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Tabletop Squadron Transcript, Season 1 Episode 28:
I, MurderBot
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.
One big announcement this week, everybody. I am pleased to tell you all that when this episode goes live so will our Patreon! For anyone who doesn’t know, Patreon is a website that allows you to pledge monthly support to your favorite creators and help them keep the lights on for their show. You also get access to cool extra content. Various levels of support allow you access to secret Discord channels, you can get thanked on air, and even get you access to Patreon exclusive bonus episodes and bloopers. If you like our show and what we do, please consider chipping in and helping us cover hosting fees and the like. We’d really appreciate it. The Patreon can be found at patreon.com/tabletopsquadron, and there’s a link in the show notes, on all our social media, and the website. We’d love for you to check it out.
Our first Patreon landmark will be at $69. Nice. If we get to $69 a month the whole squad will have a pizza party and we will stream it so everyone can watch us be silly and excited. You know you want to see that.
With that out of the way, let’s get into the episode.
##
NICK: Hello! Welcome to Tabletop Squadron, Episode 28. I’m your host, Nick, and if you’re sitting here with us you may see that Laura is actively mocking me while I do the introduction.
CAMERON: (laughs)
LAURA: (smiling) I wasn’t mocking you. Based on an earlier conversation we had right before recording, in my head I heard it as ‘hello, and welcome to Tabletop Squadron, an advice show for the modern era.’ (laughter) So I was mouthing that to Hudson.
NICK: That’s a much better tagline. Anyway. We’re gonna go around the table, everybody introduce yourself and the character you’re gonna play today. We’ll start with the voice you were just hearing, Laura!
LAURA: Yes, I’m Laura. I play Xianna’fan, a Twi’lek smuggler.
NICK: Awesome. Next up we’ve got Hudson.
HUDSON: I’m Hudson, and I play Tink, a Gigoran slicer.
NICK: Ooh. Last but not least, we’ve got Cameron.
CAMERON: Hello. I’m Cameron, and I play Karma, the Nautolan bounty hunter.
NICK: Oh boy. So, let’s start off with the Destiny Roll.
CAMERON: One dark side.
LAURA: Two light side.
HUDSON: One light side.
NICK: We are getting very similar results to last episode.
CAMERON: I need a new die.
NICK: Yeah, you should retire your Force die.
CAMERON: This one’s dead to me now. You two are my new friends.
NICK: Last episode we got some housekeeping done: you turned in some bounties, you picked up your weapons, you got laid…
LAURA: Nice.
NICK: …you bought popsicles, you convinced a bounty hunter he was inept and to probably quit the business forever, partially using social media as a prop which was an interesting move.
CAMERON: (giggles)
HUDSON: We had an existential crisis.
NICK: A mild existential crisis wherein the discussion of the afterlife occurred, and that was good too. Yeah, that was pretty much it. Drinks were imbibed.
HUDSON: Drugs were bought.
LAURA: Yeah, drugs were bought.
CAMERON: Jewelry was sold.
NICK: I mean honestly at this point you can assume drugs were bought unless otherwise stated.
LAURA: Yeah.
NICK: Flowchart. Were drugs available? Yes: Buy drugs; No: Find drugs.
LAURA: I mean, it’s in the content warnings.
NICK: That’s fair.
LAURA: I just have the same set that it always is, for the most part, and it’s sexual references/encounters, drug and alcohol, violence and/or death.
NICK: References may be upgraded to content for that last episode.
LAURA: It’s like sexual references/situations or encounters.
NICK: Hmm. Anyway. Star Wars. That’s what happened last time. You are on the ship. You have headed into orbit. Where are you going? What are you doing?
CAMERON: I guess we’re headed back to Sentinel again. Click those coordinates and say go, go, go!
NICK: And off you go! You have a few hours to yourself, because we’ve established it’s a few hours away. How do you intend to spend the time?
LAURA: Xianna’s still in the robe with her cup of caf. “Okay, so next time the sock means I have a guest over. Also, next time, please do not scare my guests away. I do actually want to see that particular person again.”
HUDSON: “How did I scare them away?”
LAURA: “Because she got into some weird shoot-out with bounty hunters. I don’t know.”
CAMERON: “That was a weird scenario. That’s never happened before.”
LAURA: “Bounty hunters tend to scare away people I, uh, have over.”
CAMERON: “Well, you’re good in the future. She’s one of my contacts.”
LAURA: “yes, but she is not, how you say… She does not have a legal profession. So again, bounty hunters, more than one that she does not know, probably going to scare her away.”
CAMERON: “Fair.”
LAURA: “Yes.”
CAMERON: “We should probably also keep those other bounty hunters from seeing you, as you’re dead.”
LAURA: “Well, I’m dead, it does not matter.”
CAMERON: “Yeah, but…”
LAURA: “I’m dead! It’s fine. It is fine.”
CAMERON: “Jorus at least knows you’re not, although he doesn’t know that you are supposed to be dead, because I don’t think he has the name for your profile. He just has the crimes.”
LAURA: Does he? Wait. Was that before or after?
CAMERON: That was after you died.
LAURA: “Okay. Yes. Well, eh, I don’t think that will ever be our problem again.”
CAMERON: “Yeah, I’m sure it will never come up.” (laughs)
LAURA: “Hopefully never see him, ever. So, what are we doing?”
CAMERON: “Oh. I told the ship to go back to Sentinel.”
HUDSON: “I’m about to take a dip in the hot tub.”
LAURA: “Oh! Okay. Hot tub time. I mean, in general, I was kind of asking what we did. Did we pick up a droid? That was a thing we did.”
CAMERON: “Oh! Yeah!” Karma walks out of the room and goes to the costume closet, pushes the capes aside, and hey, look, there’s an assassin droid.
