Tabletop Squadron Transcript, Season 1 Episode 46:
Fashion Forward

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.

Not much to say this week except that I really want to take a second to thank our guest star, Mel D’Amato, for being on our podcast. Playing with Mel was a freaking blast, and I know you’re all going to enjoy their character as much as we did.

Podcast music this week is High Technologic Beat Explosion by Loyalty Freak Music.

Let’s get into the episode.

##

NICK: Hello! Welcome to our GenCon episode of Tabletop Squadron. I’m your hosting game master, Nick. Everybody, let’s go around the table, and I usually say something funny and cool here, but we’ve been talking and making fart noises for the last ten minutes so I didn’t really think of anything. Everybody, let’s go around the table and everybody say who you are and who you are playing today, starting off with Laura.

LAURA: Hello. I am Laura, and I play Xianna’fan, a Twi’lek smuggler.

NICK: Great. Next up we’ve got Hudson.

HUDSON: Hi, I’m Hudson, and I’m playing Tink, a Gigoran slicer.

NICK: Awesome. Up next we’ve got Cameron.

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

NICK: And up next we’ve got our secret super awesome special guest today…

MEL: Secret, secret.

NICK: …Mel!

MEL: Hey! I’m Mel. I am here playing Illith Utena Hatake, a Chiss smuggler.

[oohing]

NICK: And now everyone’s going to frantically wonder when that’s going to happen. At some point in the episode, everybody. It’s gonna be fine. [laughs] Mel, do you have any plugs or anything that you would like to give us?

MEL: If you like what you hear and you wanna talk at me or have any questions about me or my character or things that I do, you can find me working on the One Shot podcast network and harass—and bother me on Twitter at @melerella.

NICK: Great. I gotta follow you. I already follow you, it’s fine.

CAMERON: [laughs]

NICK: Awesome! Let’s do the Destiny Roll~! That’s important.

CAMERON: I got two light side.

LAURA: Two light side.

HUDSON: One dark side.

MEL: One dark side.

NICK: Awesome. That gives us something to play with.

CAMERON: So that’s four light side, two dark side.

NICK: Very good. That gives us some options here. Now we’re gonna jump into it. So, we open on the lovely beach resort on Thrinaka. You’re back.

LAURA: We’re back!

CAMERON: Hey, look at that!

NICK: We are not staying on the beach resort. We are leaving again.

LAURA: Damn!

HUDSON: What?!

CAMERON: I think it’s time for another vacation.

NICK: No, stop.

CAMERON: [laughs]

NICK: We see the croissant shaped ship of the Tallahassee Quagmire land briefly. It is scored with blaster marks and smoking and has sparks shooting out of it, and the exit ramp drops with a loud clang, which is very weird. When you entered the ship it lowered very slowly, but this time it just drops and leaves a dent in the parking lot gravel. We see the four members of the squad running down the ramp as though shoved by someone, and the ramp slams up and the ship pulls up and flies away immediately, and we come to the crew standing on this windswept parking lot with beaches and dunes and gorgeous water in the background, and you are very near your own ship, the Afternoon Delight, which is a lot larger than the ship you just got off of. What do you do?

CAMERON: Since we’re not allowed to have a vacation, I guess we walk to the Afternoon Delight.

HUDSON (as Tink): Well that went okay.

CAMERON (as Karma): Yeah! I’m so glad that went so well.

LAURA (as Xianna): Did it?

CAMERON (as Karma): Yes! Probably.

LAURA (as Xianna): Huh.

HUDSON (as Tink): We’ve had worse.

CAMERON (as Karma): That’s right, it could have been worse.

LAURA (as Xianna): I could have lost more toes.

CAMERON (as Karma): It’s very true.

NICK: We get a swipe to the crew stepping onto the Afternoon Delight. It smells like a house after a vacation, like it’s hot and you can smell the thing’s baked, and you see a large, orange loth-rat scamper out of a discarded pile of bantha cakes.

LAURA (as Xianna): [gasps] Creamsicle!

NICK: It looks up at you and twitches its little nose and then dives into a hole in the wall. The ship is still here, it starts to turn on as you get in, you get the track lights, and you can see that there is a bright, flashing light coming from the holo-theater that you have in your ship, and you probably wanna go towards that, question mark?

HUDSON (as Tink): I think we got a voicemail.

CAMERON: [laughing] We got a voice-holo?

HUDSON (as Tink): We got a voice-holo.

CAMERON (as Karma): Okay. let’s go turn it on.

NICK: You walk into the holo-theater. It’s round. There’s big, comfy chairs and there’s a big, red, flashing light on the panel. Who hits the button?

HUDSON: Oh, I do.

NICK: Tink hits the button?

LAURA: I mean, Xianna’s already have asleep in one of the chairs.

CAMERON: We let Tink deal with all of the technology.

HUDSON: Yeah, I’m techy guy.

NICK: You hit the button and it’s not a voice-holo. You see Sentinel, your Jedi employer, pops up in three dimensions in front of you, slightly larger than real life – because it’s more dramatic – and he just jumps straight into it.

NICK (as Sentinel): Finally! I haven’t been able to contact you in quite a while. We’ve already made contact with Neato. He’s in the route back to Beta Squad. Good work.

CAMERON (as Karma): Uh, thanks?

LAURA (as Xianna): Thank you~!

NICK (as Sentinel): That was the last member of Beta Squad, so we’re pretty much ready to go launch this operation, but the problem is I don’t know when it’s going to start. It’s probably going to be a few weeks and I’m going to need you to remain on call. Now, this would be the part where I say that your free time up until that point is your own, you don’t even need to stay together if you don’t want to, I just need you to be able to assemble quickly, feel free to take my ship anywhere. Here’s the thing. I was going to say that, but I need you to do something for me.

LAURA (as Xianna): [whining] Ugh, what?

CAMERON (as Karma): Why did you say that you didn’t need to say that, then? You could have just not said it, and just…

HUDSON (as Tink): That was a huge build up to disappointment.

CAMERON (as Karma): I feel like we talked about you sharing a lot and how we really needed that, but I feel like that was unnecessary sharing.

LAURA (as Xianna): That was too much sharing. Too much.

NICK (as Sentinel): Well, I’m working on giving you the full background. I wanted you to know that my plan was to keep you on retainer until this very important mission comes to fruition. Ooh, mission fruition, that’s fun.

CAMERON (as Karma): Okay Sentinel, we don’t have time. Come on.

CAMERON: [laughs]

NICK (as Sentinel): The problem is there is a very specific Jedi artifact that I need you to fetch for me.

LAURA (as Xianna): Is it a weird mask?

NICK (as Sentinel): No, it’s not a weird mask.

LAURA (as Xianna): Oh.

NICK (as Sentinel): Why would it be a weird mask?

LAURA (as Xianna): Because I have one.

NICK (as Sentinel): You have a—Why do you assume it’s a Jedi weird mask?

LAURA (as Xianna): I don’t know. It looks weird. It is in my room somewhere. I also have a kyber crystal if you want that one. Wait, no, I think I sold that. Never mind.

HUDSON (as Tink): Is that the Halloween mask you have with the zipper on the mouth?

LAURA (as Xianna): No, that is a different one.

CAMERON: [snickers, laughs]

HUDSON (as Tink): Oh, okay.

LAURA (as Xianna): Did you find that room again? I’m sorry.

HUDSON (as Tink): I did.

NICK: So, Sentinel is, again, in the very familiar posture at this point of someone just trying to keep up and also trying not to absorb too much of the conversation going on in front of him.

CAMERON: Disappointed grandfather.

NICK: Yeah. He’s rubbing at his forehead.

NICK (as Sentinel): There’s a very specific Jedi artifact, a very famous set of robes. A fashion consortium recently recovered them from a site. It’s a priceless and powerful item. The robe is called the Heartbreaker. It was said to unite the Jedi order in times of strife.

LAURA (as Xianna): Wait. Clothing?

NICK (as Sentinel): Yes.

CAMERON (as Karma): Like a bathrobe?

NICK (as Sentinel): No, like traditional Jedi robes, like what I’m wearing right now.

LAURA (as Xianna): But why would the robes unite…

NICK (as Sentinel): It was like a symbol of leadership.

CAMERON (as Karma): Why is a set of Jedi robes called the Heartbreaker?

LAURA (as Xianna): Is it like robes you wear during some sort of like, you know, orgy? Because, you know, it unites?

NICK (as Sentinel): Why do you go straight to orgy with that?

CAMERON (as Karma): Because it’s Xianna.

LAURA (as Xianna): Look, I feel like at this point you know me well enough that of course that’s where I’m going to go.

NICK (as Sentinel): I’m from an order of mostly celibate magic monks. Why would you assume that we’re—

LAURA (as Xianna): Mm! Mostly?

NICK (as Sentinel): Okay fair.

LAURA (as Xianna): Mostly.

CAMERON: [laughs]

NICK (as Sentinel): Okay, okay-okay, listen. I need you to go to where this consortium is having the auction and I need you to get these robes. I would go myself, but I’m very, very wanted and everyone thinks I’m dead, so I need you to go instead.

LAURA: Xianna raises her hand.

LAURA (as Xianna): Okie, okie. Do you want us to buy the robes, or do you want us to steal the robes? Or do you not care?

NICK (as Sentinel): Long term, I don’t care. Now the thing is, I need you for this mission that we have spent months putting together, so I would rather you not take any undue risks.

NICK: He looks off to the side of the hologram.

NICK (as Sentinel): CP, do the thing.

NICK: Your data pads beep, and if you look at them you see that there’s 100,000 Credits sitting in a shell account that you have access to.

NICK (as Sentinel): Those funds should be sufficient to outbid anyone. I’m not playing around with this.

LAURA (as Xianna): Ooh! Ooh!

LAURA: Xianna’s raising her hand.

LAURA (as Xianna): Question!

NICK (as Sentinel): Yes, Xianna?

LAURA (as Xianna): Can any of us access that money at the moment?

NICK (as Sentinel): It’s a shell account. It really can only transfer in one direction, and it pretty much can just go for the bidding. I have it set up. You don’t have a great track record with the money that I’ve given you in the past.

LAURA (as Xianna): I mean… fair point.

NICK (as Sentinel): So, this is so you can see your budget, and don’t even mess around necessarily with trying to save money or anything like that. This money will auto-withdraw back out of the account afterwards, so the goal is to win not to win for cheap or anything like that. Obviously, if they are a symbol of unity in times of need, I can’t think of a single greater time than when the Jedi Order has been destroyed. This could be a great way to recruit more people to our cause.

LAURA (as Xianna): With bathrobes?

NICK (as Sentinel): What? I’m wearing—They look like this, I think.

LAURA (as Xianna): Yes, and that looks like a bathrobe.

NICK (as Sentinel): Well, that’s not very polite. This is my traditional—Anyway. You can call it whatever you want. I need you to get these for me.

NICK: You can see he’s getting kind of flustered and he re-centers himself.

NICK (as Sentinel): The fashion consortium is doing a fashion show for their Long, Long Ago line, and for some reason they’re doing it on this mining outpost above the gas giant of Bespin. I don’t know why they picked that—

LAURA (as Xianna): Ooh! I know that place.

NICK (as Sentinel): Oh do you?

LAURA (as Xianna): Somewhat. I know I was there at some point.

NICK (as Sentinel): Well that’s good, maybe you have friends there. That’s usually what happens.

LAURA (as Xianna): Ehh…

NICK (as Sentinel): They’re saying that this robe is part of their fashion line, and I’m not sure how exactly that works out, but I need the original. If you can go there, watch the fashion show if you want, win the auction, bring me the robe, I’ll give you my coordinates after you’ve confirmed that you have it, that’s it. It is imperative that you secure the Heartbreaker robe.

HUDSON (as Tink): Simply put, we’re picking up your expensive laundry.

NICK (as Sentinel): Sure.

LAURA (as Xianna): It is not his laundry, it is someone else’s laundry that he now wants.

CAMERON (as Karma): Picture a personal shopper in a really high-end department store.

HUDSON (as Tink): Ooh, and we’re the shoppers.

CAMERON (as Karma): We are the shoppers.

HUDSON (as Tink): I can get into that mind frame.

CAMERON (as Karma): Mm-hmm.

HUDSON (as Tink): I can be a fancy, rich shopper person just going around. Can we get more than the robes if we don’t spend all the money?

LAURA (as Xianna): You also have your own money. You could also steal them.

HUDSON (as Tink): No, from the shell account.

CAMERON (as Karma): Did you have any other outfits in mind?

HUDSON (as Tink): I could use something. I could use a new belt. It’s the only thing I have right now.

NICK (as Sentinel): Listen. I don’t know when the robe is going up for auction. I need the robe.

CAMERON (as Karma): Okay, so we need to go now? And we should stop talking to you.

NICK (as Sentinel): Yes, but I want to make sure you don’t try to spend the shell funds.

CAMERON (as Karma): Okay.

LAURA (as Xianna): Okay bye!

CAMERON: Karma walks out of the room and starts the ship.

LAURA: And Xianna slams down the button.

NICK: Okay, and we get an image of a bunch of feet walking by the pile of bantha cake wrappers and then the ship starting to take off and then an orange loth-rat rolling ungracefully across the floor as the ship accelerates very quickly towards space, and we get another cut to the cloud city of Bespin. I think it’s a very similar opening scene to when that happens in… Is that Empire?

LAURA: Empire.

NICK: Yeah, in Empire Strikes The Return Of.

CAMERON: [laughs] What?!

NICK: I know a lot about Star Wars.

CAMERON: For those of you who don’t know Star Wars…

NICK: It’s Empire Strikes The Return Of.

CAMERON: …that’s what you call it if you just don’t stop during the movies and just watch them back to back.

NICK: The Afternoon Delight comes in on the sunset drenched clouds and one of those stupid cloud cars with the double cockpits buzzes the ship and tells you where to land. We get the ship coming down to land on this, it looks like the top from Inception but it’s rusty brown. Hopefully if you’re listening to the podcast you know what the cloud city of Bespin looks like, but if you don’t that’s okay. If you know what the cloud city of Bespin is like from the games, there’s also giant methane eating whales floating around, but that’s a whole different conversation.

CAMERON: I would like to see a whale out the cockpit window, please.

NICK: You see a whale with kind of a tentacle mouth thing floating around in the clouds.

CAMERON: Yay.

NICK: It is clearly eating methane gas and turning it into valuable Force-sensitive gems. Star Wars is wild. So, you land the ship on a wide open air landing pad that has no railing, and you descend down the landing ramp, and a little holo-projector flickers on. You see a man with dark brown skin and a glorious mustache wearing trousers and a very open silk shirt and a very long cape.

NICK (as Man): Welcome to Cloud City. You’re an angel. Surely you belong here among the stars.

NICK: Then as you get closer to it, it says:

NICK (as Man): Welcome to Cloud City. You’re an angel. Surely you belong here among the clouds.

NICK: That’s just on loop. You are able to walk further into the cloud city of Bespin.

CAMERON: It’s like the Welcome to Duloc song.

[laughter]

NICK: It’s just Lando doing Lando things.

CAMERON: (Boop-bwoop).

NICK: Yeah.

HUDSON (as Tink): Did y’all hear that? I’m an angel among the clouds.

LAURA (as Xianna): You are.

CAMERON (as Karma): Mm-hmm.

HUDSON (as Tink): Aw.

LAURA (as Xianna): Yes.

CAMERON (as Karma): That is a very true statement, Tink.

[techno performance music starts]

NICK: We get a swipe cut to a fashion show deep within the city of Bespin. It’s up towards the top, so there are skylights along the top where you can see the clouds and the sunlight filtering through, but as that goes down it gets very dark and there’s lots of under-lighting in cool 90s neon colors, strobing lights flashing on it. Picture a fashion show. There’s a black obsidian looking catwalk that models are walking up and down. There’s a large crowd of fashion forward people. You see some Kaminoans wearing cat suits and you see some Devaronians wearing zoot suits with big hats that their horns stick through. You also notice very quickly as you walk in that standing in a group, probably the richest, most popular looking people, there is a Chiss that laughs uproariously and draws everyone’s attention in and you can’t help but notice. Mel, what does your Chiss look like?

MEL: Oh, my Chiss. Let’s see. My Chiss, Illith, is pretty tall. I’m gonna say almost six feet. They are they/them, they’re very androgynous, but they do have longer hair. They are a sky blue skinned, murderously red eyed—

[laughter]

LAURA: Ooh.

MEL: Because apparently that’s how they all look, and they are wearing tight black pants, functional yet fashionable boots, also black, because black just contrasts blue skin so well, but a more fashionable shirt. I think it is a jacket with gold accoutrement on it, just something that makes them fit in a little bit. They look high fashion, but they fit in and are functional enough to move around the crowd.

NICK: How are they wearing their longish hair? Is it pulled back, is it loose?

MEL: It is currently curled and loose.

NICK & CAMERON: [sounds of approval]

MEL: Big, loose curls draped around them.

NICK: Any necklaces, jewelry, sunglasses, anything like that?

MEL: Oh, definitely sunglasses. Yeah-yeah-yeah.

CAMERON: [laughs]

NICK: Okay.

MEL: Put some Crowley sunglasses on them.

NICK: Nice.

[laughter]

LAURA: Nice!

MEL: Good Omens!

NICK: The round glasses with the wrap-around guards.

MEL: Yeah-yeah-yeah, so you can’t see the spooky eyes.

NICK: Is there the slightest red glow out of the sides?

MEL: Just a tiny bit, yeah, just the tiniest.

NICK: Just if you know what to look for.

CAMERON: Just enough to be super cool.

MEL: Yeah, but they have an astounding number of rings on right now, like gold rings.

NICK: [laughing] Great. That’s fantastic.

CAMERON: How tall are their boots?

MEL: I think they have more than one pair of boots. This one is going to be like 3, 4 inches, stiletto murder boots.

CAMERON: So even taller.

MEL: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. They’re tall.

NICK: And functional.

LAURA: Okay, but how high up do the boots go?

MEL: They’re like riding boots.

LAURA: Nice.

MEL: They come up to just below the knee, but then there’s a part that covers the knee.

NICK: Aw damn. Okay, that changes the look a lot. I like that. Okay, so Illith is probably like a fancy glass drink kind of person.

MEL: Oh, most definitely.

NICK: Describe for me what Illith is drinking, Mel.

MEL: Illith is holding a magnificent glass with an exceptionally long stem, and inside of the glass you see gold flecks floating around in a drink that has a very floral smell to it, and it even has edible flowers around the rim of the glass – except for like one point, you have to be able to drink out of it – but there are edible flowers both in and upon the rim of the glass.

NICK: Nice. That one’s very good. I like that. What is it called?

MEL: Felucian Delight.

NICK: Nice. We see Illith with their crowd of hangers-on that you probably assembled when you got here.

MEL: They just flock to me.

NICK: Yeah, you can’t explain—

MEL: Attraction is a hell of a thing.

[music fades]

NICK: Magnetism. So, in the fashion show, as you walk in it was kind of the pre-show. The lights were up, people were walking around with hors d’oeuvres and drinks, and the squad gets a look at the general setup, and the lights start to dim and spotlights go to the catwalk, and the show proper starts. This is the Long, Long Ago line by this fashion consortium, and the first outfit to come out—

The first one is a Human model, and her hair is really close-cropped to her head, and she is walking down the catwalk with the sharp click of very high heels that you can’t quite see, because this model is wearing what looks like Asajj’s Sith robes, so the two X-crossed shoulder pads, but everything’s been exaggerated so the cloth is really wide and goes out farther away from her shoulders, and she also has the Elizabethan super-high collar behind and it’s sparkling in the lights, and where the robes would go into functional pants this is a very wide dress bottom that does kind of the southern bell rock as the model walks. She gets to the end of the runway and poses, and you notice they strike a fencing pose like they’re holding a lightsaber and they turn and they start to walk back.

You get the vibe very quickly that this is a fashion show of older, sometimes Jedi-related fashion or Old Republic fashion that’s been tweaked to be high fashion. I want everyone else to tell me what another outfit would be in this high fashion future show thing.

LAURA: Okay, I have one. There is a very tall model, probably like seven feet or more. They have gray skin and their outfit is a brilliant gold robe that’s tied at the waist, and that’s it.

NICK: Nice.

LAURA: It’s not Snoke. It’s different. [laughter] That’s all I have.

