how his life’s going.

NICK: Okay. You scroll up like a page and a half and you see a few statuses like “Proud to be the System Marshal of the Coral system,” a public post, and then some friend’s post of him kind of wondering if going straight is really for him but mentioning that he wants to do it for his family, and then two statuses ago is some just really dark poetry, like “My life is an unending abyss of which I will never escape. The Sarlac of my heart will never be sated.” That kind of thing.

CAMERON: Wow.

NICK: Yeah. The one right after that is “Got a lead on a new mission. I’ll take pictures once I’ve nabbed them.” That’s the last one that you saw. So, very roller coaster. Good stuff, bad stuff.

CAMERON: (inhales) Great.

NICK: Also, his profile picture is him with an Ewok that looks like a mini Wookie with lots of scars branded into his arms, and he’s got the beard that’s braided and has beads in it and stuff. It’s a pretty intimidating looking little guy. They’re both holding big tankards of Corellian ale.

MYRA: “Aww. He married an Ewok.”

NICK: (laughs)

LAURA: “Good for him.”

HUDSON: “No judgment here.”

CAMERON: “This Ewok looks super badass you guys. Look!” (laughs)

HUDSON: “Whoa!”

LAURA: “Oh wow~ It is.”

HUDSON: “What are those tattoos?!”

LAURA: “I mean, I would marry that Ewok.”

CAMERON: (laughing) “It’s a good looking Ewok.”

HUDSON: “I’m intimidated, and they’re not even here in person.”

CAMERON: (laughs)

NICK: Cool. Anything else you wanted to know about that?

LAURA: While Karma’s looking through some stuff, Xianna just suddenly goes, “Oh kriff! Falx took one of my sets of binders!”

NICK: (laughs)

CAMERON: “Was it the fuzzy ones?”

LAURA: “Oh no. Heh.”

CAMERON: “Oh, okay.”

LAURA: ‘I did not want to give him the fuzzy ones. We were in public, and I have SOME decorum.”

CAMERON: “Why did he have your binders?”

LAURA: “Uh…” Xianna’s kinda looking up a little bit trying to remember. “Oh… Oh! No. He had Governor Silpin killed.”

CAMERON: “Oh!”

LAURA: “yeah.”

CAMERON: “Oh, that makes sense.”

LAURA: “Yeah. I do not… The party is a very big blur, but yes. He killed Silpin, pretty sure, and then had hired us to either take the fall or just act as an alibi… I’m not really sure. I don’t even know where he went, just that he ran away at one point.”

CAMERON: “With your binders.”

LAURA: “With my binders. I am now down to two pairs. And—Ohh! (angrily) Sabos owed me three stim packs! Ugh!”

NICK: (laughs)

HUDSON: (delicately) “Sabos…?”

CAMERON: “Xianna, please stop bringing this up.”

LAURA: (laughs) “But I do not have any stim packs anymore! I am all out!”

NICK: I get this image of Xianna declaring Sabos owed her stim packs and she’s on the couch and like throws her arms dramatically into the air and then falls back in sort of toddler petulance at that point.

LAURA: Yeah.

HUDSON: A single tear falls from Tink’s face.

CAMERON: “He owed you new boots too, right? No. Tink owed you new boots.”

HUDSON: “What?”

LAURA: ‘Yes. Tink does owe me new boots.”

HUDSON: “Whaaat?”

LAURA: “You will buy me new boots. I found these in the closet. I don’t know who had this ship before us, but they had a lot of clothes.”

HUDSON: “Do they even make boots for your situation?”

LAURA: “Twi’lek feet?”

HUDSON: ‘No…”

LAURA: “I mean, they make boots that fit Twi’leks. We have very similar feet to humans.”

HUDSON: “No. No, the… The missing, um…”

CAMERON: “Appendages?”

HUDSON: “Appendages… The little ones.”

LAURA: “(sighs)”

CAMERON: “It’s when you get extra toes is that it becomes an issue fitting into shoes. Losing toes you just stuff some socks in there.”

LAURA: “I just put a little bit of fabric in that spot.”

HUDSON: “Got it.”

LAURA: “Yes, but I would really like a new pair of boots. I do not wear much as far as clothing, so boots are the main thing I do besides the coat.”

HUDSON: “The next time we see a boot seller of some sort or fashion I will get you new boots, I suppose.”

CAMERON: The next time we see a space Cavenders we’re gonna go in there and get some boots.