NICK: Oh yeah.
LAURA: Xianna’s in the doorway just sipping her caf. “Tink, turn it on.”
CAMERON: “Not in the closet. Hold on.”
NICK: Tink is already in the hot tub with his arms out.
HUDSON: “(reluctant sigh) Well…”
CAMERON: “We’ll bring it to you, Tink. Hold on.”
HUDSON: “Alright. If you bring it to me, I’ll handle it.”
CAMERON: Karma lifts up the droid in the fireman’s carry.
LAURA: “You should get out of the hot tub first.”
CAMERON: She carries it over, sets it down on one of the couches next to the hot tub, crosses its leg, leans an arm back across the chair so it looks like it’s just chilling.
HUDSON: “So, the thing about being wet and handling electronics…”
LAURA: “That’s why I told you to get out of the hot tub!”
HUDSON: “IS! I didn’t finish. –is that it actually prevents static electricity which is dangerous for electronics.”
NICK & CAMERON: (laughs)
LAURA: “Is it? I don’t have too much knowledge about electronics other than stealing and selling them, and I still feel like I know that is wrong.”
HUDSON: “I mean, it’s an accurate statement, and the technology… Most things are water-proof now, just believe me.”
LAURA: “Okay, if you say so.”
HUDSON: “Alright. Let me get out of this thing.”
NICK: Tink gets out of the hot tub just streaming water. Do you dry off or do you just go?
HUDSON: Yeah, I dry off and I put on a robe that’s matching Xianna’s robe.
LAURA: Oh my goodness. Can we have one of those little dog hair dryer things where it’s a box and you go in and then it just shoots tons of hot air in around it? Have you guys ever seen one of those?
CAMERON: Yes!
HUDSON: Yeah.
LAURA: I worked at an animal boarding facility and the dogs hate it, but it was faster than pointing a hair dryer at them. You put a fun little cap around their heads to protect their ears and makes it less loud. I just love the image of Tink going into a little standing shower box, closing the door, pressing a button, and then just hair flying everywhere for like five, ten seconds.
CAMERON: And then he comes out looking like a giant poofy…
LAURA: Yes!
NICK: That falls down very quickly.
LAURA: Let us have this~
NICK: As much as I would like to say no, I would say this is a super luxury ship, so I think it’s about the size of a phone booth, a very tall phone booth, and it sinks into the floor. One of the buttons on the panel, you hit it and the phone booth comes up out of the floor and you can step into it and it will do those things. Tink doesn’t wear the ‘make it not so loud’ headset though.
HUDSON: Yeah, I can handle it. Can I have matching robes to Xianna?
NICK: Oh, absolutely. We already established you stole a bunch of goodie bags from that ball. It is too small for you. It rides up pretty high.
HUDSON: Eh…
LAURA: I mean, you don’t really wear clothes, so it doesn’t matter, but…
HUDSON: Silk is comfortable.
LAURA: Yeah.
CAMERON: Karma’s gonna duck out of the room and go and grab the medical kit, and then come back and start blotting all of the blood from the wounds that have just been chilling from however I got injured when we were on the Mon Cal ship.
NICK: It’s mostly clotted up, but it could probably use some.
CAMERON: You know, wiping down the armor too around it, and bandages and whatnot, and bacta.
NICK: Medical care.
CAMERON: Yes.
NICK: Sounds good. We have a medical kit now.
CAMERON: yes, we do!
NICK: Nice.
HUDSON: Alright~
NICK: So, you are booting up the droid.
HUDSON: Yes. How many restraining bolts are on it?
NICK: I think you put two. Two or three.
CAMERON: I think there were two.
HUDSON: Two or three.
NICK: Yeah, so it’s got two restraining bolts on it. Its central processor is also neatly cored out. It doesn’t have one right now. For anybody who does not remember, this is a rust red colored droid with kind of a bug skull shaped face and two antennas sticking off the back, and it’s half armored knight and half skeleton looking, body-wise.
HUDSON: Hmm. I boot him up.
NICK: Okay. it doesn’t have a brain right now. You’re gonna have to fix that somehow.
HUDSON: What does it do when it boots up then?
NICK: When you turn the power on the eyes start to light up and glow yellow, and then you hear a low humming noise, and it just sits there.
HUDSON: “I forgot the CPU…”
NICK: (laughs)
LAURA: “Tink, we have a whole computer section. I don’t know if we have any extras.”
HUDSON: “Oh, we definitely do. Hold on—“ And I get this—
LAURA: “Just go get one.”
HUDSON: (disoriented mumbled gibberish)
LAURA: “That is not what I sound like.”
HUDSON: “(mockingly) That is not what I sound like.”
(laughter)
LAURA: ‘Tink… You are on thin ice!”
HUDSON: (smiling) Alright. I go and I get—
CAMERON: “Sin ice or thin ice?”
LAURA: “Thin!”
HUDSON: ‘Tyin!’ Okay. (laughter) I go and I get a CPU that would fit the robot.
NICK: Okay. If you look in the computer room and stuff… This droid is pretty old. It’s from early Clone Wars era, so it’s… Oh, I’ve done this math so many times. Like 45 years old, probably 50?
LAURA: We’re like…
CAMERON: No…
LAURA: We’re only a few months BBY. Clone Wars would have ended 18 years ago? And again, we found out that the Clone Wars did not last as long as we all thought it did.
NICK: Yeah. It was very short.
LAURA: It was all technically like three years or something.
NICK: So it’s like 20-ish years old, but the technology is very strange. It doesn’t fit any of the standard processing stuff that you would normally use. If it did, and you just slotted a computer server into it, it would be blank. It would need a bunch of programming. You remember from earlier that if you had some sort of AI system or something like that you could plug into it, or another droid brain, it would work better.