HUDSON: I have one. A model comes out and is walking down the runway, and I can’t tell what their face looks like, what their skin color is, none of that, because they’re wearing the most bright, reflective outfit that blinds everyone in the entire room, and everyone just goes AHH and puts their hand up against their eye to try to see, and then when they get to the end of the runway you can kinda see that they stripped that portion off to reveal the main outfit which is a bunch of lights that are somehow even brighter just attached to their body all over. [laughter] It’s supposed to be some kind of, I don’t know, message involved, but everyone’s just focused on not looking at this thing right now, this outfit, so they pose and they walk back, and then everyone just breathes a sigh of relief as they go back around the corner and they can see again.

NICK: There’s been an announcer this whole time, and there’s obviously the fashion show driving music going, and the announcer says:

NICK (as Announcer): The corona outfit shows that true beauty eclipses all.

NICK: And from the fashion people you hear a lot of ooh, yeah, yeah, and they’re like crying from the light. [laughs]

HUDSON: [laughs]

CAMERON: It’s so beautiful it hurts to look at.

MEL: The next model comes out and they’re a curvy model. This isn’t just another twig that’s on the runway like so many others. This is a curvy, bodacious model who is like I’m fucking here and I’m owning this runway, and they strut. The outfit that they’re wearing is actually literally projected from their skin. They’re wearing strategically placed projectors on their skin, and areas of their skin are just covered in a star scape, so obviously any genitalia and intimate parts are covered by just a cloud of stars.

NICK (as Announcer): There’s no tagline needed for this star scape.

MEL: [giggles]

NICK: The whole crowd falls quiet, it’s just—

MEL: “Wow~” Mesmerizing.

NICK: Oh, it’s good.

CAMERON: The next model comes out, the model is a more petite Human woman who has dark hair and has white face powder on, a red upper lip and then just a red line down the center of her bottom lip. Her hair is really the thing that instantly draws your eye, and it’s done kind of like the rings of Saturn where she has just hair rings above her head. You can’t see how they’re attached, but it all appears to be her hair so magic is happening. The reason that you’re drawn first to her hair and don’t really notice her outfit is because she’s just wearing the standard brown Jedi robe, and she has it closed in front of her, and she kinda stops as she enters the catwalk, pauses for a moment just to get the full hair effect, and then takes the robe off and starts dragging it behind her as she walks.

She’s wearing most of a Jedi robe setup, but none of the actual shirts and pants part, like they always have the weird sash things. All of the sashes are there, so she has two coming over each shoulder, going around their back, she has a wide waist belt sash. It’s more of a sash going into a mini skirt, so everything is covered, but rocking pair of boots, really high heels, and just walks and is dragging the Jedi robe behind her. Gets to the end of the catwalk, poses, leaves the robe there, and because Jedi robes aren’t important, and we know this because they’re meant to be left when you need to drop them dramatically, and then just struts back up the catwalk.

NICK (as Announcer): This slinky Jedi number will bring peace and unity to the galaxy.

NICK: And probably a saucy wink from the model right before she exits the catwalk again, and it continues like that for quite a while. This is a long run, and a couple of the outfits come back out and you get holo-droids going around taking multiple shots. This is this fashion consortium’s big reveal and will probably make or break the company. As this goes you get time to mingle a little bit, you watch the fashion show continue. Do any of y’all work the room or do anything during this time?

LAURA: Xianna’s going around the room chatting up with everyone she can. Is there a bar, or are drinks being served freely on a tray?

NICK: Drinks on a tray situation.

LAURA: Okay, then she’s just taking drinks, she doesn’t then have to try to get people to buy her drinks.

NICK: Nope, and it would have been open bar anyway, but this is top, high scale things.

LAURA: She is also doing some light scouting to see if there’s any jewelry that looks particularly, like, has a dainty clasp on it.

NICK: Do you want to actually try to steal something or are you just scouting right now?

LAURA: Yes.

CAMERON: [laughs]

NICK: Alright. Make me a—

LAURA: Skulduggery?

NICK: A hard Skulduggery check, yeah. There is a black die added to this because there are active security in this place. You also do notice, as you’re looking around, you think you can manage it, but this place has really tight security as far as the models go and the runway. You think it’s less to affect somebody trying to necessarily steal something and more keep people away from the models or from ruining shots of the show, but you see that trying to steal anything from this setup would be extremely difficult, but stealing jewelry from somebody is doable.

LAURA: Okay. I’m also getting rid of that black die, because I have Convincing Demeanor! Three successes and two advantages.

NICK: You get two necklaces, a bracelet, and someone’s wallet. It’s probably like 1,500 Credits worth of stuff. 1,400 of it is one of the necklaces. The rest of it is not nearly as nice as it looks, and you’re able to quickly tell, but you keep the other stuff anyway. Why not? It’s pretty.

LAURA: How many credits were in the wallet?

NICK: 100.

LAURA: Okay, that matters for me.

NICK: Okay. Illith, are you watching the fashion show, or meeting and greeting? What is your jam?

MEL: Illith splits their attention between the show and the beings around them. They’re trying to stand out but not too much. Obviously there’s people there they know and are trying to hobnob with, so they’re just kinda chilling, drinking, but also keeping an eye on the stage and a little bit on the crowd to keep an eye on who’s there.

NICK: Mm-hmm. There’s definitely some resentful glares from at least one of the models. When they get to the edge of the runway they pose and they’re all going for the serene look and they see Illith and they (angry grunt), and then there are some other people who start to look angry, look like they’re remembering something, and then kinda just drift off, like, what ever happened with that, you know, it was the experience. Probably a good 40% of the room at this point. The fashion industry is very well connected.

MEL: Very well connected.

[laughter]

LAURA: Xianna definitely spots this person and all their nice jewelry, and is weaving through the crowd like “I’m gonna get there eventually.”

NICK: The fashion show continues. There’s a point where all the lights go out and we get the camera from the blurred close-up of Illith talking to somebody and the focus goes to behind, and we get like The Ring where the lights go out and go back on and Xianna’s closer, and the lights go out and back on and Xianna’s like right behind Illith.

[laughter]

LAURA: You started hearing weird music in the background, like (hums Jaws theme).

MEL: It’s like that cat on the internet.

NICK: It’s exactly that.

MEL: Look away, and it’s closer.

NICK: Just very mischievous-looking facial expression on Xianna. Tink and Karma, are you observing this situation? What are you all doing?

CAMERON: Karma probably has grabbed a drink and is walking around but isn’t interacting with people as much as Xianna, because in settings like this especially she just kinda gives off the security vibe and is mostly flying under the radar being, like, she looks kinda scary, yeah, we’ll just pass over, because oh there’s a cool outfit over there. Not really drawing attention, not really engaging with anybody, because she looks like she should be working.

NICK: A Herglic in a very tight suit, so one of those big whale people, and an earpiece walks up  next to you without making eye contact presses into their ear and then looks side-eye at Karma.

NICK (as Herglic): How are we looking on Sector 3? Lando wants an update on the Selonians.

CAMERON: Have I walked past them? [laughs] Have I seen any Selonians in my time looking around?

NICK: There are some very raucous and drunk otter people in ball gowns that are off to the side and look to be just pushing a couple of Humans between them and giving them a hard time.

CAMERON (as Karma): The Selonians are a hot mess.

NICK (as Herglic): Roger that.

NICK: And he just walks off. [laughs] Tink, what are you up to?

HUDSON: Tink really attached himself to the fact that this is an upscale, high-end event, so he brushed his fur out which he doesn’t always do before getting ready and going into this place. With freshly brushed fur he puts his back a little bit straight, has this walk, what he thinks is a hoity-toity “I’m a rich fancy person” walk, and just has his chin up a little bit and just looks at people with this smirk, like “yeah, I belong here” and just walks among the crowd and goes in and out of people, and people might say hi or something and I’ll be like “quite right,” and then just keep walking.

CAMERON: [laughs]

HUDSON: And just kinda make laps around the room. It gets real awkward after like the fifth passing that people notice.

NICK: There’s a very, very tall male Twi’lek that’s yellow and he has the neck scarf looking lekku wrapped around, and really big sunglasses. He gets into your line of sight as you’re walking by saying quite right, lowers his glasses.

NICK (as Twi’lek): I can tell you belong here.

HUDSON: I just beam, and I just don’t know what to say, so I kinda wait an awkward amount of time to respond.

HUDSON (as Tink): Yeah—

NICK (as Twi’lek): Wha- Ye- Oh, you were gonna talk.

HUDSON (as Tink): [strained] Yeah.

NICK (as Twi’lek): Um, what do you think of the Long, Long Ago line? I think it’s one of their best.

HUDSON (as Tink): Um, wow, it is, um, so it, uh… Yeah. I think it is one of their best as well.

NICK (as Twi’lek): Quite right.

NICK: And he puts his sunglasses back up.

HUDSON: [laughs]

NICK: Illith, could you make me a Perception check please?

MEL: Yeah.

NICK: The difficulty is going to be hard, which is three purples. I’m gonna give you two blue dice, because you’re so socially aware, some of the people you’re talking to have noticed this Twi’lek tessering towards you, and you read that in the social cues.

MEL: [rolls]

CAMERON: Alright, so you have three successes and one threat.

NICK: Oh nice. I guess the threat is that Xianna makes it right up behind Illith, and then Illith, you sense that somebody has targeted you and is in your personal space. How do you respond?

MEL: Yeah, I think the threat is that Xianna manages to get closer than Illith usually lets someone, and as Xianna gets close Illith’s move at the last moment is to sweep further away and in between two people that were coming together to speak to begin with, so they put people between Xianna and them, and then begin an intimate conversation with another guest.

NICK: [chuckles] Okay. You remove from the situation.

MEL: Mm-hmm.

LAURA: Xianna probably bumps into those people.

[laughter]

LAURA (as Xianna): Ooh! Ooh. Oopsies. So sorry. Um, that is my bad. Oopsies. Continue! Heh.

NICK (as Guest): Watch where you’re going. I was trying to talk to Illith. We never get to see them anymore.

LAURA (as Xianna): I don’t really care. Okay bye.

NICK (as Guest): Rude.

NICK: And the obviously model who didn’t get invited to this fashion show to be a model turns back to Illith, and I’m sure you console them on how much better they would have done.

MEL: Oh yeah.

NICK: Yeah.

MEL (as Illith): Oh, you poor dear.

NICK: And they immediately look like they feel better and offer to go get you a drink.

MEL (as Illith): Oh thank you.

NICK: About this point, as people settle in, the lights turn back up almost like the party is over.

NICK (as Announcer): If I could have your attention please. Everybody at the fashion consortium’s event of the year for the Long, Long Ago line, please turn your attention to the catwalk for our Peace de Resistance, the Heartbreaker robe.

[techno performance music starts]

NICK: The lights all go out and a single spotlight comes up. What you see is an almost completely naked Human man, just like an Adonis of a person, eight-pack, hexagonal, close cut buzz cut, classical features, sharp jaw, and he is walking down this catwalk with an imperious impression on his face, and all he is wearing is a little blue and gold thong, and the crowd falls completely silent.

[snickering and giggling]

MEL: Illith moves closer to the stage.

[laughter]

LAURA: Xianna has her scanner goggles on and is like—

MEL: (Zoop!)

LAURA: –like, (zoom!) Heh.

NICK: [laughs] The crowd has fallen completely silent as he pads almost silently down the catwalk, but you can hear his footsteps because he has everyone’s attention. As he gets towards the end of the catwalk you see that there’s a gold woven cord around his neck. He gets to the edge of the catwalk, winks, and then pivots on one foot revealing a shimmering, golden half-cape on his back.

MEL: [laughs]

NICK: Everyone gasps, and the music starts up again as he starts to walk back, flaunting his shiny cape.

NICK (as Announcer): The Heartbreaker cape was made from recovered ancient materials from an ancient Jedi tomb. We’ve remastered it into the feature of our show.

NICK: You just feel yourself drawn to this cape, like you can’t look away from it. This model is the most intriguing person.

CAMERON: When you say half-cape, you’re meaning short enough that we can still see his ass, right?

NICK: Oh, 100%.

MEL: Oh yeah!

CAMERON: Because if we can’t, it’s wrong.

LAURA: I was just about to say that, because if it doesn’t Xianna literally can look away, because there’s a butt.

NICK: Yeah. The cape drapes over the right shoulder blade and comes down to about mid-back on one side. It’s very much a fashion cape, one that marching bands would kind of wear, but shimmering and gold. Yeah, you see a good butt. You see a scientific donk. [laughs]

CAMERON: That’s Bespin’s ass.

[laughter]

NICK: Very good. Yeah, so he strides off stage and then comes back out and does it again with more of the floating press droids around. They wanted to give the crowd an uninterrupted view the first time, and you notice his feet step in the exact same spot like he’s done this walk. This is this model’s moment, this is his outfit, and it’s a good piece of art. It looks good.

CAMERON: He’s a good piece of art.

LAURA: Xianna starts looking around for Karma and Tink.

CAMERON: Karma’s there.

LAURA (as Xianna): Oh! Okay, karma. Are we supposed to get that or something else? Because I feel like Sentinel told us that we needed the original, and that does not look like an original robe…

CAMERON (as Karma): Yeah…

LAURA (as Xianna): …that Sentinel would want, unless he does.

CAMERON (as Karma): See, what I was curious on was is the thong required as well.

LAURA (as Xianna): I mean, I assumed so. It is a part of the outfit.

CAMERON (as Karma): Yeah. It’s the Heartbreaker robe, so…

LAURA (as Xianna): I mean…

CAMERON (as Karma): It looks like a lot of fabric is missing. I hope that’s not a problem.

LAURA (as Xianna): Unless it’s one of those mix and match bikini situations where you can buy the top separately from the bottom and then just pick the ones you want, and you know, although you still tend to buy one of each.

CAMERON (as Karma): The gold on the thong matched the cape perfectly.

LAURA (as Xianna): Oh, so you think it is a full set. Okay.

CAMERON (as Karma): I think it at least has some of the fabric on the thong.

LAURA (as Xianna): Okay. We will get both.

LAURA: Xianna’s doing that eyes up, mapping it out in her head thing.

LAURA (as Xianna): Okay. We will get both the cape and the thong, but then also see if there is an original in the back to steal and/or buy and get that as well. We’ll just get all of it.

[music fades]

CAMERON (as Karma): Oh yeah. I think we’re just looking for gold at this point. That seems to be the color, so let’s just grab any of it and hope that it’s what he needs.

LAURA (as Xianna): So do we want to just have someone out here bidding and then the rest of us go in the back and, you know, steal?

CAMERON (as Karma): He did say he wanted us to keep a low profile.

LAURA (as Xianna): Okay, so we can still steal.

CAMERON (as Karma): So I don’t think Tink should go backstage.

LAURA: [laughs] And Xianna, like—

NICK: Tink has like the second highest Stealth rating out of all of you.

CAMERON: Tink is very stealthy, however he’s a giant, white Gigoran. [laughs]

LAURA: Xianna reaches a hand into one of the hidden pockets and pulls her hand back out and there’s two necklaces and a bracelet and a wallet.

LAURA (as Xianna): I already stole this, you know.

LAURA: And then puts it back.

LAURA (as Xianna): Sneaky!

CAMERON (as Karma): Alright, sure. I’ll be the bidder. I’ll go find Tink.

LAURA (as Xianna): Okay, and remember, I am still technically dead, so can’t put me on a wanted poster.

CAMERON (as Karma): Well, I mean, they could, just you’re—

LAURA (as Xianna): No. That’s not how it works, because I am dead. Heh.

CAMERON (as Karma): They can still put your picture on a wanted poster, they just don’t necessarily know your name is Xianna. They can still say hey, that purple Twi’lek did this thing, we need her. That’s how wanted posters work. They don’t need to know your real identity.

LAURA (as Xianna): [huffs]

CAMERON (as Karma): You’re still probably wanted in some areas even though you are actually supposedly dead. A lot of people still don’t know that, because it probably wasn’t linked to your actual criminal account.

LAURA (as Xianna): I don’t think that’s how it works. I’m gonna go find Tink. Heh.

CAMERON (as Karma): Okay. I’m pretty sure that’s how it works.

NICK: There’s a model looking guy with a very open silk shirt and he’s walking by holding two martini glasses in one hand.

NICK (as Guy): Man, that’s an intense conversation.

NICK: And just walks away from the two of you like he overheard.

HUDSON: Tink was walking around and just bumps into Illith.

HUDSON (as Tink): Oh! Sorry.

MEL (as Illith): Oh, that’s quite alright. Are you alright?

HUDSON (as Tink): Yeah, yeah, just a little jostled I should say. Did you see that situation on stage a little earlier?

MEL (as Illith): Oh yes, I saw it very well.

HUDSON: Yeah, that guy’s ripped.

CAMERON: [laughs]

MEL (as Illith): You could say that.

HUDSON (as Tink): I did.

[laughter]

MEL (as Illith): Well done. Well said.

HUDSON (as Tink): Thank you~ So, what are you doing around here?

MEL (as Illith): Oh? Just like you, I assume. I’m here to see the fashion show and appreciate some art.

HUDSON (as Tink): Ah. Yeah, same here.

MEL (as Illith): You look like you belong here.

HUDSON (as Tink): You know, you’re the second person who’s told me that and I’m just getting all these warm fuzzies. Thank you.

MEL (as Illith): Oh, you’re quite welcome.

NICK: [smiling] There’s just a glow coming off of Tink at this point, just a happy guy. The lights don’t snap on as much as they did before the finale of the fashion show, but an announcement comes on as the lights start to dim up.

NICK (as Announcer): We’ll be starting the auction for the originals of the fashion show in the next 20 minutes. Please grab whatever drinks and funds that you need and step into the next room.

NICK: People start to funnel into the ballroom.

LAURA: Do we still have our coms in?

NICK: Yeah.

CAMERON: Yeah.

LAURA: Xianna gets on the com.

LAURA (as Xianna): Okay. Reverse the earlier plan. We are going to steal the thong {ze song}.

CAMERON (as Karma): Sorry, the what?

LAURA (as Xianna): The thong!

CAMERON (as Karma): The music? No, no…

LAURA (as Xianna): Don’t make me say the butt floss.

[laughter]

CAMERON (as Karma): Oh, the thong~!

NICK: And that’s where we’re gonna end the episode.

NICK & HUDSON: Ba-naaa~!

CAMERON: [giggles]

## Outro

CAMERON: Thanks for listening to Tabletop Squadron. If you’ve enjoyed our show please consider logging onto iTunes and giving us a five-star review. Five-star reviews will help new listeners find the show and will make the squad do barrel rolls in our X-wings 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.

Illith Utena Hatake is played by Mel D’Amato. You can find them on Twitter at @melerella.

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.

Tabletop Squadron Transcript, Season 1 Episode 45:
From Hootenanny to Afterparty

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.

Not a lot of announcements this week, space friends, but I do want to take a second to let you know that we have a metric ton of bonus content hitting the Patreon feed over the next couple of months. Some of it may wander to the main feed at some point, but if you want to see what’s been going on in the background of the plot or see some of your favorite side characters make new appearances I would strongly recommend you check out Tarkin’s Underwear Drawer available only to our $5 and up patrons.

Podcast music this week is Pink Fish Signs (Take Two) by GeeNerve, Drive Fast by Three Chain Links, and The String by 2L8.

So now, let’s get into the episode.

[musical chime]
Hi, I’m Lilit and I play Xianna’fan, a Twi’lek smuggler. I was going by an old name during this recording and while we have left the audio as originally recorded, I would request that you use my current name when discussing the episode. Thanks!
[musical chime]

##

NICK: Hello! Welcome to Tabletop Squadron, Episode 45. It’s a pleasant day, more towards evening really. I should really think of things to say for this part. I’ve really run out of conversation topics. What’s your favorite pet? I like iguanas. Alright… We’re gonna go around the table and everybody say who you are and who you’re playing today, starting with Hudson.

HUDSON: Hi, I’m Hudson, and I’m playing Tink, a Gigoran slicer.

NICK: Wonderful. Up next we have Laura.

LAURA: Hello. I am Laura, and I play Xianna’fan, a Twi’lek smuggler.

NICK: And last but not least we have Cameron.

CAMERON: Hello. I am Cameron, and I play Karma, a Nailo—[laughs]

NICK: [laughs]

LAURA: A nylon bounty hunter!

