Tabletop Squadron Transcript, Season 1 Episode 43:
Gigoran Warfare

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.

First off, we have a new patron! [air horn noises] Megan B, welcome to the crew. We see that you brought your own tools. That will probably come in handy as our main mechanic seems to be doing it more as a hobby. Sincerely, thank you so, so much for supporting our show.

One other announcement this week. We did a spur of the moment Twitter drive and hit our goal pretty quickly. Thank you for that. as a reward I have recorded myself singing a parody of my own composition, Harley the Hutt, to the tune of Shia LaBeouf. It’s art… That’s all I’ll say about that. expect that to show up on our social media platforms in the near future if it hasn’t already. So um… thanks for that as well. Remember, you did this to yourselves.

Music this week is Play Dat Soul by Ménaje Quad and Main Stem by U.S. Army Blues.

So let’s get into the episode.

##

NICK: Hello! Welcome to Tabletop Squadron, Episode 43. I’m your host and game master, Nick. It’s a lovely summer evening. By the time this comes out it will hopefully be fall, but we’re in Texas so it probably won’t be. It will probably still be hot and terrible.

LAURA: Fall is a place in your heart, okay?

CAMERON: [laughs]

NICK: It can’t be fall if the souls of my shoes stick to the concrete because they’re melting.

LAURA: I don’t know what to tell you. Just pretend more.

NICK: And then I fell, so I guess we’ve got that going.

CAMERON: You obviously need to spend more time in the Halloween sections of Michael’s and Joanne’s.

NICK: [laughs]

LAURA: Yeah.

HUDSON: So like, for—What’s that time change thing called? Daylight Savings Time.

[laughter]

LAURA: Oh. I thought, I was about to say, the first day of pumpkin spice?

NICK: Yeah, the autumn equinox.

HUDSON: No, Daylight Savings Time. I was thinking like, how do you remember it, and I was like… fall backwards, spring forward.

NICK: That’s actually correct.

LAURA: Yeah.

HUDSON: Okay. I did the opposite the other day and I was like—

NICK: Spring backwards—

CAMERON: –fall forwards?

[laughter]

HUDSON: Yes.

NICK: Oh no. [laughs]

HUDSON: That’s what I was doing over and over again. I was like, [gritted] this doesn’t sound right.

[laughter]

NICK: So, everybody go around the table, introduce yourselves and see who you are playing today, starting with Cameron.

CAMERON: [smiling] I need to see who I am playing today. I feel like I need to draw a name out of the hat to figure it out. But okay, I’ll just use the sheet in front of me then. I’m Cameron, and I’m playing Karma Nailo, a Nautolan bounty hunter.

NICK: Awesome. Next up, we’ve got Hudson.

HUDSON: Hi. I’m Hudson, and I’m playing Tink, a vibro-axe wielding Gigoran slicer.

NICK: Ooh, a new modifier on there.

HUDSON: For now.

NICK: For now? [laughs] Okay. Are you gonna lose it?

HUDSON: I just switch things up every once in a while. I can’t get, you know…

NICK: Oh, okay, I see what you’re saying. Okay.

HUDSON: …can’t get too used to it.

NICK: And last but not least, we’ve got Laura.

LAURA: Hi. I’m Laura, and I play Xianna’fan, a Twi’lek smuggler.

NICK: Awesome! So, before we do the recap, let’s start off with the Destiny Roll~!

LAURA: Two light side.

CAMERON: Two light side.

HUDSON: Two light side.

NICK: Oh no.

CAMERON: Woo!

LAURA: Oh shit.

NICK: This is actually very good for you all…

CAMERON: This is gonna be so helpful, if we remember that we have them.

NICK: …seeing as you are about to go into a large combat. So, when we last left off, you all were about to start a large military conflict. You all drop podded sort of successfully onto the planet Fygo, the city of Sart, which is currently under siege by a star destroyer. You met up with Neato, the grizzled Rodian mercenary. You tried to convince him to come and work for Sentinel, but Neato refused to do it until after he had kinda settled this whole battlefield situation going on. You met with the general of the resistance, General Karthage, who gave you a small contingent of soldiers to help you basically just sew distraction and destruction amongst the Imperial forces. Tink, you broke off with Neato and Specialist Talon and Specialist Kevin to go to the, basically it looked like a technological university, and it was on the far side of town and your plan was to disrupt communications. Xianna and Karma and HK and Weathers and Smith all went to the beach, again somehow, and went to try to disrupt the artillery that was making a push up onto the land to try to get in range of the shield facility that’s protecting the entire city from orbital bombardment. [breathes]

LAURA: And Xianna’s swimming. Heh.

NICK: Yes. Xianna and Weathers and Smith are currently underwater. So, we’re gonna open exactly where the last episode left off. Karma, you have the first of the mobile artillery platforms in a target lock with your rocket launcher ready to fire. HK is on the roof of a nearby building with his rifle aimed at a group of stormtroopers ready to provide covering fire and a distraction. Xianna, you are underwater with Smith and Weathers as your trio prepares to detonate the thermal detonators that you planted on the still floating artillery craft in the bay. They are rapidly approaching the point where they will not sink once you detonate the charges, so you know that you’re in a hurry here. Xianna, as you breathe in through your rebreather you notice your lungs start to burn and know that your apparatus is failing. Tink, you are at a terminal a district away in the communications building ready to interrupt Imperial communications and stop any reinforcements overhead. Everybody hears over the coms HK talking to himself. It almost sounds like he’s singing. “So many organics, so easy to vent. So many organics, soon their lives will end.” A lot of things are going to happen really fast here. Who goes first?

CAMERON: [giggles]

LAURA: God, I love Hank.

NICK: [laughs]

CAMERON: Order wise, since HK is trying to provide the distraction it makes sense for him to go first, then for Xianna and Smith and Weathers to blow the water craft as another distraction to get everyone to turn around that way, and then Karma will rocket launcher the one on land.

NICK: Okay. You wanna tell HK dramatically to take the shot?

CAMERON: “HK, fire at will.”