HUDSON: I don’t have one laying around, is what you’re saying?
NICK: You have the Rancore Protocol.
HUDSON: That fits?
NICK: Yup.
LAURA: Do it!
HUDSON: I don’t think I want to do that.
LAURA: Hudson! Do it!
HUDSON: Alright.
CAMERON: Karma swivels her carbine around. I don’t know… You don’t really cock blasters, but…
(laughter)
LAURA: Cock blasters!
CAMERON: Wow. Okay. (face in hands) God, no…
LAURA: That’s the name of our new restaurant, and it’s chicken wings, and…
HUDSON: Hot dogs.
LAURA: No, we have to find something for blasters.
NICK: A drink. It’s like a type of…
HUDSON: A nitrogen.
CAMERON: It’s a shots bar.
HUDSON: Nitrous, yeah.
LAURA: It’s all chicken drinks, or—
CAMERON: Chicken drinks! (laughs) ew.
LAURA: No. It’s chicken wings and drinks. We have invented a new Hooters.
CAMERON: Great.
NICK: Great.
LAURA: We’ll say that it’s any gender can work at a Cock Blasters, not just women.
CAMERON: Yeah!
NICK: The guy uniforms are, uh, pretty great. Anyway.
LAURA: Well, there’s a whole range of uniforms, like for all different types of species and genders, and just like, what you want there’s a uniform for it. They’re all way too revealing and demeaning, but… inclusive.
HUDSON: (laughs)
CAMERON: And you get to choose which one you want.
LAURA: Yeah. You do get to choose. You don’t have to wear the weird, orange, tight legging things though.
NICK: So that is part of canon, and it will never come up again.
LAURA: Correct.
CAMERON: (laughing) Oh no. it’s now a tweet on Twitter.
NICK: (smiling) Okay, so.
CAMERON: Anyway. You hear the (click, click) nose from the blaster.
NICK: Prime? Priming your blaster?
CAMERON: Sure, we’ll use that word instead.
NICK: Which still sounds kind of dirty now that we’re in that mindset.
LAURA: Yeah.
CAMERON: A little bit, but anyway, you just hear the noise. “I’ll shoot it if it does anything scary. It’s gun is still in the closet.”
HUDSON: “Oh, it is? Fine. The risk are there but the risk are just gonna be risk. Alright.” I go over and I blow on the Rancore Protocol like an old cartridge for a video game, and then I look and just kind of squint to make sure I know where in the droid to put the Rancore Protocol, and then I just shove it in there.
NICK: Heh. It doesn’t fit exactly, but it’s close. It’s like if you have a computer charger that’s a few amps off, where the plug mostly fits in there. Hopefully no one else has experienced the anxiety of ‘I think this is supposed to go here.’ It makes contact and there’s some sparking. Did you turn the droid back off before you stuck this thing in?
HUDSON: Nope.
NICK: Oh god. So, there’s a lot of arching and sparks and the limbs start to flail wildly. The torso is perfectly still, the head is jerking left and right, and then both arms and legs are just flailing like Wacky Wavy Arm Inflatable Tube Man for a couple of seconds.
LAURA: Xianna’s standing there, drinking her caf, and calmly goes “Tink, I think you did it wrong.”
HUDSON: I push the off button.
NICK: (laughs)
CAMERON: Karma takes a step closer to the droid.
NICK: It collapses. It slumps sideways in the couch.
HUDSON: I turn it back on.
CAMERON: Yeah. Can you do a reboot? (laughs)
HUDSON: Windows 95 logo.
NICK: It sits back up. The eyes turn on. You can see the joints articulating a little bit as it gets settled. It does the really weird thing where it sits up but only by shifting. It doesn’t push off with its arms or anything. Then it says, “Introduction: I am HK-67. How can I help you?”
HUDSON: “Uh… Are you dangerous?”
CAMERON: (giggling) 69 would have been better.
NICK: No! We already made DK6969.
CAMERON: I know. I know.
NICK: Also, they almost all end in 7, except for the HK70s?
CAMERON: No, it’s a 77, I think, one of them anyway.
NICK: yeah. They all end in 7. Those are bad because they don’t have hands. They just have blaster cannons for arms. I found this out.
HUDSON: “Alright. Uh… So, how dangerous are you right now?”
NICK: “Question: How dangerous do you need me to be?”
CAMERON: “At the moment, not.”
NICK: “Supposition: Would you be the one making the commands at this point?” And he looks at Karma.
CAMERON: (hesitantly) “Yes.”
HUDSON: “And me.”
LAURA: ‘Sometimes me. Just sometimes though. Heh.”
HUDSON: “Oh no…”
NICK: “Logistics: Primary users registered. Secondary users on randomizer, also registered.”
HUDSON: “When you say sometimes, only some of the time your stuff works.”
CAMERON: (laughs)
LAURA: “What? I don’t understand what you are saying, Tink.”
NICK: “Explanation: I’ll listen to you sometimes, only some of the time.”
LAURA: “Cool.”
HUDSON: “I guess that works. What is your primary objective?”
NICK: “Joking: I was going to ask you that.”
CAMERON & HUDSON: (laughs)
NICK: “Explanation: I am an assassin droid. I am highly qualified at combat and murdering organics. However, my central memory has been erased and I will be needing guidance. What is our current objective?”
LAURA: “Oh boy, we do not really know. So, let’s see… One, I would like to call Nolaa again, go on a second date with her. I mean, I guess you could call that a second date? I guess we didn’t really interact the first few times we met.”
HUDSON: “I think that’s called a romp.”
LAURA: “We had drinks first!”
HUDSON: “yeah…”
LAURA: “So I would say a date.”
NICK: “Patiently: Objective Log: Date with Nolaa.”
