Tabletop Squadron Transcript, Season 1 Episode 26:
Set Sail Into Battle

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.

This week it was pointed out to us that we have been using slurs for sex workers on the show. We are sorry. These terms were not appropriate to use and we apologize for any hurt we have caused. We will be having an internal talk about being more mindful of the words we choose and how they impact people. We will also be rewriting some of the crits on the Edge of the Empire critical hits chart. A few of them use ableist language that is hurtful. We believe we have read one or two of these crits out loud on the show and we apologize for that. These things are on us, but we will try to do better in the future.

We have some announcements this week. We’ve been extremely busy lately and the newest results of that work are a Discord channel. We started a channel for everyone to come and say hello. For anyone who doesn’t know, Discord is like Skype or Slack and is a chatroom where you can talk to people about specific subjects. This one is about Tabletop Squadron. Come talk to other people who like the show and the cast about the Afternoon Delight’s shenanigans. If you’re interested in joining the group, the link is on our Twitter page, the website, and our Facebook. Stop on by. The Discord has already decided that at 420 Twitter followers Thrawn will appear in the show, so now I have that to deal with. If you have written fan fiction or drawn fan art, the Discord is a great place to show it off!

Music this week is Tanzen (K ID 22) vy KieLoBot and Seaquest by Black Bones.

Let’s get into the episode.

##

NICK: Hello! Welcome to Episode 26 of Tabletop Squadron! We have now gone as long as animes go. … For this episode we’ll do the intro in Japanese!

CAMERON: (laughing) What?!

NICK: No…

LAURA: We’re at a weird time where we’ve obviously passed ones that only do one season, so like 13 episodes, but we’re not at the One Piece level where we have 400 episodes.

NICK: Yeah, but unlike most of the ones that only go two seasons, both seasons have been great! So, we’ll go around the table, introduce yourselves, and say who you’re playing today. We’re gonna go the other way, so let’s start with Cameron.

CAMERON: Hello! I am Cameron. I’m playing Karma Nailo the Nautolan bounty hunter.

NICK: Wonderful. Next up we have Laura.

LAURA: Yes, I am Laura, and I am playing Xianna’fan the Twi’lek smuggler, thief. Yes.

NICK: Yes.

LAURA: I have pockets.

NICK: Woo. Last up we’ve got Hudson.

HUDSON: Hi. I’m Hudson, and today I’ll be performing as Tink the Gigoran slicer.

NICK: Performing well, I hope.

HUDSON: yes, yes, quite right.

NICK: Yes, indubitably. Before we get started, let’s kick it off with the Destiny Roll~

CAMERON: Fuck. (laughs)

NICK: yesss.

LAURA: [laughing] It’s exactly the same as last time. Oh no—

CAMERON: Nope. I’m two dark side this time.

LAURA: We each only have one, so it’s now four.

CAMERON: It was SO close to being two light side and then it hit the edge of my dice tray and flipped.

NICK: Yeah. Well, I didn’t have to use them last episode because you all just were really kind to walk into all the bad things I wanted to happen, so that was good.

CAMERON: (pouting) Welp, I’m grumpy now.

LAURA: I know my character!

NICK: (laughs) You are consistent!

LAURA: I am consistent.

NICK: Alright. When we last left off, Karma, Xianna and Tink had all boarded the Mon Cal cruiser and worked your way towards the bridge. The bridge currently has Ziller, the GGG quartermaster, a couple other people in it that we’ll describe in better detail, and everybody’s met there and the last thing that you heard was Ziller saying, “Oh good, I thought that these were going to be stormtroopers, and they’re not.” Then you immediately started hearing the tromping of booted feet, and that’s where we will pick up.

So, we’ve got karma kind of in cover in a doorway aiming right at Ziller, we have Xianna on the opposite end of the doorway hidden where no one can find her, Tink and Web-Web just came running into the bridge asking Ziller what’s going on, we’ve got booted tromping feet behind you all… What do you do?

CAMERON: I shoot Ziller.

LAURA: Yeah. Xianna would have already been shooting and not have waited, because Karma said to shoot.

CAMERON: Yep. Our hallway went pew-pew!

NICK: Okay. What we’ll do is we’ll go ahead and roll Vigilance for everybody and then we’ll let you have two PC slots right at the start. I think it’s three, but Tink used his running into the place in the first place, so he doesn’t need one.

HUDSON: If I have 2 in Vigilance and 1 in Willpower, then I roll a yellow and a green?

NICK: Two yellow, one green.

CAMERON: What? No.

NICK: A yellow and a green.

CAMERON: Yes.

NICK: You were exactly right. I am wrong.

CAMERON: Karma has two successes, one advantage.

HUDSON: I have two successes.

LAURA: I have one success, one advantage.

CAMERON: What other dice would you like rolled?

NICK: I need two yellows and a green.

CAMERON: Three successes, a triumph, and two advantages.

NICK: I need two green dice.

CAMERON: Two advantages.

NICK: I need a green and a yellow.

CAMERON: Four advantages.

NICK: (snickers, smiling) Okay… I need three yellows and a green.

CAMERON: Two successes, two advantages.

NICK: One more time.

CAMERON: That is four successes, two advantages.

NICK: Okay, and we’ll just do that in the wind… Great. That’s enough initiative. Starting off, karma and Xianna both get a shot at Ziller because they were armed up and ready to go.

LAURA: Xianna was shooting at the panel.

NICK: Okay. Xianna is shooting at the panel.

CAMERON: We just get shots onto the bridge.

NICK: Sure. Don’t let me explain your tactics. You go right ahead.

CAMERON: Haha!

NICK: Average.

LAURA: We are at what range?

NICK: You are at medium  range from the panel, short range from Ziller.

LAURA: Four successes and a threat.

NICK: Oh geez. Okay.

CAMERON: Three advantages, so I’d like to trigger my crit. (laughs) No, I don’t hit.

NICK: I wish you could.

LAURA: Can you trigger someone else’s crit?

(laughter)

NICK: I don’t think so.

CAMERON: Can I trigger Xianna’s crit?

NICK: I’m not saying that will never happen, I’m just saying it’s gonna have to be a very specific situation where you can do that.

CAMERON: Yeah. … Pew!

NICK: So, Xianna shoots the control panel right in the sparky bits. It immediately explodes filling the room with white smoke and knocking those two pirates to the ground. One of them hits his head and is unconscious immediately. It does that really gross movie theater splunky broken bone noise. He’s out. He will not be coming back. Then, karma shoots at Ziller. He dives behind the captain’s chair and the Mon Cal captain. You shoot and the last shot hits the Mon Cal captain as he ducks behind it and he is not hit. He takes cover behind the captain’s chair, that’s what he does, and now we’re gonna get into initiative order. So, the first thing that happens is you hear the sounds of booted feet getting faster and somebody is close to coming around the corner on the hallway, the right angle hallway that Xianna and Karma originally came down. There is the rattle of armor, and you figure oh gosh, maybe these are those stormtroopers that Ziller mentioned a second ago. They are not quite in line of sight but they are very close. That is them, next up is Ziller. He pulls a heavy blaster out of his conveyor belt…

CAMERON: … Conveyor belt? (laughs)

NICK: Don’t know why I said that…

CAMERON: (laughs)

NICK: He pulls a heavy blaster pistol out of his utility belt. He puts the pistol on the shoulder of the captain and he goes to shoot Karma, because Karma was trying to shoot him. That’s gonna be two yellows and a green. I think his motion put him at medium range actually, because he’s across the room now.

CAMERON: He gets a black die because I’m in cover?

NICK: Two black dice, one for cover and one for all the smoke that’s in the room.

CAMERON: Three successes, two threats.

NICK: Okay. I forgot what a heavy blaster pistol does.

CAMERON: Well, actually, you know, I’d love to help you but unfortunately that’s the one I lost when we were escaping the herdship, so I no longer have that written on my sheet.

LAURA: Heavy blaster pistol is 7 damage.

NICK: Ooh.

LAURA: Three crit, medium range, encumbrance 2. It has a stun setting~

NICK: He’s not using it, though. You said 7, +3 so that’s 10 damage coming at you. It hits you in the shoulder of your armor. I think it hits hard enough to bruise but doesn’t pierce it… and hurts. That was Ziller. He is still behind that captain’s chair and probably will remain there for a while. We’re up to our first character slot! We’ve got Karma in the doorway, Xianna still in the doorway, Tink you are—

HUDSON: I thought I was behind everybody.

NICK: Blaster fire is kind of pinging in front of you. You are by the doorway, but you are in the room.

HUDSON: Correct.

NICK: yes. What does anybody wanna do? Character slot.

LAURA: Xianna will shoot again. She has her scanner goggles on, so the fact that it’s smoking isn’t a big deal.

NICK: Yeah. That shouldn’t affect anything.

CAMERON: Can she have another blue die from the two threats that Ziller had?