NICK: You don’t hear a response. He just starts shooting. I’m gonna need you to make a roll for HK for me.

CAMERON: Okay.

NICK: We’re about to break out all his talents.

CAMERON: Oh boy.

LAURA: Pew, pew, pew.

NICK: I’ve not talked about this, but I designed HK for two things, and one of them is this.

LAURA: What’s the other one?!

NICK: [smiling] Screaming suppressing fire and shooting at the walls is the other thing I designed him for. First of all, HK starts with two yellows and two greens. This is long range, so it starts with three purples. Now, Precise Aim: Once per round, Hank may perform a Precise Aim maneuver. Suffer strain equal to the ranks in Precise Aim to reduce the target’s melee and range defense by that number. He has 1 point in Precise Aim, so he’s going to spend that strain to reduce the stormtroopers’ range resistance, which they have. Targeted Blow we’ll use in a second. Then he’s got a bunch of lethal blows, which may come up, and then Quick Strike, so I get a blue die because no one else has acted yet.

CAMERON: And he’s gonna aim, so he gets another blue die?

NICK: And he’s gonna aim, mm-hmm.

CAMERON: So two yellow, two green, two blue, and three purple?

NICK: Yeah, that sounds about right.

CAMERON: HK got five successes and two advantages.

NICK: Cool! Also, do you wanna flip a destiny point so he can activate his targeted strike?

CAMERON: What does that do?

NICK: His Targeted Blow: After making a successful attack you can spend a destiny point to add Agility to damage to one hit.

CAMERON: Okay. His Agility is 4, right?

NICK: Yeah.

CAMERON: Yeah, let’s do that.

NICK: Yeah, okay. It was how many successes?

CAMERON: Five!

NICK: Five successes, so that’s 14 damage, plus 4, so that’s 18 damage, which is gonna be four stormtroopers out of the ten that’s on the beach. [laughs]

[bouncy techno jazz music starts]

So yeah, you tell HK to take the shot and he just starts shooting. We get the image through… So he doesn’t have a scope, but it’s through his rifle vision which is very yellow and lit up with red silhouettes of these stormtroopers, and he has one centered in the shot and he takes the shot, and Karma, from where you are you can kind of see the beach, and this shot just… the stormtrooper is just gone and there’s a little cloud where the stormtrooper used to be of like vapor.

CAMERON: Ew.

NICK: Yeah. You can see the stormtrooper, really when you look, got blasted down the beach and is like sliding into the water, and then quickly there’s another shot and another stormtrooper goes sliding, and another shot, and another stormtrooper goes… and it takes three, because each one has less than a second in between, and the stormtroopers start to panic and run for cover and try to get behind the artillery. Ten there’s another shot and one that was mostly behind cover gets hit in the leg and falls back out of cover and then another shot takes that one down where they’re standing. So yeah, sufficiently distracted, I think at this point. What next?

CAMERON: “Xianna, do you wanna set off the fireworks?”

LAURA: “Oh. Okie!”

NICK: Blub, blub, blub, because you’re underwater.

CAMERON: [laughs] But she can hear me at least.

LAURA: “Okie!” [through underwater sound effects]

NICK: So, you detonate the explosives?

LAURA: I’m assuming I have a button?

NICK: Yeah. You and Smith and Weathers all have buttons on little dooblies that you can hit.

LAURA: I hold up fingers and do a 3, 2, 1, button thing so that they can see.

NICK: Yeah. Their crew cuts are floating in the water, and they hit the buttons. We get the shot from like an aerial helicopter shot and there’s these three landers, they look like large troop carriers with like the Lambda thing on the front but they’ve been floating in the water, and they have the big cannons on top, and you see the one furthest from Xianna and Smith and Weathers explode just into a fireball, and then very quickly the second one does, and the third one goes off and it doesn’t completely engulf it and it continues to go forward but much more slowly. Now the stormtroopers are hiding from a sniper, behind the artillery, and also looking behind them as a large chunk of their firepower is turned into a literal fire. Good work.

CAMERON: I’m gonna take aim at the artillery one on land closest to me and I’m gonna fire my rocket launcher.

NICK: Go right ahead.

CAMERON: What’s my difficulty on my rocket launcher attack?

NICK: You are also long range so it’s gonna be three purples.

CAMERON: I am aiming. The artillery has not gone yet this encounter, so I get another blue die?

NICK: Yep… I used it, so you can use it. [laughs]

CAMERON: It hasn’t fired anything recently. Four yellows, two blue, three purple.

NICK: Wow, you’re good at shooting.

CAMERON: I am. That is a triumph, two successes, and three advantages.

NICK: Okay. We’re not gonna go into the whole ‘does a rocket launcher beat a space ship’ conversation, because I don’t think the rules hold up super well to that. this was an ambush with an anti-tank missile designed to take down an artillery thing. You blow it up.

CAMERON: Yay.

NICK: Is there anything you want to use that triumph for?

CAMERON: Hmm. So on the ground there’s still one artillery and six live stormtroopers?

NICK: Yup.

CAMERON: I want to use some of my advantages to give the stormtroopers black die because I just blew up something right next to them and that’s gonna make it harder for them to both pinpoint where things came from and just like life in general.

NICK: Yeah, I think that’s narratively appropriate. There’s smoke and sand and shrapnel in the air.

CAMERON: And fire!

NICK: And fire, and… they don’t—everything’s exploding, so they are pretty pinned down. Now, stormtroopers are special forces, scary people, but no amount of training is gonna necessarily prepare you for being actively blown up. So, yeah.

CAMERON: Do y’all have any ideas for the triumph?

HUDSON: Can a piece of shrapnel take out a stormtrooper?

CAMERON: {Assume you could use} a triumph to take down a…?

NICK: Yeah.

CAMERON: Giant piece of shrapnel falls from the sky and squashes one of the stormtroopers!

NICK: [laughs] Okay, yeah. It’s the stormtrooper that was closest to the artillery piece you exploded.

CAMERON: It was the stormtrooper who was acting like a Sim and was just waving their hands in the air, pointing at the fire, yelling ‘fire.’