(laughter)

NICK: Speaking of which… Do you have any interest in getting your foot looked at?

CAMERON: (laughing) Do you want ACTUAL medical attention?

LAURA: yeah. About this time Xianna goes, “Where are we going?”

CAMERON: “Oh. Just back to Sentinel’s scary empty place.”

LAURA: ‘Yeah… After that, can we go to a populated place with, you know, real stores… and medical people, that are not Tink, and a shoe store…”

CAMERON: “Yes. Let’s go to Sentinel, since that’s where we’re going right now, and then we’ll get our money and then we can go shopping.”

HUDSON: “Ooh, money.”

LAURA: “Cool.”

CAMERON: “Buy some stim packs, and boots.”

LAURA: “yes.”

HUDSON: ‘I could use a nice scarf, something with a little zing.”

CAMERON: “And a new journal for Tink.”

HUDSON: “yeah!”

CAMERON: “Where he will use fake names.”

HUDSON: “It could just be like an encrypted journal.”

CAMERON: “If you want to do code that’s even better. Still fake names in code, though.”

HUDSON: “Got it.”

CAMERON: “Yeah.”

HUDSON: “But what if—“

CAMERON: “No.”

HUDSON: “Okay.”

NICK: (laughs)

CAMERON: I don’t know how everybody else is doing, but I don’t have money, so…

LAURA: I have 304 Credits.

CAMERON: I have 70 Credits.

LAURA: I also have a bottle of whiskey.

HUDSON: I have 254 Credits.

NICK: Is there anything else you wanted to spend your downtime with? Any catching up you needed to do?

LAURA: Oh. Xianna fell asleep while Karma and Tink were speaking. The moment she stopped speaking she’s like on the couch asleep, and no one really knows how she didn’t spill the cup of caf. She’s holding it in the most perfect way so it doesn’t actually fall over, like she does that a lot or something.

CAMERON: Karma’s gonna go through and clean all of her weapons again. It’s been a while since she did that.

HUDSON: I’m going to get a snack.

NICK: Okay. (laughs)

CAMERON: Karma takes Tink’s blaster and cleans that too.

HUDSON: I haven’t used it, have I?

CAMERON: No, but this is a calming thing karma does.

HUDSON: You can clean my vibro-axe. It probably has so much blood on it.

CAMERON: (laughs) That’s true. Yeah. Karma’s just doing a deep clean of all the weaponry.

NICK: When you do that, where do you see yourself setting up? Do you bring everything back to your quarters?

CAMERON: Dining room table.

NICK: You spread it out on the dining room table? There’s a 14 seat table. That’s definitely something this ship has. This ship is very big. From the outside, and this isn’t a TARDIS situation it’s just the way they designed it, it’s like Millennium Falcon sized, a little bit bigger.

LAURA: Which is a TARDIS situation.

CAMERON: (laughs)

NICK: Well, the Millennium Falcon is, but—Fuck that. It doesn’t matter. With this one, in all of the space that you would normally have storage and auxiliary systems and things they just stack luxury features. There’s a large formal dining room that opens out onto the mess, but then above that is one of the bedrooms. It’s all just fitted in. the way the local gravity sits you don’t have to do a lot of stairs, you just find yourself in different rooms depending on what angle you go. There’s a lot of stuff.

HUDSON: What’s the most ridiculous luxury feature we have on there that we’ll just never use?

NICK: Well, you have a holo-theater but you’ve used that.

CAMERON: We have a hot tub, but we use that all the time. We have a room of requirement that will have some luxury in it later on.

LAURA: When we flip a light side point.

HUDSON: I have one. We have a space wine cellar…

LAURA: (gasps)

HUDSON: …except along with the wine, because I don’t really.. I mean, I drink but not super heavily. Crap, I can’t be straightedge now.

CAMERON: (snorts)

LAURA: Yeah.

HUDSON: Because I don’t drink that often, instead of filling it with wine or alcohol I filled it with like… popsicles?

LAURA: So, we had found various wet bars but they were pretty low level stock. Did you find this hidden wine cellar and knowingly replace the wine with popsicles and sodas?

HUDSON: Absolutely.

LAURA: So you got rid of the wine?

HUDSON: Well yeah, because I needed to make room for the popsicles and soda.

NICK: (laughs)

LAURA: This will absolutely be a plot point later on when you go to use that and Xianna’s there. (laughs)

HUDSON: So I basically dropped it all through the airlock.