NICK: Absolutely. He’s so busy taking a bead on Karma that he’s leaning out and exposing himself, tactically.

LAURA: yeah. I’m gonna shoot him. I’m gonna aim since I’m just standing in the doorway. He’s still medium, right?

NICK: To you, yes.

LAURA: Cool.

NICK: There is a black die because he’s in cover, though. … Well, that helped a lot. (laughs) It’s blank~

LAURA: Four successes and one advantage!

NICK: Sheesh. How much damage is that?

LAURA: That will be 10 damage.

NICK: Okay. That hurt him a whole bunch. How many advantages did you have?

LAURA: One. I just want to put that towards… Can I make it so I hit him in his shoulder and he kind of spins and he’s no longer completely in cover?

NICK: Yeah. You can have knocked him out of cover. You can do that.

LAURA: Yeah. I would like to have knocked him out of cover so it makes it easier for whoever shoots him next.

NICK: I think what it is, you hit him real well, right in the chest, and it went pretty deep, and he’s not wearing armor, so he drops the blaster pistol and draws his vibro-axe and just steps out of cover.

LAURA: Cool.

NICK: He’s raging right now. Up next, we hear some more stomping of booted feet. Tink, you look behind you to see a group of five stormtroopers coming around the corner. They are going to shoot at Web-Web because Web-Web’s right near you. That’s gonna be two yellows and two greens, average difficulty. They’re not gonna aim or anything.

CAMERON: Three successes, two advantages.

NICK: Ow… Poor Web-Web. They all shoot. The guy in the front says, “Shoot the blue one!” It’s five, so the three in the front kneel and the two behind them stay standing, and they just shoot one shot all in unison because these stormtroopers are competent. This usually doesn’t get to happen for me.

They hit Web-Web, and Web-Web says “Kriff!” and runs and dives behind a bank of stuff to get out of the way. They got hit pretty good. They’re not very happy. You can hear a stream of curses in Gungan. None of you speak Gungan, but you can clearly tell the tone of the statements. That is them. Up to another character slot.

CAMERON: I will take this one since I’m armed. I’m going to shoot at Ziller again.

NICK: Okay. He’s no longer in cover. He’s got his big old vibro-axe out.

CAMERON: And he stepped back to medium range?

NICK: yes, from where you are.

CAMERON: Okie-dokie.

NICK: (quietly) Do you want to aim?

CAMERON: Yeah. Well, no actually, I want to use my maneuver for something else. I’m just going to shoot him. One success, two advantages.

NICK: How much damage is that total?

CAMERON: Ten.

NICK: Oof. Okay. You hit Ziller in the chest basically in the exact same spot that Xianna did. He is not dead, but he–

CAMERON: We’re stunning him. Both of our guns are set to stun.

NICK: Oh! Oh, then he’s super unconscious.

LAURA: Oh, no.

NICK: Did you switch yours back to murder?

LAURA: I think Xianna switched hers back to murder. I honestly don’t remember.

CAMERON: We never said that we did.

LAURA: I don’t know if I ever said I did, but I feel like Xianna would have…

CAMERON: Karma’s is still on stun, so that was 10 stun damage.

NICK: Okay. If you kept it on stun he’s unconscious. If you didn’t, then he’s just bleeding and also dizzy.

CAMERON: The thing is whether or not you remembered that your gun was on stun.

LAURA: She probably didn’t.

NICK: I actually really like the idea of Xianna shooting him and being like ‘yes! … Aw, what the heck?’

CAMERON: ‘Why was it blue?’

LAURA: ‘No, it was on stun!’

NICK: (laughs) Doesn’t recognize stun damage because never uses it.

CAMERON: How come it’s blue? What is wrong with this gun? (laughs)

LAURA: (laughs)

NICK: The blue does more damage. Yeah, so, with the second stun wave he basically just drops. He slumps. Little Zzz status icons come up from his head. He is unconscious. Great job. You wanted to use your maneuver?

CAMERON: Yes. I am taking off my bounty hunter badge and holding it facing behind me. I just saw stormtroopers come from the other side and there’s boots behind me. There’s going to be stormtroopers coming. I’m trying to identify myself, and I’m gonna use my advantages that the smoke is cleared from behind me and they can see it when they come around the corner.

NICK: Oh dang. I keep forgetting that you’re technically not wanted. (laughs)

CAMERON: yes.

LAURA: Neither is Xianna.

CAMERON: And Xianna is technically dead.

LAURA: Technically.

NICK: Technically.

LAURA: Technically dead. (laughs)

NICK: Oh man. So it occurs to me that the only person on the crew that is actively being pursued is Tink, which just seems kind of unfair to me.

(laughter)

HUDSON: It really is.

LAURA: Xianna has that split second where she doesn’t remember this. “Oh shit! The fuzz!”

NICK: (laughs)

LAURA: And then she’s like, “Oh wait… I am dead! Haha!”

CAMERON: Jorus is technically after Xianna right now.

NICK: Yeah, that’s true.

CAMERON: But he doesn’t know her name. Tink is like 100% Sila’s got him down.

NICK: He’s six inches from convicted at this point since Sila has his notebook of many tricks.

CAMERON: Yeah. So, my maneuver and my advantage to take my badge out and show it so that they see it, so that they know I’m not on the bad side. I don’t want to be one of the baddies.

NICK: Okay. Goodness. Alright, next up is a character slot. I think that would be Tink.

HUDSON: Yes. Dumb question of the evening: Is this bridge actually a bridge?

NICK: (chuckles) No.

HUDSON: It could be, but it’s not?

NICK: I think it just became one if you want it to be. We just didn’t mention that this room is above a chasm above the reactor.

LAURA: They’re never above a chasm.

NICK: No. The bridge is the driving place for the boat. It’s where the captain hangs out.

HUDSON: Oh, okay.

NICK: You know in Star Trek how there’s more people on the ship but it always shows those same eight people and it shakes around and they fall over and stuff? Picture that. That’s basically what this is.

LAURA: Ooh! What you could have… I don’t think the Mon Calamari ships ever show it this way, it’s usually the galactic ones, where this is a raised section so a lot of the people on computers and stuff are lowered…

NICK: Oh, the Imperial ships have that.

LAURA: …so there is kind of a bridge, but the Mon Calamari ones always seem to be flat.

NICK: Well no, because they’re on that floaty chair on the arm.

LAURA: Oh, there is a little bit.

CAMERON: First of all, I like the fact that you used Star Trek to explain what a bridge is as opposed to Star Wars, the game we’re playing.

(laughter)

LAURA: To be fair, no, I was going to tell Hudson… ‘Have you ever seen an episode of Star Trek?’ That’s what I thought of too! I think they call it the bridge in Star Trek and use that way more often than they do in Star Wars.

CAMERON: Oh yeah, because they’re constantly telling people to report to the bridge. They don’t do that in Star Wars as much.

LAURA: And they’re constantly on the bridge and mentioning it in Star Trek whereas in Star Wars they don’t use that as often.

CAMERON: But in the Mon Cal cruisers there is the floaty bit in the bubble that the admiral sits in, so there’s part of a bridge thing.

NICK: yeah. It’s like a chair on an arm.

LAURA: His bubble chair.

NICK: So, depending on what you want to do, kind of.

HUDSON: I was curious. I don’t have to do it. I had an idea, but…

CAMERON: I had advantages in my initiative roll. I’d like to donate those to Hudson to help with bridge creation if required. (laughs)

NICK: (smiling) Okay. Fine. Tell me what you’re aiming for. Let’s make this happen.

HUDSON: I’m gonna push someone off.

(laughter)

NICK: Okay. Web-Web is nearby taking cover behind a panel. So, the way it is… However everybody was picturing it, that’s what it looks like, but around the edge there is a sharp 15 foot drop, 5 meter drop, I know that’s not exactly right but close, and then there’s more panels and stuff down there. It’s a drop enough that could mess with people. Your options, you can get to everybody. There is one of the lackeys who was trying to hack the computers on the ground near there but still functioning. One of them is unconscious. The Zabrak man in the ship uniform is standing off to the side also near the edge. Ziller is out. There are stormtroopers behind you. I think that’s it right now. Who do you want to push?

HUDSON: Where was the one who tried to hack stuff?

NICK: He’s in front of you. He’s lying on the ground near the edge between two sets of computer panels, one of which is exploded.

HUDSON: I’ll kick that guy off.

NICK: (laughs) Okay. You use your maneuver to run over to him. Make me a Brawl check.

HUDSON: Oh no…

CAMERON: Hey, you’re pretty strong.

HUDSON: Yeah. I don’t have anything in Brawl, though.

CAMERON: Yeah, but he’s also on the ground and just got blown up a little bit.

NICK: It is going to be average difficulty, two purple, but you will get a blue die because he’s prone.

HUDSON: Do I get another one because she gave me advantage?