NICK: What do Sims yell when there’s fire? What’s the Simmish?

CAMERON: I don’t know. They just yell, noise, ‘aaaah,’ and then they have the little speech bubble around their head that has flames in it and they’re just waving their hand and standing right next to the fire… and then it slowly engulfs them.

NICK: Wow.

CAMERON: I played Sims a lot.

NICK: That game’s dark.

LAURA: It does get dark. I made some pretty messed up houses in the Sims.

NICK: [laughs]

HUDSON: As the piece of shrapnel falls from the sky, the stormtrooper looks up and says, ‘oh brother,’ like Looney Toons?

CAMERON: [laughs]

NICK: Wow. Yeah, this dark war-torn landscape I’ve tossed y’all in, we’re definitely aligned tonally. [laughs] This is good. Yeah, so you do that, leaving five stormtroopers, one fully functioning artillery piece, and one semi-functioning artillery piece. Xianna, as you go to give your two very muscly commandos a thumbs up your rebreather cuts out. You are about 20 feet below the surface of the water, and you are now breathing water. It hurts.

LAURA: Well yeah. [laughs] Xianna’s eyes get real big and start pointing at the rebreather and I guess just starts trying to… Oh, do you think the first reaction would be for her to go grab one of theirs or start swimming?

NICK: Oh, I didn’t even think of that.

CAMERON: Oh no… [laughs]

NICK: Well, in my head I had it going a certain way, but now you’ve raised other options that are also fun. I think that’s probably your call.

LAURA: Yeah. I think that would be Xianna’s first reaction. She swims up to whichever Smith and Weathers is closer and just tries to grab their rebreather. Heh.

NICK: Okay.

LAURA: She’ll give it back, just…

NICK: You’re gonna have to make a Brawl check to do that, but before we do we’re gonna cut over to Tink. Tink, you are sitting in a beanbag chair, I think, in front of a large computer terminal. There are other terminals around at which are seated Specialist Talon and Specialist Kevin. They are all looking at you expectantly. You just got into the main system. You sliced into it, you had no problems, and you’re looking at what you’re going to do, and as soon as you do that you know that on the roof of this building are a bunch of radio receivers and electronic surveillance systems, because that’s what they were training in at this building, and they all light up at once. You see a ton of transmissions immediately start beaming towards the atmosphere, and while those transmissions are close to instantaneous, the encryption that the Imperials use and everything means that there’s a slight delay, and you have a chance to interrupt that if you so chose. You can tell from the coms and the explosions and everything that you see that the battle has started. What do you do?

HUDSON: I want to do a couple of things. The first thing is I want to temporarily interrupt the transmissions so that they’re not getting there on time and they’re all kind of wobbly-dobbly.

NICK: Okay. Are you trying to completely stop them so it’s silent or are you just trying to make them so that people can’t understand what’s going on?

HUDSON: Can’t understand what’s going on.

NICK: Okay. That’ll just be a hard check then. That would be Computers. You can have a blue die because Talon and Kevin are backing you up.

CAMERON: You have the two blue dice for your outlaw tech data breaker?

HUDSON: Not for this.

CAMERON: It’s a Computers check if he plugs it into the computer.

NICK: Well, so like, he plugged it in to get into the computer, but now that he’s fully in he’s not really hacking so much as maintaining the surveillance system.

HUDSON: Yeah.

CAMERON: Okay.

NICK: If he tries to later infiltrate the star destroyer I would say you could use it again, but for now.

HUDSON: So this is the first thing I do, so I’m gonna roll. Six advantages, one success.

NICK: Interesting. So, we see the whole board light up. It’s Star Wars, so it’s not really like a full LCD computer screen, it’s like a bunch of different lightbulbs like an old scoreboard or something that like show the transmissions going. On the side there is a little computer screen that you’re using. Neato, who’s standing at the doorway with his disrupter rifle, turns around and says, ‘Hey chum, what do all those lights mean? Looks like the canaries are starting to sing, eh?”

HUDSON: “It means I own them.”

NICK: “I don’t see what your ownership has to do with the situation, but those lights are getting pretty big.” And then they immediately all cut out, because you have control. It’s been scrambled. You have so many advantages. What would you like to spend those on?

HUDSON: I’m gonna crack my knuckles. “You thought that was cool? Watch this.” I close my eyes… [laughter] and I wanna upgrade one of my purples to a red on the next roll because my eyes are closed…

NICK: Okay. I’ll flip a dark side point to do that. Sure.

HUDSON: …and I try to perform a man in the middle attack. I intercept messages and send my own messages that say everyone lay down your weapons.

NICK: Oh dang. Okay.

CAMERON: [laughs] You’re getting so computery.

NICK: Yeah. It’s almost like Hudson has—

HUDSON: In the middle of an attack, like, that’s self-explanatory to an extent, right?

NICK: Yeah, yeah. No, I think that’s cool. I like using actual hacking shenanigans in the show. I think that’s fun.

LAURA: You mean two people typing on one keyboard isn’t real hacking?

HUDSON: [laughs]

NICK: Well, I mean…

HUDSON: It’s called pair programming.

CAMERON: I mean, that’s how you type faster, but…

LAURA: Is that not how you type faster…?

NICK: This one will be hard again, so that’s two purples and a red now. You can use your outlaw tech data breaker because now you’re actively trying to get into their system.

HUDSON: So two blues, or three, because you gave me a blue.

NICK: Yep, you have three blues. You are very good at this.

HUDSON: [laughing] I do it with my eyes closed because I want to be really cocky and show off to everybody in the room.

[laughter]

NICK: I’m hoping for that despair. Tink is better than Hudson’s hands are big for dice.

HUDSON: Okay. I have a triumph with a success, two additional successes.

NICK: Okay. Hmm… Be thinking about that triumph. I think… Stormtroopers are some hard cases, right? If they’re currently under fire and you’re able to hijack their transmissions with a command, I would assume it would be like an automated command rather than you recording something?

HUDSON: Yes.