CAMERON: Oh no! No, a Nailo, she is a Nailo, that’s true, but that’s her last name. [grinning] I play Karma Nailo, a Nautolan bounty hunter. I tried to just say my first name and it messed it up. [exasperated, giggling] I can’t do it!

NICK: It’s gonna be okay, Cameron. You’re okay.

CAMERON: [giggling] No~!

NICK: It’s gonna be fine. Okay, so before we get into the recap let’s do the Destiny Roll~

HUDSON: Hai-yah!

CAMERON: Two light side.

HUDSON: Two light side.

LAURA: Two dark side.

HUDSON: Boo~

NICK: Yay.

LAURA: No~ Not my fault.

HUDSON: You rolled it.

LAURA: It’s the dice’s fault.

NICK: You have to just make some new ones, I guess. So, when we last played you were in a very large armed conflict against the Empire launching a big assault on the shield facility on the planet Fygo in the city of Sart. You were able to destroy four out of the five artillery emplacements and also slow the final one down pretty good, and it got stuck. You were able to basically stop the Imperial assault from the beach. Tink was ambushed by a whole bunch of stormtroopers. Xianna went and rescued him.

CAMERON: Grenade sandwich.

NICK: Grenade sandwich did happen, you’re right. Specialist Kevin was struck down in the line of duty.

HUDSON: Rest in peace.

NICK: Yep, and then Karma split up from the group to go try to protect the shield facility, had a major Rambo moment shooting up the whole place and keeping the assault from getting too over the top, and everybody met up on an embankment and that’s where the episode ended. Am I missing anything?

CAMERON: I do have a crit on me right now. I am Compromised, so I have an extra difficulty until the end of the encounter, on all of my checks.

NICK: Ooh, that’s gonna be…

CAMERON: Yep, so I have an extra purple die here to remind myself.

NICK: Okay, that’s good. So, we’re gonna go ahead and get started. We open on the entire resistance force that the crew of the Afternoon Delight has assembled. We see everyone: Tink, Xianna, Karma, HK, Neato, Specialist Talon, and Smith and Weathers, all in smoky silhouettes on a mound of city rubble. The air is hazy and full of the sounds of blaster fire. A rumble shakes your feet as a single distant artillery cannon fires destroying a building. There is a hoard of stormtroopers in front of you working to fight their way into the shield facility. They have two operating cannons that are firing into the front of the building and you can see the structure starting to crumble. Occasionally return fire comes from the militia, but you can’t tell how many there are or what their situation is.

Where we’re gonna resolve this, because this is going to be the big, climactic, sort of Lord of the Rings running down the hill sort of fight thing, I want everybody to say what the thing they are contributing to trying to break this charge is. You will get a roll, and then we will put together how the scene goes based on how everybody does at their individual actions. So when you think of how you want to try to impact this being vastly outnumbered by superior firepower situation, speak up.

HUDSON: We’re on top of the hill?

NICK: Yeah, there’s a barricade built out of rubble and stuff and you all are standing on that looking out over the parade ground where you were originally except this time it’s full of alive and dead stormtroopers and cannons, and most of them aren’t paying attention to you, they’re trying to get into the shield facility. The militia is currently losing, they probably need some help, because if they get into the shield facility they’re gonna turn off the shield and then you will be exploded from space.

LAURA: Do they have any transport vehicles, ATSTs or anything like that?

NICK: They have those two kind of shielded cannon contraptions that they dropped, but they don’t have any of the big walkers or anything like that, {because they don’t wanna drop pod}—

LAURA: How—

CAMERON: But there were like 20 drop pods, right?

NICK: Yeah.

CAMERON (as Karma): Tink, can you rig up the rockets on a drop pod to launch into the stormtroopers?

HUDSON (as Tink): Yeah, I think I could do something like that, but that doesn’t exactly get us in, yet.

CAMERON (as Karma): No, we’re trying to clear the way though.

HUDSON (as Tink): Ohh.

CAMERON (as Karma): A drop pod rocket. [laughs]

HUDSON (as Tink): Oh! How about this? Alright. Multiple ideas going on at the same time, here we go!

CAMERON (as Karma): Okay?

HUDSON (as Tink): We got the rockets launching. They’re gonna be like “ahh, rockets!” and then try to run away a little bit, but some of them will run forward and try to get us so that they run away from the rockets toward us, so if we have enough shovels we dig under, or we find a sewer system.

LAURA (as Xianna): Okay. Shovel idea out, I do not want to do manual labor. Sewer system, maybe, I don’t know if this place has a sewer or not.

HUDSON (as Tink): I mean, when you gotta go it has to go somewhere.

LAURA (as Xianna): Yes, but not necessarily in an underground sewer.

HUDSON (as Tink): Above ground sewers sound gross.

CAMERON (as Karma): Well, Sart has been under attack for like three months too, so I don’t know how well the infrastructure is holding up.

HUDSON (as Tink): That’s true.

CAMERON (as Karma): Also, we have this hill that we could duck behind and use as cover, which seems like a quicker solution to the digging or the excavating of the sewage system.

HUDSON: [laughs]

CAMERON (as Karma): But I like the creativity that’s happening here.

HUDSON (as Tink): Thank you. I’m owed gold stars already, I feel like I just earned more.

NICK: As you’re talking, you see that the smaller cannon platforms fire and a big chunk of the wall of the shield facility collapses in, and you can see a couple of militia members scrambling further back into the base as stormtroopers start to push forward in a final charge.

CAMERON: I would like to whip my rocket launcher off of my shoulder and shoot the cannon.

NICK: Okay.

CAMERON: That’s my big firepower.

NICK: [chuckles] So, you’re all talking strategy and long-term things and this happens, and you’re like “I’m gonna slow this down.”

CAMERON: What is the difficulty?

NICK: It’s gonna be hard. You’re at long range right now.

CAMERON: What if I run forward?

NICK: I mean, you could interrupt your conversation, sprint down the hill, and get to medium range before shooting. Yeah.

CAMERON: [laughing] Because it is at increased difficulty, so I’d rather not make a daunting check.

NICK: Yeah, So, in the middle of y’all’s conversation that happens and Karma looks forward and says “one second,” and runs off down the hill carrying a rocket launcher and takes a shot.

CAMERON: I’m guessing since it just shot I don’t get my blue die for the fact that it’s not engaged with me.

NICK: Nope, sorry.

CAMERON: Well…

HUDSON: [laughs]

CAMERON: I am gonna aim my rocket launcher, though.

NICK: Yeah, you can aim.

CAMERON: [rolls]

NICK: That’s a lot of successes.

CAMERON: That’s six successes, but three threats.

[laughter]

NICK: YAY! You had collected two rockets, right?

CAMERON: Yes.

NICK: I think this rocket looked a little different, like it had more stabilization fins on the back, it looked a little bigger. It slots into the rocket launcher just fine. So you drop down to one knee and you fire and this has a lot more kick than it previously did. With that many successes there’s not even a need to calculate damage. There’s a mini mushroom cloud as this thing explodes. Stormtroopers scatter everywhere. You’ve taken down this cannon, but also the kickback knocks you onto your back and you fall prone [dramatic bass noise] in the middle of this field, and a bunch of stormtroopers look at you as they see where the source of this explosion is from. I think they assumed they had killed you before. The fact that you just ran back down this hill again… So, there’s probably about 25 stormtroopers that turn around and start to move towards you and fire at you.

CAMERON: I forget. If people are shooting at me, is it better to be on the ground because I’m harder to hit?

NICK: Yeah, they get a black die.

CAMERON: Okay. I don’t get up, then.

NICK: Okay. You just stay down?

CAMERON: [laughing] I’m just like, sitting there, like whoops!

NICK: You roll behind a rock or something. Okay! That was step one, one of the cannons has been destroyed by a rocket launcher.

CAMERON: Was it the cannon by the 30 or the cannon by the 10?

NICK: We’ll say it’s by the 30, because a majority of them turned around and are now shooting at you.

CAMERON: Okay.

LAURA: Okay, so how difficult would it be to kind of go off to the side and loop around everything and then come back behind one of the shielded cannons, and say, sneak into it? Up inside the cannon, or just whoever is shooting it, I don’t know.

NICK: Hmm… That’s a good question. One thing in your advantage is you’re already behind the cannons, because they’re pointed at the shield facility. That would be good. There’s only one left, you could loop around. What I would say is with a successful stealth roll you would be able to get close to it. It’s like an open air thing. Imagine a really beefy motorcycle with a cannon strapped to the front of it. It’s like a car with no frame, basically, like the bottom part with the moving transmission with the cannon on the front and with a bunch of shielding on the front. it’s been stripped down. It’s like if you took a tank and were like “this needs to be light enough to enter from orbit and not explode.”

CAMERON: I’m picturing like a jeep.

LAURA: Okay, yeah. I at first was thinking of a different type of shielded cannon that’s in Star Wars stuff. I know what you mean now.

NICK: Yeah. You would be able to get close to it. There are 10 stormtroopers around it, so I doubt you would be able to get into the driving position from it, but if you wanted to you could probably get to there.

LAURA: Okay, then I want to go to there.

NICK: Okay. Make me a Stealth roll.

HUDSON: It’s just Xianna going?

NICK: Unless you want to go with her.

HUDSON: I have an idea to save karma.

NICK: Okay. We’ll do Xianna, because I think as Karma ran down the hill Xianna took that moment and was like “I wanna go play with this” and ran off that direction. As all the PCs scatter to the winds all the NPCs look at each other and are like (confused noise) and do a shrug, and then start shooting.

CAMERON (as HK): Suppressing fire.

NICK: [laughs] Yeah.

LAURA: One, what difficulty, and then two, Xianna does pull out a bag of impact and takes some on her way.

LAURA (as Xianna): Okay, I’m going to go. Bye Tink.

NICK: Sneaking through a battlefield with special forces being very aware in the middle of a firefight I think is a daunting task, but if you succeed you will be right up next to the cannon in the middle of all these people, or wherever you wanna be in that situation.

LAURA: Daunting is four, right?

NICK: Yeah.

LAURA: Okay!

NICK: But I’m not going to flip a dark side point.

LAURA: Debating whether  or not I want to flip one to get an extra green.

NICK: It might be a good idea, because if you get caught in this it’s gonna be real bad.

LAURA: I’m gonna do it!

HUDSON: That’s a good idea.

NICK: That’s a lot of dice.

LAURA: Impact.

CAMERON: Yes.

NICK: [laughs]

LAURA: Okay, so I have a triumph with a success, four more successes, and an advantage.

NICK: Wow! Okay. I’m just gonna give you narrative control to kind of do whatever you want with that, because you also have a triumph, tons of successes… I think that you are able to loop around to kind of the edge of the battlefield, and there’s a lot of smoke and haze in this area, and you just do the anime style vanish into the smoke and reappear in other places, and you are a ghost. What are you trying to achieve with your stealthiness here?

[funky, smooth action music starts]

LAURA: Xianna sneaks into some sort of coverage, maybe a large rock or boulder, and does the very classic thing of picking up a smaller rock and throwing it so everyone looks in that direction, and while the stormtroopers have now gathered into a smaller area, say maybe they’re all engaged with each other spatial-wise if we were to assign it some sort of range, and are looking where the sound was near the cannon, Xianna throws two detonators at them.

NICK: Oh. Okay. That would be a ranged attack, light. We’ll give you, I don’t know, probably two blue dice for your amazing Stealth roll. You can use your triumph to just automatically activate the Blast if you want.

LAURA: Sure.

NICK: What is the damage on a thermal detonator? Do we know?

[music fades]

LAURA: Um…

NICK: Because we were using it narratively before.

LAURA: Ooh, I have frag grenades.

NICK: A thermal detonator does a lot more than a frag grenade does.

LAURA: Thermal detonator, Ranged: Light, Damage 20…

NICK: [bursts into laughter]

LAURA: …Crit 2, Range short, Blast 15, Breech 1, Vicious 4, Limited Ammo 1.

NICK: Holy cow, and you wanna throw two?

LAURA: I’m throwing… Ooh, actually, I didn’t realize it did 20 damage, 15 Blast, and Breech, and Vicious.

NICK: Yeah.

LAURA: I don’t even remember what Vicious does.

NICK: It increases the Crit.

LAURA: I’m just gonna throw one.

CAMERON: Xianna knows how powerful they are.

NICK: If you threw two I was just gonna increase the difficulty of your attack by one and do the dual wielding rules, which would be very neat, but I think you would know a thermal detonator will kill anyone within the range.

[music resumes]

With all of your Stealth successes, you got them all to cluster not just by throwing a rock but by them seeing you and then you vanishing into the smoke and then running to investigate. You manipulated them quite a bit.

LAURA: Yeah. I did it so that they would all be in one area looking away from where I ended up.

NICK: Which is short range.

LAURA: Yeah.

NICK: Which means you have to throw it and run, because the blast radius is probably that big.

LAURA: Yeah. I mean, that’s half the reason why I needed them to be looking the other direction was so that I could throw it and then just start booking it without having to worry about getting away stealthily, because give me a few extra seconds before, you know, they realize they’re about to explode.

NICK: Yep, okay, it’s short ranged so that’s an easy ranged attack, light, and Blast is already activated because of your triumph from your Stealth, so that’s immediately 15 damage.

LAURA: [smiling] Seven successes and two advantages.

NICK: Wow. Okay. Y’all are not going to find thermal detonators again for a while. [others laugh] I didn’t realize that they took down ships. There were 10 stormtroopers in that general area. I think there are two operating the tank thingy, but the other eight are just vaporized. How many advantages was it?

LAURA: Two.

NICK: Two? Which is a crit. Do you want to also have stopped the cannon’s advance or something like that narratively interesting with your advantages, or are you trying to hijack the cannon?

LAURA: I do like the idea of hijacking the cannon, so I think with everything I was able to draw them far enough away from the actual cannon that when I threw the detonator it didn’t truly damage the cannon. There might be some singe marks on it but no actual damage.

NICK: We’ll have you do like one attack roll to try to hijack the cannon / shoot it where you wanna shoot it, and we’ll give you two blue dice on that for how distracting.

LAURA: Cool!

[music stops]

NICK: You are a one person ambush. We see Xianna do that, just making disastrous work of this military. The skill of this combat was not expecting small nuclear warheads to be involved, but that’s very cool. Then we go to Tink. You said you were trying to help Karma?

HUDSON: Yeah. Just to make sure I’m clear on this, Karma’s at the bottom of the hill and I’m at the top, right?

NICK: She’s at the bottom of the hill and then a ways further forward.

HUDSON: Okay. I’m like:

HUDSON (as Tink): We need to save Karma!

HUDSON: I reach in my utility belt and throw out a frag grenade, and I yell as loud as I can towards Karma…

HUDSON (as Tink): This is for you! Hurt them with this!

HUDSON: …and I do like a hook shot, a Kobe if you will, and throw it towards Karma.

CAMERON: [laughs]

HUDSON: Now does she hear me, or does she think I’m grenading her? Do I need to roll for that?

NICK: I don’t think you need to roll. What do we think is more interesting? I do kinda like the idea of her not hearing you, because she’s far enough away and you’re in the middle of a war.

HUDSON: I just don’t know how far away.

NICK: She’s one range band. You can throw her one.

CAMERON: [laughing] It just- I don’t hear it. I’m distracted because I just fell, I sit up slightly, and I see what Xianna’s doing, and I’m like “oh my gosh…”

NICK: You’re also very heavily under fire right now.

CAMERON: Yeah.

NICK: If the stormtroopers make an attack you might die, is where we’re at.

CAMERON: Yeah, and then a grenade just shows up next to me, and I do the shy away from it and then realize that apparently all of Tink’s grenades have pins in them, so I realize that the pin is still in it and I’m like “oh, hey, I’ve got a grenade” and I pick it up.

NICK: [laughs] Okay, so you have a grenade. You were like behind a rock that’s about the size of your head trying to use that as cover.

CAMERON: Yeah.

NICK: So, what do we want the NPCs to do? I just want them to kind of act as a group.

CAMERON (as HK): Suppressing fire.

NICK: Do they just charge down the hill shooting and try to draw people off?

CAMERON: Yeah. Distract them so that not all of the guns are shooting at me. [laughs]

NICK: You all hear over the coms, you hear HK say:

NICK (as HK): Tactical Evaluation: Primary user under direct threat. Follow me.

NICK: HK just goes sprinting down the hill and starts shooting.

NICK (as HK): Suppressing fire.

NICK (as Neato): Suppressing fire!

NICK: Talon is just yelling and shooting, and Smith and Weathers are shoulder to shoulder running down the hill, so this group of your friends is running towards one of the original blown out cannon and are trying to make that for cover, and they manage to draw a decent amount of the stormtroopers’ fire. Could you roll me a Force die, please?

CAMERON: Two dark side.

NICK: Oh no… Can you roll me – agh, this is so many stormtroopers – four yellows at a hard difficulty, because they’re at long range. Yep…

CAMERON: Do they have a black die for my rock?

NICK: They’re not shooting at you. This is the stormtroopers shooting at the group.

CAMERON: Oh, okay. Oh no~ Oh, okay… One failure, one triumph, three advantages.

NICK: Okay. The group is moving fast enough, and there’s all the smoke, and it’s difficult to see, so none of them get hit, but the stormtroopers rally and start to lay down normal fire. They’re gonna have two blue dice at the next person they shoot at, and… What should their triumph be? I think their triumph is that a stormtrooper throws their own thermal detonator and blows up the rest of that cannon so there is no cover for this group. They’re just standing in the middle of an open field now. That lays out the situation. I don’t think we need to dice roll for the rest of this. I think we’re going to be okay except for the stormtroopers are gonna get a shot at Karma before this is over.

CAMERON: [weakly] I would like to throw my grenade.

NICK: Yeah. We’re just gonna make this into one last dice roll and it’s going to be you all versus all of them and then let’s just describe cinematically how this goes. Does that sound good?

HUDSON: Yeah.

NICK: Because mass combat in this situation isn’t very interesting…

LAURA: Yeah.

NICK: …as shown by suddenly in the rules we’re able to kill 10 elite stormtroopers in one throw, which is very neat, or like you killed 35 with a cannon earlier. There’s a lot going on. One, I need you to roll me another Force die, because let’s find out how the militia is doing.

CAMERON: Hudson or Laura, you roll this one, mine didn’t go well.

NICK: [laughs]

HUDSON: One Force die?

NICK: Yep.

HUDSON: Two light side.

NICK: Hey nice! As this is happening, 15-20 of the militia members – so the numbers are getting close to even at this point – come charging out of the shield facility, because you’re divided the fire enough, and they take up position in the rubble and start to shoot back, so that’s good, that’s going well. I think it’s just down to this last stormtrooper roll. It’s gonna be four yellows versus two purples and they have two blue dice. Yup. Yes, they can have a black die because of your rock.

HUDSON: [snickers]

CAMERON: I would like to flip a light side point to make it harder to hit me. [giggles]

NICK: Sure. Yeah, seems fair.

CAMERON: So I upgrade one of the purples to a red, then?

NICK: Yep.

CAMERON: I’m sure it’ll be fine.

NICK: This roll isn’t just shooting at Karma, this is them fighting back, and we’ll figure out how this goes.

CAMERON: Four successes and a triumph.

NICK: [inhales] Okay. The stormtroopers fall into a defensive position. They’re in a ring shooting in every direction. Four successes and a triumph, so karma, you are going to take 10 damage because you are the one most exposed in this situation.

CAMERON: Oh no…

NICK: Yeah, and a crit.

CAMERON: [laughing] Oh no~

NICK: Because you are the main target. Everybody else kinda did support things. This is combat, this is your focus, but you were also the focus. Let’s roll that crit and see how you do.

CAMERON: 62 plus 10 so a 72.

HUDSON: Hamstrung: Lose free maneuver until end of encounter.

[smooth electronic/techno music starts]

NICK: You get hit. It hurts. You’re pinned down. You’re exhausted. This has been a rough eight hours. [laughs]

CAMERON: It’s been a long, like, past 15 minutes for me.

NICK: Yeah. You’re just moving slow, you’ve got that dramatic action hero limp. Tink, did you charge down the hill at any point? Are you still up on the hill?

HUDSON: Nope, just still up on the hill.

NICK: Okay, well you don’t get shot then. Xianna, you’re behind a cannon, so they don’t shoot you. HK probably takes a hit. How much health does HK have?