NICK: She did that so that there was a ledge to shove off of.

CAMERON: I did that so that there was a bridge.

HUDSON: Oh, so there was a bridge! Okay! Three successes, two threats.

NICK: Okay. Everyone is looking at you. I think what happens is you parkour over a computer panel. All these computers by the way I’m picturing like Mission Control from the 70s, those big, white, blocky things. You parkour over those, the one where you plant one hand and swing your legs over. You run over to that guy who’s on the ground. He’s reaching for his pistol, because he was going to go next, and you just soccer kick him in the stomach. You know in the movies when someone gets hit hard and it’s very obvious that they had a rope tied to him and pulled it real fast to make him slide? He does that, and he goes sliding. The back of his head hits the corner of a panel with a smack and then he spins off and falls, and there’s a comically long delay, and then you hear (“boom”), and that guy is definitely out.

HUDSON: (laughs)

NICK: Your threats are everybody saw you run onto the bridge, and they’re all looking at you, and you just ran up and clearly declared your side by punting this guy. You hear Web-Web say, “Oh… Yeah. That makes a lot more sense. Come on, you could have told me.”

CAMERON: And then we get the camera shot of Tink looking over the ledge so that we can see that it’s only 15 feet and that the pause when he was falling was way too long.

NICK: But the guy is sprawled out really dramatically, like the end of Die Hard. (laughs)

LAURA: There would also be a Xianna wave, of “’ello Tink!” Heh.

HUDSON: Yeah, Web-Web says you could have told me and I say, “I dropped very strong hints!”

(laughter)

NICK: “Fair enough.” So that was that. Lackeys are very dead. Tink’s in the middle of the room. Karma is still in the hallway. Xianna is still in the hallway. The Zabrak in the Mon Cal navy uniform pulls their blaster pistol, looks around, you can see a decision come to their face, and shoots at Tink. That’s going to be three greens. They are competent. Flip me a dark side point to upgrade one of those to a yellow, and they are at medium range. They’re on the far side from him. Hmm, I want him to aim, too.

CAMERON: Two successes, two threats.

NICK: Huh. The same thing happens with this person. They have now loudly declared sides with their gun, but they do… What’s a light blaster, 5?

CAMERON: A light blaster is 5.

NICK: Okay. You’ve got 7 damage coming at you, Tink, minus your soak.

HUDSON: Four?

NICK: Yeah. Your soak is 3?

HUDSON: Yup.

NICK: Four damage, and they already aimed so they’re basically just gonna crouch down in place, but just for flavor because they can’t take cover, because that’s what they’re doing. Up next we have the stormtroopers. They come around the corner and they immediately see Karma holding the bounty hunter badge and the four of them take very obvious military positions against the walls and start covering each other as they work their way forward. The one with the orange pauldron, because there’s always one of those if you need one of them to talk, comes up behind Karma and says, “Bounty hunter, report. What’s going on?”

CAMERON: “A group of green Gigorans have taken over the Mon Cal ship. We hailed the captain, spoke to him, he was shot down, he’s over there by the chair. Their leader seemed to have been the green fellow there who’s taken out. The white Gigoran is on our side. The purple Twi’lek is on our side. I think everyone else in the bridge is not on our side, our side being the non-pirate side, sir.”

NICK: We get a shot of the stormtrooper captain looking at Xianna who’s still against the wall and nods at her.

LAURA: She waves.

CAMERON: “Obviously the other stormtroopers are also okay, I assume.”

NICK: You can’t see his face, but he’s rolling his eyes a little bit inside his helmet.

HUDSON: (laughs)

CAMERON: Just wanted to be clear. (laughs)

NICK: “Yeah… Copy that.” He makes a hand motion. “Clear the room.” The four of them start charging in and they just start laying down fire like crazy. Two of them are gonna shoot at Web-Web, two of them are gonna shoot at Tink, so that’s a green and a yellow.

CAMERON: (laughing) Sorry buddy, I tried.

NICK: You’re a Gigoran!

CAMERON: I said the white one was on our side!

NICK: Yeah, but he doesn’t really listen to you.

LAURA: Yeah, but they’re stormtroopers.

NICK: They’re Nazis.

LAURA: (laughs) They’re space racists.

NICK: They’re still assholes. Yeah, a green and a yellow versus two against Web-Web.

CAMERON: One success.

NICK: Great. They shoot Web-Web. Web-Web’s in bad fucking shape.

CAMERON: Sorry Twitter family.

NICK: Oh no, Web-Web’s gonna fucking make it, Web-Web’s just not doing well. Web-Web may come back with a robot face or something, I don’t know.

CAMERON: (laughs)

HUDSON: Ah…

NICK: And then a green and a yellow at Tink.

CAMERON: One success, one threat.

NICK: Okay. That’s 6 damage going at you Tink as they basically just shoot you in the chest, because you’re still standing in the middle looking triumphant. “We got the Gigoran, sir!” That is their turn. The captain is just like a proud papa right now. He’s not engaging. Ziller’s unconscious, and… character slot.

CAMERON: I guess I’ll shoot the Zabrak, since I’m on stun and he’s still standing.

NICK: Sure. Black die for the smoke that I’ve been forgetting to include.

CAMERON: Blue die for the aiming. So far I think it’s anybody who’s been wearing a helmet hasn’t had to deal with the smoke, because magic helmet viewy things.

NICK: That does make sense. Oh no, those helmets filter smoke, they don’t filter poison.

LAURA: Yeah.

NICK: Sorry, that’s just… Star Wars… Anyway.

CAMERON: Anyway. Is he at medium range from me?

NICK: Yeah.

CAMERON: Okie-doke.

NICK: That’s a lot of threats.

CAMERON: Two successes, two threats, so that is 11 stun damage.

NICK: Yeah. You shoot him, he flies backwards, and there’s a long pause… and then you hear (WHOMP). You blasted him off of the bridge, but remember this is the Gonzo director we hired for just this arc, so this guy flies backwards.

CAMERON: Oh, that’s true. Yes. He goes flying!

LAURA: This one has had multiple reshoots, has changed directors three times, one of them was a kung fu director.

NICK: (laughs) We are way over budget.

CAMERON: The first time we shot this it was a very different fight scene.

NICK: It was all gritty hand-to-hand.

LAURA: That’s why some of them fly way back, because they hired a kung fu movie director for half of it. They do that full pull line fly.

CAMERON: Well, they didn’t want to pay the stunt men to do it again less intensely, so like, it works.

LAURA: Yeah.

NICK: Mm-hmm. That was you. Zabrak is out you assume since he fell off and there was a flump and then you didn’t hear anything. Now the stormtroopers are coming from the other side. They clear the room. They actually chuck a stun grenade in there, so roll me two greens and a yellow versus hard, because they threw it from far away, and a black die because they’re not really looking at what they’re throwing at. They’re doing the breech and clear thing.

CAMERON: Stormtroopers are good at their job. Three successes, a triumph, and two threats.

NICK: Holy cow. I’m gonna go ahead and activate the blast on that stun grenade.

LAURA: Blast is, for two advantages, each character engaged with target suffers damage equal to blast rating and successive.

NICK: They threw it at Tink. Web-Web is far enough away that they’re not gonna get hit with it. Engaged is really close. Man, the blast radius on those kind of stinks.

LAURA: I mean, engaged is kind of what you make it. All the range bands are kind of what you make it.

NICK: I agree. I think it hits everybody in the room.

CAMERON: I think everybody else is unconscious or dead besides Tink.

NICK: So, Tink will take the full stun damage, Web-Web will take the blast. I’m not trying to take Tink out with one stun grenade.

HUDSON: It wouldn’t take me out. It would hurt real bad, though. That’s 8 damage I put down.

CAMERON: It would go against your strain, though, if it’s a stun grenade.

HUDSON: Yeah, that’s why I’m saying it would still be 5 damage.

NICK: It still reduces by your soak, too. Tink takes 8 stun damage. You hear Web-Web’s cursing get really weak from behind the panel that they’re hiding behind. The stormtroopers start to file into the room and clear things. I am actually going to put my last little trump card in here. There’s some blaster fire from behind the stormtroopers and two of them drop with just smoking holes in the back of their helmets, so they are down. You can hear a mechanical voice indistinctly coming from there. Someone else is shooting at the stormtroopers. Up next is a character slot.

LAURA: I think Karma already shot. Who’s left?

NICK: Web-Web maybe, you can’t see them, and Tink, and then a bunch of stormtroopers shooting at everybody that’s moving.

LAURA: Huh…

HUDSON: I could go with and run out of there.

CAMERON: They’re just gonna shoot you if you run. (laughs)

LAURA: Yeah.

HUDSON: True.

NICK: There are ways to make them stop shooting you.

HUDSON: Yeah, dying.

(laughter)

NICK: Search your feelings.