NICK: So, you’re gonna sew a bunch of confusion, but they’re not necessarily all immediately gonna give up, right? So I think a couple of them lay down arms, a couple of them stop looking for whoever’s shooting at them because they’re busy trying to confirm the orders, so you have definitely thrown them into disarray on the ground but they don’t all immediately just stop fighting. Anything you wanna use that triumph for? It can be kinda unrelated to what you were doing.

HUDSON: This is definitely unrelated to what I was doing.

NICK: Okay?

HUDSON: I send one more message that says, ‘Code Macarena! I repeat, Code Macarena!’ Just to fuck around.

[laughter]

CAMERON: [giggling] That’s your triumph, is you said that? Okay.

HUDSON: [laughing] yes.

NICK: One of the stormtroopers says, “Well, you heard the orders,” and walks out onto the beach and starts doing the dance.

HUDSON: [laughs]

NICK: And then is immediately cut down by Hank and dies horribly.

CAMERON: So I get to cross off another one?

NICK: Yeah. Good job, you used your triumph to—

HUDSON: Kill a stormtrooper inadvertently?

NICK: –to kill a stormtrooper. Mechanically that makes perfect sense.

[laughter]

LAURA: Wow.

NICK: Narratively we’re getting a little interesting with it. This is fun. This is good.

[giggling]

NICK: Great. Neato, from the doorway, says, “Ah, the old Code Macarena trick, a classic!” And we cut back to the beach. Xianna, you are currently trying to fight a commando for his rebreathing unit. I think that’s a Brawl check against a commando.

LAURA: Okay, but what if I use Agility?

NICK: I think you could argue that it’s Skulduggery, like that you do it sneakily, in which case it would be against his Perception instead of against his Brawl, which might be good.

LAURA: Okay. So then, basically try to pickpocket from his mouth.

CAMERON: [laughs]

NICK: yeah. You’re good enough at that. I would accept it.

LAURA: Pickmouth. I don’t like that. [laughter] Anyways, I am gonna flip a light side point for that.

CAMERON: Xianna starts panicking, points to her mouth, swims over, and then sneakily steals someone’s rebreather. [laughs]

NICK: Or it’s just like, so quick.

LAURA: Well I do it right as they say Code Macarena, and you can tell in our eyes we all are, like, that flash second of ‘aw shit, I wish we were on land to do the Code Macarena. We know what this is. We’ve been waiting.’

CAMERON: Yeah. Because Karma had the Imperial com, so she patched it into our group com, so we can all hear, so we all heard Code Macarena and we’re all thinking… that was Tink.

NICK: Yeah. Well, and I think, it’s Star Wars so you can have dual channels open, so you can hear the slightly distorted voice of Tink on the Imperial coms, because that one I think was Tink just talking into a microphone.

HUDSON: Yeah.

NICK: And then you can also hear him talking over your squad channel. His Perception is going to be two reds against you.

LAURA: I’m just trying to remember all of my stuff, because it’s been a while.

NICK: I’ll give you a black die because you’re underwater trying to do this.

LAURA: Fun. I’m just gonna go ahead and take that away.

NICK: [laughs]

LAURA: Because I have something…

NICK: You gotta tell me the name of the talent.

LAURA: Oh wait, no, that’s Streetwise or Knowledge.

NICK: Oh no.

LAURA: That’s for Stealth and Coordination. Uh… Bypass Security!

[laughter]

NICK: Maybe not. I think you’re still probably going to be fine, though.

LAURA: Yeah. I think that’s the one thing that I don’t remove… Oh wait, no. Remove black die per rank of Convincing Demeanor. That includes Skulduggery.

NICK: Nice.

LAURA: Ha. What was the difficulty?

NICK: Two reds. You can pickpocket underwater as good as you can pickpocket on land. That’s impressive.

LAURA: Yeah.

NICK: If there’s a despair, he will shoot you.

HUDSON: [laughs]

CAMERON: Underwater?

NICK: Yup. They work once underwater.

LAURA: I got three successes, two advantages.

NICK: Okay? You snatch the rebreather out of their mouth, and you can see, whether it’s Smith or Weathers, they have this moment where they don’t notice, it’s so fast. Do you want to use your advantages that you put your rebreather in his mouth or do you want it to be that he doesn’t freak out and try to take it back from you?

LAURA: That they don’t freak out and I’m able to put my hand up and do a little countdown and then hand it back to them after a few breaths, and then motion that we’re going back up.

NICK: Okay.

LAURA: So that hopefully they understand that like, hey, I’m being an asshole, but I’m not gonna let you die?

NICK: [laughs]

CAMERON: Hey, sharing is caring, okay?

LAURA: Sharing is caring. Please let me live.

NICK: Okay. Yeah, I think that would account for how successful you were on this roll. However, swimming back to the surface while alternating who can breathe and who can’t I think is very challenging. I would like an average difficulty Athletics roll to see how good you do making it back to the surface.

LAURA: Oh… boy.

NICK: Really hitting you on those Brawl checks tonight, aren’t I?

LAURA: Yeah.

CAMERON: All the Brawn.

NICK: Brawn, that’s what I meant to say.

LAURA: [long pause]

CAMERON: [giggles]

NICK: [laughs] What’s that dice pool there, Laura?

LAURA: It’s a single green. [laughs] I have a 1 in Brawn and I have nothing trained in Athletics, because everything I do is Agility based. Pretty much if I do a skill it is Agility or Cunning, every so often Presence, but…

NICK: I need to get you into a fistfight at some point.

LAURA: Two failures and a threat.

NICK: Okay. This is really difficult. I think the swimming before… You’re okay at swimming, but you probably breathe pretty heavily because you’re used to having a rebreather, and suddenly now that you have to control your breathing and everything you realize how much physical effort it is, and you start to see some spots, and your lungs start to hurt. You’ve kind of established a cadence with the commando that you’re sharing with on how long you take it back and forth, and on one of the times you take an extra breath but the commando, without thinking about it, pulls it back, so then you kind of inhale some water and your vision starts to get darker. You get a shot kind of even with the water level of the choppy waters of the bay being disrupted by the recent explosions that we’ve had, the reflection of the fireballs of the rapidly sinking artillery platforms, and in the distance kind of out of focus on the beach you can see stormtroopers diving to the ground away from the exploded things on shore and just kind of random blaster fire from the roof of a nearby building as Hank keeps people pinned down, and then the water surface is broken by one of the commandos, and then there’s a long four second pause… and then the water is broken by the other commando dragging Xianna, who doesn’t have the rebreather, and starts coughing into the air. You all are on the surface of the water. You made it. Xianna, take 4 strain.