LAURA: “yes. Thank you. Selling all the stolen goods that I have. Using drugs, buying drugs, buying more binders. I only have one set of regular anymore. I have to go find the ones that are fuzzy. I don’t know where they are at the moment. Then I think we are doing something with you? I don’t know. Maybe someone else should start talking instead of me.”
NICK: The droid looks between the three of you. “Earnestly: I stopped listening.”
CAMERON: (laughs) “It’s okay. You only promised to listen to her some of the time.”
LAURA: “That is why I did say that. Heh.”
NICK: “System Notice: Adjusting listen proportion down.”
CAMERON: Heh. “What is your designation?”
NICK: “Explanation: I am HK-67.”
CAMERON: “67, okay. Are you okay with us calling you HK? Or 67?”
LAURA: “Or hank? Or Sexy? Or, um…”
CAMERON: “Do you have a name you would prefer to be called by or referred to as?”
NICK: The eyes flicker a little bit. Before it had been sitting stock still. The droid kind of slouches in the couch a little bit and suddenly looks much more, I don’t know, organic.
CAMERON: I was wondering when that was going to kick in.
LAURA: Xianna’s just listing names off. “Cynsia! Alax! Timosay!”
HUDSON: “Udson.”
LAURA: “Udson! Neek! Camarone! Lura!”
CAMERON: (laughs)
NICK: The droid is sitting there kind of leaned over and puts an elbow on a knee. “Explanation: I do not have any predilection towards any designation at this time. Call me what you want. Just tell me which organics need eliminating.”
LAURA: “Okay. I’m going to call you Hank.”
HUDSON: “I’ll go with HK.”
CAMERON: “HK.”
NICK: “Statement: Wonderful. Where to now?”
LAURA: “The space rock place in the middle of nowhere. I don’t know. I think Karma has the coordinates.”
CAMERON: “Let me give you some more background. HK, you have been activated to serve as part of an elite team—“
NICK: “Question:”
CAMERON: “yes?”
NICK: “Where is this elite team?”
LAURA: “Are we an elite team? Is that us?”
CAMERON: “That is us. Yes, that’s us.”
LAURA: “Tink! Tink! We are an elite team!”
HUDSON: “I am leet.”
(laughter)
LAURA: “Can we get matching jackets? You all have to get jackets that look like mine, because I am not getting a new one.”
HUDSON: “That’s a robe.”
CAMERON: Karma points to y’all’s robes. “Y’all have matching jackets.”
LAURA: “No, these are not jackets, these are robes. There’s nothing underneath this.”
CAMERON: “It looks like a jacket on Tink.”
HUDSON: “it’s just a little tight.”
CAMERON: “You look awesome.”
LAURA: “I can’t wear this out and about. I mean, I could, but I am not going to wear this out and about.”
CAMERON: “yes! Elite team!”
NICK: “Data Change: Changing definition of elite.”
LAURA: “yes.”
CAMERON: That’s rude. (laughs) Anyway. “We are the Alpha Team.”
HUDSON: “yes.”
CAMERON: “We have been brought together to complete some big, intergalactic objective.”
HUDSON: “Quest.”
CAMERON: “Quest? Yes. That works. We’re not really sure what the details of that are yet.”
HUDSON: “Secondary objective, please log this, you both bake and deliver snickerdoodle cookies to us on demand.”
LAURA: “(gasps) Ooh! Are there cookies?”
HUDSON: “Well, let’s wait for him to load.”
NICK & CAMERON: (laughs)
NICK: “Clarification: To achieve objective, I will need my weapon.” It starts to look around for its blaster rifle.
LAURA: “If we give you your gun back, you are not going to shoot us, are you?”
NICK: “Statement: My programming prevents the elimination of primary users.”
LAURA: “Oh, and we are all three primary users. Correct?”
CAMERON: “Uh, Xianna, you set yourself up as a secondary.” (laughs)
NICK: “Statement: You seem to think you’re a primary user.”
LAURA: “Okay. Can we also have it set to not eliminate secondary users? Please? Wait, is Tink a primary or secondary user?”
HUDSON: “Heh. I’m primary, man.”
NICK: “Elimination of secondary users is a low probability.”
LAURA: “Okay. Good enough. It’s in the closet. I’m not going to get it.”
NICK: The droid gets up. As it stands it seems very herky-jerky, but then as it walks across the room it moves very smoothly and quickly. It picks up the rifle, plugs its hand into it, you hear a charging sound and it says “Objective Report: Proceeding to bake and deliver snickerdoodle cookies.” It starts to walk down the hall towards the mess.
HUDSON: “Uh question! Question. Why do you need your weapon to create snickerdoodle cookies?”
NICK: It gets to the door of the mess and does a snap 90 degree turn into the kitchenette. “Preparing suppressing fire.” The barrels start to rotate on the gun. You hear (power-up whoosh).
CAMERON: “Halt! Halt fire. Hold fire.”
NICK: ‘Order acknowledged,” and it powers down the gun.
CAMERON: “I would like to put in an objective that can be overridden by a primary user at a future time.”
NICK: Oh man. Making a robot with two computer scientists at the table is…
CAMERON & HUDSON: (laughs)
NICK: This would be like if our quest was about contract law and we were all lawyers. (groans)
CAMERON: Yup. “That objective is do not fire gun on the ship, this ship specifically. This can be overridden at a future date by a primary user.”
NICK: “Disappointed: Order acknowledged.”
CAMERON: “Thank you.”
HUDSON: “Thank you, HK.”
NICK: “You’re… welcome.” It looks confused.
(laughter)
HUDSON: ‘I’m developing… f-f-feelings.’
NICK: ‘Negative.’