LAURA: Can Xianna move to the next door on the other side of the bridge? How far is that?

NICK: You could do it in two movements.

LAURA: Okay. Xianna will use her maneuver and then her action to move that distance and be against the wall on the other side of the door so she has some cover from that section, and while she’s running through there she wants to point at Tink and go “He is with us! Please do not shoot him!”

NICK: Hmm. I feel like… Okay. You can hear indistinct com chatter through the helmets, and that combined with the fact that two of them just got murdered, they turn around and the other two throw their backs against the opposite side of the door from you and they’re looking around the corner. The other stormtrooper captain has two blaster pistols drawn and is just cowboy dual wield shooting down the hallway. You actually can see with your scanner goggles on, there’s a Gand bounty hunter splattered, half covered in green blood, that doesn’t look like it’s theirs.

LAURA: Ew.

NICK: It’s just basically… You know Bullet Tooth Tony from Snatch, just doing that indistinct grumbling while trying to kill people thing from the hallway? It is very unhappy right now. That was you. Another character slot.

HUDSON: Ugh… I don’t feel great. I don’t have any weapons and there’s no one else to hurt.

CAMERON: (laughs)

NICK: You have a knife.

HUDSON: I have a knife?

NICK: Yeah. Didn’t you give—Oh no. They never gave you your weapons. (laughs)

HUDSON: They never gave me my weapons.

LAURA: So, just put your hands up. (laughs)

CAMERON: When he was kidnapped he had a knife. They did not give him his knife back when they sent him onto the ship.

HUDSON: Nope. I get on my knees and put my hands up.

NICK: Okay. (laughs) They all stop shooting you. You can hear the stormtrooper captain that’s near Karma go “Oh. Whoops.” Heh. We move on to the next slot. Some things happen… and those people are all dead. I think what happens is the stormtroopers from the far side of the room move in a scary wave to the same door Xianna is. One of them tries to plant their elbow on your shoulder to do the squad covering tactics thing, so we get this cool shot of into the doorway and it’s just surrounded with stormtroopers and also Xianna looking mildly confused.

LAURA: Xianna would definitely turn around and just be like, “Oh~? How are you~? Heh.”

NICK: “Doing fine. Let me shoot this Gand real quick.”

LAURA: “Okie!”

NICK: And they all (blast noises), and they just riddle him with blaster fire. The Gand slumps back against the wall and leaves a gross, green streak down the wall, but it’s not down. We get the shot of that Gonzo stormtrooper captain with the two pistols walking up to the Gand, and the stormtrooper captain says, “bounty hunters,” and fires. The Gand flips the stormtrooper the middle finger. “Stay down!” He fires, and the Gand starts cursing in Gand, and (repeated blast noises).

LAURA: “Oh wow. He will just not die.”

(laughter)

NICK: And then the Gand finally slumps to the ground, there’s a clatter of guns, and that will end combat. Everything’s mostly down at this point. Karma… You haven’t seen the Gand yet. You’re still in the room. Never mind there. So, the room is cleared, you got a bunch of stormtroopers, Gand is down. You have eight stormtroopers, two of which are captains.

CAMERON: Karma’s going to put her badge away and stand up from where she’s been crouching next to the door and saunter onto the bridge.

NICK: Okay. You can see Tink still kneeling there with his hands in the air saying ‘they didn’t give me a weapon! I don’t know what’s going on!’ Then you see a puddle of blood and then an open hatch in the base of a computer panel with a narrow crawlspace, like very narrow, and a streak of blood going into that so someone must have climbed through there, then a bunch of bodies including two dead stormtroopers. The rest of the stormtroopers are a combination of covering the doors and each other and a couple of them milling around, and the two captains are talking but you can’t hear them because they’re doing it through radio, so you just get this pantomime of two stormtrooper officers gesturing at each other waving their arms around kind of robotically, but you don’t know what they’re saying.

CAMERON: Alright. I’m gonna approach the two mime stormtroopers who are having the conversation.

NICK: The two captains? As you get close you can very indistinctly hear their voices, but it’s very muffled through the laminate of the helmets.

CAMERON: “Pardon me, sirs.”

NICK: The Gonzo stormtrooper captain who is now very clearly discernable because there’s splatters of green blood on the front of his otherwise white armor. He goes to reach for one of his blaster pistols that are on holsters and the other stormtrooper captain says, “No, she’s good. She helped. We’re fine. Don’t shoot her.”

The other one says, “Agh, bounty hunters.” They acknowledge you.

CAMERON: I start talking primarily to the one who was on my side who just told the scary one not to shoot me. “The reason that I am here is I am after the bounty on the Green Gigorans. They had kidnapped my friend, the white Gigoran,” pointing at Tink who is still on his knees with his hands up, “so we were also retrieving him, but I have a bounty on Engebo 5 for bringing the Gigorans back. Is it alright with you gentlemen if I take just the Gigorans with me?”

NICK: There’s a long pause, and then the blood splattered one says, “We’ll let you collect the bounty if you make it worth our while.”

The other one clonk slaps him in the back of the head and they look mad at each other. “You can claim the bodies when you decide to leave.”

CAMERON: “Okay. Thank you.”

LAURA: I would like to add that the shot’s kind of panned out so that you see all of this but in the background you see Xianna flirting with the one stormtrooper that had used her as a balance, so you definitely see her putting her hand on the shoulder armor and like tracing things and being like… “So, uh, when do you get off? Heh.”

(laughter)

CAMERON: Well…

LAURA: “So, you seem pretty tall for a stormtrooper. Heh.”

NICK: “Well, you know what they say about tall stormtroopers.”

LAURA: “Uh, yes I do.”

NICK: “We get longer grieves on our armor.”

LAURA: “Oh. I was going to say you had very large, uh, penises.”

CAMERON: (giggles)

NICK: “Well that too. You can’t tell because I’m wearing a helmet, but I’m winking.”

CAMERON: I thought it was they hit their heads as they went through doors.

LAURA: Ooh.

NICK: Ooh. That’s very good. At that point the camera is centered on Xianna and this one stormtrooper. The captain—we’ll just call them asshole and not asshole for now.

CAMERON: Capt’in Asshole?

NICK: Capt’in Asshole. Captain Mass’oll

LAURA: So many apostrophes.

CAMERON: Great.

NICK: But not Mass’oll… Massle, M-A-S-S-L-E. Not asshole captain says, “Trooper, we’re gonna secure the bridge. Private Longfellow, go with the bounty hunters. Make sure they don’t get into trouble.”

(laughter)

LAURA: (giggling) I was gonna say, if I had my choice it would have been a designation number of 69.

CAMERON: (giggling) It can be both. It can be both.

NICK: (smiling) Yeah, there’s a little serial number under his helmet that says like DK6969.

(laughter)

LAURA: Oh yes.

NICK: The one extra tall stormtrooper salutes over Xianna’s head, because he can just see straight over. “Yes sir!” He basically just attaches himself to you three as a unit and waits to see what you all are going to do.

CAMERON: Karma’s gonna walk over to Tink. “Alright buddy, you can stand up.”

HUDSON: “Oh. I think I can…” I struggle a little bit to get up.

CAMERON: I help.

NICK: Yeah, your knee is hurting real bad. The one that was exploded not that long ago.

CAMERON: Like two days ago.

HUDSON: yeah…

NICK: yeah, it’s not in great shape.

LAURA: Do you have wounds or just strain?

HUDSON: Both.

LAURA: Okay. (reluctantly) Xianna would hand you a stim pack.

HUDSON: Yay… So, that heals 5?

LAURA: Five.

NICK: At this point I feel like Tink might need a port for all his stim pack injections.

CAMERON: You just do the dog thing where you pinch his skin, and then you do the shot in it, and then you wiggle it to get it to disperse.

NICK: (laughs) Do you hand it to him? Do you throw it at him?

LAURA: I hand it to him.

NICK: Okay. We get a shot of Tink grabbing that and just like jabbing it into his neck, like ‘ah, that’s the good stuff.’ You’re feeling better. Your ears are ringing a little bit from the stun grenade going off. It’s not a comfortable feeling, but the group is back together, and Ziller is unconscious. You do know that there are three other Gigorans—well, I guess Tink does. You know that there is between three and five total Gigorans.

CAMERON: Yes. It’s around the size of a quartet.

NICK: yeah. They’re still somewhere in the ship.

CAMERON: Okay. I’m gonna go over to Ziller and put a pair of binders on him since he’s still unconscious.

NICK: Good idea. Do you binder him to something?

CAMERON: Yes, to the captain’s chair since he seems so fond of it.

NICK: yeah, that seems capable. He’s twisted around in an uncomfortable position.

CAMERON: Then I pat him down real quick to see if I can find Tink’s knife.

NICK: You don’t find Tink’s knife, but you find a bigger knife.

CAMERON: Oh. He has his battle axe on him, right? Ziller had a battle axe?