HUDSON: 40 or something.

NICK: Oh no, not very much, he got hit earlier.

CAMERON: I did send HK with a droid repair kit, to Tink.

NICK: Yeah, he didn’t use it.

CAMERON: So he has one on him.

NICK: Yeah. He is hit for, we’ll say, 8 damage which puts him at 1 hit point remaining. He gets blasted up, but in doing so none of the NPCs are eviscerated. HK is laying suppressing fire, having a grand old time. You just hear over the com, besides people on this open frequency – and you also can hear the Imperial frequency, so it’s just a lot of noise of people calling out shots and saying where the formations are and where targets are – and over all of that you just hear HK going:

NICK (as HK): [ascending wild laughter]

NICK: [breathes] So, Xianna, at this point how do you remove the operating stormtroopers from this cannon and then what do you do with it?

LAURA: How many stormtroopers are on this cannon?

NICK: Two. You have a fine gunner that is aiming and then a person whose job seems to be to do the big aiming and also the driving.

CAMERON: The gunner is real good looking.

NICK: Like the fi—

CAMERON: They fiiine.

NICK: Okay, great, thanks.

CAMERON: You’re welcome.

NICK: Yeah. Yeah…

CAMERON: We can tell, through the stormtrooper helmet. They are a good looking individual.

LAURA: I’m thinking I would just shoot them at this point.

NICK: Okay. Yeah. You plug both of them in the back. They were very focused on trying to take that one last shot now that the militia has run out into the open. You’re able to jump into this cannon. The aiming is done like the old World War II battleships where you have to crank the wheels to move the cannon around. [laughs] You have one for left and right and one for up and down.

LAURA: [laughs] We’ve figured out interplanetary travel but can’t figure out how to make a cannon without hand cranks.

NICK: You know…

HUDSON: [laughs]

LAURA: Sometimes you just really need to hand crank a cannon, if you know what I mean.

[laughter]

HUDSON: They still sell trucks with the manual windows.

NICK: But also that’s a very Star Wars thing, that the cannons have manual cranks. It was to strip weight for the drop pod thing. There you go. The electric aimers were heavy.

LAURA: Because the hand cranks weigh less?!

CAMERON: [laughing] {There’s no lighter.}

NICK: Sure! Whatever.

CAMERON: I feel- No, I feel like no.

LAURA: I feel like that’s wrong.

NICK: Is that what we’re focused on in this massive set piece?

LAURA & CAMERON: Yes!

NICK: [laughs] I’m not taking it back. It’s got hand cranks. What do you do with your cannon?

LAURA: I wanna shoot some stormtroopers!

NICK: Okay.

LAURA: Go pew-pew. Boom.

NICK: You shoot the stormtroopers right into the middle of the formation. You’re able to fire a couple of times before the cannon just jams up and gets stuck and shuts down, but you pretty much shatter their formation. HK is just blasting at will into this group. Your group of supporters are also shooting. You hear Neato over the coms say:

NICK (as Neato): We’ve got the Imperials on the run now, chums. Let’s turn this hoedown into an afterparty.

NICK: He’s taking down troopers. Karma, I imagine you are also shooting into the group.

CAMERON: Yeah.

NICK: The militia charge out and the stormtroopers surrender. We get down to there’s like four or five left including one with one of those shoulder flappies that show that they’re important, and they drop their weapons and put up their hands.

NICK (as Stormtrooper): We- We surrender. There, uh… fight’s over.

NICK: They put up their hands. Tink, were you just like cheering them on from the hill?

HUDSON: Yeah. I haven’t moved from the hill.

NICK: [laughs]

CAMERON: He’s triumphantly waving his axe around.

HUDSON: Yeah, just waving my axe.

NICK: Cool. The militia runs out of cover, takes the stormtroopers hostage, and you can see General Karthage with a very large bandage on her shoulder, just soot streaked through her face, and you can see most of her hair which was already cut very short singed down to the scalp on one side. She takes a cigar out of a hip pouch and just thrusts it into the fire of some nearby wreckage of the cannon and sticks it in between her teeth and walks towards you all, looking around. She has that stone-faced look of a commander looking at the end of a battlefield which has a lot of militia members on it, probably only about a third of them survived just at a glance. She walks towards Karma while kinda eyeing Xianna to see if Xianna’s gonna get out of the cannon or not and does a gesture towards Tink up on his hill.

HUDSON: I run down the hill.

NICK: Xianna, do you come towards the group or do you stay in your cannon?

LAURA: Xianna had been so concerned with the cannon jamming up that she had been hitting it and cursing it and trying to unjam it, and even kicking it and hurting herself because she kicked it too hard with her foot that’s missing some toes.

NICK: Aw.

LAURA: They’re healed, but they’re still a little sore, so she’s jumping up and down on one foot just letting out a real good stream of curses in Rylothi? Twi’lek? Whichever one it is.

NICK: I believe the language is called Bib Fortuna.

CAMERON: [laughs]

LAURA: In Bib Fortuna-ese. She has not noticed that the stormtroopers have surrendered yet. [laughs]

NICK: [laughs] Okay. Great. General Karthage walks up to Karma as Tink comes puffing down the hill.

CAMERON: Karma slowly gets up off the ground.

NICK: Karthage reaches down a hand and grasps you by the forearm and pulls you to your feet.

CAMERON (as Karma): Thank you.

NICK (as Karthage): Well, it seems like we’ve made it out of this in one piece.

CAMERON: Karma looks down and checks.

CAMERON (as Karma): Eh? Oh yeah.

NICK (as Karthage): Maybe mostly in one piece. I don’t know how to thank you all. Thank you for everything you’ve done. I don’t know what happened, but the artillery stopped. Clearly you broke this massive charge. I don’t think that the Empire is going to be able to make any sort of financial argument for this being worth it at this point.

CAMERON: Karma stretches and then hunches back over and holds her side.

CAMERON (as Karma): I think they probably should have given up a while ago, though, so y’all may wanna try and figure out something to do with that star destroyer.

NICK (as Karthage): Well, at least their ground forces have been decimated. We’ll have some time to regroup. For now, I think at this point we’re going to need to abandon the city. We’ll take to the jungles, maybe head for another city, it’s only a couple hundred clicks away, we’ll probably make it, but we wouldn’t have been able to leave without y’all’s help so thank you.

NICK: Tink, at this point you arrive, and Neato and the rest of the crew arrives.

NICK (as Neato): Well, it looks like we’ve been successful, chums.

NICK: He climbs onto the little rock that Karma was using as cover and plants a foot successfully there, and just looks at Tink, and looks back at everybody else, and looks at Tink.

NICK (as Neato): If only there was some sort of dramatic pose to celebrate our victory.

HUDSON: I breathe really hard and put my hands on my knees.

HUDSON (as Tink): [huffing] Miss Karthage, can, um—

NICK (as Karthage): General.

HUDSON (as Tink): General Karthage, could I get a stim pack? And Hank is not looking good.

NICK: Hank’s—

CAMERON: [laughs]

NICK: [smiling] An arm is barely attached by one little strut, and his gun, the barrels are all smoking bright red like they’ve overheated. He puts the gun into the ground and steam rises up from it, and there’s a big gaping char wound in his chest.

NICK (as HK): Assertion: I am damaged.

CAMERON (as Karma): Did you give Tink the repair kit that I sent with you?

NICK: I don’t know how a droid would be able to roll its eyes when it’s just lights, but you really get that impression. There’s the shoulder slump and the head roll and everything.

NICK (as HK): I was a little busy… suppressing fire?

CAMERON (as Karma): That’s a no, then? Do you wanna give it to Tink now?

NICK: HK is kind of behind Tink and off to the side a little and pulls from a back secured strap a mechanics thing and just throws it, and it hits Tink in the back of the head.

HUDSON (as Tink): Ow!

NICK: [laughs]

CAMERON (as Karma): Okay. That was unnecessary. There’s no need for that.

HUDSON (as Tink): [whispering] Sorry!

CAMERON: [laughs]

NICK: HK just stares stilly into space. I think at this point you hear from across the now quiet battlefield you hear Xianna say something triumphantly.

LAURA: You hear her like jumping up and down.

LAURA (as Xianna): Fuck yes! I did it!

NICK: [laughs] The cannon goes off and you hear the whistle of a plasma ball go flying by. It’s over your heads by like 10-15 meters, but it’s a little close, and it hits a building on the far side and the building starts to list and collapse. [explosion] Xianna, you look up and realize the battle seems to have been over for a while.

LAURA: Once the building collapses there’s that moment of silence and you just hear very quietly in the distance Xianna being like:

LAURA (as Xianna): Oops…

[laughter]

NICK: It echoes slightly in the silence.

HUDSON: Can Neato jump on my back?

NICK: Neato’s still waiting for someone to triumphantly grab his leg so he can do his pose.

HUDSON: Oh. I grab him and throw him on my back.

HUDSON (as Tink): For Neato’s a jolly good Rodian, for Neato’s a jolly good Rodian.

NICK: You grab Neato and toss him up on your shoulders and start singing.

NICK (as Neato): Whoa. Wait, hey. Hey chum, I, uh, really prefer for my dogs to be on the ground if you understand. I’m up in the air here. I don’t know exactly what you—[stammers] Well… For Neato’s a jolly good Rodian~

LAURA (as Xianna): For Neato’s a jolly good Rodian~

[laughter]

NICK: Yep. So, I think we fade out from that scene. You all debrief with Karthage. Karthage is going to assemble any civilians that are left, all of the militia, and basically just evacuate the city during the quiet from this situation. You all are able to leave the city limits, and we come to you on the edge of the jungle, you’ve gone to the part of the shield that’s the closest and you can see that this large blue-green shield stops about half a meter above the ground, and you know that if you can get outside of it that you can use your stratopacks, which you still have. We haven’t talked about them in a while.

HUDSON: [laughs]

NICK: It’s a big footlocker. I think you probably left them with the militia members when you went to do your big assault and then after it was over you picked them back up. You’ve had to hike outside of the city, but you do have Neato with you. We start the scene with Neato saying:

NICK (as Neato): Well, we didn’t exactly win, but we didn’t lose either. Close enough! Onto the next thing, right chums?

CAMERON (as Karma): Yup.

HUDSON (as Tink): Is Neato joining our team?

CAMERON (as Karma): Tink!

LAURA (as Xianna): No. Neato is joining the other team.

CAMERON (as Karma): Beta Squad!

HUDSON (as Tink): Ohh.

NICK (as HK): Plaintive Statement: You already have a sniper.

CAMERON (as Karma): Very true, HK.

HUDSON (as Tink): That’s true.

CAMERON (as Karma): How are you feeling now that Tink fixed you with that repair kit?

NICK: It’s just like a durasteel plate has been welded onto the front, but everything looks about the same.

LAURA: Just some duct tape.

NICK: Yeah. HK looks down, looks up.

NICK (as HK): I mean, I’ve been worse.

CAMERON (as Karma): That is true. You did have a hole in your chest when we first met.

NICK (as HK): How come I always get shot in the chest? You’d think some other part of me would take damage.

NICK: Sparks shoot out of HK’s shoulder.

CAMERON: Karma points at the arm and then puts her hand down and thinks better of it.

CAMERON (as Karma): I mean, you’re just, you’re very wiry.

NICK (as HK): Ha. Ha. Ha.

CAMERON (as Karma): [nervous forced laugh]

HUDSON (as Tink): Your chest protrudes is what they’re trying to say.

CAMERON (as Karma): Yes, funny pun, but also your chest is the largest piece to shoot for you mechanic-wise, so it kinda makes sense.

HUDSON (as Tink): Yes.

NICK: Neato throws an arm over Karma, avoiding her injuries, and an arm over Tink.

CAMERON: [laughing] Like puts his hand on Tink’s shoulder.

NICK: Yeah.

NICK (as Neato): Well, now that this afterparty is well underway, how are we gonna get out of here exactly, chums?

LAURA (as Xianna): We crawl underneath the shield and then we hit the little buttons on the reverse parachutes.

CAMERON: We put on our backpacks.

HUDSON: I have a question out of character.

NICK: Sure.

HUDSON: How shiny and heavy are the medals we got from General Karthage?

CAMERON: [laughs]

NICK: You didn’t get any medals.

LAURA: No medals.

CAMERON: There was a very intense medal ceremony where all of these rebels that we didn’t know showed up.

HUDSON: [laughs]

NICK: But you didn’t get one, you just made an angry noise.

HUDSON: No ceremony where there’s music and I’m walking down an aisle and then I just randomly go (sound resembling Chewbacca in final scene of A New Hope)?

NICK: Yup.

LAURA: You don’t get a medal.

CAMERON: Yep, and Karma and Xianna get medals, and you and HK don’t.

LAURA: Xianna becomes a general.

[laughter]

NICK: Oh no!

CAMERON: You can tell by the stripes on her pants.

LAURA: Or at the very least a captain at first, and then a general.

NICK: Yeah, I forgot about that. That’s a poor organizational decision.

LAURA: [laughs] Yeah, it makes no sense.

NICK: Okay. You all crawl under the shield?

CAMERON & HUDSON: Yes.

NICK: We get a scene of you all slapping these—remember they look like stainless steel briefcases with just a big red button on them, and you strap them on like backpacks. You look like kids on the first day of school putting your shiny, new backpacks on. Neato slides into his and secures the straps.

CAMERON: Karma shifts her rocket launcher and blaster to the front so that she can put the backpack on. Leaves the sword to the back though, that’ll work.

NICK: [laughs] Okay.

NICK (as Neato): So we hit these big red buttons and we go to space, huh?

CAMERON (as Karma): Yep, and then it lights a beacon, and the ship hopefully comes and picks us up, before we run out of oxygen.

NICK: HK says…

NICK (as HK): Assertion: That will not be a problem for me.

NICK: …and hits the button over his shoulder. You see there’s a pulse of blue light and HK is hovering about a meter off the ground, and then you hear a sound like an old ocean-going vessel sail unfurling, and then HK just shoots up into the air super-fast.

CAMERON (as Karma): Okay everybody, press the button, because we all need to be close.

CAMERON: Karma button presses.

HUDSON: I button press.

LAURA: Xianna button presses.

NICK: Neato stands there for a minute as you all shoot up into the atmosphere.

CAMERON (as Karma): Press the button!

NICK (as Neato): Well, sally forth into the great, blue beyond, eh?

CAMERON (as Karma): Press the button!

NICK: And hits his own button, and jumps and flies up. It’s like reverse skydiving, so it’s like the same speed as falling at terminal velocity but you’re going up instead of down. The backpack isn’t pulling you by the straps, it’s like a field around you that’s lifting you up, so it’s  not super uncomfortable, it’s just a really weird feeling to see the ground falling away at this speed, but you don’t really have any control, it’s just happening.

You slow down as you get further and further up. You can see the curve of the planet. You can see the size of the continent that you were on that you remember from when you drop podded in. you come to the extent of what the stratopack can do for you. You’re in a pretty tight cluster, because you rose straight up and the winds were consistent, and you float on the barest edge of the atmosphere. You can feel your lungs starting to burn from lack of oxygen and you can feel the tug of your skin pulling away from you in the low pressure. You’re not dying, but you could make a good run at it if you were given enough time. You all hear your stratopacks beeping gently and you see a star dislodge from the distance and move towards you.

[occasional TIE fighter noises begin]

That’s when you hear the howling of something much closer. A massive green bolt flies through the middle of your group, burning the air around you and scattering you apart on the buoyant field of your stratopacks. A TIE fighter blazes past, almost hitting you with its solar panels, and begins to come around for another run. What do you do?

[noises pause]

CAMERON: I shoot it with my rocket launcher.

[laughter]

LAURA: Okay! But before you do that, how hard would it be to time throwing, say, a detonator at it as it flies by?

NICK: I think that you would be able to. The hardest thing would be putting it in proximity timers. The detonators are really useful. At least in the video games you can throw them to explode on contact or explode on a timer, but the thing that would be hard is getting it into the TIE fighter’s range and  not being within the range itself, as you cannot run away, so it would be probably a hard throw. I would say it would also be a hard rocket shot, and I would let you two do that at the same time as it’s coming back towards you.

[TIE fighter noises continue]

You’re floating in space and Xianna goes for a thermal detonator and Karma pulls her rocket launcher up as the TIE fighter is doing that howling approach towards you. It’s shooting at you, but not very close, because it’s hard to aim a space plane at a person. They’re not designed for that.

[upbeat hopeful music begins]

You can see the star destroyer floating in the distance and it’s shooting turbo lasers into the inky blackness, so it’s engaged with something else right now. You can see in the far distance the Tallahassee Quagmire, that weird croissant-shaped ship, spiraling through the turbo laser fire and heading towards you but it’s gonna be a few minutes. So, make those rolls.

CAMERON: Is the encounter over?

NICK: Yes?

CAMERON: Okay.

NICK: Why?

CAMERON: Because one of my crits was an extra difficulty until the end of the encounter.

NICK: Yeah, I’ll say the encounter is over. You had some brief denouement. Tink, do you want to hit it with an axe?

CAMERON: [laughs]

HUDSON: I’m good!

NICK: Okay.

HUDSON: I could lose my axe.

NICK: Yeah, that would be bad. You have extras, they’re not as nice, though.

CAMERON: My rocket launcher has two successes, one advantage.

LAURA: Five successes and one threat.

NICK: Geez, okay.

HUDSON: [laughing] They both work?

NICK: Yeah, they both hit it, which is good.

LAURA: I’m all jacked up on impact!

NICK: Karma pulls up the rocket launcher and fires before the rocket has had time to lock on and it flies and hits just to the outside of the solar panel, and you know what happens when anyone sneezes on a TIE fighter solar panel, and it starts to spin and scream, mechanically.

[TIE fighter screeches]

CAMERON: [giggles, feigns a scream]

HUDSON: [feigns a scream]

LAURA: Spinning is a neat trick.

[laughter]

NICK: And it tumbles within Xianna’s range of the thermal detonator, because the biggest limitation on the thermal detonator would be the short range, which means it’s like right next to you all.

CAMERON: But luckily the TIE fighter hits it and then continues moving past us and carries the blast away.

NICK: Sure. It was very severely damaged but probably would have stabilized and come back, and Xianna’s able to underhand chuck it and it sticks to the bottom of it, so you hear the [TIE fighter screeching] as the TIE fighter goes spinning away, and then it zooms in and you see the little ball beeping underneath it, and it flashes back and forth between those for a little bit, and then there’s a silent ball of fire as it engulfs the TIE fighter and the TIE fighter is destroyed.

Good work. That was very cool. Normally in Star Wars you hear the explosion, but I think a silent ball of fire is cooler in this situation. You are all left hanging there kind of scattered through the atmosphere. You’re probably within 40 or 50 meters of each other, because you got scattered by the shot. You have a minute in very low oxygen. You can see the Tallahassee Quagmire getting closer.

LAURA (as Xianna): Okay, well I am out of detonators.

HUDSON (as Tink): I have grenades, but mostly stun grenades at this point.

LAURA (as Xianna): I don’t think that’s going to help us up here.

HUDSON (as Tink): It could malfunction a ship.

NICK: You’re floating in space, pretty far from each other, having this conversation on your coms, and the Tallahassee Quagmire comes scooping over the atmosphere, you can see it almost skidding over the air resistance as it gets close, and the bottom of it opens up and a large, round magnet starts to thrum, and you all get individually sucked into this small box one at a time. There’s a couple of these small boxes, and you recognize it as the box that you and Tink got stuck in originally when you came in. [chuckles]

LAURA (as Xianna): Oh hey, I recognize that box.

NICK: Karma and HK get pulled into one of these little phone booth situations by their stratopacks, and then Neato gets pulled into one, and then Xianna and Tink get pulled into another one. The ship immediately starts to rattle with absorbed turbo laser fire and TIE fighters that you can hear, and you can hear Tiny’s voice from over the ship PA system.

NICK (as Tiny): Quick, Carn [beep-beep], punch it, punch it!

NICK: And the ship jumps to hyperspace, and not soon after these little boxes open up and you all fall into this stripped down open area that is the main part of the ship. Neato sits up and rubs at his head.

NICK (as Neato): Wow, swanky conveyance you’ve got here.

CAMERON (as Karma): Oof.

HUDSON (as Tink): Ugh.

LAURA (as Xianna): That was unpleasant.