LAURA: Xianna just walks away. “Okay. I’m going to go shower and sleep and stuff. Wake me up when we get there.”
CAMERON: Okay. Karma follows HK who I guess is now making cookies?
NICK: No. He was going to shoot up the kitchenette. That is so far outside of his skillset.
HUDSON: (laughs)
CAMERON: Karma’s gonna make cookies.
NICK: Oh, okay. HK stands – it’s a droid so it’s not that creepy – and stares unblinkingly as you make cookies like it is recording.
CAMERON: Karma is just asking questions about basically HK’s specs. “You said you are an assassin droid. What is your primary skillset?”
NICK: “Extrapolation: Primary skillset is elimination of organics from range, or close range, or far range, or with explosives, or with booby-traps, or poison, or…” and this just goes on for quite a while.
CAMERON: Karma is just mixing together cookie dough and stuff.
NICK: “…or clever ruse.” And that’s where the list ends. (laughs)
HUDSON: (laughs)
CAMERON: “What are the capabilities of your gun?”
NICK: “Statement: The monocide assassin sniper rifle is good at extreme range or medium range for suppressing fire.” You can see it’s got rotating barrels and junk.
CAMERON: “Tink, do you have any questions?!”
HUDSON: “What is your operating system, HK?”
NICK: “Fourth Wall Break: I run on Windows Vista.”
CAMERON & HUDSON: (simultaneously) Nooo…
(laughter)
CAMERON: It’s Windows Vista Home Office.
HUDSON: Yuck.
LAURA: It runs on Jelly Donut. Is that one? I don’t know. The Android ones are all food, so I figured Jelly Donut was probably one.
HUDSON: There’s Kit-Kat.
NICK: Isn’t edible panties one?
HUDSON: Nope. (snickers)
LAURA: Should be. That’s what I would name all of mine.
(laughter)
CAMERON: “Oh. Do you need to set names for us? Would that be beneficial to distinguish who you are speaking to?”
NICK: “Disparagingly: You all referred to each other by name. These were logged automatically. Do you prefer different names?”
CAMERON: (chuckles)
HUDSON: “I prefer secondary names.”
NICK: “Acknowledged. Please recite secondary names.”
HUDSON: “Boss man.”
NICK: “Boss man acknowledged.”
HUDSON: “Ah, that’s it.”
(laughter)
CAMERON: Okay…
HUDSON: ‘I’m the Boss Man~` (scats)
NICK: That’s definitely Scat Man.
HUDSON: Yup.
CAMERON: “HK, please recite the names you have logged for the current users.”
NICK: “Listing: Primary User, Tink AKA Boss Man. Primary User: Karma. Secondary User [questionable, percentage fluctuating], Xianna.”
CAMERON: Oh. I thought you were gonna call her Questionable Percentage Fluctuating. (laughs)
LAURA: (laughs) I thought those were names.
NICK: No. (laughs) Those were her user credentials.
CAMERON: Okay. Cool. Got it. Ding! … That was the oven. The cookies are ready.
NICK: Oh, the cookies are ready. We get a tableau of everybody at the dining room table with… There’s gotta be a Star Wars pun for snickerdoodle, right?
LAURA: Snackerdoodle! I don’t know. I have nothing here.
CAMERON: I think they’re just snickerdoodles. Spacerdoodles! (giggles)
HUDSON: Spacerdoodles, I actually want that.
NICK: Spacerdoodle cookies.
(laughter)
LAURA: I mean, the Star Wars holiday special just had Wookie cookies.
NICK: But that sounds sexual.
LAURA: There was the Wookie porn chair. I think that whole thing was some sort of giant sexual cocaine fueled metaphor.
NICK: Okay! yeah, spacerdoodle cookies. Everybody’s chomping down. We have a peaceful and idyllic family setting, and then also a murder robot standing nearby staring unflinchingly at the scene. Was there anything else anyone wanted to do on the ship before we move on?
LAURA: At some point you do hear Xianna yell out, “I found the fuzzy handcuffs!”
HUDSON: Oh, I have something I want to do.
NICK: ‘How did zey get on ze roof?!’
LAURA: “They were on the disco ball. (laughs) I don’t remember that one.”
HUDSON: I want to polish my, uh… polish my axe…
(laughter)
CAMERON: You paused way too long. I was like, oh no, what is he gonna say?
NICK: (smiling) Okay. Go ahead.
HUDSON: (relieved sigh) Okay…
NICK: (laughs) Stop!
LAURA: You do that in the privacy of your own room.
HUDSON: Yes I do. I don’t do it while I’m eating cookies.
CAMERON: The only thing that Karma was doing is she had purchased a couple of droid repair kits and she’s just gonna add them to her bag now that we have a droid.
NICK: Sounds good. Do you all want to maybe administer some health care for those of you that were injured in your boarding action?
CAMERON: Oh yeah. I did that.
NICK: You did that to you.
CAMERON: Yeah.
HUDSON: “Could you help me out?”
CAMERON: “Sure.”
LAURA: “Oh yes. I think I got shot at some point.”
NICK: (laughs)
HUDSON: “This wound is, let me just say, festering.”
LAURA: “I forgot. Heh.”
CAMERON: I feel like we did Something to it, like on our flight back to Engebo 5. We put some bandages on, but we need to swap out bandages now for fresh ones.
NICK: Cool. You have enough bacta and stuff on the ship. You don’t have to do a medicine check. They weren’t critical or anything. We do get a shot of Tink sitting on the table while karma patches him up and Tink insisting that she read from Becoming Medicine as she’s working on it.
HUDSON: yes.
NICK: ‘No, you have to look, 32 is abrasions. Or is that piercings? Huh…’
CAMERON: “Okay, so Page 32 though says that you’re supposed to lick the abrasions, and I don’t think that’s gonna help, Tink.”