NICK: Yeah.

CAMERON: Okay. I hand you the battle axe, Tink.

HUDSON: Ooh. Thank you.

LAURA: Does he have a com?

NICK: Yes, he does.

LAURA: Xianna takes the com and then goes over to Tink. “Okay, Tink, do you want to pretend to be this Gigoran and you ask the other Gigorans where they are on the ship?”

HUDSON: “Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.”

LAURA: “Okie.” Also, was he wearing a translator?

NICK: Yes, because he was talking.

CAMERON: He had one on his head.

NICK: But when he was shouting to you all he had a translator pulled down, because you don’t speak Gigoran.

HUDSON: Can you do the Ziller voice one more time?

NICK: ‘Yeah brother, this is Ziller.’

HUDSON: “Alright. I’m about to get on the coms here. … Hey uh, this is Ziller. Um, yeah, we just had a great victory over here. Where are y’all at?”

NICK: “Yeah, Ziller, you sound different. What do you mean where are we at? You’re the one that told us where to go.” I’m gonna need a Deception check from you. It’s average, these guys aren’t real smart.

HUDSON: Success and a threat.

NICK: “But I guess since you know where we are that’s no big deal. Is the bridge secured?”

HUDSON: “Bridge is fully secure. I just have a sore throat so that’s why I’m sounding like this.”

NICK: “… makes sense. You know, the humidity from that translator you wear all the time is really bad on the vocal cords. It’s cool that you don’t make us wear one, boss.”

HUDSON: “Oh well, you know how much I like you guys. Uh… Yeah. Keep up the good work, soldiers.”

NICK: “Okay! We’re almost done robbing the forward cargo hold, so if you wanna come help carry stuff you can set that self-destruct. Let’s finish this thing up.”

HUDSON: “Actually, stay where you are. Before you carry any more out I want to inspect what you got.”

NICK: “Seems suspicious, but okay!”

(laughter)

HUDSON: “Uh… Over and outie!”

(laughter)

CAMERON: So he had taken his translator off to say this, so we’re just watching him make noises.

NICK: What did we say Gigoran sounds like? Oh! Bus breaks. You just keep hearing bus breaks happen, but a slightly lower bus breaks.

LAURA: Well, a bus and a Wookiee had sex and produced some sort of… Bussiee. Heh.

CAMERON: No, it sounds like a bus and a Wookiee having sex.

LAURA: Ohh.

NICK: (groans)

HUDSON: Okay! I tell the stormtroopers where the rest of them are.

CAMERON: “Tink, you gotta put your translator back on, buddy. We can’t understand you.”

NICK: (laughs)

HUDSON: “Oh sorry.” I put it back on. I tell them where they went, to the front cargo hold.

NICK: Okay. Asshole captain, Massle, Captain Massle says, “Well, we’re securing the bridge, and if you want to collect that bounty you should actually do some bounty hunting. We’ll come by later if they kill you, but you should do whatever you want now. If we leave here they may send more.”

CAMERON: “Roger that, captain.” I skip off the bridge.

NICK: (laughing) Okay.

CAMERON: Karma’s had it. (laughs)

LAURA: Xianna does a little goodbye salute to designation number DK6969.

NICK: Oh, he’s coming with you.

CAMERON: He’s coming with us. He’s our assigned guard.

LAURA: Oh! He’s coming with us! So then never mind. He’s coming with. She’s gonna keep talking to him the whole time.

NICK: So, you are headed out. Which way are you going? Are you going back towards the Afternoon Delight or towards the GGG ship?

CAMERON: Towards the GGGs, so heading out the other door.

NICK: Do you want to make a plan with your cadre of troops here?

CAMERON: “It’s that way, right?”

HUDSON: “Yeah!”

CAMERON: I point down the hallway towards the way that everybody came in from, where the Gand is lying, and I see the Gand.

NICK: Yeah. You know this Gand, actually.

CAMERON: Oh no, Bobby. (laughs)

NICK: His name is…

HUDSON: Gandar.

NICK: Sure. Gandar the Immortal is his thing, and you know that his brother, Sandar—You’ve never seen them separated or heard of them separated. You never worked with them closely, they’re just one of those… The ones that if the Empire calls a bunch of bounty hunters to stand on a star destroyer to receive orders to get somebody, they’re usually there. They’re just thug guys, but yeah, they’re tough, they’re real tough. Or they were.

CAMERON: Alright. I’m gonna lean down and… steal all of his stuff now that he’s dead.

NICK: (laughs) Okay.

CAMERON: We’re reincorporating it into the bounty hunter profession. He would want someone to take this.

NICK: Roll me a Skulduggery?

CAMERON: “Hey Xianna, help.”

LAURA: Xianna looks over and she’s like…

CAMERON: “Are you busy?”

LAURA: “I would, um, never do anything illegal.”

NICK: (laughs)

CAMERON: “No, I know! I just—“

LAURA: “Is it okay to steal from a dead body? Or to take things from a dead body?”

NICK: “That’s highly dishonorable.”

LAURA: “But is it… Are we allowed to?”

CAMERON: “Yes. The bounty hunter code says that you are allowed to retrieve. I should at least retrieve his personal items to return to his family and drop off at the nearest bounty office.”

LAURA: “Okie.”

NICK: “If you say so.”

CAMERON: “I do, sweetie.”

LAURA: So, she goes over and she helps.

NICK: It’s gonna be hard. You’re going to find stuff, but if you pass the hard check you’re gonna find something cool.

CAMERON: Your Cunning is 4 now, right?

LAURA: Yes. My Cunning was 4. My Agility is now 4.

CAMERON: What is your Skulduggery?

LAURA: It is a 2.

NICK: So is Xianna doing it and you’re just helping?

CAMERON: Yeah. I put the dice pool together so I’m going to roll it, but yeah. Oh no…

NICK: Nuh-uh.

CAMERON: Alright, so it fails with two advantages.

NICK: You’re able to find his blaster rifle which is just next to him.

LAURA: Xianna’s just too busy flirting, and she just…

CAMERON: She doesn’t want to look Good at it, so she’s like ‘oh, I have to be awkward touching the body. It’s dead… I’ve never done this before…’

LAURA: Also, since we’re past the encounter, Xianna’s now coming down off of impact.

NICK: Ooh. That’s gonna be rough.

LAURA: Yes. It’s a black die to Agility, Cunning, and Intellect.

NICK: Oof. You find the blaster carbine. You find 100 Credits. You know that Gands often hide important effects and things inside their natural armor, but this one is mostly soaked in blood at this point and you can’t find it, and you don’t really feel like trying to vivisect him while your bounty is still on the ship, so you kind of just give up on that.

CAMERON: Can I find his badge?

NICK: Sure.

CAMERON: I’ll just return that to the bounty office so they know he’s out of commission.

NICK: Sure. You do that. You head on down the hallway. This is the same hallway, Tink, that you ran down with Web-Web on your shoulders earlier.

CAMERON: “Was there anything interesting down this hallway, Tink?”

HUDSON: “Not really.”

NICK: He says, ignoring the other Gand that tried to murder him earlier.

HUDSON: “I mean, like, I guess earlier there was this cool… I’ll tell you about it later. There was just acrobatics and we threw them like a football…”

CAMERON: “Did you see another Gand? It’s weird that there’s only one, because his brother should be here too.”

HUDSON: “Yeah. I saw a second Gand.”

LAURA: “Okay, but—“

CAMERON: “That wasn’t interesting?!” (laughs)

NICK: As Tink says that, you come to what looks like passenger quarters and there’s a Gand that’s just been completely cut open and splayed out. Somebody took some really intense vibro-knives and went from neck to pelvis and then pulled.

LAURA: “Oh. Ew.”

CAMERON: “Oh my.”

NICK: It also looks like that happened and the Gand kept fighting for a while.

CAMERON: “Oh yeah, they were tough.”

LAURA: “Okie. Let’s move on, then.”

HUDSON: “This is the Gand!”

NICK: (laughs)

LAURA: “Yes, okay, we are moving on.”

CAMERON: “Thanks Tink.” Karma quickly goes over and checks this one out too.

NICK: You’re able to grab the badge pretty easily from the same place, but there’s not really a lot else on this guy. You continue onward. You come to a four-way intersection. In front of you there is a very large cargo hold. You can actually see some GGGs still in there including one of the Gigorans, and then to the right you can see a sealed passageway that looks like it leads to an airlock but is still sealed. To the left there is a long hallway and you can hear the sounds of people rummaging around in there, but you can’t see it.

LAURA: How many people are in the cargo hold?

NICK: You don’t have a full view. You can see a Gigoran and one other person, but from the noises there’s more people but you don’t know for sure, from where you’re at. You could try and get closer.

LAURA: “Tink, do you have your scanner thing?”

HUDSON: “Yeah. I do. Wait… No I don’t. Wait… Let me check.”