CAMERON (as Karma): [weakly] Hey Tiny.

NICK: Tiny turns around in his seat as he was finishing locking down the ship for a hyperspace jump.

NICK (as Tiny): But you lived. Everybody’s back. Nobody’s completely decompressed.

HUDSON (as Tink): Where’s HK? Where’s HK?!

LAURA (as Xianna): He is right there.

CAMERON (as Karma): [struggling] He’s right on top of me.

HUDSON (as Tink): Oh…

NICK: HK sits up and a couple of sparks shoot out of his head and he rolls off of Karma.

NICK (as HK): Apologies.

CAMERON (as Karma): It’s okay.

NICK: HK does not get up. HK stays sprawled on its back, just on the floor.

NICK (as Tiny): Well, it looks like you were successful. Hi, I’m Tiny.

NICK (as Neato): Salutations, new chum.

NICK: And they shake hands. Neato starts to just stalk around the ship and rub on his shoulders where they’re pretty sore. The stratopacks are all still stuck in those phone booths. You had to undo the straps to get out. Neato is making himself at home.

NICK (as Tiny): Well, so, we’re jumping to a neutral point where we’re going to drop Mr. Neato off. Huge fan, by the way, huge fan.

NICK: Neato just nods graciously.

NICK (as Tiny): And then after that we’ll swing on back to the resort and you can pick up your ship and then you’re off on the next thing. That was the extent of our payment was to pick you back up and drop you off. So, welcome to the Tallahassee Quagmire, fastest bus in the galaxy.

NICK (as Neato): Your ship looks like shit!

[laughter]

NICK: Neato seems unimpressed.

CAMERON (as Karma): Tiny, would you or Carn [beep-beep] happen to have any medical supplies on the ship?

NICK (as Tiny): Uh, I think Carn [beep-beep] has some supplies. He might be able to help. He picked up some weird textbook recently.

CAMERON (as Karma): Oh no.

NICK (as Tiny): Yeah… He really thinks that he’s a doctor now, but I don’t think it’s like an actual book. It seems to focus more on how the doctor feels about how things went than the actual…

CAMERON (as Karma): Is it Becoming Medicine or Becoming Emotion?

NICK: Carn Horn [beep-beep] turns around and just goes:

NICK (as Carn): [deep groaning whine / Wookie noise]

CAMERON (as Karma): Oh, it’s Becoming Emotion, okay.

NICK: [chuckles]

CAMERON (as Karma): Hey Tink.

HUDSON (as Tink): Yeah?

CAMERON (as Karma): Do you have any medical supplies with you?

HUDSON (as Tink): Oh, let me see here. By the way, those books usually come in a set, you must have gotten it used, but it’s still gonna be great for you.

NICK (as Tiny): I think Carn picked up the international edition. You’re not supposed to buy those, but they are cheaper.

HUDSON (as Tink): That usually doesn’t come with the CD and the access code you need.

NICK: [laughs]

CAMERON: [laughs] What?

NICK: Carn [beep-beep] slides a big canvas duffle bag over and you see nice bacta gear and things to patch you up.

LAURA: Xianna also has seven stim packs, but she is already curled up in a corner sleeping. She found a whole stack of pillows and a beanbag and has made what is essentially a nest.

NICK: I think, Xianna, they feel like a stack of pillows and a beanbag but it’s actually like paper trash and wires and things, because this is a super uncomfortable ship.

LAURA: Yeah. [laughs]

NICK: That’s like the one defining feature we have of it, but you are completely conked out. Do you have any medical advice as you help patch up your friends, Tink?

HUDSON (as Tink): Now with stim packs, you gotta fit as many as you can in one hand that you’re planning on using and stab them all at the same time.

CAMERON (as Karma): Please, please, please don’t stim pack me again.

NICK: [laughs]

HUDSON (as Tink): So, I read in my book, Becoming Medicine that—

NICK (as Carn): [deep groaning whine / Wookie noise]

HUDSON (as Tink): Yeah! Yeah, exactly. So if me and someone else who has consumed that knowledge hold hands and get our energies together, so we aligned our energy, our Force auras, and that actually can heal you faster than normal stim packs, or they accelerate the stim packs, or you lose your appetite if you were really hungry. It’s one of those three things.

CAMERON (as Karma): I thought we established that we were not using more stim packs.

HUDSON (as Tink): Why not?

CAMERON (as Karma): I have been stim packed twice today.

HUDSON (as Tink): Oh, there’s not a limit. You’d think there’s a limit—

CAMERON (as Karma): No, there is.

HUDSON (as Tink): I mean, I’ve never seen one.

CAMERON (as Karma): Carn [beep-beep], you have so much bacta in this duffle bag. Please, can I just have some bacta?

NICK: Carn smiles wickedly and pulls a bone saw out of somewhere.

CAMERON (as Karma): No, I’m fine. I just have two crits. [laughs]

NICK: And that’s where we’re gonna end the episode.

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.

Tabletop Squadron Transcript, Season 1 Episode 44:
A Fishy Situation

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 of all, I’d like to thank CurseOfStu for their kind iTunes review. Your cat is great, you’re great. Thanks for telling others about us. I also want to thank The1BShipes for their very kind review. We are all very happy to hear that you’re enjoying the crew’s shenanigans.

Finally, I want to take a second to thank our newest patron! Jackie Betts, you’ve made a special effort to show appreciation to the show by talking to us, sharing wonderful art, and supporting our Patreon as well. Thank you, so much, from the bottom of all our space hearts for all that you do. Welcome to the ship. I think there may be a loth-rat somewhere onboard, so if you could track that down before it chews through the wires I’d appreciate it.

Podcast music this week is GIGA METAL by Loyalty Freak Music and Lost Sad Lament, Piano and Cello by Solar Flare.

Now, let’s get into the episode.

##

NICK: Hello! Welcome to Tabletop Squadron, Episode 44. I’m your hosting game master, Nick. I like the color of the walls in here. It’s pleasant. It’s like a light avocado.

LAURA: It’s like the palest green.

NICK: Yeah! It’s really mellow. It’s nice.

LAURA: I hate it.

HUDSON: I’d say it pales in comparison to other walls.

CAMERON: Boo.

NICK: That means it—

LAURA: I mean, it does. I hate it.

NICK: Oh. Good!

CAMERON: [laughs]

NICK: Yeah, fuck these walls.

LAURA: Because it’s too light of a green! It looks like it’s white that went bad.

HUDSON: I’m not observant, so I thought it was white. If you would have just taken me out of the room and been like what color was that room wall—

NICK: Hudson, look at the door. What color is the door?

HUDSON: White.

NICK: What color is the wall?

HUDSON: Where?

CAMERON: [giggles] In this room.

NICK: Like, next to the door.

HUDSON: Oh, next to the door? Avocado.

NICK: There you go. Nice.

CAMERON: [laughs]

LAURA: That is not the color of an avocado!

NICK: It is if it’s a bad one. I would know. Anyway, already doing great. Yeah, so we’re gonna go around the room. Everybody say who you are and who you are playing today, and your favorite color of avocado, starting with Cameron.

CAMERON: Hello. I am Cameron, and I’m playing Karma Nailo, the Nautolan bounty hunter. I like normal, kind of dark green avocados…?

NICK: Hmm. Okay. Interesting. Up next we have Laura.

LAURA: Hi. I’m Laura, and I play Xianna’fan, a Twi’lek smuggler, and I like that sort of medium bright green.

NICK: Solid. Good choice.

LAURA: Yeah.

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

HUDSON: Hi, I’m Hudson, and I play Tink, a Gigoran slicer, and my favorite color of avocado is dark green, and I like it—well actually, it kind of scares me when people have the knife after it’s cut in half and they, like, just throw it into the brown thing in the middle, the circle that looks like a—

[laughter]

NICK: The pit?

HUDSON: Yeah, the pit, and they just pull it up. It’s kind of weird.

NICK: Yeah, that’s a thing. Fun kitchen fact for the day: If you put the pit of an avocado in your guacamole it won’t turn brown as fast.

LAURA: That is not a proven scientific fact!

NICK: I am science!

CAMERON: Proven!

LAURA: The best way is to put a thin layer of lime juice for the acidity and then smoosh plastic wrap on top to prevent oxygen from reaching it, because the brown is from oxidation.

CAMERON: Mm-hmm!

NICK: As I started talking I was like this is not gonna go well for me. [laughs]

CAMERON: Or, best solution, just eat your guacamole really fast, and then it won’t go bad.

NICK: That is—

HUDSON: No, no-no-no.

LAURA: So if you cover the entire surface with pits it might reduce browning just because anywhere the pit is sitting on won’t oxidize as fast.

CAMERON: [laughs]

NICK: So, before we get started with the recap, let’s do the Destiny Roll~!

CAMERON: One dark side.

LAURA: One dark side.

HUDSON: One dark side.

CAMERON: Oh no.

NICK: [sinister laugh] Okay! So brief recap from last episode. You all started your assault upon the beach and the artillery pieces. Tink, you hacked the communication network of the star destroyer and kept them from asking for reinforcements as Karma shot a rocket launcher at a bunch of stuff. HK shot a bunch of stormtroopers, got shot, jumped off a building, and just started shooting everywhere because that’s like what he does. Xianna almost drowned, made it to the beach, was not happy about it, and then shot a stormtrooper. And then Tink, you did some hijinks down a hallway, including leapfrog, and hit a bunch of stormtroopers with an axe, and then figured out that there were 15 more stormtroopers and ran away and hid in a room.

The last thing that happened when we left off was Tink was pinned down by enemy fire in a small room and Karma and Xianna were on the beach trying to figure out where to go. You are having to deal with Tink potentially getting shot. A whole bunch of enemy stormtroopers are currently launching assaults upon the shield facility, which if it falls will result in your eminent orbital bombardment and demise. Also, one of your artillery things is moving slower but is still up and moving and also heading towards potentially a firing position upon the shield facility. That’s where we’re going to kick it off.

Xianna, you were last holding two grenades and your blaster pistol. What are we doing, folks?

LAURA: Yep. Gonna go get Tink.

NICK: So, Xianna, you are running towards the technology district. Did you bring Smith and Weathers with you?

LAURA: I mean, they were there. Whether or not they followed me is their own choice.

HUDSON: Weather or… Oh, oh, oh! Whether or not, W-H.

CAMERON: [giggles] Smith and whether or not they came.

HUDSON: Weather or not they came.

NICK: Heh, um…

CAMERON: You’re welcome.

NICK: Okay. Xianna, you are heading towards Tink, presumably as reinforcements. Tink, you are I guess currently fighting back against the stormtroopers that are shooting everywhere.

HUDSON: Oh yeah.

NICK: Okay. And Karma, you had not yet made your decision. Xianna, I think you took HK with you, didn’t you?

CAMERON: Yes…?

LAURA: I think HK was at least gonna follow me.

NICK: Yeah. We’ll say HK took off after you. Karma, you are on the beach, Xianna and HK are heading towards the technology district to rescue Tink. There is a large artillery piece rolling up the beach with no external weapons you can see besides the huge cannon that is firing periodically upon the city. It looks like however this thing operates they haven’t really been able to see outside of their vehicle and what their objective is or they decided to ignore what was going on and try to complete their objective. The shield facility, you can hear from here, just the sounds of combat beginning. What do you do?

CAMERON: I don’t have any explosives on me.

NICK: HK did.

CAMERON: Yup. [defeated chuckle]

NICK: You could probably catch him.

CAMERON: Alright. Yeah. I’m gonna order HK back, grab the explosives from him.

NICK (as HK): Indignant Statement: You didn’t have to order me. You could have asked nicely.

CAMERON (as Karma): Sorry, you were just running.

NICK: HK comes stomping back towards the beach with a satchel.

CAMERON (as Karma): Thank you~ Here, take this droid repair kit and have Tink fix you whenever you meet up with him. I’ll trade you for the explosives.

NICK (as HK): Acknowledged.

NICK: And HK goes traipsing off. His mechanical run on loose sand looks pretty unstable combined with his damage and also just kicks big plumes of sand everywhere. It’s pretty awkward as he makes his way back off the beach, which also puts him behind Xianna by a good probably quarter mile at this point, because he had to turn around.

CAMERON: I put the explosives in my backpack, that I have.

NICK: Sure.

CAMERON: I’ve got a mom backpack.

NICK: Sure.

CAMERON: And I’m gonna go swim towards the artillery.

NICK: Okay, so you are attacking the artillery. Who do we want to see first? I feel like a scene of Tink’s desperate resistance is probably next up on the plate here. Tink, you are pinned down in a room full of smoking, destroyed computers that you destroyed yourself. You have with you Neato, who is leaned up against a wall, trying to peer around the door, but just can’t because of the amount of blaster fire going through. You also have Specialists Talon and Kevin who are ducked behind a ratty couch that is occasionally taking angled blaster fire with their hands on their heads, taking cover. Neato, from his position by the door, says:

NICK (as Neato): Well chum, it looks like we’re gonna become Selonian cheese quick without a little hand here. Any idea on how to get out of this sticky wicket?

HUDSON (as Tink): Uh, uh, uh… Let’s, uh… Oh! I got it. Okay! Let’s take those mainframes and throw them at the door to block them from coming in, because they’re heavy.

NICK (as Neato): So your plan is to hole up here and wait for help?

HUDSON (as Tink): Yeah, pretty much. I mean, do you want to take on 15 stormtroopers?

NICK (as Neato): I’m not particularly interested in getting blasted. I could probably take about 14 of them, 15 is my limit.

HUDSON (as Tink): It only takes one of them to shoot you down, so uh…

NICK (as Neato): It’s a good point. We’re fine with this. Is someone coming to get us? I thought this was a solo mission.

HUDSON (as Tink): I sent out my signal.

NICK (as Neato): Is anyone actually coming to help?

HUDSON (as Tink): You know, sometimes you just gotta believe.

NICK: Karma and Xianna, you have an open com channel, so if you wanted to say something to Tink reassuring you could.

CAMERON (as Karma): You got this, buddy.

CAMERON: And I dive into the water. [laughs]

NICK: Sploosh!

HUDSON (as Tink): Alright. I just heard Karma say something super encouraging and then a sploosh sound.

CAMERON: [laughs]

HUDSON (as Tink): Maybe she’s in the bath? I can’t think of where she would be. Either way, it sounds like they believe in us.

NICK (as Neato): Well that’s good. I’m a fan of Karma, but that doesn’t help with all the stormtroopers outside.

HUDSON (as Tink): Hmm.

NICK: Heh. Let’s leave that scene, and make me an Athletics roll for how quickly you can throw these mainframes to barricade the door. Athletics is a skill that is Brawn-based.

HUDSON: Wouldn’t it be just pure Brawn? Because Athletics…

NICK: Eh, I would say weight lifting is not just how strong you are. Technique also comes into play. Lift with your knees and not with your back.

LAURA: Is it Brawl or Melee to use an improvised weapon?

NICK: That would be melee.

LAURA: So what if he used his Melee skill to throw them as if he was using them as an improvised weapon.

NICK: [deflates]

HUDSON: I don’t even want to do that stretch.

CAMERON: I feel like if he’s throwing them it becomes Ranged: Heavy.

NICK: No, that’s very funny though.

[laughter]

HUDSON: No, I’m okay going with the just Athletics.

NICK: What was interesting to me is you were arguing for pure Brawn which is exactly the same.

HUDSON: Yeah, I’m now connecting that it was. What’s the difficulty?

NICK: Let’s say average.

HUDSON: Yay.

NICK: You could use it as a Melee attack, but you couldn’t barricade the door. You would have to throw it at the stormtroopers.

HUDSON: Yeah. That might be my backup if the barricade doesn’t work.

NICK: Alright. Let’s try a barricade. You can have a… Who would you like to help you?

HUDSON: The spirit of Karma? I would like Kevin help.

NICK: Okay, a black die then, because he’s bad at this.

[pause, laughter]

HUDSON: Alright.

NICK: It was a subtle ploy.

HUDSON: Ha-ha. One failure and one advantage.

NICK: Hmm… The failure, I think that Specialist Kevin is not really very helpful, obviously. You try to each lift up an end and he can’t really do it, so it turns—

HUDSON (as Tink): Put your back into it, Kevin!

NICK (as Kevin): Look, it’s really heavy, and I’m a computer person not a lift things person.

CAMERON: “This is more of a hardware issue, I’m really more of a software guy.”

[laughter]

NICK: That’s a good line. I like that. Yeah, so he’s just in the way. You end up tripping over him. You are able to knock it over, but you’re not able to slide it anywhere, and the stormtroopers move up some firing position-wise and they’re starting to get more accurate, and swaths of the room are now melting under blaster fire. You are not able to walk through the middle of the room. It’s you and Kevin on one side of the room and Neato and Talon on the other side of the room as you hear them saying:

NICK (as Stormtrooper): Move up. They’re not returning fire.

NICK: You can hear the slow clomp of boots. They are moving slowly, because they don’t want to walk into a bad situation. That doesn’t work. Is there something you would like to spend your advantage on?

HUDSON: Can Neato come up with a good idea? Or is that too much?

NICK: Um… That would be more a triumph, I think. If you want Neato to do something helpful we can boost that.

HUDSON: Okay.

NICK: You could probably say for an advantage that as they’re moving up Neato, with his skills, is able to… You see him lean his disrupter rifle around the corner without looking, and he makes eye contact with you with his one galaxy patterned eye—because remember, he has an eyepatch, we haven’t talked about that a lot but he super does.

HUDSON: [laughs]

NICK: He makes eye contact with you and says…

NICK (as Neato): It’s a no-look shot.

NICK: …and he takes a shot, and you hear a stormtrooper go:

NICK (as Stormtrooper): [dorky pain groan]

NICK (as Neato): Score one, bull’s-eye.

NICK: We’re going to cut away. The advantage is they have not entered the room and killed you all, but you were not able to slow them down as much as the server would do.

HUDSON: And now it’s at Neato’s limit, so really Neato could take them all on according to Neato. [laughs]

NICK: Theoretically.

CAMERON: If he just shot one they’re down to 14.

LAURA: He just 360 no-scoped a dude, so…

HUDSON: True.

NICK: That’s one of the 14.

CAMERON: Oh, no, that’s true. It doesn’t reset?

NICK: No.

CAMERON: OH, okay.

NICK: That’s for the scene. [smiling] This is apparently a mechanic now I have introduced.

CAMERON: Well, if you switch away now then that was the scene, so then when you go back to Tink and Neato it would restart and he’d be able to take them all, right?

NICK: No, that’s not how scenes work. [laughter] Xianna, you are currently pelting down the alleyways of this occupied city, you are followed closely by Smith and Weathers, and in the distance if you haven’t turned a corner around a building in a while you can hear the distant clanking of HK running after you. As if from a distance you hear:

NICK (as HK): Assessment: It sure is good I don’t get tired.

NICK: Clank, clank, clank. So, are you trying to get there fast or are you trying to get there stealthily?

LAURA: I think I’m just trying to get there, so I would assume fast.

NICK: Okay. I won’t make you roll an Athletics for how fast you can run ,because I don’t like that, but I will make you roll me a Force die just on if you happen to intercept any patrols or anything.

LAURA: One dark point, dark side point. What do we call them?

CAMERON: Dark side.

NICK: Dark side point.

LAURA: One dark side point!

NICK: Sure. Go ahead and, what is your Coordination?

LAURA: I have Rank 3.

NICK: Okay, and your Agility is 4 or 5?

LAURA: My Agility is still 4. My Cunning is 5.

NICK: Okay. So, if you could roll me, Cameron, a three yellow versus three reds and a purple.

CAMERON: One success, three threats.

NICK: [pauses, laughs]

[laughter]

LAURA: They fall prone!

[dramatic bass noise, stopped abruptly]

NICK: I’m getting there!

LAURA: Ha-ha!

CAMERON: Ha! But they do shoot you.

LAURA: They do shoot at me, but they fall prone!

[dramatic bass noise finishes playing]

HUDSON: On stairs, which means they fall down, the stairs.