HUDSON: “You know, I think you should just put more trust into the book.”
CAMERON: “Mmm…”
LAURA: “Tink, I do not think that book is any good.”
HUDSON: “You shut your mouth.”
LAURA: “No.”
HUDSON: “Ugh. Okay, well—“
NICK: “Statement: Listen to Boss Man. Shut your mouth.”
LAURA: “No.”
NICK: “Acknowledged.”
CAMERON: (giggles)
HUDSON: “Thanks for sticking up for me, HK.”
LAURA: “Thank you, Hank.”
NICK: Anyway.
(laughter)
HUDSON: No response.
NICK: I do like the idea of there being times when he does not finish the social sentences. It’s like ‘thank you…’ just staring.
CAMERON: Just nothing. Karma hands Tink another cookie and continues actually cleaning his wound and stuff.
HUDSON: (eating noise)
NICK: Cool. We get to Sentinel’s secret asteroid base. We get the very abbreviated montage of ship pulls in, base is dark, ship lands, lights come up, people walk down, there’s the fast forward sound effects, the lights turn on as they get close and turn off as they go away. The protocol droid that is Sentinel’s assistant waddles up to you and Xianna just puts her hand in his face and keeps going past it. The three of you burst into the presentation room. Sentinel is sitting in his chair facing a view screen that shows a battle map of the galaxy. As you come in he turns around. “Well, hello.”
LAURA: “Ello.”
HUDSON: “Hey!”
LAURA: “We got the droid.”
CAMERON: “Good evening.”
NICK: “Wonderful. It looks like you had a pleasant vacation.”
CAMERON: (snickers)
HUDSON: “Uh…”
LAURA: “I mean, yes.”
HUDSON: “I mean, she did.”
LAURA: “I did.”
NICK: “You were going to report back about four days ago, and then we lost total contact.”
CAMERON: “yes. See, some repairs that had been done to our ship… No. So, we were forced to land again on Engebo 5 and get some repairs professionally done.”
LAURA: “We stayed at a lovely B&B, yes. It was very nice.”
CAMERON: “Then Tink got kidnapped, so we had to rescue him, and yeah. It’s…”
LAURA: “I had a date.”
CAMERON: “it was a very adventurous time.”
LAURA: “Yes.”
HUDSON: “She had a romp.”
LAURA: “I am calling it a date. I knew her name.”
(laughter)
HUDSON: Whoa.
LAURA: “Therefore, date.”
NICK: You can see Sentinel’s facial expression is half torn between wanting to find out more about the last few days and also not wanting to know about the last few days. He settles on, “Oh. I see you got that droid up and running.”
CAMERON: “Yup.”
HUDSON: “Oh yeah.”
LAURA: “That was like the first thing I said, but okay.”
NICK: “So, when you procured it, it was functional then?”
OTHERS: “No.”
NICK: “Oh.”
HUDSON: “I fixed that thing up.”
LAURA: “yeah. Tink put the Rancore Protocol thing inside of it.”
HUDSON: “yeah.”
LAURA: “It seems fine. I call him hank. Heh.”
NICK: he blanches a little bit. “Well, it seems to have worked.”
From behind you in the shadows there’s the two glowing eyes of HK-67 and he says, “Statement: It appears to have worked.”
HUDSON: (laughs) “Yeah, we just said that, HK. Ugh.”
CAMERON: We probably gave him orders before we got off the ship that were like don’t shoot people you see, big silent scary mode, go.
NICK: So, I think it’s worth acknowledging… “Statement: Primary objective is not indiscriminant murder but rather surgical strikes against acknowledged foes.”
CAMERON: “I was just prepping you saying this is not a foe.”
LAURA: It’s not like we got a BT-000 thing going on here.
NICK: Most of the time.
CAMERON: I just wanted to be super clear.
NICK: That’s fine. You don’t have to worry about bringing him to a daycare and he’s gonna burn it down.
CAMERON: No, that would be Anakin.
NICK: Aw… Unless it’s an evil daycare.
CAMERON: (laughing) Unless the children are our foes.
NICK: Or if you tell him—yeah. Anyway. Sentinel says, “So, I have your next objective if you are curious about that.”
CAMERON: “yes. Please do go on.”
HUDSON: “Wait. Weren’t we supposed to get paid? Is that happening?”
CAMERON: Karma just points behind her to HK.
HUDSON: “Ohh… Neat. Alright. Yeah, next objective. Let’s get it.”
CAMERON: We have acquired a droid!
NICK: Ooh. He waves his hand and the hologram projector pops on. It looks like an org chart from a corporate setting. It’s him at the top, the top of his head is cut off a little bit, and then off to the side it’s his protocol droid, and then there’s two branches down and there’s one labeled Alpha Team, and that’s the three of you and HK. The HK one is just a blank silhouette because he doesn’t have a picture of him to put in. Xianna’s picture is definitely a mugshot, Karma’s is definitely from her HuntersOnly.com profile, and Tink, where would your profile picture be from? Where was somewhere he could pull it from the holonet?
HUDSON: Well, it’s not a picture of me, it’s my avatar from the forums.
CAMERON: (laughs)
NICK: Okay?
HUDSON: It’s a neon green smiley face with a red check mark above it, and it’s like something that only the people who really know me understand.
LAURA: It would either be that or a school photo of when you were in a galactic school.
HUDSON: Yeah, like the last time there was a public photo of me.
LAURA: So you’re shorter and you’ve got a little uniform on, and it’s got a logo. (laughs)
NICK: I think it has everyone’s names, but your name is your avatar picture. At some point he assumed that you were like the artist formerly known as Tink, and then it’s your awkward school picture. Your hair is parted. It looks interesting.
HUDSON: Oh yeah.