LAURA: “Doesn’t it scan for people?”

HUDSON: “Oh. You mean the scanner that scans for people scanners?”

NICK: (laughs)

CAMERON: (laughs) Oh gosh!

LAURA: “Yes… the scanner that scans for people… scanner. I don’t know what it is called.”

CAMERON: “His scanner actually only picks up other scanners. That’s why it picks up motion scanners.”

HUDSON: “It’s the Crad Corp EnhanceScan.”

NICK: Scanner.

(laughter)

LAURA: “So does it scan for people?”

HUDSON: “yes.”

LAURA: “Okay. Do you want to use that and tell us how many people are…?”

HUDSON: “If you’ll shut up, I will.”

LAURA: “Wow…”

CAMERON: “Oh my gosh. He’s gotten so rebellious in like his few hours away.”

LAURA: “You were gone for like… one day.”

HUDSON: “I’m not feeling good! I probably have a concussion.”

CAMERON: “Did you hit your head?”

HUDSON: ‘I mean, when I fell I think I did.”

LAURA: “Do you want any… uh, uh…” She’s half way through that sentence and goes, “um, a bantha cake? Heh.”

NICK: “Ooh. A bantha cake? I used to love those when I was a kid.”

LAURA: She rummages in her pocket and pulls out two bantha cakes.

HUDSON: “Whoa, 69, that might be a special bantha cake.”

LAURA: “No. it is just a bantha cake.”

NICK: “What do you mean?”

HUDSON: “It might be laced with—“

CAMERON: “No, he just means it’s one of the blue ones. You know how they sometimes have the white or the pink ones?”

LAURA: “Oh! He means it is one of those special edition ones and sometimes they are pink instead of blue.”

(laughter)

NICK: There’s the shot of you three talking, it was zoomed in and you were kind of huddled, and when Longfellow started talking it zooms out and you just see this 6’4” stormtrooper standing behind you all slightly awkward.

NICK: “Can-Can… Can I have a bantha cake?”

LAURA: “Oh, of course!” She hands him one of the two. “So Tink, do you want this other bantha cake?”

HUDSON: “No thanks.”

LAURA: “Okay, well I offered. So how many people are in the room?”

HUDSON: “Looks like there are…”

NICK: You fire up the scanner. You can actually see the whole front half of the ship from the range. You can see there are five lifeforms in the forward cargo hold and five lifeforms in the port cargo hold off to your left. Also, the whole ship lights the hell up with motion sensors, especially some really sharp clusters back towards where Karma and Xianna came from and another set of clusters that is, if you’re facing the forward cargo hold, it’s at like 7 o’clock, so somewhere back further into the ship. But yeah, this whole thing is security rigged.

HUDSON: “Oh. You think my scanner did that?”

CAMERON: “Did what?”

HUDSON: “Cause all the lights.”

NICK: (laughs)

LAURA: “What…?”

CAMERON: “Can I see that for a second, Tink?” (laughs)

LAURA: “How many people are there?!”

HUDSON: “Okay. There are five people in the cargo hold and five people in the…”

CAMERON: Other one.

NICK: Other cargo hold.

HUDSON: “…on the other cargo hold.”

LAURA: “Ugh. I don’t want to have to get ten people. That is too many.”

HUDSON: “I mean, we don’t have to.”

LAURA: “What are we even doing here again?”

CAMERON: “We are getting the Green Gigorans… gregariously?”

HUDSON: “The Triple G, yo.”

NICK: At this point the stormtrooper tilts his helmet up to above his nose and starts eating the bantha cake. You see this amazing male model chiseled jaw with a little cleft. The bottom of his nose looks strong. He smiles and has perfectly white teeth.

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: (laughs) yes!

NICK: (deep, suave voice) “Oh, well thank you so much for this bantha cake.”

LAURA: Yesss~!

NICK: “It sure brings back those nostalgic feelings from my childhood in my privileged home.” And then he slides the helmet back on.

(laughter)

LAURA: (grinning) Oh well, uh… You are welcome. Heheh.”

NICK: (return to standard, nerdy, muffled stormtrooper voice) “That was very kind of you.”

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: “Yes, um, heh. Well, anyways, I do not want to have to get ten people. That is a lot of work and I’m tired…”

CAMERON: Karma pops her neck and looks at Tink. “We got this? You got an axe now.”

HUDSON: “I do.”

CAMERON: “Don’t get hit.”

HUDSON: “Uh… When do I ever want to?”

CAMERON: “I was just warning. I don’t know.”

HUDSON: “Okay, well…”

CAMERON: “It looks like you have not been following that advice, so I’m just providing it again.”

HUDSON: “(huffs) Sometimes even when you want to not get hit you get hit, and I’ve learned that through experience.”

CAMERON: “Do you want another gun?”

HUDSON: “yeah, I’d love one.”

CAMERON: I hand him the carbine. (laughs)

NICK: (laughs)

LAURA: “I have a grenade.

HUDSON: “Now where’s the trigger on this thing?”

(laughter)

NICK: Oh gosh. Tink’s holding it, kind of aiming up and asking that, and hits the trigger and it goes (pew-pew) into the ceiling. Luckily you’re far enough down the hallway that it blends in with the general rummaging so you don’t tick them off.

CAMERON: “Hey, you found it.”

HUDSON: “Alright. I think I can shoot this thing now.”

CAMERON: “I would say go for your axe first.”

HUDSON: Alright. I strap the gun to me.

CAMERON: “Just carry the carbine so I don’t have to carry it.

HUDSON: Wait, can I do that?

NICK: You can, just where?

HUDSON: I thought I had it across…

NICK: Do you want it on your back or in front of you?

HUDSON: Yeah.

NICK: When you said it that way, I was like you’re big enough to strap this rifle to your leg.

CAMERON: Like normal people would put a light blaster, he’s just got a carbine there.

HUDSON: (laughs) No, on my back.

NICK: Okay.

HUDSON: “Let’s do it!”

CAMERON: “Alright.”

LAURA: “Okay…”

NICK: “Are we just charging in or what?”

LAURA: “I guess.”

CAMERON: “No, we’re sneaking.”

LAURA: “Oh, we are sneaking. Okay.”

HUDSON: “I thought we were just charging in.”

CAMERON: “Well Tink, you can, because they think that you’re on their side, because they kidnapped you. We cannot.”

HUDSON: “Ohh… Do we have grenades?”

(laughter)

LAURA: “I literally just said I had grenades.”

HUDSON: “I don’t remember you talking… at all. Which kind of grenades do we have?”

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: “The frag grenades. The ones that go explode.”

HUDSON: “Oh. Why don’t we just use those? What if we just throw all of them in there?”

LAURA: “I have three.”

CAMERON: “How much damage do y’all really wanna do to this ship?”

HUDSON: “I just wanna get them killed and over with.”

LAURA: “I don’t, um…”

CAMERON: Karma looks to trooper Longfellow. “Do you have an opinion on this, on how this ship remains intact?”

NICK: “I mean, the captain’s dead, so as long as you don’t vent atmosphere and throw people into space I don’t really care. I’m sort of the rebel of the patrol. I like to get results.”

LAURA: “Okay.” I hand Tink a grenade.

CAMERON: “I can respect that.”

LAURA: And I take one too.

CAMERON: Alright.

HUDSON: “Let’s go. You know what, thinking about it more… This concussion, I go back and forth.”

LAURA: “Tink, I already handed you one. You better use it.”

HUDSON: “Whoa. I’m already off the grenades topic. Thank you for the grenade.”

(laughter)

LAURA: “If you are not going to use it hand it back.”

HUDSON: “No, I’m going to use it, maybe. First we gotta sneak there, and then I’ll come out of sneak mode and be like ‘sup everybody,’ and then—“

LAURA: “And then we throw the grenades. Got it.”

CAMERON: “Or—“

LAURA: And Xianna starts sneaking forward.

CAMERON: Okay.

NICK: (smiling) Okay.

CAMERON: Karma just waves everybody else forward. (laughs)

NICK: Stealth check, please.

LAURA: Difficulty?

NICK: Average.

CAMERON: Karma got one success and an advantage.

NICK: Great. Are you trying to post up in the doorway again?

CAMERON: Yup. Worked well for me last time.

NICK: How convenient that the ship has ledges in front of all their doors that are about the width of karma so that she can sneakily take cover.

CAMERON: It is very convenient.

LAURA: One success.

HUDSON: Uh… Two triumphs…

LAURA: What?!

CAMERON: Holy shit!

LAURA: But no successes in those triumphs.

(laughter)

HUDSON: …and two failures, I guess.

LAURA: No, no, those failures cancel. That’s why these don’t have successes is because of this.

HUDSON: So straight up two triumphs. (laughs)

LAURA: But no successes in them.

NICK: Oh no… We need to play a game where the solution is just like flipping coins or something.