NICK: Airlocked the wine—Oh no. (laughs) So, the space wine cellar is actually the biggest of the mini bars. The fridge actually has an elevator function so it can cycle through, and you figured out where the switch was to do that. You’re like, ‘Oh, this is great! There’s plenty of room for popsicles if I just get rid of this stuff. Who’s gonna need that anyway?’ So yeah, the expensive wine collection is floating through space probably somewhere near Ithor. (laughs)

LAURA: (sighs)

CAMERON: (breathy) Great.

LAURA: I’d say most of the other stuff that I would think of we already have; rotating beds, disco balls, a hot tub… I mean, unless there’s just a room full of drugs, what else?

CAMERON: Unlikely.

LAURA: Yeah…

HUDSON: Where did we get the ship from again?

NICK: Sentinel gave it to you.

HUDSON: “I could have drugs…”

LAURA: I mean, it does now.

NICK: (laughs)

CAMERON: Maybe a yoga studio.

HUDSON: A hot yoga studio?

CAMERON: No.

HUDSON: Just a yoga studio.

CAMERON: Just a yoga studio.

NICK: I think the main lobby serves a lot of functions, in that the hot tub can sink into the floor and you can use it as a yoga studio.

LAURA: Yeah. I’m assuming there’s a few just pretty empty all-purpose rooms that aren’t designed as bedrooms or anything, just extra spaces to do what you want with them.

NICK: Yeah.

LAURA: Have we found a naughty room yet? (laughs) Have we done the whole, we open the door and it’s just swings and masks, and everyone’s like (gasps dramatically), and Tink’s like ‘oh, what’s that?’ (giggles)

CAMERON: Clooose the door.

LAURA: And Xianna just slowly closes the door, and she’s like ‘oh, don’t worry about that room.’ (giggles)

HUDSON: “What’s the dress up room for? Why can’t I go in?”

LAURA: “Don’t- You don’t need to go in there.”

HUDSON: “Alright.”

CAMERON: “All the costumes that are gonna fit you are gonna be in the closet.”

LAURA: “Oh no, some of those could have fit him.”

HUDSON: “Are you calling me fat?”

CAMERON: “No. I’m just saying you’re very tall.”

HUDSON: “Oh, okay.”

NICK: So I think that room is actually off of Sabos’s cabin which is why you didn’t find it.

LAURA: (laughs) We never found it.

CAMERON: (laughs)

NICK: You were digging through there looking for something during the trip, and you opened the door and yeah. We get that scene of Karma just full-body pushing Tink out of the room, like ‘no, no, no, it’s fine.’

CAMERON: Nooo, no, no, no, no, no, no.

LAURA: No, no, no.

NICK: Is there anything else you all wanted to do on the ship before you arrived?

CAMERON: I don’t think so.

LAURA: I mean, Xianna’s passed out for…

NICK: Several hours.

LAURA: Probably at least four out of the five hours.

CAMERON: Karma’s gonna log in and see if Sabos and Xianna are showing up as turned in.

NICK: Uh…

CAMERON: To see if the Vengeance…

NICK: …the Vengeance actually logged it?

CAMERON: Actually logged it.

NICK: So, when you look in the Imperial bounty database the database shows Processing, so it looks like they logged that they had it but that the process may have stopped half way, or it’s at Imperial headquarters going through approval. I would imagine that the loss of the super star destroyer kind of shut down a decent amount of Imperial bureaucracy.

CAMERON: It distracted them from my 7,000 Credit total bounty just a little bit.

NICK: Yeah, a little bit, a little bit, but it does look like they sent it off.

CAMERON: But Xianna’s not currently showing as being captured, or is she still an available bounty?

NICK: The bounty section is showing Processing. Sabos and Xianna are both showing as Assumed Deceased actually.

CAMERON: Okay, cool.

LAURA: Ooh.

CAMERON: I wake Xianna up, and I show her profile page.

LAURA: “What?! Huh? What? … Oh cool~! I am dead now. Yes. (laughs)”

CAMERON: ‘I wouldn’t get too excited, because Jorus does know you’re alive, but he doesn’t know you’re Xianna, so…”

LAURA: “I mean, yeah… so, eh.”

CAMERON: ‘We’ll see.”

LAURA: “I mean, he is a backwater marshal. They don’t have quite the same pull. And if he does not know my actual name…”

HUDSON: “With all this talk about naming, I think I need a new hacker name. I recycle those every once in a while.”