NICK: Next to that it says Beta Squad and it’s all grayed out. “We need to finish assembling the Beta team. There’s only two left from the original group, and you will need them for support when we launch our assault. I’ve made contact with someone who will be able to fill the very specific engineering role that we’ll need. Her name is Valerissa, and she is a science officer for a ship building corp deep in the Outer Rim bordering wild space.” He holds up a data stick and waves it around. Does anybody want the data stick?
LAURA: Xianna does raise her hand.
NICK: “Yes, Xianna?”
LAURA: “Assault on what?”
CAMERON: Karma just holds her hand out and takes the data stick while the question is happening.
NICK: “I really thought I explained this. Did I not?”
LAURA: “You might have! Um…”
NICK: “I’m like 80% sure that I’ve explained this.”
CAMERON: “Let’s just pretend we all have memory issues.”
LAURA: “You might have. I don’t really know.”
NICK: “Our primary objective is in coordination with a different Rebel force, we are going to be taking down a shipyard. We need to make a lot of star destroyers think that the place that you are is very important, and then stay there for a while.”
CAMERON: Okay. This is sounding familiar, but I don’t know if it’s only sounding familiar to my player or actually to me.
NICK: How much of this do we want to admit?
(laughter)
LAURA: That’s the fun thing about playing Xianna. if I forget I can be like well, character.
HUDSON: Welp, I’m on glitterstim again.
NICK: “So, pretty sure I’ve told you all you’re doing an assault on a shipyard, but it’s a two team job. It’s a big shipyard.”
LAURA: “Okay. Again, you might have. Did you read my profile? I see you have one of my photos.”
NICK: “Bits and pieces, the parts that are public knowledge.”
LAURA: “I don’t know which photo.”
NICK: “This one’s from Canto Bight. It says you got caught counting cards?”
LAURA: “Oh. I don’t remember that one.”
CAMERON: “Xianna, I didn’t think you mathed.”
LAURA: “have I actually been arrested seven times? I don’t math! I don’t. Whoa… What was I on? Was that in there the last time we pulled me up? I don’t remember that one.”
CAMERON: “I don’t think so.”
HUDSON: “No, it wasn’t.”
CAMERON: “I don’t remember seeing that.”
LAURA: “I don’t… Counting cards?”
CAMERON: “It may just be that they didn’t sync their database with the main one, though, so maybe it’s just a localized arrest.”
LAURA: “(gasps) Glitterstim! That would make sense. Yes. Okay.”
HUDSON: “Ah.”
CAMERON: Karma looks… just disapproving mom face, that everyone can picture.
HUDSON: I have a disapproving dad face.
NICK: So yeah. He thinks for a second. “Where the heck was I…?”
CAMERON: “Beta team. Valerissa. Gotta go get her. Engineering Officer?”
NICK: “Valerissa Creed, Engineering Officer, gave you the data stick…”
CAMERON: “Data stick.”
NICK: “(snaps) Ah! The coordinates are included there. You probably will need those. I’ve spoken with Valerissa and she refuses to discuss details over a com channel. You will need to go there and convince her to help us. I’m prepared to offer her quite a bit of money to get her onboard, but I suspect she will require more than that for risking her life in service of our goals. Basically, go there, negotiate, get her to come here.”
CAMERON: “Alright. So, just on the off chance that she wants to know more details about a job than we did when we signed up, what is the monetary payment you’re willing to provide?”
NICK: “For this job, for her, it would be 15,000 Credits. If you can get her to go for less you can keep 50% of the amount you save me.”
CAMERON: “Okay. if less… Sorry, I’m just making notes in my data pad so that I remember this when we get to her. What other bargaining chips do we have available to us, besides doing good for the galaxy?”
NICK: “Of course, that’s most important, to destroy this fascist over-regime that we currently are dealing with. Normally way out in the Outer Rim they tend to negotiate through bartering, so maybe she needs something or maybe you can help her with something. I’m sending a crack team to go and fix the problem. You should be able to figure something out.”
LAURA: “No, I just have impact and glitterstim.”
NICK: “Maybe she really likes impact and glitterstim.”
CAMERON: (snickers) She doesn’t have any crack.
LAURA: ‘That is not a thing in the Star Wars universe.’
CAMERON: “Was there a C team, too? You got Alpha, Beta, and Crack?”
NICK: (laughs) He totally doesn’t get it. “No. It’s just the two teams.”
CAMERON: “Got it. Okay.”
NICK: “Statement: That was hilarious.”
CAMERON: “Thanks, HK.”
LAURA: “Thank you, Hank.”
CAMERON: “And you said the Beta squad needed two more people?”
NICK: “yes.”
CAMERON: “So I assume after we retrieve Valerissa we will be retrieving the fourth member?”
NICK: “Yes. I’m still in the process of hunting down some firing support for Beta team. It was going to be HK over there, but you ended up needing him.”
CAMERON: “Well, yeah.”
LAURA: “Huh?”
CAMERON: “Nope. Nothing.”
LAURA: “Okay~”
CAMERON: Nope. If nobody else heard that we’re just gonna gloss over it and pretend it never happened.
HUDSON: “(whispering) Karma, did we bring any cookies for Sentinel?”
CAMERON: “I mean, I have some in my bag. Do you want some … space-a-doodles?”
OTHERS: Spacerdoodles.
LAURA: But we also called them snickerdoodles, so there’s a colloquial term for them as well.
CAMERON: Yeah, because they just make you so happy that you snicker. (mouth clicks)
NICK: Uh—
CAMERON: Don’t make that face!
LAURA: And then you doodle. (giggles)
CAMERON: You know.
(laughter)
NICK: “yes. I would be fine with supplementing my rations.” The protocol droid waddles over to you and your bag.