LAURA: (laughing) Like it would be any better than this.

NICK: Goodness. Were you trying to do a stealth check?

HUDSON: Yes.

NICK: Okay. You fail the fuck out of the stealth check.

HUDSON: That doesn’t matter for me, though.

NICK: It doesn’t.

CAMERON: He walks in like he owns the place.

NICK: Or you try to stealth and just kinda keep walking past where everyone else takes cover? Longfellow stays back a little ways. He knows he’s not sneaky. He plays to his strengths. He’s, uh, kind of a cool dude.

HUDSON: Smooth operator.

NICK: Yeah… Anyway. You crouch and you’re being pretty sneaky, and then you look up and realize you’re standing in the middle of the room. You just kept going. With your triumphs, one of them I’m going to suggest that you do it on their ‘oh hey, it’s our slicer friend. Look, he got a vibro-axe, as is his cultural right.’

CAMERON: (laughs)

NICK: Great. They’re not gonna recognize it’s Ziller’s. So you’re there, you’re in the middle, you could engage with any of them. you see there are four Humans and they’re basically just piling the crates in the corner because Ziller told them not to move them yet, and there’s one Gigoran who is doing the same thing but with bigger, heavier crates by himself, moving them.

LAURA: Get them all standing next to each other, or make them like once you walk in they all stand next to each other.

HUDSON: Oh…

CAMERON: They all come over to greet you.

NICK: If that’s what you would like to do.

HUDSON: “Oh man, guys, my stomach… I need to visit the little Gigoran’s room. Stay right there.”

NICK: “Well, but you just got here.”

HUDSON: “Nope, nope, it just hit me, hit me like a ton of bricks… Bye.”

CAMERON: (laughs)

NICK: They look confused, and they all kind of cluster together, and you can hear them from the doorway being like “man, that was kinda weird, right? I know he’s the new guy…”

HUDSON: I run away far enough and throw the grenade.

(laughter)

NICK: With the way that’s set up, if you want to throw multiple grenades at once, assuming that you get enough to activate blast two should take out this whole group.

LAURA: I’d be throwing one and Tink would be throwing one.

NICK: Yeah, but if you want to throw in unison and try to do it, then yeah you can go ahead and do that. We don’t need to do initiative for this.

HUDSON: “Xianna, now!”

NICK: (laughs) ‘Who’s Xianna? I don’t know what he- Did he look concussed to you?’

CAMERON: It just sounds like all these Humans are talking to this bus.

NICK: The Gigoran doesn’t really grace them with his conversation.

LAURA: Can we be short range? I’m imagining if they were talking to him…

NICK: Sure. If you’re using triumphs to position people they can be short range. That’s fine. I do want to flip a dark side point though to flip it to a red, because if I can get a despair out of this I will absolutely do it. … Nope. Dang.

LAURA: One success, one advantage for me.

HUDSON: Does mine get upgraded to a red as well?

NICK: Yep. Flip me another dark side point, please.

HUDSON: What’s the difficulty?

NICK: Easy. … Uh-oh.

HUDSON: One failure, one advantage.

NICK: Okay. This happens very quickly. They throw their grenades. I think the Humans scatter. Xianna is able to plunk the Gigoran in the chest. It blows up and…

LAURA: Nine damage.

NICK: Nine damage takes him out. Wait… No, it doesn’t. He would have soak. So, it hurts him real, real bad. He’s still standing. The Humans all kinda scatter out of the way. They are discombobulated. The other grenade sails over his head and blows up a crate, and with the threats, the crate is full of sulfur which ignites and just starts pumping noxious gas into the room. That seems bad. Karma and Longfellow can get a shot in here. We’re gonna do it like a sort of informal initiative because this is mostly cleanup. You already took Ziller out.

CAMERON: Short range, taking a blue die because I’m aiming, taking a blue die because they haven’t gone in combat yet, because I’m remembering it this time gosh darn it. Gonna do eeney-meeney-miney-moe and I shoot one.

NICK: You’re shooting at the Humans?

CAMERON: I’ll do the Gigoran. He’s the one I’m technically after.

NICK: Are you shooting stun?

CAMERON: I’m still stun. Well, wait, hold on. They were all dead or alive, and he just took a… Yeah, I’ll flip it.

NICK: Ooh. Okay.

CAMERON: This Gigoran’s gonna get it.

NICK: Karma’s getting irritated.

CAMERON: This is taking too long. Three successes and an advantage, so that is 12 damage.

NICK: Nice. That takes down the Gigoran and two of the guys leaving two remaining. We’ll just resolve it cinematically, because it’s more fun that way. The grenades go off, there’s an explosion, the hull starts to fill with noxious gas. Longfellow goes running into the room and does a baseball slide and fires and takes down the other two with clean shots, and then puts his E11 blaster on his shoulder and says, “Well, that wasn’t too hard.” As he’s doing that, the gas is starting to fill the room and he coughs a little bit, and then you see (laughs) the camera rotates dramatically to be from his perspective and walking behind you all towards the ship are two more Gigorans carrying a really big crate of stuff that’s just piled high with safety deposit boxes. They look to see you all, and then we get a freeze frame, and for this one I’m gonna need a Cool check to see who draws first in this situation. They are engaged range with Xianna and Karma, and they are medium range from Tink and Longfellow.

HUDSON: What is the difficulty for me?

CAMERON: None.

NICK: Cool check is just competitive.

CAMERON: Karma is two successes and an advantage.

LAURA: Two successes, two advantages.

HUDSON: One success, one advantage.

NICK: For the Gigorans, roll me two yellow dice please.

CAMERON: Two successes, one advantage.

NICK: Bleh. For Longfellow, roll me a yellow and two greens. He’s fairly competent.

CAMERON: Three successes.

NICK: Ooh. Alright. He’s gonna go first. He basically sees them, and Xianna and karma you see it look like he’s suddenly aiming at you all, and then he tries to double tap and shoot over your shoulders. Roll me a yellow and a green versus average difficulty, but upgrade the purple to a red, flip my last dark side point there. Is it my last one?

LAURA: Yes.

NICK: Yeah. I kept a good count in my head.

CAMERON: Did he aim?

NICK: Yes, he did. Fairly confident, this Longfellow.

CAMERON: One success, two threats.

NICK: That’s what, 12 damage?

CAMERON: Carbine is 9.

NICK: Okay, so it’s 10 damage. He double taps, it goes right over Xianna’s shoulder. This is the Gonzo director so her lekku blow in the wind from it.

CAMERON: The camera follows the blaster bolt as we go over it and we see her head tails ripple as it goes.

HUDSON: Six lens flares.

(laughter)

NICK: She turns dramatically to see one of the Gigorans took both blaster bolts to the forehead, and there’s the loud (clunk), it’s the sound effect from when they drop Han Solo in carbonite, where it’s just that super loud, no bounce thud, as they drop the case and safety deposit boxes start to slide down out of the big crate and pile over on the now dead Gigoran. Xianna’s up next, which is thematically appropriate since she turned around.

LAURA: I’m gonna grab my blaster and shoot them. I have Quickdraw with that one.

NICK: Cool, and it’s close range. Well, engaged is what I said, but same difference.

LAURA: Three successes, one threat, so total damage will be 9.

NICK: Oh, you almost get him. You quickdraw, shoot him twice, pause dramatically, and he stumbles backwards and drops the other side of the case, and then starts to roar and comes at Xianna with his vibro-axe. Roll me a green and a yellow at that difficulty, see how he does.

LAURA: Black die; I have 1 Range Defense.

NICK: This is Melee though.

LAURA: Also melee.

NICK: Great.

LAURA: yes.

NICK: Well there you go.

LAURA: Works both ways!

NICK: You tricked me.

CAMERON: One of all of the defenses. … Fail, with one advantage.

NICK: Okay. His advantage is he’s moving quickly enough that he’ll be a little bit harder to shoot. Whoever attacks him next will have a black die. Xianna, how do you dodge this rampaging Gigoran with a giant axe?

LAURA: I drop and roll.

NICK: Okay. Do you roll through his legs?

LAURA: Oh yes. That sounds a lot more fun. I was just gonna drop and roll off to the side, but through the legs sounds much more fun.

NICK: You do that, and we get a confused noise, and then it’s Karma’s turn.

CAMERON: Alright. I’m gonna shoot him.

NICK: makes sense.

CAMERON: If we’re engaged mine is harder now again, so I’m back up to average, because short is one?

NICK: Yeah.

CAMERON: He hasn’t gone yet this encounter?

NICK: yes he did, he attacked Xianna.

CAMERON: Oh dang it, he just did, that’s right. Well, he missed and it as just so spectacularly a failure that I forgot that he went.

NICK: I mean, it did serve to basically show how cool Xianna was more than to do anything, so that makes sense.

CAMERON: Four successes.

NICK: Yeah. How do you kill this guy? Or do you switch back to stun?