CAMERON: “Was that in your book too?”

LAURA: ‘Oh, you certainly need a new name. Yes.”

HUDSON: “yeah, I know, but like when I sign off on code I write and stuff.”

LAURA: “Yes!”

CAMERON: “You’re signing off on code you write?”

LAURA: “Wait, what?!”

NICK: (laughs)

LAURA: ‘Nooo. You don’t do that.”

HUDSON: “No, you do that.”

LAURA: “Like, if you live behind a calling card you make it like a sexy little thing that is not your real name, you know, you like leave a little note card with some lipstick kisses on it… if the inspector is a really cute one.”

HUDSON: “No, it’s not my real name. So, hackers have that in the scene, and it’s just a handle that they use. Before I’ve been Prodigy, I’ve also been Leetness, like L33tn3ss.”

CAMERON: “Oh gosh.”

LAURA: “But, but why?”

HUDSON: “Because that’s the name I went by. It’s cool. It’s a cool thing to do.”

LAURA: “No…”

CAMERON: “No, but see, Tink, if you’re using the same name every time and every time you hack into something you’re logging that name there, then you are just leaving a trail of exactly where you’ve been—“

HUDSON: “I recycle!”

CAMERON: “Mm… How long-! Okay. What name were you using most recently?”

HUDSON: “I was StarDestroyer1.”

CAMERON: “How long have you been using StarDestroyer1?”

HUDSON: “Six months.”

CAMERON: “See, that’s WAY, way too long.”

LAURA: “Oh, that is way too long.”

HUDSON: “But then you don’t develop the credibility!”

LAURA: “But no! At most you leave like your calling card for like a month, and that is only if you know the main detective is really attractive and you have like a weird sexual tension thing… and then you do it just so that they know that they have to take that case.”

HUDSON: “Sexual tension will never be in the hacker space.”

LAURA: “That’s how you avoid getting arrested! Most of the time.”

CAMERON: “Tink, I’m a bounty hunter. Okay?”

HUDSON: “When did Xianna wake up?” (laughs)

CAMERON: “Oh, I just woke her up.”

LAURA: “Yeah, she woke me up. Yeah.”

HUDSON: “Oh, okay.” (laughs)

CAMERON: “I woke her up. The Empire said she’s dead, and that was cool, so I shared that. I am a bounty hunter. If I were after the bounty that’s open on StarDestroyer1, the fact that every time you hacked in somewhere you left that means that I can find you.”

HUDSON: “Oh no, I understand that. I’m just saying, that raises the stakes and makes you more credible in the scene. So… that’s what I’m doing.”

LAURA: “No…”

CAMERON: ‘I do not want our stakes raised.”

HUDSON: “No, no, no. Not yours, just mine, digitally.”

CAMERON: “No! You are with me!” (laughs)

LAURA: “yes, but you are with us!”

HUDSON: “Okay. Okay. I will recycle it every three months.”

LAURA: “Eh, yeah.”

CAMERON: “(sighs)”

LAURA: “I am cool with that amount.”

CAMERON: “Okay. No. I have a counter offer. Pick three new ones that you have not used before. Every time you log into something and you feel the need to sign it, use them in rotation, so you’re not doing three StarDestroyer1 in a row, you’re doing StarDestroyer1, Ewok2, and Jettison5 or whatever, and rotate through those three so that there’s not a prolonged trail.”

LAURA: “Why do you even need a calling card if you are not trying to get the attention of a specific person?”

CAMERON: “I would think you would use it if you were trying to pick up elicit contracts for hacking jobs. You could list it on your resume? Do you have a resume?”

HUDSON: “That’s part of it, but it’s the fame. It’s all about the fame, the credibility, and the scene.”

CAMERON: “To get new jobs, or just to be cool?”

HUDSON: “Just to be cool.”

CAMERON: “Okay…” (laughs)

LAURA: “I mean, do you get free things for being cool?”

HUDSON: “You get… You get… You’re just cool. You’re just a cool guy. Everyone wants to be cool.”

CAMERON: “I think you’re cool anyway without getting us tracked by the Empire.”

HUDSON: “Well thank you, but not to everyone else. I just want to be known, to be heard.”

LAURA: ‘I mean, and having every Imperial know who you are, yeah. So maybe don’t leave the same calling card every single time.”