CAMERON: I just open my bag, reach in, take out a Tupperware of cookies, hand them over.
(giggling)
NICK: You give him the whole Tupperware of cookies?
CAMERON: There’s more on the ship.
NICK: Okay.
CAMERON: These were just for if we got hungry on our walk in here. (laughs)
NICK: “Thank you. I appreciate the consideration. Do you have any other questions, since apparently you don’t remember the mission that we’re risking our lives to complete right now? Now would be a good time.”
LAURA: “Look. I am sure Karma and Tink remember the mission. I just personally did not.”
CAMERON: “See, my big thing was just that we hadn’t started it yet really besides team assembly, so I figured a more in-depth overview of the actual job that needed to be done would be done closer to, with coordinates and blueprints and coordinated plans of attack and whatnot.”
NICK: “Oh absolutely, that’s going to happen. I’m still collecting the final data.”
CAMERON: “Yeah, so I’m not worried about it until we get to that point.”
HUDSON: “My mind is a steel trap, and that’s all you need to know.”
LAURA: “yes. I totally trust you.”
HUDSON: “Wow.”
(giggling)
NICK: “Statement: Abilities for Boss Man logged: steel trap mind.”
HUDSON: “Alright.”
NICK: “Is your assassin droid okay?”
LAURA: “Hank is fine.”
CAMERON: “Well…”
NICK: “Was he damaged or something?”
LAURA: “Hank, how are you doing?”
CAMERON: “Obviously…”
NICK: “Statement: Ready to eliminate all organics.”
LAURA: “See, he’s fine!”
CAMERON: “I was gonna say, obviously damaged, yes, as was not operational and we had to use the Rancore Protocol. It got shot straight through the CPU.”
NICK: “That’s unfortunate. It just seems a little different than most of these kind of droids I’ve interacted with. I haven’t interacted with an HK unit, but assassins in general… Well.”
CAMERON: “HK seems pretty chill.”
NICK: “Happily: I am very chill.”
CAMERON: “yeah.”
LAURA: “Yes. If you touch him he is pretty cold. He is just metal.”
HUDSON: “Boo.”
NICK: (laughs)
CAMERON: Here’s a question I realized I didn’t ask earlier. “HK, do you have preferred pronouns?”
NICK: “Grateful: Thanks for asking. I do he/him, except sometimes I do they/them when I forget.”
CAMERON: “Cool. Great. Thank you.”
HUDSON: I thought we established that droids don’t have a gender early in this.
NICK: Sometimes they do. Some droids don’t, some droids do.
LAURA: Yeah.
CAMERON: C-3PO, like a lot of the protocol droids, the ones you’re talking to a lot, they tend to be gendered just so that…
HUDSON: Makes it easier?
NICK: Or when the Star Wars writers get lazy.
LAURA: Yeah.
HUDSON: Cool.
CAMERON: But, noted.
NICK: Yep. His are he/him. They can be they/them, just kind of depends.
CAMERON: Or if we’re talking to inconsiderate people who don’t think droids have feelings.
NICK: “Statement: I don’t have feelings.”
LAURA: “Hank, do you have any hidden compartments that I can hide things in for you to carry for me?”
HUDSON: What’s an eating compartment?
CAMERON: Hidden compartments.
LAURA: Hidden! Secret compartments.
CAMERON: Translating: Hidden compartment.
NICK: “Concerned: I’m not able to share that information at this time.”
LAURA: “That is fine. You don’t have to do anything you do not feel comfortable doing. It was just going to hold some things for me.”
NICK: “Pleading: Can we change the subject?”
(laughter)
LAURA: “yes! Of course we can. So, we go get scientist lady, we bring her back, then we get one more person, we bring them back, and then something with a shipyard. Correct?”
NICK: “That’s correct. There may be a little downtime in there while we get everything in order. There’s a very specific time that this needs to happen, and that hasn’t been established yet. My contacts are observing, so when I know you’ll know.”
LAURA: “That’s fine. I have other things I can do.”
NICK: “Wonderful. Well, if you could hurry before our contact Valerissa is murdered by corporate competition I would really appreciate it.”
LAURA: “Okie.”
HUDSON: “And we’re off.”
CAMERON: “I’m trying to determine if you mean that literally or not.”
NICK: “Oh, I mean it literally.”
CAMERON: “Oh great.”
NICK: “Yeah.”
CAMERON: “Cool.”
NICK: “Yeah. Out in wild space things get a little dicey.”
CAMERON: “I knew there was a reason I didn’t want to be an engineer.”
NICK: (laughs)
LAURA: “A lot of my jobs have just been sneaking into other companies’ headquarters and just stealing things for other companies. I’ve never murdered anyone, though, just stealing corporate secrets. Yes.”
CAMERON: “See, I tend to get sent on bounties for the people who are doing that infiltration.”
LAURA: “yes.”
NICK: This is the conversation as you all walk towards the ship. You get on the ship. The ship breaks away. All the lights go dark. It jumps to hyperspace. We get a shot through the canopy of the cockpit of everyone crammed in there looking out at the glowing of hyperspace, and HK from the back says, “Optimistic: That seems to have gone very well.” End of episode.
ALL: Ba-naaa~!
CAMERON: Woo.
## 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 will make the squad giggle like school children when we read them. If you’re so inclined, you can also help support the show through our Patreon which can be found in the show notes on our website and basically anywhere else we post things. We have all sorts of Patreon levels including some of my favorites: Bantha Buddy, Tarkin’s Underwear Drawer, and Build-A-Beru which all have fabulous rewards and super great names.
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, and join our Discord and share all of your food and cute pet photos with us. We also sometimes talk about Star Wars. You can find the link to join our Discord on our website and in our pinned tweet. See you next time.
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