LAURA: Yup.

HUDSON: Makes sense.

NICK: That was difficult. And at this point, the stormtroopers are going to recover from the initial shock of this ambush attack. There are four left on the beach, one of which is still kind of just pinned down by all the explosions and everything that’s going on, that’s part of the confusion of them getting conflicting orders, but three of them managed to rally together behind the last non-exploded artillery and they take a shot at I think Hank’s position because he’s the one that they’re most likely to see, because he’s still shooting. That distraction has worked pretty well. Really this whole ambush has gone off a lot better than I expected. So, they’re going to be shooting at Hank’s position. They have two yellow and a green. It is long range so it’s a hard roll, and they also have a black die because he is in cover.

CAMERON: And they have a black die from all of the smoke.

NICK: Yep, and they have a black die from all of their distractions and things. Probably not smoke, because their helmets filter smoke, but not toxins.

CAMERON: And fire!

NICK: yeah, and just general shellshockedness probably. Let’s go ahead and roll that and see if they manage to hit our robot friend.

CAMERON: One success, one triumph, and one threat.

NICK: Oh, they got a triumph. Let’s roll a crit~! The threat is I think whoever shoots at them next will have a blue die.

CAMERON: A 48. Head Ringer: +1 difficulty to Intellect/Cunning checks until the end of the encounter.

NICK: Yeah, that’s gonna be real hard for Mister ThinkBot over there. But they had one success?

CAMERON: Yeah.

NICK: So that’s one success, they do 8 damage, that’s 9 damage, so he takes 5 damage. Ooh, that still hurts him very bad. He’s not happy about that.

CAMERON: And then mark down that he has a crit.

NICK: So the stormtroopers hit Hank’s sniping position, and you hear the sound of blaster fire hitting metal over the coms, and you hear Hank say, “Oh, that was unexpected. Alright you stormtroopers, I’ll show you what’s up,” and he jumps off of the roof of the building and there is a very loud clang. Karma, you can see him try to superhero land but his leg gives out, so he keels over but he gets up pretty quick. He looks pretty damaged, there’s a lot of sparks coming out of his torso, and you can see that there are some holes kinda near to where you repaired his armor from where he got shot the first time when his processor was cored out, but he is leveling his gun at them. we’re gonna jump back to Tink. Tink, what are you working on right now while you’re slicing?

HUDSON: Well, I’m seeing if there’s anything that I can steal to benefit me later on , like secret codes or accesses.

NICK: Are you trying to actively attack the Imperial network at this point?

HUDSON: Yep.

NICK: Okie-dokie. First thing you’ll have to do is get into the star destroyer. You’ve done that before.

HUDSON: Mm-hmm.

NICK: You have a black die on that that you can’t remove with your data breaking thing because it’s from the fact that you have left a signature in star destroyers every time in the past.

HUDSON: Okay. Even if I have the skill it doesn’t matter?

NICK: Yeah. This one ,because it’s so situational, this one is mostly if you get threats I’m gonna make you do that again, because I like doing it and it makes me happy. So that black die will stick. The other black die, because you would have at least one more, from trying to remotely access a military data base in space, we’re gonna take that away with your skills. So, you only have one, and you still have three blue dice because of your setup here. Let’s see how you do.

HUDSON: What’s the difficulty?

NICK: We’re gonna go hard.

HUDSON: So hard with a black die?

NICK: Yep.

HUDSON: One success and eight advantages.

[laughter]

NICK: Laura looks so pleased.

LAURA: [giggles]

NICK: Well, so you get in. Would you like to use those advantages to just give everybody a blue die on the next thing they do?

HUDSON: Yep.

NICK: We’ll just say that you are doing so well that you’re pulling strings throughout the system, distracting stormtroopers with bursts of static in their coms, maybe throwing off the propulsion of these artillery pieces a little bit more, things like that. if you could flip me that dark side point, though… As you are doing that, you do get into the star destroyer, it takes a while with just one success so we’re not gonna give you the time to immediately start casing the joint so to speak. That dark side point was, the entire building is shaken? Shooken? Shook?

LAURA: It’s shook! Heh.

NICK: So shook!

LAURA: Been shook!

HUDSON: Shaken.

NICK: The entire building begins to shake—

HUDSON: Oh yeah.

CAMERON: [laughs]

NICK: –as it takes a large impact, almost as if something has fallen from space and hit the roof of the building. This would be a good time to mention you’re on the fourth floor. It’s a five story building. Neato flips a toggle on his disrupter rifle and you hear it begin to charge. [power-up noise] “Well chums, it looks like we might have company,” as you hear the booted feet of stormtroopers on the roof as a patrol is making its way down the stairs. Maybe it’s a coincidence, maybe it’s not, maybe it’s Maybelline. Yeah, so you’ve got that going on. Do you stay focused on your slicing, or…?

HUDSON: I think I take my vibro-axe and I absolutely smash every computer in that room.

NICK: Ohh! Okay.

CAMERON: Go full Kylo Ren on this room. [laughs]

HUDSON: Yes. Does that throw a wrench in some stuff, Nick?

NICK: No.

LAURA: You threw an axe in it. Ha-ha!

NICK: Yeah, quite literally. So like, peek behind the GM curtain here, I was expecting you to continue to try to slice while Neato tried to defend you, but if you wanna smash it so there’s no backtrace and fight your way out, that’s an option too, like 100%.

HUDSON: Yeah, let’s do that.

NICK: So then, that went internal, and I wouldn’t even have looked surprised, I would have just rolled with it, but then my thinking is… Is smashing all the computers to remove any trace of you a Skulduggery check, or a Computers check, or a Melee check? [laughs]

HUDSON: I think Melee.