NICK: So, you’re able to go a majority of the distance to this technology district very quickly. You have been this way before actually, or most of the way, because this is kind of back the direction when you originally came to meet up with Tink and karma and Neato. It probably only takes you five or six minutes. Smith and Weathers are close behind you. You round this corner and it comes into this large, open courtyard with a dry fountain in the middle, and it’s been scorched. There’s been some fires and there’s some craters in this courtyard, but otherwise it seems very quiet, and a little warning flashes in the back of your head of there’s no cover here, there are a lot of sightlines, but like you said you’re in a hurry, you’re trying to get to Tink, you’re on a mission. So you cut across this courtyard, and the first thing you feel is a feeling of getting just punched in the back of the shoulder by something just really heavy and you’re spun around and dropped to the ground, and you take [wincing] 11 damage.

CAMERON: Shit.

LAURA: Did you include the fact that I have a 1 in Ranged Defense and a 1 in Melee Defense?

NICK: No. Roll me a black die for that, please.

CAMERON: If that’s the case, just three threats.

NICK: God damn it. Okay.

LAURA: Ha-ha!

NICK: That’s so much less dramatic! Oh well. So yeah, I think you still get hit. It’s down to just the defense of your coat keeps you from getting hurt.

LAURA: I roll my shoulder so that it glances off. You know? Did you not see A Knight’s Tale? You roll your shoulder back and it glances!

[laughter]

NICK: It’s not- It’s not-

CAMERON: That’s how that works.

LAURA: You roll it forward and then it glances away.

NICK: My description still stands. You feel like you got punched in the back and you are spun around and dropped to the ground. You have that moment of, you’ve been shot before, it very much feels like that first moment where you get shot where you don’t really feel the burn of the blaster or anything ,it’s just the kinetic force, and you feel at your shoulders and your chest and you realize that you’re not bleeding, and your coat has absorbed the blow of the shot, and you can see in front of you a large carbon scoring where a majority of the shot did not hit you. Your coat has saved your life.

LAURA: Yeah.

NICK: Then you hear:

NICK (as Stormtrooper): [nerdy pained wailing]

[laughter]

NICK: And a scout trooper just like- I think this trooper was on a fire escape and just blended into the shadows of it. The screws that held it to the building crack and it shifts and they lost their balance, and they just fall over, and they fall… [dramatic bass noise] …gosh, like three stories to the ground, so that’s like—

LAURA: Oh! That’s so much damage!

CAMERON: Ooh.

NICK: So they just turn into mist, just (splat). The scout trooper falls prone [dramatic bass noise] out of this fire escape, and then falls three stories to the ground, which by the rules of Star Wars is—Actually, could we look up what the actual fall damage is? Because I think it’s like 5 damage and 5 strain per 5 feet or something like that. It’s really, it’s too much.

CAMERON: Does Soak apply to fall damage?

LAURA: Falling Damage—

CAMERON: The rulebook says 10 damage for falling a short distance.

LAURA: Medium is 30.

CAMERON: Heh. They dead.

NICK: Thirty damage?!

CAMERON: For medium.

NICK: Ugh, that’s so much, and it’s medium range, I said it was. Three stories is like the far end of medium range. So, according to the rules, it’s 30 damage. Yeah. They’re super dead. I’ve made this reference before, but it does that high pitched squeaky click that it makes when they throw the scout troopers on Endor into the tree, and the stormtrooper just goes (splat) and is done. They are done. There is no more scout trooper, and you are able to continue on to the technical institute without any other issues, because you can see it on the far side of this clearing. So, you’re able to continue onward. From there we are going to cut away to… karma.

Karma, you are currently swimming underwater. What do you think it feels like to be breathing water, on a planet that is not your home, that has been… like, the home of war machines for the last while and is scorched by cinders and blown up buildings and stuff?

CAMERON: Breathing the water feels like drinking water in Lubbock.

NICK: That’s going to apply to three people.

CAMERON: Yep, but it’s a perfect description for that.

NICK: Those three people are gonna be like heck yeah.

CAMERON: It’s a very bad, weird water taste where it’s just any time you’re traveling and you drink tap water and you’re like this tap water tastes wrong. It’s like that, but more so, because Lubbock.

NICK: So it’s got a metallic tinge to it, and you can feel it kind of coating your… however you breathe.

CAMERON: My lungs.

NICK: Well, I think they’re amphibians, right? So you just breathe through your skin?

CAMERON: Sure.

NICK: Ew… I don’t like that. Anyway.

CAMERON: We don’t have to think about it. It’s fine.

NICK: Yeah, let’s not. It’s fine. There’s gills under your head tentacles or something.

CAMERON: Hiding next to my ears.

NICK: Or they are your ears. Who knows.

CAMERON: [snickers] Okay.

NICK: So you have some explosives. You are swimming to this artillery craft. What are you doing?

CAMERON: I am looking for the holes caused by the last explosion.

NICK: They are myriad and obvious. There are probably three or four big old holes.

CAMERON: And I’m putting the explosives that I have with me, depending on how large the hole in the hull is, reaching it in and sticking it farther inside so that it hopefully does more internal damage to the ship and not just surface hole stuff.

NICK: Okay. I’m gonna need some sort of roll here. My thinkings are they could be Athletics, because swimming up to a moving craft very quickly and placing these things without cutting yourself on jagged craters and things could be difficult, or you could argue that it’s Weapons: Heavy if you have a lot of explosives experience and you’ve done this kind of thing before, I could be persuaded. I feel more Athletics than that.

CAMERON: I feel more Athletics. I feel like with being a bounty hunter often times you’re not using explosives because you need something to turn in for the bounty.

NICK: Yeah, no disintegrations.

CAMERON: yeah. So I’m fine with Athletics.

NICK: make me a hard Athletics roll. Flip me a dark side point though, to upgrade that, because… it’s hard.

CAMERON: Because reasons.

NICK: Mm-hmm! See Hudson? We’re doing it again.

HUDSON: [laughs]

CAMERON: Nicholas… But can I have a blue die, because they haven’t gone yet this encounter? [laughs]

HUDSON: Is that a skillset?

NICK: Is this a Stealth or Coordination roll? Oh no, wait, it’s not an attack roll. You just said you’re checking your Athletics not your ability to place the explosives.

CAMERON: Yeah, okay.

NICK: So I’m gonna say no.

CAMERON: [giggles] Dang.

NICK: I almost always give you that one. This time I am not going to.

CAMERON: I know.

NICK: I do appreciate the optimism, though.

CAMERON: Okay. I had to try.

NICK: Yeah.

CAMERON: [rolls]

NICK: I thought that was a despair. I was super excited.

CAMERON: No. One success, two threats.

NICK: Okay. I think you are able to place the explosives. Do you swim away to a distance and then detonate them?

CAMERON: Yep, I just swim back to shore, and then cool action hero style, as I’m walking out of the water—

NICK: Aw man!

CAMERON: There’s water flying, it goes slo-mo for a second, my head tails flail out and I press the button and it explodes behind me.

NICK: Uh-huh, and we get you walking away from this big explosion.

CAMERON: And I don’t look at it.

NICK: The camera angle changes to you striding up the beach. You pick up the gear that you dropped, because I’m assuming you weren’t swimming around with an empty rocket launcher for instance.

CAMERON: Yeah, I set it down.

NICK: So you’re picking it up and you turn to press your hand to your coms and keep track of where everybody else is, and then behind you we hear the thunderous explosion of another shot coming from the artillery. It is stopped, it can’t reach the shield facility anymore, but it was on the lip of that beach. Your threats are that it didn’t sink, because that’s how you’ve been destroying them so far with these hand explosives. It’s also at a weird angle. This shot goes mostly up and then comes down like two blocks away and explodes, because it’s hanging off, so it’s not gonna really affect much but they’re just destroying as much of the city as they can at this point.

I think you see one of the people in the general Veers helmets with the open front and the big goggles open up a hatch and stick their head up, and they’re at a weird angle because of the way the ship is, and they put binoculars on, and you hear them go “Kriff!” and then close the hatch and they just keep shooting periodically. So that’s that, you have stopped the artillery but it is still around. Where are you headed next?

CAMERON: I am running towards the field generator.

NICK: You are running back to the main generator.

CAMERON: Mm-hmm.

NICK: Cool. We will come back to you in a minute, because more pressingly… Tink, you don’t know for certain that anybody’s coming to help you. you can hear the stormtroopers moving up. They are gearing up to have an assault on the room that you are in. you can kind of hear their radio chatter as they’re preparing for this. What are you doing to take cover or try to hold them back?

HUDSON: So, I’m on the far side of the room and they’re coming to the front door and all of my peeps are around me.

NICK: Yep, although it is kind of hard to walk through the middle of the room, because there’s a lot of laser death in that area.

HUDSON (as Tink): Alright guys, we’re gonna hug the wall, go to the left side, uh, and then I have these grenades.

NICK (as Neato): You’re not planning on using those boom spheres in here, are you chum?

HUDSON (as Tink): I mean, there’s no enemies in here, so what do you think, Neato?

NICK (as Neato): Well, but they’re coming through the door.

HUDSON (as Tink): I’ll throw it before they get in there.

NICK (as Neato): Alright!

NICK: As he says that, I think a squad of three stormtroopers come in, and Cameron could you make me a roll please of a green and two yellow? This is an average difficulty, because they’re right in the door. Give them a black die, because they are just jumping around the corner and shooting at Tink. Let’s roll it up.

CAMERON: [rolls]

NICK: Uh-oh.

HUDSON: [laughs] It’s okay. I have a plan.

NICK: Okay good.

CAMERON: Three successes, two threats.

NICK: Oh, only two threats? What a bummer.

CAMERON: Yeah, one of them cancelled.

NICK: What a bummer. I wanted everyone falling down today. So three successes, that’s 10 damage coming at you. Now I’ll give you an option, the 10 damage can hit you, or it could hit someone else in your group.

HUDSON: I think it needs to hit someone else in my group. [laughter] I’m gonna have it hit—

NICK: Oh, it’s Kevin. Kevin is getting shot.

HUDSON: Kevin. I was about to say Kevin.

CAMERON: Oh no.

NICK: Yeah. Three stormtroopers jump around the corner. You hear one of the stormtroopers say:

NICK (as Stormtrooper): They’re to the left. Fire!

NICK: Specialist Kevin looks up with his little light blaster pistol and goes…

NICK (as Kevin): What?!

NICK: …and just gets unloaded on by these three stormtroopers.

HUDSON: Ha!

NICK: He was the one furthest—That’s messed up, my dude.

HUDSON: Sorry. [laughs]

CAMERON: Whoa!

NICK: He was the one furthest from the wall where the rest of you were, he was on his way to you, and he just gets dropped. Talon says…

NICK (as Talon): No~!

NICK: …and shoots back and starts shooting the stormtroopers, and Neato says…

NICK (as Neato): Take this, bucket heads!

NICK: …and shoots them. So, those three go down very quickly in the doorway making a temporary barricade, and you can hear the radio chatter as the rest of the stormtroopers back up and make a new plan, because that didn’t work. Kevin is leaning up against the wall just, you can see he’s in very, very, very bad shape. He’s been hit multiple times.

HUDSON (as Tink): Kevin, what are you doing on the floor? Put your back into it!

[somber music starts]

NICK (as Kevin): [groans] I… I can’t… It’s getting so dark, Tink. Talon… Talon, where are you?

NICK (as Talon): I’m on the other side of the cover.

NICK (as Kevin): Talon, I just wanna tell you…

NICK: And then he falls unconscious and sprawls on the ground. [music fades out] So, I think at this point, Xianna, you and Smith and Weathers have gotten up to the fourth floor of this building, so you’re in the stairwell and you can hear the stormtroopers moving around up ahead, and it’s pretty obvious where you need to go. Do you call Tink or anything?

LAURA: Yeah, I get in the coms.

LAURA (as Xianna): Tink! Hey, are you hulled up somewhere? And you know, secured?

HUDSON (as Tink): So we’re hulled up somewhere. We’re not secured. That’s not the word I would use.

LAURA (as Xianna): Okay. So if say, hypothetically, I was to throw some grenades into this hallway here and blow up some stormtroopers, you’d be okay?

HUDSON (as Tink): How close are they to my room? I don’t really, I can’t really tell. And actually, my room is the computer room that looks like a lot of blaster fire has hit it.

LAURA (as Xianna): Okay, I’m sure it’ll be fine.

HUDSON (as Tink): Okayyy.

CAMERON: [giggles]

HUDSON (as Tink): Real quick, before you get off the line, I have some grenades too. You wanna make a grenade sandwich over here?

LAURA (as Xianna): Okay! In 3, 2, 1… Grenades!

LAURA: Heh.

HUDSON: I put the grenade pin in my mouth and pull it out like an action movie.

NICK: Which is super interesting, because most of the grenades in Star Wars have buttons, but we’ll go with it.

LAURA: Yeah.

HUDSON: [laughs]

NICK: Neato’s like, “Where did you find grenades with pins?!”

HUDSON: [laughing] And I throw the grenade. It’s a frag grenade, by the way.

NICK: “Because those are absolutely my jam.”

LAURA: “Those must be thousands of years old!”

NICK: “Or they’re new technology, depends on the arc!”

[laughter]

HUDSON: Okay. I throw this frag grenade at the same time that Xianna throws it.

NICK: Okay. I would really like a Ranged: Light attack from both of you, just to see placement-wise how this goes.

HUDSON: Ha!

NICK: [chuckles] I know. This arc has been asking people to do the skills they’re not good at.

HUDSON: What’s the difficulty?

NICK: Average. You’re just chucking grenades down a hallway. It’s not…

HUDSON: Oh, okay.

LAURA: Can we say we aim?

NICK: [smiling] No. You can’t aim grenades. We had this conversation before.

LAURA: [smiling, defiantly] Why can’t you aim grenades?!

NICK: What? With what?!

LAURA: Staring very intently.

[laughter]

NICK: You line up that red blinking arc that comes up in video games.

LAURA: Yeah.

HUDSON: Earlier, when they were coming through the door, what I wanted to do was if they weren’t there yet and they were coming through the door about to shoot, and I got an action, I was gonna throw the grenade, slide it on the ground so it goes under their legs, and it blows them up so they blow up and go towards us, so then I could get them with my axe if they’re close enough, or they’re dead.

NICK: I’ll say depending on how this goes it’s possible that some people will get blown towards you, because I like that image very much. You can still do it.

HUDSON: It doesn’t have to happen. I was just saying what my plan was had they not arrived with grenades. I like the sandwich grenade.

NICK: Well, and like who knows, this is explosives, we’ll see what happens.

HUDSON: One failure.

NICK: Aw.

LAURA: Two successes, three advantages.

NICK: Okay. Do you want to send your three advantages to activate Blast on all of these?

LAURA: Sure.

NICK: Okay. We’ll say because you threw, what, roughly four grenades total? How many did you throw, just one?

HUDSON: I just threw one.

NICK: So three grenades?

LAURA: Yeah.

NICK: Three grenades in a small hallway with 15 stormtroopers—

CAMERON: Uh, 11 stormtroopers.

NICK: Sorry, 11. Oh yeah, because three more died.

CAMERON: Yep, I’ve been keeping track.

NICK: I’m glad You can count. There’s just a large explosion and you hear (several overlapping wimpy stormtroopers whining and shouting in pain), and a single stormtrooper is chucked bodily by the back, arms and legs pinwheeling, into your office where you’re hulled up, Tink, and hits a wall and starts to get up and reach around for their blaster. What do you do?

HUDSON: I take out my axe, I run over, and the hand they’re reaching out to get their gun, I chop it off.

NICK: Ooh… Okay. They’re super concussed. Okay, you- Are you trying to take them out or are you trying to capture them?

HUDSON: I don’t wanna kill them straight away.

CAMERON: [laughing] “I wanna play with them first.”

HUDSON: I don’t want to play with him either, but like…

NICK: Getting dark.

HUDSON: I wanna make sure he doesn’t—We could use him to get out of here maybe, with credentials or finding the best way or having him call in something.

NICK: Okay. let’s say that you cut off his hand, and he goes (extended shout of pain) and falls unconscious, and if you need a stormtrooper for some reason… As you walk out into the hall you can see that it’s just a mess. You’re harkened back to that time that Val used a fuel air bomb in a small space facility. This is a lot of explosive in a small space with a bunch of people. They’re just in piles kind of smooshed up into the corners. There are no other people standing here. Xianna, you’re able to bring your group in through the hallway and meet up with the rest of this squad.

LAURA (as Xianna): Ello Tink~

HUDSON (as Tink): Hey Xianna.

LAURA (as Xianna): How are you?

HUDSON (as Tink): A little tired.

LAURA (as Xianna): Well, I almost died, so there’s that.

HUDSON (as Tink): Um, I almost died, so there’s also that.

LAURA (as Xianna): No, no, like I was drowning. It’s been a day.

HUDSON (as Tink): No-no-no, like, there was blaster fire in my face. I don’t think that’s anything like what you were dealing with.

LAURA (as Xianna): Well, um…

NICK (as Neato): Not to rain on your space parade, but Specialist Kevin is definitely actually dead, so…

HUDSON (as Tink): Aw man.

LAURA (as Xianna): Wait, is he dead-dead, or like… unconscious dead?

[somber music starts]

NICK: [laughs] You look over and Neato just kinda prods him with a foot and he slouches over, and Talon is just looking out a window trying to keep it together.

NICK (as Neato): Yeah, he seems to have gone cold fish, chums.

LAURA (as Xianna): I just told you I almost drowned today, and you use a fish pun. Rude.

NICK (as Neato): I think that pun was the last one. I’m fin-ished. … Ha-ha.

[music fades]

LAURA: Xianna looks down at her hand holding the blaster, [laughter] and you can see in her eyes that… this day has for some reason hit closer than most of the others have, and she starts to raise it and then kind of walks away and mutters to herself.

LAURA (as Xianna): No… No. Karma would be disappointed. It is not worth the trouble.

NICK (as Neato): Wow Tink, that was closed. I thought she was gonna hit me and then I’d have a sock eye.

CAMERON: [laughs]

LAURA: Xianna turns back into the room, leans in, like pops into the door frame.

LAURA (as Xianna): No! I would have shot you dead!

HUDSON (as Tink): I think she’d do it.

NICK (as Neato): I’ve been shot before.

HUDSON (as Tink): Mmm…

LAURA (as Xianna): Well so have I, and you know what, I think we all have been shot. Whatever. I would have killed you. Shot you right in the face. Goodbye, and good day!

CAMERON: Karma comes over the coms.

CAMERON (as Karma): Everybody stop clowning around and get to the shield facility.

NICK (as Neato): You’re right, karma. I can tell we’re starting to flounder down here.

CAMERON: [giggles]

[somber music resumes]

HUDSON (as Tink): hey Talon, you wanna, um, carry Kevin for a proper… uh, burial?

NICK (as Talon): Uh… I mean, if the rest of this assault is going on we can come back later if we live. I think our priority is to take care of whatever’s next. You can’t really be carrying… [deep breath] dead comrades around in the middle of a battle.

[music fades]

NICK (as Neato): Well, it looks like the squad’s back together. what do we do now?

LAURA (as Xianna): Did we blow everything up?

NICK: Karma, I think you can answer in on this radio conversation. You’re currently running towards the facility.

CAMERON (as Karma): Artillery is blown up. Artillery still has gun power, but artillery can’t move and isn’t hitting anything important, so I’m running to the shield facility as they… There are a lot of stormtroopers over there.

NICK: You can hear in the background, when Karma is coming in, rapid footsteps and breathing. She is hustling.

CAMERON (as Karma): This rocket launcher is heavy.

NICK: [laughs]

NICK (as Neato): So, the artillery is taken care of. Is there an assault on the shield station?

CAMERON (as Karma): Yeah, like 20 drop pods.

NICK (as Neato): Oh. That’s really bad, actually.

CAMERON (as Karma): Yeah, that’s why I’m running there. Run there. I assume y’all are safe, because you’re talking to me.

NICK (as Neato): Are we safe? Well, most of us. Okay. Well chums, what do you think? Should we head towards the shield facility, try to end this little shindig? By the way, we’ve upgraded to shindig. No, we were already a shindig. It was a hootenanny…

LAURA (as Xianna): Are we not in a hoedown?

NICK (as I think you’re right. I think we’re at a hoedown.

LAURA (as Xianna): You know, I feel like we had a whole system set up for the difference between hootenannies, hoedowns, and shindigs, and I think we have forgotten it completely.

CAMERON (as Karma): I thought hoedowns involved barns.

LAURA (as Xianna): It’s kind of like a rectangle square thing where if it is in a barn it is a hoedown, but not all hoedowns happen in barns.