HUDSON: “Okay. So what I’m gonna do is I’ll have three different names, I’ll rotate them every three months. The names may be related so that they can kind of be tied together to one identity, like Huey, Dewey and Louie.”

LAURA: “No! Do not make the names related. They will track you easier.”

CAMERON: “You can pick three equally badass names that are not related to each other.”

HUDSON: “Alright.”

CAMERON: “If we’re doing that you can keep them longer than three months…”

HUDSON: “Ooh.”

CAMERON: “…but you would need to use one, then use the next, then use the next. If you hacked three times in a day you would use all three.”

HUDSON: ‘So it’s like a guild. I make my own guild of one person.”

CAMERON: “yes. You’re making your own club, but you are yourself.”

HUDSON: ‘Ooh. It’s not called a club.”

CAMERON: (laughing) “I’m sorry.

NICK: (laughs)

HUDSON: “I’m making that. Great. Okay. So, I could be PlanetAnnihilator2…”

NICK: (laughs)

LAURA: Well, you know PlanetAnnihilator1 is already taken.

HUDSON: “Alright. Alright. I’m gonna workshop the names a bit, but they’re just gonna be real cool. You’ll see them pop up later. Don’t worry.”

CAMERON: “Okay. well, I wrote down PlanetAnnihilator2.”

HUDSON: “Yeah, exactly. Do you have any suggestions?”

LAURA: “Ooh… xx_HardcoreGigoran_xx.”

(giggling)

HUDSON: “Yeah.”

LAURA: ‘No, three Xs.”

HUDSON: ‘CosmicBrownie~!’

NICK: (laughing) I don’t understand what you’re referencing.

HUDSON: No, that’s not a reference, that’s just a really bad name I came up with. CosmicBrownie would be the worst tag.

LAURA: Hudson just likes cosmic brownies.

CAMERON: I like it! If you’re going for cool, that ain’t gonna be it.

HUDSON: (laughs)

NICK: Alright. So, you wander your way through space and eventually you come out of hyperspace near Sentinel’s darkened, secret lair that’s floating in the middle of nowhere. Lights click on to the ship as you approach, and the station has changed very little in the day or so that you’ve been gone. You are led through the hallways that turn on as you walk through and turn back off as you go away, back to the same holo-theater where you were brought the first time. The protocol droid who served as your guide is waiting by the door. Sentinel is seated nearby. He looks very put together and calm.

“Well, glad to see you didn’t lose another one. That’s very good.”

LAURA: ‘Yeah. Can we stop doing things for Falx?”

CAMERON: ‘Oh. I thought you were gonna ask if we could stop bringing up the fact that we lost Sabos.”

LAURA: “Oh, I do not really care at all. Can we stop doing things for Falx? I mean, he kind of was trying to, I don’t know, frame us or use us as an alibi. I don’t know. He definitely murdered the governor. Also, I’m not too angry about that, because it does benefit me a bit, but he did take my binders.”

CAMERON: “See, but Xianna… The way that blackmailing works is that it’s not necessarily we’re just wanting to do something for him, it’s that he’s blackmailing you.”

LAURA: “I mean… Yeah.”

NICK: “I agree with Karma. It was not my decision really, but I have a feeling that based on some of the rumors I’ve heard, he won’t be much of a problem. He seems to have lost some of his influence.”

LAURA: (strained) “Okay, good.”

HUDSON: “Like all of his influence as a person, or…?”

NICK: “I’m not sure if he’s dead or not, but I did see that they are appointing a new governor to the Unroola Dawn region, so whatever happened to him he is no longer in power.”

LAURA: “None of us killed him, right?”

CAMERON: “I did not.”

HUDSON: ‘I didn’t.”

LAURA: “Okay. Just making sure.”

CAMERON: “I would have told y’all.”

NICK: “It’s a shame. He’s gotten a lot less helpful lately. If you do run into him again, know that I no longer consider myself in his debt. If you want to finish him off that’s fine with me.”

LAURA: “Got it.”

NICK: “With extreme prejudice, as they say. That’s a thing that people say.”

CAMERON: “yeah.”

NICK: “Okay.”

LAURA: “Sure.”

CAMERON: “I think we can manage that at this point.”

HUDSON: “We’re not in court.”

NICK: (laughs) “I was able to liquidate some assets to put together your fee. A lot of it’s tied up in military operations right now, but I was able to pull it out. What did I say it was, 15,000 Credits?”