CAMERON: No, this guy is unfortunate in the fact that I just killed his friend and saw someone getting shot behind me and just turned and did not flip it back, so that’s just 13 death damage.

NICK: Good old death damage.

LAURA & CAMERON: Death damage.

NICK: That was my favorite bounty hunter. Okay, so how do you kill this guy? (laughs)

CAMERON: Okay? (giggles) Karma probably sees the shot go by and Xianna turn, and then turns and this guy is just right there and basically just shoots him point blank.

NICK: Okay. he flies backward and slams into a wall and it dents in a little bit, because that’s just how this thing is going.

CAMERON: Yeah.

NICK: And they drop. Everybody that you can see is down. The far cargo hold has fallen silent as if there are some people hiding in there who don’t want no more. You are now free to move about the cabin.

HUDSON: “Let’s get out of here.”

CAMERON: “I need to pick up all of my Gigorans.”

HUDSON: “Okay. Need any help?”

CAMERON: “Yes please. (laughs) I can’t carry all of them.”

LAURA: “We could get the cart that they were using for the deposit boxes, put them on it.”

CAMERON: Okay. Let’s load it up with Gigorans.

NICK: You throw the three Gigorans onto the cart.

LAURA: Xianna wants to make a show of helping picking up one of the Gigorans, the one that got buried, and she wants to try to get a few of the safety deposit boxes underneath them.

CAMERON: Oh, see, Karma’s just tossing them on top. Karma doesn’t even care anymore.

LAURA: Xianna just wants to make sure there’s a few, or if they have little pouches get them in the fur, and stuff a few in there, surreptitiously.

NICK: Okay. That sounds like Skulduggery to me.

CAMERON: Can she have a blue die? Because I’m not not helping?

NICK: What?!

HUDSON: (laughs)

CAMERON: I’m not not helping.

LAURA: She’s not not helping~!

CAMERON: Yeah, like the case where… I see it happening and I’m just putting people on top and not…

NICK: Don’t care?

CAMERON: Yeah.

NICK: So, I will give you a blue die too, because you’re trying to keep DK6969 from seeing, right?

LAURA: yeah. I just don’t want him to see it.

NICK: So, he ran back out and slammed dramatically into the wall next to the dent where the Gigoran was and is aiming down the wall, bracing himself, covering you while you load it up. ‘I’ll make sure nobody else comes by.”

LAURA: “Oh, thank you~”

NICK: He’s looking away from you, so you get a blue die for that.

LAURA: What would the difficulty be?

NICK: Average is fine. Ooh, wait. I have a proposal for you. You can keep that roll, or the harder you make the difficulty the better shit you’re going to find. If you want to keep it average and you want to do that amount of successes, that’s fine. You can roll for hard and find cooler shit, or you can roll for daunting and find some really cool shit.

LAURA: I’m going daunting. Let’s see how this works. Ugh! That was almost a triumph. Okay, so two successes and one threat.

NICK: Nice. The threat is Longfellow is looking up and down the hallway and see’s something. “Hey, what are you doing over there? Load them up. Let’s go.”

CAMERON: “Sorry, the axes are sharp. We’re just being careful.”

LAURA: “I am very small and they are so big.”

(snickering, laughter)

NICK: Jesus.

CAMERON: He’s really into that.

NICK: He is, but he also like… When the helmet’s on he’s a little more blustery. You can tell he’s flushing through the helmet and he nervously snaps back to cover the hall. You can tell he’s trying to look cool.

CAMERON: The helmet turns slightly pink.

NICK: Yeah. You get the little chibi blush circles.

LAURA: The little anime (laughs) on the helmet.

NICK: Yeah, the slashy lines. You grab quite a few safety deposit boxes and a couple of the long boxes that look like necklace cases. I’m just gonna put five-star haul and we can talk about that later when you count up your loot at the end. So, you’re able to get that up, you push it back, you get back to the bridge and the troopers are still guarding but Karma waves at them and they wave you through. Do you toss Ziller onto the cart, too?

CAMERON: Yup. Uncuff him from the chair, just cuff him back to himself.

NICK: Okay. Yeah. You have this big pile. The cart is grinding on the ground a little bit at this point. It’s really heavy. The repulsers are still helping, but you’re definitely getting the (grinding) noise as you shove it along. Tink is having to lean into it and help. Is there anything else that you’re looking at as you leave the ship, or are you just headed back to the Afternoon Delight?

CAMERON: Karma’s gonna go over and look where she saw the blood trail earlier leading into the cabinet.

NICK: Okay. What are you looking for?

CAMERON: Something in the cabinet. (laughs)

NICK: Okay, so just because you saw it earlier… You kneel down and look into the cabinet. We get a cool shot of all your head tails down on the ground and pooling like hair, and it looks really cool. There is an access hatch there that seems to go into the depths of the sip. It’s very small. It would fit maybe a medium sized dog. Something went in there, but you can’t see where it went. You might be able to fit, but it would be pretty tough.

CAMERON: Okay. I close the cabinet back up.

LAURA: “What was in the cabinet?”

CAMERON: “It’s empty.”

LAURA: “Oh, okay.”

NICK: We also get a really brief shot of “DK6969, reporting back, sir.” The captains both salute and he salutes and they start exchanging information.

The not captain Massle says, “Well, good job, private. We’ll make sure this is detailed in your record. They didn’t do anything illegal, did they?”

We get a shot of the tall stormtrooper looking at Xianna, and there’s a long pause. “No sir, they did nothing wrong at all.

CAMERON: (giggles) Aww~

LAURA: Xianna’s doing her little wave, just like “oh hello, heh.” Smiles at him.

NICK: He snaps back into formation with the rest of them looking almost identical except that he’s taller.

CAMERON: “Tink, there were only four Green Gigorans, right?”

HUDSON: “Uhhh… I thought there was maybe a fifth one. I know that there were some people from the group that got away.”

LAURA: “This is good enough. They didn’t know how many there were either, so if we’re collecting the bounty we can just lie.”

CAMERON: “True.”

HUDSON: “It’s real fuzzy.”

CAMERON: “Okay.” I start pushing the cart again. “They’re not gonna be able to get back into their ship anyway, so the stormtroopers will take care of them.”

HUDSON: “Yeah. Eh, good point.”

CAMERON: Because we know something that they don’t know, and that’s that they can’t access their ship anymore.

NICK: So you go back to the ship?

CAMERON: Yep.

NICK: Okay. We get a shot of… Oh my gosh. We’re going to camera skip over how you get this heavy cart into the flexible tube that you entered in. we’re gonna skip that bit.

HUDSON: (laughs)

CAMERON: We just show on the other side where I’m walking onto the ship still pushing the cart with all the Gigorans on it.

NICK: We’re gonna zoom the camera back a couple of fourth walls here to the point where the actors have the cart at the gate and they all look at the director, and the director is like…

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: (laughs) Just shrugs.

NICK: …scruffy guy with blonde, puffy hair and glasses, and he’s looking at you like “Well shit. We’ll just skip that scene. Go back to the ship!”

(laughter)

LAURA: It’s a hover cart! It’ll hover over the fabric!

CAMERON: It’ll hover through the tube!

HUDSON: Movie magic.

NICK: The prop department is like, “Don’t try to put that cart in there. You’re gonna tear it up. We spent a lot of time on that.

LAURA: It doesn’t actually work. (laughs)

NICK: Anyway. We get a shot of the unconscious Gigorans sprawled in the main lobby of the ship, or the one unconscious ones and the three dead ones, and I think we get a shot of Xianna nearby with her just pile of safety deposit boxes starting to crack into them. we see Karma going to the cockpit and start to flip switches and get it running. Tink, what are you doing at this point on the ship as you get ready to take off?

HUDSON: I’m lying on the couch taking a little snooze.

CAMERON: (laughs)

NICK: Okay. You’re asleep, arm thrown across your eyes, as Xianna’s… I’m really getting the kid right after Halloween haul.

LAURA: Oh yeah. I imagine they’re in that little main lounge room and she’s sitting on the floor right in front of one of the very long lounge chairs. She has everything piled up in front of her and she’s going through things and opening things up.

NICK: yeah. One of the safety deposit boxes gets cracked open and we get the shot from Pulp Fiction where it’s like…

LAURA: (laughs) Just glowing.

NICK: …just the yellow light on Xianna’s face and the camera’s behind it, and you go ‘ooh~’

LAURA: Her eyes light up.

NICK: You see the Afternoon Delight detach and start to fly away, and then the camera angle pulls out to the Mon Cal cruiser and the big asteroid starts to shift and slide free, and it sets the cruiser into a slow, weird, off-axis tilt, and then you see the YT2400 that the GGG were using detach and start to fly away too… and that’s where we’re gonna end the episode.

ALL: Ba-naaa~!

CAMERON: Wee!

## 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.