CAMERON (as Karma): Okay.

LAURA (as Xianna): It’s just that if it is a barn it’s definitely a hoedown.

HUDSON (as Tink): I wanna have lunch.

LAURA (as Xianna): Well, we can’t all have everything we want, so let’s just go kill some people I guess.

NICK (as Neato): Alright, off to the hoedown.

NICK: You all—Gosh. You have Smith and Weathers who did nothing, they’re still in the stairwell [laughter] securing your escape route. Neato, Tink, Xianna, and Talon, and you get to the stairwell and you hear clank, clank, clank. As you all get to the door, HK is there and the barrels of his gun are spinning.

NICK (as HK): Directional Query: Point me at the stormtroopers.

LAURA (as Xianna): We are going that way. Follow us.

NICK (as HK): Expletive deleted.

NICK: As you all run down the stairs past him, and you hear a mechanical (heavy sigh), and the droid starts to head down the stairs after you as you run the other direction.

LAURA (as Xianna): If you had just ignored karma you would have been here first and you could have killed some “meat bags” as you call them, but no.

NICK (as HK): Secondary direction overridden by primary user.

LAURA (as Xianna): I mean, that sounds like your fault, but anyways. I’m sure there will be stormtroopers for you to kill where we are going next.

NICK (as HK): Adjusting direction following percentage for secondary user.

NICK: So, you all are just running straight for the shield facility? You’re the reinforcements?

LAURA: Yeah.

HUDSON: We are the only reinforcements that I’m aware of.

CAMERON: Are we gonna sandwich them though?

NICK: Yeah, 20 drop pods and eight of you.

CAMERON: We got this!

NICK: Okay, so that happens, you all shut off the coms. Karma, you arrive at a scene of, just, it’s a disaster. It’s not going well. These stormtroopers have gotten through all of the barricades. You’re able to climb over the barricades. There are the bodies of both stormtroopers and militia people strewn everywhere. You have a scene like the rubble of the buildings that got hit by the artillery before you were able to destroy it, and some of the resistance militia smooshed in amongst the rubble. You’re reminded of the militia officer from when you first got here that Neato had said that he was with, just gives you a quick flashback to that.

CAMERON: [dramatically] I wonder what was on his holo-recorder.

NICK: [smiling] It doesn’t matter, because it got smooshed. So, you’re able to walk up one of the last barricades, it’s actually the one that you originally entered the parade grounds in, and you can see in front of you three large groups of stormtroopers. They have, they’re not tanks, but it’s like if you took a tank and stripped all the armor off the top and sides and just left the tracks and the big, scary cannon and the heavy repeating blaster on the front, so they’re like these open air vehicles with mobile cover on the front that are slowly advancing towards the shield facility. A majority of the militia troops have fallen back into the large dome that is the shield facility except for some troops who are hulled up in little bunkers made out of sandbags out front. as you run up you see one of these bunkers of sandbags get exploded by one of the cannons, because cannon beats sandbags most of the time. What do you do? This is probably 80-90 stormtroopers with three large pieces of military hardware all moving in three separate groups towards a facility that if they take will open you to orbital bombardment, and you are by yourself. And yes, this is a difficult decision and situation. It’s almost like you had to choose what your priorities were.

CAMERON: Mm-hmm. Weird.

NICK: And that this is what happened to the smallest priority, but also Tink is alive, so you know.

HUDSON: I get on the coms and talk to karma.

HUDSON (as Tink): I believe in you, Karma. If you go in you will survive.

CAMERON (as Karma): Aw, thanks buddy.

NICK: I really like the idea of Karma standing on this barricade, no one’s noticed her yet, there’s flame and smoke and a stormtrooper sprawled over the barricade right next to her, Karma with her hand to her earbud saying “Aw, thanks buddy,” holding her big thermo-sensitive assault rifle.

CAMERON: So, there’s the shield facility, there’s some bunkers in front of it, you said there’s like 90 stormtroopers…

NICK: Yeah.

CAMERON: What is the positioning of the cannon-mobiles in relation to the stormtrooper squads?

NICK: They’re broken into three large groups being led by these three cannons, basically like 30 to a group, and they’re just like spaced equidistant moving their ways up. They’re not moving very quickly, but they’re basically cover that the troopers can hide behind. And they’re sprawled out further back behind it, the cover mostly is protecting the ones that are operating it, but it does make it so they’re able to defend themselves better as they cross this open ground, almost completely negating the advantage of a large, open ground.

CAMERON: I was trying to figure out a way for me to pick off some of them without drawing all of their attention to me while I wait for my friends.

NICK: The other thing that I’ll add to this image as well is that the circle of stormtroopers has moved past the armory tent, so you could potentially make it to the armory tent without being noticed.

CAMERON: Can I sneak to the armory tent then to get something that shoots more than one at a time?

NICK: Yes, you can try and do that. Yeah. Ooh, can we Rambo it? Can we find you a mini gun?

CAMERON: I’m down for a mini gun.

NICK: Okay. Well, you gotta make it to the tent first.

CAMERON: I know, but I’m—

NICK: This is going to be very embarrassing for you to just die in this cinematic thing.

CAMERON: It is. It’s gonna be very sad.

NICK: This is going to be a hard difficulty check, because you are crossing open ground with 80 potential people to see you who are all being very alert, because combat.

CAMERON: But they are all facing the other way.

NICK: Which is why it’s not daunting.

CAMERON: [laughs] Okay. What’s my Stealth? Hmm, that’s a thing. Note to self: Up my Stealth later. I do get two blue dice for my Stalker talents.

NICK: Mm-hmm.

CAMERON: Okay… Four successes, two advantages.

NICK: Yeah, they don’t see you at all. Do you want to spend your advantages that the weapons tent hasn’t been looted in any way and has even some gear that you didn’t notice the first time you were in there?

CAMERON: Yup. Some stuff got returned since we were last here.

NICK: Yeah, in the 30 minutes that it’s been, because you haven’t been gone that long.

HUDSON: [laughs]

CAMERON: Sure. Just so much has happened.

NICK: With stuff being returned, you could get another rocket or two.

CAMERON: If they have any other rockets I’m grabbing them.

NICK: Okay. We’ll say that there are two rockets. You’re  not sure where they came from. You notice there is some stuff missing, like a lot of the rifles and things have been taken, and it’s like there were two rockets under a pile of rifles that you didn’t see before, so you’re able to grab those. Is there anything else you want?

CAMERON: I would like a turret mini gun.

NICK: Like a heavy repeating blaster I think is what they’re called.

CAMERON: Yeah, like one of the ones with the shield in front of it for setting up a turret for defense.

NICK: Yeah, there’s one in there. Moving it by yourself is gonna be pretty dang hard.

CAMERON: It’s okay, I’m strong!

NICK: Okay, so what is your plan?

CAMERON: My plan is, I setup so they’re all in front of me and I’m kind of behind them, angled in a way that my shield is mostly protecting me, and I get on my coms.

[action rock music starts]

CAMERON (as Karma): Hey everybody, I’m here. If y’all could hurry up that would be super fantastic.

CAMERON: And then I’m gonna take a page out of HK’s book and just start laying down suppressing fire back and forth just so that they can shoot back at me and hit the shield, but they can’t really approach. Just trying to mow down as many stormtroopers as possible.

NICK: Make me a heavy weapons roll.

CAMERON: I get a blue die because they haven’t gone yet this encounter.

NICK: [laughs] That’s true.

CAMERON: What’s the difficulty?

NICK: This one’s gonna be hard, because it’s you versus 90 people, and you should know, like, you’re not gonna win this. You can hope to slow them down.

CAMERON: Oh yeah. I’m just- I’m providing a distraction [laughs] so hopefully some of the people who are still alive inside can do something. I’m not gonna aim though, because I’m not aiming at a specific person, I’m just shooting in general. Is that fair?

NICK: Yeah, I think that’s fair.

CAMERON: Seems like a reason not to use the blue die. I got two successes and two advantages.

NICK: So I think this plays out like you said. Not all of the assault force turns around, but a decent amount of them do. They seem very well-coordinated, and you can see that there are several stormtrooper officers mixed in. Very quickly you take some of them out and you’re able to strafe back and forth, and the cannons do stop advancing, and very quickly there’s some hand signs exchanged and you can hear on the stormtrooper com that you still have orders being exchanged, and roughly a third of the troops turn around and start firing back. You can feel your large repeating blaster heating up and taking damage. You know you’re gonna have to bail out of this pretty soon, because you’re getting shot by like roughly 30 people. This is not designed to do that. It’s supposed to take errant shots while you do stuff. But you’re able to slow them down for probably a solid couple of minutes with that and your setup time. The gun does start to disintegrate around you.

Now, I will make you a deal. You can do sizable damage to this group but the gun is going to explode on you, or once they start to concentrate fire you can bail and run for cover but you’re not going to have damaged the group much.

CAMERON: I’m sticking it out.

NICK: You’re sticking it out. Cool. So, you’re shooting into this group and blaster fire is hitting it. What actually happens, the gun doesn’t explode, the shielding starts to melt and boil away – kind of like when Han Solo is let out of the carbonite and it peels back and it’s all weird and metal and slurpy, it’s a weird noise.

CAMERON: And wet.

NICK: And wet for some reason.

HUDSON: Moist.

NICK & CAMERON: [sounds of disgust]

NICK: But that starts to peel back and you’re able to strafe back and forth a couple more times, and a couple of shots make it through the cover and hit you. You’re going to take a shot from a large group of stormtroopers. That is going to be four yellows versus your defense. It’s gonna be average difficulty. Do you have any Ranged Defense?

CAMERON: No.

NICK: Okay…

CAMERON: I’ll flip a light side to make it harder for them.

NICK: That’s fair.

CAMERON: Can I use my advantages to give them a black die?

NICK: Sure. Yeah, you can give them a black die.

CAMERON: Okay.

NICK: Roll it.

CAMERON: [giggles nervously] Oh shit… Well, that’s interesting. Three successes, a threat, a triumph, and a despair!

NICK: So they have a despair…

CAMERON: Uh-huh. [laughs]

NICK: Wow. That’s actually very good for you. That’s interesting that the most accessible part of this is that they screw up. So… [laughs]

CAMERON: That was a really good use of my own light side point. [laughs]

NICK: Yeah. So, three successes, you’re going to take 15 damage, which is a lot.

CAMERON: Meh.

NICK: How much health do you have left?

CAMERON: I mean, I have 4 health left.

NICK: Oh yeah, you’re fine.

CAMERON: I’m fine though.

NICK: You’re like coughing blood from the corner of your mouth.

CAMERON: It’s totally fine.

NICK: So, roll the crit that they did on you.

CAMERON: An 86.

NICK: Which is what?

CAMERON: Which is… Compromised: +1 difficulty until the end of the encounter, so an extra purple die, for everything.

NICK: Okay. So you’ve been shot, your gun has been turned to slag, you are getting pinned down. The despair is that in the hubbub of all of the shooting and things, while you were getting hit and you fall back, your gun overloads and shoots three very, very powerful charges into the middle cannon and it explodes.

CAMERON: Huzzah.

NICK: So, you have taken one of these large cannons down.

CAMERON: [silly] How many, approximately, stormtroopers would you say are now deceased?

NICK: Like 15-ish, for the explosion, and then like… since you stayed in it, probably you took down like 20 besides that, so you did, as advertised, a sizable chunk. They were not expecting for a large emplacement to open up at their unprotected flank. But, you are hit, you fall backwards off of the embankment that you had setup, the stormtroopers are pretty close to the shield facility, because it took you a while to drag this big, heavy gun there quietly and not be seen, so you are laying, your feet are up on this embankment, you’re kind of upside down, blood is trickling out of your mouth, you have a massive set of scorch marks across the chest of your armor, and you see – kind of upside down, we see from karma’s view, just the assorted feet of the rest of the squad and their assorted NPCs walking up to you upside down.

CAMERON (as Karma): Oh hey, y’all.

[music stops abruptly]

HUDSON (as Tink): Hey.

LAURA (as Xianna): Ello.

NICK: [smiling] You all, as you went up, saw Karma with this big explosion, the sound of shattering metal, and then saw Karma get tossed backwards off of this embankment.

HUDSON (as Tink): Karma, stand still, I know how to do this best. Close your eyes.

CAMERON (as Karma): I’m… I’m laying down.

HUDSON (as Tink): Oh. Close your eyes.

CAMERON (as Karma): Okay.

HUDSON: I hold her down by her neck and get two stim packs at once in one hand and just stab them into her.

[laughter]

LAURA (as Xianna): Oh, I don’t—Okay. I mean…

HUDSON (as Tink): No-no-no, if you do it like this, then it flows through the blood differently.

CAMERON (as Karma): Ow!

CAMERON: [laughs]

LAURA (as Xianna): If you say so.

NICK (as HK): Assertion: Boss Man is “becoming medicine.”

HUDSON (as Tink): Ah, yes.

NICK (as HK): Boss Man, did I say that as instructed?

HUDSON (as Tink): Yes, thank you, thank you. Did you read the for-ward?

NICK (as HK): I did not read your textbook. You just told me to say “becoming medicine.”

LAURA (as Xianna): The “for-ward?”

HUDSON (as Tink): Yeah, the thing that’s in the front of the book, the for-ward.

LAURA (as Xianna): The forward.

HUDSON (as Tink): The for-ward.

LAURA (as Xianna): The forward.

CAMERON (as Karma): No, when you’re talking about medical texts it’s for-ward, because hospital wards.

HUDSON (as Tink): Yeah.

LAURA (as Xianna): Nooo~!

[laughter]

CAMERON: And Karma rolls her head to look at Hank.

CAMERON (as Karma): [dazed] I think I’m winning on the stormtrooper count. I’d have to math, but I’m pretty sure.

NICK (as HK): Debate: There were no witnesses for your body count. Doesn’t count.

CAMERON (as Karma): But I’ve got bodies.

NICK: [laughs]

CAMERON: Karma starts to get up as the stim packs kick in.

NICK: Yeah. You can see- It’s not a great move. There’s definitely instructions all over these stim packs that are like “use individually.” The burn marks do lose a lot of the angry, red swelling, but they also are discolored and the skin is not in a good place. Karma is up and moving because mechanically that heals freaking 9 wounds, because it’s 5 and then 4, but you’re probably gonna have a really wicked come-down off of this once we’re done.

CAMERON (as Karma): [dazed] I’m fine. Let’s get going.

NICK: So, you are all standing in a group.

NICK (as Neato): So, how goes it on the home front?

CAMERON (as Karma): I killed one of their cannons. I think, uh… approximately 35 stormtroopers.

NICK (as Neato): Thirty-five?!

CAMERON (as Karma): Yeah.

NICK (as Neato): That’s the Emperor’s dozen.

LAURA (as Xianna): Excuse me?!

CAMERON (as Karma): What?

NICK (as Neato): An Emperor’s dozen, 35 stormtroopers.

LAURA (as Xianna): That makes no sense.

NICK (as Neato): You make no sense.

NICK: Neato belly crawls up this embankment and looks over.

NICK (as Neato): Oh wow, there’s still, uh, quite a smorgasbord of stormtroopers out there.

CAMERON (as Karma): Oh yeah, I was just entertaining myself while I waited for y’all.

NICK (as Neato): That’s some kind of entertainment.

LAURA (as Xianna): Karma, I do not know if killing people is entertainment, and I feel like if I am the one saying moral ethics at the moment… something’s wrong with that, right?

LAURA: Turns to Tink.

LAURA (as Xianna): That’s wrong, right? Heh.

HUDSON (as Tink): Wrong, right. Left, right. Up, down. You know.

LAURA (as Xianna): You were not listening, were you?

HUDSON (as Tink): Ehh.

NICK (as Neato): Morality is in the eye of the sarlacc.

CAMERON (as Karma): What?!

LAURA (as Xianna): I don’t think sarlaccs have eyes.

NICK (as Neato): Exactly!

CAMERON (as Karma): [laughing] What?! I can’t handle this.

[laughter]

LAURA (as Xianna): Ohh. Are you a nihilist? I understand. Heh.

HUDSON (as Tink): Nihilist? Okay, so morals are subjunction to each person.

CAMERON (as Karma): Guys, guys, guys—

NICK: Jesus.

[laughter]

LAURA (as Xianna): Why am I the philosopher in this group?! What?!

CAMERON (as Karma): We can have this conversation later on our ship, in the hot tub, after we’ve rescued all these people, but for the moment there’s still a smorgasbord – as Neato said – of stormtroopers that are in the way and holding down these poor people who live on this planet and we need to help them, and I’ve had a rough day. Actually, it was like a rough past five minutes, but we should go.

LAURA (as Xianna): Okay, a smorgasbord, so… 74.

HUDSON (as Tink): No-no-no, a smorgasbord is like upper 70s. It’s more of a cornucopia. I’d say below 70.

LAURA (as Xianna): No, no, a smorgasbord is 74 exactly. A cornucopia is just like around 60, 70, 80.

CAMERON (as Karma): Okay, then it’s not quite a smorgasbord then, because I think it’s 55 and two cannons.

NICK (as Neato): It’s more of a buffet, really.

LAURA (as Xianna): That’s not—That’s a buffet.

HUDSON (as Tink): That is a buffet.

CAMERON (as Karma): Anyhow. HK, look what I found for you, all of these stormtroopers.

NICK: We see everybody coming up the embankment at once. You do have a pretty sizable group. We’ve got Xianna, HK, Tink, Karma, Specialist Talon, Neato, Smith and Weathers, so there’s eight people. We have all of you coming up and doing the dramatic superhero silhouette thing along this, and we see over your shoulders to all of the stormtroopers down below, and everybody poses with their weapons ready to go, and HK says:

NICK (as HK): Emotional Statement: If I had eyes I would be crying right now.

NICK: And that’s the end of the episode!

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.

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.

Tabletop Squadron Transcript, Season 1 Episode 42:
Infiltration Station

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.

Not a ton of announcements this week, space friends, just a friendly reminder that if you leave a review for the show on iTunes or back us on Patreon I’ll read your name in the intro and say something nice about you.

Music this week is Susie the Cat – Boss by Checkie Brown and The Third man Theme by Rat City Blues Brass.

Now let’s get into the episode.

##

NICK: Hello! Welcome to Episode 42 of Tabletop Squadron, the answer to life, the universe, and everything. I’m Nick, your host and game master. We’re gonna go around the table, everybody introduce themselves and say who they’re going to be playing today, starting with Hudson.

HUDSON: Hi. I’m Hudson, and I’m playing Tink, a Gigoran slicer.

NICK: Ooh~ Up next we’ve got Cameron.

CAMERON: Hello. I am Cameron, and I am playing Karma Nailo, a very smart mouse.

NICK: Oh, I get it.

CAMERON: Yeah.

NICK: Because you’re referencing the classic Douglas Adams novel.

CAMERON: Indeed, I am.

NICK: Wonderful.

HUDSON: Oh—Is that the… little house on a prairie?

NICK: Yep, you got it.

[laughter]

LAURA: Holy shit, Hudson!

CAMERON: What?!

LAURA: What?!

HUDSON: [laughing] I was joking.

CAMERON: Okay, that’s Laura Ingalls Wilder.

HUDSON: [laughs]

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

LAURA: I’m Laura and I play Xianna’fan, a Twi’lek smuggler. I was gonna say ‘and thanks for all the fish,’ but I feel like just nothing can go after what Hudson just said,, [laughter] so it doesn’t seem funny anymore.

HUDSON: I ruined it.

LAURA: You did.

NICK: No, you made it best.

HUDSON: [laughs]

LAURA: I don’t know…

NICK: So, before we get started with the episode, let’s go ahead and do the Destiny Roll!

CAMERON: One dark side.

HUDSON: Two dark side.

LAURA: Two light side.

CAMERON: Thank you, Laura!

NICK: Why? What’s wrong with some dark side points?

CAMERON: I just don’t want all dark side points, because we’re actually gonna roll this episode.

NICK: Maybe!

CAMERON: We’re probably gonna get shot at, so we have to roll this episode.

NICK: Maybe.

CAMERON: Probably.

HUDSON: We need more planning time.