CAMERON: You know, honestly Cameron doesn’t remember. (laughs)

NICK: I think it’s more than that.

LAURA: I think it was 20…

CAMERON: I feel like it was 25. One sec, let me see if I wrote it down!

HUDSON: Was it really—Oh, I guess people get mad when you’re like wrong about stuff on podcasts. I forgot.

CAMERON: Yeah, I didn’t write it down… Hmm.

HUDSON: (laughs) I was like, this isn’t a big deal, we’ll just be off by a couple thousand. I’m like, no, wait.

LAURA: (laughing) Turns out the people listening to these remember things. It was evenly dividable!

NICK: Oh yeah, it was!

CAMERON: It was 24. It was a weird number so that it would be three… yeah.

LAURA: Well, because it was divided, dividable by… divisible by three.

CAMERON: (giggles) Dividibidible.

LAURA: (smiling) Divisidible.

NICK: (garbled similar sounding word) Okay. So, he says…

CAMERON: Hold on. Let me get back to my page. (laughs)

LAURA: (musically) Nine, three, nine is divisible by three.

NICK: “What was it that I said, 15,000 Credits?” He smirks a little bit.

LAURA: “Um, no…”

CAMERON: “I believe it was 24.”

LAURA: “yes, 24.”

CAMERON: “Thousand, Credits, not just 24.”

NICK: “Twenty-four…”

CAMERON: “…thousand Credits.”

LAURA: “Yes.”

NICK: “…thousand Credits. Yes. Ah, I do recall that being a little more accurate. We’ll get that transfer started right away.” He gestures to the protocol droid, and the protocol droid takes a data spike and sticks it into a data pad and starts typing stuff in.

It brings the data pad over and says, “Excuse me,” and holds out the data pad for somebody to initiate a transfer, because a thing you can do in Star Wars is just touch stuff together and then money goes. That’s a thing that happens sometimes.

LAURA: Xianna’s like right there.

CAMERON: We do the weird phone thing where I touch my data pad to that data pad and we both tap it and it just does things weirdly.

NICK: Yeah. You verify the funds are transferred. The crew of the Afternoon Delight is 24,000 richer.

CAMERON: Woo!

HUDSON: “Divide that into three?”

LAURA: “Yes, that is the plan, Tink.”

NICK: “I don’t care who your treasurer is. Deal with the money as you will. I have more important things to worry about.”

LAURA: “And do you want to tell us why we are here again?”

NICK: “Well, I was planning on reaching out to you by com, but since you arrived back that means we’re a lot more secure. I can give you a lot more details. So, I managed actually to track down a fourth compatriot for you. CP over here calculates that with a fourth member your odds of success increase dramatically in the coming months.” The protocol droid does that little head bobble that protocol droids do. The chime raises a finger like it’s going to cut in but Sentinel just keeps talking over it. “Unfortunately it looks like someone else found your compatriot before I could. You’re going to have some competition on this one. You can find your quarry on the planet of Engibo 5 on the outer rim. It’s only a short hop from here. Unfortunately, it looks like you won’t be the first to arrive, but if CP’s calculations are correct you won’t be too far behind.”

LAURA: “What does any of that mean?”

NICK: “I found somebody to act as your firing supports per the actual large mission.”

LAURA: “yes?”

CAMERON: “Mm-hmm?”

NICK: “I need you to go get them.”

LAURA: “Okay but… Who are we going to just be behind, and… What?!”

CAMERON: “They have another offer?”

NICK: “Oh.”

LAURA: “Did they get arrested?”

NICK: “You’ll have to forgive me. I’ve been working in the shadows for a long time and I’ve really been doing the vague, not enough information, but I feel like you have proven that I need to be a little more forthcoming in information since I’ve already put it all on the table.”

CAMERON: “yes please.”

NICK: “I found you an assassin droid.”

CAMERON: “Ohh. Retrieval makes more sense now.”

NICK: “It’s a prototype assassin droid. They are extremely hard to find. It was made during the Clone Wars and were never mass produced. Unfortunately, Black Sun is also interested in it and they got the coordinates before we did.”

CAMERON: “Oh shit.”

LAURA: “Okieee. Cool.”

NICK: “I need you to go quickly. I think they’re sending an entire enforcer squadron, so that’s gonna be a problem.”

LAURA: “Okay, yes. We do not want to really get involved with them.”

CAMERON: “How many people would that be in that squadron?”