CAMERON: I would say either Melee or Computers, because Melee for axing good but Computers for knowing where to hit.

NICK: For axing the correct things.

CAMERON: Yeah.

NICK: Which are you better at, Computers or Melee?

HUDSON: I’m the same in both as far as the number of yellow dice I’m going to get, however in Computers I’d be better in because I get my skill tree stuff.

NICK: Alright. You wanna do Computers just in case?

HUDSON: Yeah, let’s do that. yeah, sure.

NICK: So, you are smashing around but you’re not just trying to demolish everything, you are like cutting the hard drives in half on this thing. You are being very surgical. As Kevin and Specialist Talon, I think that they’re typing away like ‘oh man, we got into the database, look at all this stuff,’ and their screens start to flicker out as you just start wailing on stuff.

HUDSON: [laughs]

NICK: Talon goes, “What are you doing?!” Roll the die.

HUDSON: What’s the difficulty?

NICK: Average? You have a big old vibro-axe. I feel like making a computer inoperable is not that hard.

HUDSON: And I get a blue die because everyone got a blue die from my last advantages?

NICK: Yeah, from all of your advantages. I feel like eight advantages is like, everyone gets a blue die for the rest of the session, whatever. [laughs]

HUDSON: Six successes and a threat.

[laughter]

HUDSON: You should see this dice composition. It’s magnificent.

NICK: So, the threat is going to be that this takes a little longer than expected, so the stormtroopers are gonna get to go first when they get to you. the six successes is that this entire thing is completely shredded to hell. No one’s gonna be able to track anything about you through this system, including the star destroyer that you got into.

HUDSON: Wouldn’t it also mess up their coms, since that’s what’s controlling their coms?

NICK: Yeah, we’ll say that.

HUDSON: I feel like that just more makes sense.

NICK: Yeah. You had such complete control, you’ve been so successful with this that you have them all patched through you, and I think that they are shut off, at least for now, they may come back up later as they figure out what the heck happened. So, with that amount of successes on that slicing check, if you wanted to remove a piece of this computer that you would find useful later and take it with you, you could.

HUDSON: Sure.

NICK: What piece of the computer do you take?

HUDSON: A group of USB keys in a little container.

NICK: Okay. You slam the axe into a piece and it just flies up into the air and you just grab it out of the air. ‘Ooh!’ And you—

HUDSON: –pocket it.

NICK: And around this point you hear the clomping of stormtroopers coming down a set of stairs and you hear, ‘Hey, it looks like there’s some people in there. Let’s investigate.” The stormtroopers start heading towards you.

HUDSON: “There’s no people in here!”

NICK: “Hey, they say there’s no people in there.”

And Neato says, “Investigate this, Imperial scum!” and he starts shooting down the hallway.

“Hey, I think there is people in there!” [smiling] And we’re gonna cut away. So, as that is going on and the stormtroopers start a gunfight, we’re gonna cut back to the main beach. No communication went out from the ambush. Nobody heard from the star destroyer that this ambush was happening. Communications were cut, but they heard some gargled thing. I think you managed to make it sound like a communications error, so they’re kind of troubleshooting rather than sending reinforcements. We are down to four stormtroopers on the beach, one artillery piece, one partially moving artillery piece in the bay that is shooting sparks into the water, and Xianna… You are being held above water as you cough by a commando and the other commando is there. What do you do?

LAURA: I mean, Xianna’s a little panicky right now. “[coughs] Beach! [coughs]”

NICK: “Well that’s not very polite. I just saved your life.”

LAURA: “No, beeeach! [coughs] I am… [coughs] drowning!”

NICK: “Damn Smith, did you hear what she called you? That’s so rude. Let’s head to the beach.”

“Yeah guy, I don’t know.”

LAURA: [whining and coughing] “Yes! Beach!”

NICK: “I just don’t think we know each other that way.”

CAMERON: [laughs]

LAURA: “No~!” [laughs]

NICK: [smiling] Smith is swimming with one arm.

LAURA: “Please, I have so much water in my lungs!”

NICK: So yeah, you swim towards the beach as gunfire erupts from the small gunfight going on. Karma, what are you doing?

CAMERON: I would like to have reloaded my rocket launcher.

NICK: I think enough time has passed that you could reload.

CAMERON: And shoot the other still fully functioning artillery.

NICK: Okay. Roll up that check. You will have a black die because you are shooting through smoke and fog and mess and things.

CAMERON: But I get a blue die from Tink’s crazy amount of advantages.

NICK: Yep.

CAMERON: I’m aiming, so I get another blue die.

NICK: Yep.

CAMERON: And it hasn’t gone in combat yet, so I get another blue die! [laughs]

HUDSON: [laughs]

NICK: [huffs] Okay. [chuckles]

CAMERON: It hasn’t! And it’s still long range.

NICK: Yep, unless you move up.

CAMERON: I think I’m—Actually, I think I’ll do that. I’mma move up.

NICK: Okay. Give me the action sequence of Karma finishing the reload and running to a new firing position.

CAMERON: So, Karma shoots the first rocket, I think the rocket launcher has more kickback than she’s used to as it’s significantly higher powered than her carbine, but she fires it, sees the explosion, smiles slightly, drops down, starts reloading it, hops back up about the time that she hears the metal getting hit noises of HK getting hit and sees him jump off the building, shakes her head, hops through the window and starts running up to where she can see, because the artillery is higher, but it’s still smoky enough that she can’t really make out any of the stormtroopers, and then puts it up on her shoulder and aims it and fires.

NICK: Okay.

CAMERON: A triumph, one success, and three advantages, which I think is the exact same thing I rolled last time.

NICK: Huh. Feels like it, doesn’t it?

CAMERON: Yes.

NICK: So, the rocket strikes squarely in the middle of this landing thing, and it goes up in a big oily fireball. You know that wet-looking fire that they use in action movies sometimes? It does that, just viscous and flowy and very globular.

CAMERON: [snickers]

NICK: That’s a weird word.

HUDSON: Yeah.

CAMERON: Yeah, but it works.

NICK: Yeah. Do you want to use your triumph to take out one of the three remaining stormtroopers or do you want to use it for something else?

CAMERON: I want to take out one of the additional stormtroopers. The fire happens, Karma takes the rocket launcher off her shoulder and just chucks it forward into the smoke a little bit and hits a stormtrooper who falls and hits his head and dies. [laughs]

NICK: Are you that close to the stormtroopers?

CAMERON: Well, I’d been to the side, shot the one closest to me, and then approached.

NICK: Oh, so you ran around?

CAMERON: So probably came up almost even with the first blown out one so that now that the rocket launcher, I’m out of rockets, I can switch to my carbine and be within medium range of everybody.

NICK: Rather than it being like an accident, can you just use it like a baseball bat and like take this person out?

CAMERON: Sure. Yes. I guess she’ll use her sword melee skills with a rocket launcher and just swing it.

NICK: Okay. Sure.

CAMERON: And conk him on the head.

NICK: So it’s one of the ones taking aim at Hank who is just spouting obscenities as his gun cycles up. One of them has taken cover on the other side of the wall that you were using and is kind of blown back by the force of the rocket going off and then you just smash them over the head with it and they go down.

CAMERON: And then I take cover, behind the shell of the first one.

NICK: Sure. Yup. HK is probably only about 10-15 meters away from you, because you’ve run towards him. HK is not taking cover. HK is just a big, glowing beacon of angry droid at this point. Around this time, Xianna, you make it to the beach. We see Weathers stride purposefully up the beach, water streaming off of his tanktop and combat pants, and it looks very much like a propaganda add for like ‘Join the Military’ as he strides up and pulls a carbine out of somewhere and starts walking towards the combat. Then Smith strides up onto the beach with your arm thrown over his shoulder, and as he gets up out of the water he lets go of you to grab the carbine.

LAURA: Xianna just falls face forward into the sand and just does the very pathetic crawl up onto the sand and then just flops back down, and has like tears in her eyes and her face is reddened so her cheeks are more of a plum than a violet. “Ugh! I was saying beach, not bitch. There was no T in that word. [groans]”

NICK: Smith looks down and goes, “Oh… Hey, are you alright? You look pretty bad.”

LAURA: “No! I was drowning. My rebreather was out. That is why I took yours, or his, whichever’s I took.”

NICK: “Well I got that.”

LAURA: “Yes! So you took it a few times while I was still breathing.”

NICK: “We were only like 20 feet underwater. It wasn’t that far.”

LAURA: “I don’t swim good. I did not learn to swim until I was an adult and I am not very strong. I am so, so sad and so small.” [resists giggling]

CAMERON: [laughs]

LAURA: “I just want to sit on the sand. I like the sand.”

NICK: Smith primes his carbine and—

CAMERON: I think you mean he cocks his blaster.

NICK: Nope. He primes his carbine.

[snickering and laughter]

LAURA: He puts a nice primer layer on it.

HUDSON: heyo.

NICK: And says, “Okay little friend, well uh, legs and lungs. Let’s go.” They start to head up the beach towards the remaining stormtroopers, covering each other tactically.

LAURA: She pushes herself and sits up and is wiping the tears from her face. ‘Legs and lungs? What the fuck does that even mean?! [sobs] I am so done with today.” She starts shakily getting back up and just starts trudging after them.

NICK: Yeah. So you head up the beach, Xianna?

LAURA: Yeah.

NICK: Okay. I think at this point HK just starts laying down suppressing fire. There’s only three of them left at this point. They have taken cover in the burned out remains of the last artillery piece. So, Xianna, as you’re running up the beach we get the shaky cam behind you like they do in beach landing scenes as you scramble up the beach, and there’s all this blaster fire around you, all these red bolts flashing through the smoke, and as you clear the smoke and you’re near enough to see the stormtroopers you can see that all of the blaster fire coming in your direction is Hank just laying down a curtain of destruction.

LAURA: “Haaank! Hank, stop it!”

NICK: “Suppressing fire!”

LAURA: “No, not at me! Other direction, please!”

NICK: Roll me a force die, would you?

LAURA: One light side.

NICK: “Secondary user recognized. Redirecting suppressing fire.” He focuses in on where the stormtroopers are, pinning them down, giving them all black dice. I’m not gonna make him roll to shoot for that. that’s fine. So Xianna, do you want to help engage in this situation? They don’t have cover against you because they’re pinned down away from HK.

LAURA: Yeah. “Thank you, Hank~!” And then pulls out her blaster and shoots the closest one.

NICK: Cool. Roll me. Do you think you got to within close range of them under the cover of the smoke or are you still out at medium range?

LAURA: Uh, probably close.

NICK: Sure. I’ll give it to you. [laughing] There’s so much just noise and explosions. You all have done a very good job at guerilla warfare. I’m impressed.

LAURA: Would we say I could aim?

NICK: Sure.

LAURA: Okay.

HUDSON: Should we call it Gigoran warfare?

CAMERON: I like that better.

NICK: Gigoran warfare? Officially, now, yes.

LAURA: Okay, three successes.

NICK: Okay, that’s 8 damage. You take down one of the stormtroopers pretty easily.

LAURA: Nine damage.

NICK: Nine damage.

LAURA: For mine, yes.

NICK: You take down one and a half stormtroopers. [laughs]

LAURA: Yeah!

NICK: Uh, good job? I think you manage to shoot one out of cover and drop another one leaving one and a half stormtroopers remaining. We are getting pretty close to the end here. I think that the injured stormtrooper buckles down behind cover. The last stormtrooper being surrounded just breaks and runs, and Smith and Weathers take them down before they can get away, and the last injured one just keels over at this point. Hank walks up and just kicks them in the head and knocks them out. You are now on this smoking battlefield, and we cut back to Tink. Tink, there are approximately six stormtroopers in cover at the end of the hallway just shooting into this room right now as Neato just… says stuff, and shoots back, just a lot of incomprehensible language at this point. What do you do?

[peppy jazz music starts]

HUDSON: “Neato, run towards them and then slide on your knees. I’ll leapfrog.”