LAURA: “Ooh. Egh.”

NICK: ‘Probably between 10 and 20.”

CAMERON: “Oh great.”

LAURA: “They will send a good amount of people.”

NICK: “Black Sun, as they say in the outer rim, doesn’t mess around.”

LAURA: “They do NOT.”

CAMERON: “Oh, I am aware, having brought many of them in.” (laughs)

NICK: “Ooh, yeah, maybe don’t go announcing who you are. That may not go well.”

CAMERON: “I don’t normally do that…”

HUDSON: “I did a few jobs for Black Sun in the past.”

NICK: “How’d that go?”

HUDSON: “I mean, they never knew my real identity, so… It went alright.”

NICK: “But you did have a standard moniker you used so you could become more famous on the scene, right?”

CAMERON: “Oh my gosh. Not you too.”

LAURA: “This is not a thing.”

HUDSON: “Yes! Exactly! I was trying to explain this earlier.”

CAMERON: “Don’t encourage this…”

LAURA: “What is this nonsense?!”

NICK: “That’s how you get more cred. That’s how you’re cool and famous. Everybody knows that.”

LAURA: “But what happens when you steal from them? Then they know your actual moniker. When I stole drugs from Black Sun I did not use my real name.”

HUDSON: “No, no, no. You leave a note that says, in my case, “Prodigy was here, lul lul lul lul lul lul lul lul lul,” because that’s what you leave on the site.”

LAURA: “Oh, I mean, I did leave a note actually.”

HUDSON: “So yeah, that’s my note I leave, except it’s a message on their hacked website.”

LAURA: ‘I mean, I did leave a little flimsy note that said, “XOXO, Ella,” because that was the name I was using, and I left it in the box that they kept their drugs in. Heh.”

NICK: (laughs)

CAMERON: (exasperated) “Oh my gosh, you guys.”

NICK: “Anyway. This is all extremely interesting, but the only way you stand a chance of retrieving this droid on time is if you go right around now. They’re jumping from further, but they already started.”

LAURA: (reluctantly) “Okay…”

HUDSON: “Let’s head out!”

NICK: “Alright. Go, go, go.”

CAMERON: “Oookay.”

LAURA: “We go. Yes. We go, go, go. Got it.”

CAMERON: “Is this assassin droid activated currently? Are we going to have to convince the assassin droid to come with us, or is this a droid that is turned off that we can pick up and run off with?”

NICK: “So, it’s unclear.” He’s rolling with you. He’s actually in a hover wheelchair kind of situation. He’s rolling with you as you walk quickly, very West Wing style, down the corridor. “What we actually found, and it seems the information was sold to multiple parties simultaneously, is a production facility on Engibo 5. There should be at least one working, that was the guarantee, but I don’t know if it’s turned on, or in storage, or some assembly required. I’m not sure, but I don’t have time to find a trustworthy mercenary, and these droids are supposed to be top-notch, so it’s our best bet.”

LAURA: “Okay, so we will just wing it. Okie. Cool.”

CAMERON: “Alright. While we’re walking, I have a question on the Rancore Protocol.”

NICK: “Okay?”

CAMERON: “Tink plugged it into a droid and it kind of turned into a weird…

CAMERON & HUDSON: “Murder bot”

CAMERON: “…and um… What?!”

NICK: “Yeah. The Rancore Protocol, I sent you after it because I figured it would be a tool, but having heard that and some other rumors… It’s a very old program…”

CAMERON: “Mm-hmm?”

NICK: “A couple thousand years maybe. It’s possible that it’s a rudimentary AI, and that it could have been a little cranky. I’m not really sure what happened with a murder bot situation. That doesn’t sound right at all.”

(pause)

LAURA: “Okay, got it.”

CAMERON: “Okay, cool! Thanks.”

LAURA: “yeah, okay. No idea.”

CAMERON: “That’s… great.”

LAURA: ‘Okay. We go now. Bye!”

NICK: Okay. we get a cool slow-motion shot of everyone urgent jogging onto the ship, the ship takes off, and that’ll be the end of the episode. Da-naaa~!

HUDSON: Da-naaa~!

LAURA: Ba-naaa~!

CAMERON: (starts Super Mario Bros. theme)

LAURA: (joins in Super Mario Bros. theme)

## Outro

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

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

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

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

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

Our intro song is Space Jam by Pablo Ribot.

Additional music by James Gunter.

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