NICK: “Copy that, the old one-two!” And he takes off.

LAURA: [laughs]

NICK: Kevin looks at you and goes, “What?!”

HUDSON: “Don’t worry, I’ve done this… bef—Don’t worry.”

CAMERON: [laughs]

NICK: Specialist Talon goes, “I am extremely worried.”

HUDSON: I start running, sprinting.

NICK: Yeah. Neato is already heading down the hallway saying “Time to fade away, friends, before you end up in the hoosegow as I… shoot you, quite a lot.”

[laughter]

HUDSON: I like that.

NICK: Yeah. He’s just firing. His rifle doesn’t fire very fast, but even if he doesn’t hit them bits of their cover disintegrate so they’re rapidly pulling back. As he gets half way down he slides on his knees dramatically and he goes, “Now Tink, take to the skies!”

HUDSON: I’m holding my vibro-axe with one hand and with my other hand I put it on his shoulder and leap over him and go and slash a stormtrooper.

NICK: Yeah. Roll me a Melee attack, and you can have a blue die for being like real cool.

HUDSON: What’s the difficulty?

NICK: Average.

HUDSON: I almost grabbed two reds.

CAMERON: Yeah, don’t do that.

NICK: I mean, you can if you want.

HUDSON: Two advantages and three successes.

NICK: How much total damage is that?

HUDSON: Plus 3, so that’s 9.

NICK: How many advantages?

HUDSON: Two.

NICK: What’s the crit on your axe?

HUDSON: One.

NICK: Would you like to crit?

HUDSON: Yes!

NICK: Your axe is crit 1?!

HUDSON: Yes, because I have Monomolecular Edge.

NICK: You should crit constantly.

HUDSON: [laughs]

LAURA: He often doesn’t get advantages.

NICK: Oh.

HUDSON: Yeah, I don’t get a ton of advantages.

LAURA: Or we’ve forgotten.

CAMERON: Do you have a d100 down there, Hudson?

HUDSON: No.

CAMERON: You may roll your crit.

NICK: Well, if they’re just stormtroopers, you can just kill one if you want.

CAMERON: But it’s more fun to roll a crit.

HUDSON: I wanna see what happens if I crit them!

CAMERON: See what the crit is at least.

NICK: Okay.

HUDSON: Sixty-three.

LAURA: Slightly Dazed: Disoriented until end of encounter.

NICK: That means they have a black die to all their actions. So would you like them to be mildly inconvenienced or would you like to kill them?

HUDSON: I’ll kill them.

[laughter]

NICK: Okay. I’m glad we’ve gone on this journey together. So, yeah, that’s 9 damage. That’s two plus another one for the crit, so you take out three of them just very quickly.

HUDSON: Out of how many?

NICK: Yeah, about that… So, you slash down through one, slash another, and on the backswing you conk one in the head with the butt of your axe, and you look up, and in the time it’s taken you to do that Neato slides the rest of the way into the hallway, just like [long squeak].

HUDSON: Like under my legs? [laughs]

NICK: Yeah. [laughs] And we get this shot of him rocker posed holding his rifle like he just did a cool power slide with a guitar.

HUDSON: This is ridiculous.

[music fades]

NICK: Yeah. You’re the one who leapfrogged into combat.

LAURA: [laughs]

HUDSON: That’s true.

NICK: And you’re posed with the axe planted, and then the camera zooms out and shows like 15 stormtroopers in this hallway all aimed at you. Neato stops, and everyone’s just kind of stopped as these three stormtroopers fall to the ground. Neato says, “Tink…? I think we should head back… towards cover.”

HUDSON: “We can take—Ohh.”

CAMERON: [laughs]

HUDSON: And I see how many there are. I start running the other direction. I don’t even answer.

[laughter]

NICK: The stormtroopers in unison, you hear a bunch of them go, “Hey!”

Neato goes, ‘Hey yourself!” and shoots one of them, and then we just get this thing of all this blaster fire going as you and Neato run back towards the hallway. So, we cut back to Karma and Xianna and Smith and Weathers and Hank who is gouting sparks out of his chest. You all hear on the coms Neato saying, “We’re under heavy fire over here. A little help would be appreciated.”

CAMERON: I pick up my rocket launcher and I form a cross with it and my sword across my back.

NICK: That is very cool.

CAMERON: I want this for later. [laughs] I’m keeping this rocket launcher.

NICK: [laughs] Smith winks at you. “Yeah, conserving resources, not a bad idea.”

CAMERON: “Well I don’t want anyone else to have it.”

NICK: “Well, and it was our last rocket launcher.”

CAMERON: “Mm-hmm.”

NICK: So, are you all heading towards Tink and Neato and the rest of the group?

LAURA: Yes. Everyone turns around and Xianna has her blaster in one hand and two grenades in the other. [laughter] She’s like, “Okie, we go.”

CAMERON: “So that one’s still moving though.” Karma points to the sparking, still damaged artillery piece in the bay.

NICK: Yeah. It’s still kind of rolling up the beach.

LAURA: “Yeah, well, I almost drowned, so we did what we did. Let’s go.”

NICK: And as you’re discussing logistics, also your coms are filling with blaster fire, and you know that Tink is not super close, we get a kind of zoomed out shot of all the smoke and fire, and the sky is turning the dark purple of evening at this point, and you all hear this whistling noise, and you look up and you see… it’s gotta be 20 drop pods, Imperial ones, falling in the sky in a synchronized curtain line, each one slightly behind the other, and they are falling directly towards the shield facility. We get this long silence as they shriek in and then you hear the [rapid repeated impact] as they hit, and you see a couple of buildings list and start to fall as they land. Your coms just go haywire with Imperial communications that you can hear and the militia in the area all declaring that they’ve made contact at once and the main shield facility is under attack.

LAURA: Xianna just shouts out, “Okay, I’m just gonna go get Tink. Bye,” and starts running off.

NICK: [smiling] I think that’s where we’re gonna end the episode.

[laughter]

ALL: Ba-naaa~!

## 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 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. 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.