CAMERON: [chuckles]

NICK: So, jumping into what happened last episode… You walked across town with Neato, found the resistance militia in the city of Sart over by the shield generation complex, came up with a battle plan, decided that Tink was going to split up with a group of engineers to try and do something technology related, and Karma, HK, Xianna, and Smith, and Weathers, the two Sartian Human commandos, were going to try to go behind enemy lines and blow up the enemy artillery and maybe steal one.

CAMERON: Yeah. Let’s steal their cannons.

HUDSON: And Neato’s with me.

NICK: And yup, Tink has Neato. Am I forgetting anything?

CAMERON: The general was not impressed.

NICK: No. General Karthage was not impressed.

HUDSON: We’re an S-Corp, right?

NICK: [laughs]

CAMERON: We are an S-Corp. ADD Enterprises, Afternoon Delight Depot.

NICK: Karma and Xianna and Hank and Smith and Weathers, as they walk into a large white canvas tent, there are weapons racks on the walls, and Smith and Weathers grab a couple of heavy blaster pistols and start slotting them into their belts. Weathers says, “Look, grab anything you think is important.” He grabs a big backpack and starts putting satchel charges in it. “Obviously we’re gonna need these, but the world is your oyster. We’re only getting one shot at this. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em, as the general would say.”

CAMERON: “All of y’all, rebreathers, we’re going swimming. HK, not you, no rebreather.”

NICK: “I will not need one as I do not have lungs and I will not be going in the water.”

CAMERON: “Correct. Somebody’s gotta cover our exit.”

NICK: “Okay.”

CAMERON: [laughs] “Thank you for the acknowledgement, HK.”

NICK: “Acknowledged.” Xianna, do you grab anything special? Basically you can ask for any kind of weapon you want and it’s probably in this tent. They have military grade hardware here.

LAURA: Xianna grabs some grenades…

NICK: Okay.

LAURA: …that are already on my character sheet, so I’m just gonna wipe away the little line through them. Ha-ha. Then, some thermal detonators?

NICK: Sure.

LAURA: Can I have four?

NICK: Sure.

LAURA: Cool.

CAMERON: Hello, yes, I would like a rocket launcher, please.

NICK: There is one.

CAMERON: Is a rocket launcher Ranged: Heavy?

NICK: Yeah.

CAMERON: Okay. [laughs]

HUDSON: But there’s no rockets, just potatoes.

CAMERON: Aw, that’s fine.

NICK: [laughs] Yeah, there’s a rocket launcher with one extra rocket. It looks kind of like a stinger missile launcher looks, if you know what that is, but basically it’s a big tube. You know those carpentry angles they use that’s like a metal ruler with a crossbar with the level in it?

CAMERON: Yes. Yeah.

NICK: That’s basically what this rocket launcher looks like, just make it swooshy and silver and blue.

CAMERON: Okay, and if it has an extra rocket then I would have two rockets total?

NICK: Yep, two shots, that’s all they have. There’s a few blank spaces where you can see there were a couple more of these, and Smith walks up and shakes his head. “Yeah, a couple of the other commandos thought they could take out the artillery from the edge of the bay and we never saw them again. I guess it didn’t work since we’re still getting bombarded.”

CAMERON: “Alright, well be on the lookout for those rocket launchers. I would like more rockets if we see them.”

NICK: “Okay. I’ll see what we can do.”

CAMERON: “Just as we’re walking, just keep an eye out.”

NICK: HK looks at the walls and says, “Evaluation: I have no need for these organic weapons as I am already fully equipped.” His gun barrel spins a little bit in his hands and then he just kind of goes back to standing there. They all grab rebreathers. Do you want anything else?

CAMERON: Do they have any visual equipment?

NICK: They’ve got like electro-binoculars and stuff.

CAMERON: Yeah, let’s grab a pair of binoculars.

NICK: Sure.

CAMERON: Just for viewing.

NICK: Xianna already has her scanner goggles.

LAURA: Yes. Xianna’s also like, on some of her pockets that, sometimes you can see the pocket, sometimes you can’t, but it looks like she’s zipping some of the pockets up. Heh. Although I guess zippers don’t really exist in Star Wars.

NICK: She’s just running her fingers along them and they’re sealing, however that works.

LAURA: She’s sealing her pockets in some way.

CAMERON: She’s closing up the Ziploc on all of her pockets. [laughs]

LAURA: Yeah, she’s sealing them because she does not want the granola bars in her pockets to get damp.

CAMERON: That would be gross.

NICK: Yeah, her concern is the granola bars.

LAURA: Well yeah.

CAMERON: Yeah.

LAURA: And also all the drugs.

NICK: [laughs]

LAURA: You know, and the binders. You don’t want them rusting.

CAMERON: And you don’t want the fuzzy binders to get wet.

LAURA: Yeah, because it’s really hard to dry them and not get the fur matted in a weird way. If you’ve ever thrown a fuzzy blanket into the dryer and it gets matted it’s just never fun.

CAMERON: Mm-hmm.

NICK: So, you trot back outside. Weathers has his backpack with satchel charges, he’s got his two pistols and his carbine, he looks pretty much set to go. Smith has the same general load out but he doesn’t have a back pack on. They slap a couple of scout helmets on, so they’re the ones that have the plasteel rings and then the soft cover on the top, because that makes sense for a helmet.

CAMERON: Yeah.

NICK: It’s Star Wars. It’s like the ones that they wore on Endor. They buckle them on and they don’t salute, but they stiffen straightly like they were going to salute and then remember that you’re not the boss of them. “Alright. What’s the plan?” We’re gonna cut away to Tink and Neato as they walk into this very large shield generator facility.

So, the whole facility, Tink, is metal gangplanks and ladders, and there’s a big, glowing electric core that’s in the middle. It’s got spinning concentric rings in a blue-green light in the middle. It’s some sort of reactor. You can see 70s style computer panels lining it at various levels. You can see a group of engineering looking types a few levels up on one of these gangplanks. You can’t hear them over the hum of the generator, but they’re obviously having an argument and pointing at it. Neato says, “Well, it looks like it’s time to go find us some patsies, chum.”

HUDSON: “Alright. They look patsy enough to me.”

NICK: “Lead on, McDuff.”

HUDSON: I walk up the stairs toward the engineers, and when I get close enough I say, “Alright twerps, we’re going in!”

NICK: “Hey…! What? Who are you?”

HUDSON: “Sorry, sorry, bad start. I’m Tink, and—“

NICK: ‘The Gigoran slicer~’

[laughter]

HUDSON: ‘I’m Tink, the Gigoran slicer~!’

NICK: [laughs]

HUDSON: “I’m Tink. As you can see, I’m a Gigoran, not a Wookie, a Gigoran. Get it right.”

NICK: ‘I thought he was a Woo—“ “Shut up, man!”

HUDSON: “Nope. Nope.”

CAMERON: [whispering] White Wookie. White Wookie.

HUDSON: “I’m a Gigoran, and I’m a slicer, and I’m here to recruit the cream of the crop to help us on our mission!”

NICK: Well, I don’t know about that. our job is to keep the generator running so we don’t get bombed into our component atoms from orbit.”

HUDSON: “That was your job. Now it’s not.”

NICK: “Under whose orders?”

HUDSON: “Neato?”

NICK: “… What?”

HUDSON: “Tell them whose orders it’s under.”

NICK: “Yeah! It’s under the orders of the main fizz bang, the leader, the generalissimo.”

“… What?”

“General Karthage. She said we can take two of you on a mission that totally won’t result in our impending demise.”

HUDSON: “Who wants to come~?”

NICK: “My job is to replace the batteries…” It’s a very small person with big, thick glasses that was talking, and he climbs into an air vent and disappears.

HUDSON: “Not you, punk! Oh—They’re gone.”

NICK: So you’re left with three engineers. They’re all Human. There is a very skinny, lanky man with blonde hair and what looks like he’s trying to grow a mustache but it won’t grow out. He’s the one that was talking to you originally. There is a very, very pale man with long, long, long dark hair that goes down to his waist. He is studiously studying his fingertips and won’t make eye contact with you. Someone shoves him to the side and says, “I volunteer.” There is an average height woman wearing what looks like padded scientific armor, so it’s like battle armor but it has extra pockets and things and you can see technology stuck in different places. ‘If we’re finally gonna push the Imperials out of our city, I want in.” She starts to salute, realizes none of you are military and stops. She grabs the guy with the wispy mustache and says, “So is he!”

“Wha–? Uh… Crap.” [chuckles]

HUDSON: “As Neato would say, I like your moxie!”

NICK: ‘Yes! They’re mo—Aww, you beat me to it.”

HUDSON: [laughs]

NICK: So, she straps on a helmet and says, “Specialist Talon reporting for duty, and this is Specialist Kevin.”

HUDSON: “Ha!”

NICK: “Yep. My name’s Matt Kevin. Thank you. It’s a family name.”

HUDSON: “It’s a… It’s a name.”

NICK: “Well, I guess you said you said you needed two. That’s us. We’ll just leave the other two here. Hopefully the generator won’t explode.”

HUDSON: “Get some pep in your step. Come on.”

NICK: “That’s MY line!”

HUDSON: “Listen, you’re rubbing off on me.”

NICK: “We could sit here bumping gums all day, but we found ourselves a real button man, a real ringer. We’re gonna go out there and take it to the Imperials.”

Specialist Talon goes, ‘Umm… What?” She looks at Tink.

HUDSON: “Listen. Neato’s gonna say stuff, and you won’t always understand it, but just know it’s 110% positive energy.”

NICK: “Either way, grab your heaters and let’s go!”

She says, “What?”

“Heaters. Your boom sticks. Your death dealers.”

“Oh, my gun?”

“Yeah! Grab your heaters!”

HUDSON: [laughs]

NICK: She goes and she grabs what looks like two service pistols off of a workbench and tosses one to Specialist Kevin who almost drops it but slots it into what looks like a work belt that just happens to have a pocket that fits a blaster pistol in. Talon says, “Okay, we’re ready to go, but you still haven’t said where we’re going or what we’re doing.” And we’re gonna cut back to Karma, Xianna, and HK. Did you all leave the camp?

LAURA: Probably.

CAMERON: Yeah.

NICK: Alright. You’re walking, or I would assume you’re like hustling through the alleyways.

CAMERON: Yeah. We’re doing the video game run while you squat so that no one sees you.

NICK: Yeah, from cover to cover, and covering each other, right?

CAMERON: Yeah. Doing all sorts of weird hand signals.

NICK: There’s just a lot of waist-high walls that you can dramatically slam your backs against into and then peek over for cover.

LAURA: There’s definitely a shot of someone doing an actual hand signal of ‘okay, two of us are gonna move ahead,’ and then Xianna looks to everyone and does a hand symbol and then moves, and everyone’s like ‘that didn’t mean anything. Right?’

NICK: [laughs]

CAMERON: [laughs] ‘Wait. Where is she going?’

LAURA: ‘I’m pretty sure that was something highly inappropriate she just did. What?!’

CAMERON: [laughs]

NICK: [laughs] Weathers goes, “Was that aimed at us, or is she just talking about her plans after this?”

CAMERON: “Definitely the plans after this. Come on.”

NICK: ‘Oh, okay.” They take off.

You’re hustling through these alleyways and HK says, “Tactical Evaluation: We are beginning to approach enemy incursions. What is the plan?”

CAMERON: “So we need to get to the cannons. We need to get behind the line and then go take a swim.”

LAURA: “Are we going to sneak past them or shoot our way through? My vote is sneak, but um…”

CAMERON: “I mean… I like sneak, killing if necessary. I would like to not draw more troops to this area.”

NICK: So, Weathers jogs up, and you’re peeking around a corner, and you’re beginning to see single scouts riding swoop bikes around. They’re a lot closer than they were before. Weathers ducks back around the corner. “So, are you planning on swimming with that rocket launcher, or…?”

CAMERON: “Yeah.”

NICK: “Okay… if that’s the plan.” Go ahead and roll me a Stealth check, please.

HUDSON: First roll in the last two and a half hours of this campaign!

CAMERON: Nice!

NICK: Hey, you know, we’re telling stories here… and sometimes I forget the dice exist.

HUDSON: [laughs]

NICK: I’m gonna start making you roll Education to understand what Neato’s slang means.

[laughter]

LAURA: What was the difficulty?

NICK: This one’s gonna be hard. You are trying to get past military patrols. Also, I wanna flip a dark side point. Upgrade that difficulty for me, please. Two purples and a red.

CAMERON: Okay. Can I give us a blue die? I can see heat signatures through walls with my scope on my blaster.

LAURA: And I have scanner goggles.

CAMERON: To assist with just avoiding things around corners and stuff.

NICK: Let’s do it this way. You won’t have the blue die, but if you with your heat scope and Xianna with her scanner goggles are taking point and telling people when to go and not go, I won’t make the other three roll.

CAMERON: Okay. That seems fair.

NICK: Because HK will absolutely fail that check.

CAMERON: Yeah, okay.

LAURA: Okay.

NICK: Does that seem like a fair trade?

CAMERON: Yeah.

NICK: Okay.

CAMERON: Karma has three successes and one advantage.

LAURA: One success, one advantage.

[smooth digital jazz music starts]

NICK: Nice. You are pretty capable of getting around these stormtrooper patrols. They are not expecting a small unit to be moving towards them. They’re expecting organized and large resistance. So, describe to me you sneaking as a group past several patrols of troops in quick succession.

CAMERON: As you mentioned, HK is not sneaky, so I think it’s Xianna and Karma are being incredibly sneaky and talented and moving like ghosts, and Smith and Weathers have a lot of training, they’re doing good at the same time. We keep getting lucky with like, a loud noise happens as HK clunks across an alley or something. We have to walk on metal where his metal feet would make a lot of noise, but stormtroopers are walking past at the same time so the feet sounds, like…

LAURA: Or timing it to a cannon blast, or just doing that really typical thing of Xianna picks up a rock on the ground and throws it so the stormtroopers look a different direction so that they can have HK just walk by.

CAMERON: [laughs]

NICK: Heh. Okay. You do that. You end up… The bay is surrounded by a wide boulevard, and there’s a low brick wall, and then sandy sloping beaches that go down to this quiet bay. You notice that you’re able to get to the far side of this road and you are in a small café up against the walls behind a shattered window, and you all crouch, and you get a call directly to your com units from HK so it’s not out loud but you can hear it. “Irritated Statement: We’ve been doing a lot of sneaking and not a lot of ventilating organics.”

LAURA: “Well—[exhales] Hank, you have to sneak first and then kill later.”

CAMERON: “If you had a sword this wouldn’t be an issue. Swords are quiet, as long as the screaming doesn’t—You know, swords aren’t that quiet, but swords have the ability to be quiet whereas your blaster does not.”

LAURA: “Wait. Karma, do your swords scream?”

CAMERON: [laughs]

LAURA: “Swords are pretty quiet I feel like.”

CAMERON: “No. I was more talking the people that you were… stabbing.”

NICK: “Verification: Vibro-blades do make an extremely high-pitched whining noise.”

CAMERON: “But it’s—“

LAURA: “Okay, but would you classify that as like a scream?”

CAMERON: “And it’s still quieter than a blaster.”

NICK: HK just kind of bobbles his head like ‘yeah, I guess you got a point.’

[music fades out]

You look up over this shattered windowsill and you see that two of these sort of modified artillery platforms have actually made beach landing and the other three are probably still 100 meters out in the water but are slowly moving forward, so these are slowly grinding their way up the beach. They’re maybe going like 3 kilometers an hour. It’s not very fast, but they are moving and then pausing to fire periodically. From here, the noise of them firing is extremely loud. It leaves your ear cones ringing, Xianna, and people with ears, they are ringing. HK’s audio receptors are ringing. Whatever.

CAMERON: [laughs]

LAURA: The phones are ringing. The bells are ringing. Everything is ringing.

NICK: Yeah. It’s very ringy. So, you’re able to see that these artillery platforms, two of them have made beach fall. There are probably about ten stormtroopers scattered around. They’re more focused on trying to make sure that the sand doesn’t gum up the repulsers. It has a full contingent of repulsers that you would see a star ship using, but they seem to be misfiring, not at full power, and they’re barely keeping these things off the ground at all. if there is a sand castle, this thing will crush the sand castle because it is too low. So, Weathers ducks back down, you can see sweat streaming down his face, and he says, “So, we’re here. You gonna use that rocket launcher and then we run, or what?”

CAMERON: “Yes. Okay, let’s split up the explosives, because they’re all in the backpack right now. Everybody take some. These are to blow up the ones in the water. We split.”

NICK: “Okay.” They pass them out. There’s enough for everybody to have two. Do you give some to HK too?

LAURA: Well, we don’t want him to feel left out.

CAMERON: “HK, do you want some? You could go place them somewhere on land.”

NICK: HK looks at you all. One of his optical sensors blinks out and then blinks back on. “Humorous Laugh: Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.”

CAMERON: “Okay, so that’s a no. Alright.”

HUDSON: [laughs]

NICK: “Yes.”

CAMERON: “Oh, yes? It’s a yes?”

NICK: “Yes. Please give me the explosives.”

CAMERON: “Oh okay.”

NICK: “I will take all of the explosives.”

CAMERON: “No, not all of them. We need some, too. Sharing is caring, buddy. We’ve talked about this.”

NICK: “Acknowledged.”

CAMERON: “Here you go. Here are your bombs.”

NICK: “Ha, ha, ha.” He straps them to his waist.

CAMERON: “Okay. We do need to work on your evil laugh. We can work on that later. Alright, so you three,” she says pointing at Xianna, Smith, and Weathers, “if y’all wanna go take the farthest two of the water ships and blow those up, as soon as I fire this rocket launcher they’re going to know where I am, so if y’all wanna get in the water now before everyone turns around and looks at me, that might be a good move. I will try to take out the two on land and then swim to the one in the middle.”

LAURA: “Okie.” How far are we from the water?

NICK: It’s probably 30 yards of beach.

LAURA: Okay.

NICK: No one is particularly looking at you all, and you are not directly in the path. You’re able to get further off to the side. I would either need another Stealth check or a force die roll on is anyone looking at you.

LAURA: I’ll do another Stealth.

NICK: Okay. It’s the same difficulty. It’s hard, with—How many dark side points do I still have?

CAMERON: Two.

NICK: Yeah, we’ll flip that again.

LAURA: I don’t fall prone, so we’re good there.

NICK: Aww.

CAMERON: [chuckles]

LAURA: Four successes and a threat.

NICK: And a threat. Just one threat?

LAURA: Just one singular threat.

NICK: One lonely threat.

LAURA: The water is very cold.

[laughter]

LAURA: Xianna sneaks onto the beach and then starts getting into the water and then just yells back as she starts running back up the beach. “No it is too cold! Too cold! No, no, no!”

CAMERON: [giggling] I was gonna say your head tails shrink.

NICK: [groaning and laughing] That’s not how those work.

CAMERON: [laughs]

HUDSON: [laughs] That’s only Sabos’s.

NICK: Ugh…

CAMERON: [laughs] Ew.

NICK: So for your threat we’ll say Xianna and Weathers and Smith all run down the beach, you dive in. Xianna, as you dive in, the water hits your rebreather that you have tucked into your mouth and you take your first breath and it tastes very ozoney as you breathe in.

LAURA: Yeah, yeah, okay. Cool.

NICK: Like, the balance is maybe off on it or they hadn’t scrubbed the filters, I’m sure it’ll be fine, as you swim deeper into the water, but you’re able to make it all the way through with no problems. So Karma, did you stay on land and then you were gonna shoot the rocket?

CAMERON: For the moment, yes.

NICK: Okay.

CAMERON: “Okay, HK, I need you to serve as a distraction.”

NICK: “Affirmative.”

CAMERON: Okay. You said that there were two that were coming up on land? They were kind of slowly making their way up the beach?

NICK: Yeah.

CAMERON: Okay.

NICK: And the other three are approaching land, they’re just further out.

CAMERON: They’re just still in the water. Okay. “So what I wanna do, I’mma need to shoot one of these and then I’m gonna need to reload the rocket launcher before I can get to the second one, so I will shoot the far one, then if you could lay cover fire while I get the reload happening I’ll shoot the second one.

NICK: “Affirmative. Would you like my tactical placement in the same building or just setup a crossfire?”

CAMERON: “Probably crossfire.”

NICK: “Affirmative.” And he just takes off. He runs out of the building. He stays pretty low, he’s pretty quiet. Xianna, you can still hear, over the coms you hear a crackle of “Tactical Statement: Give me 45 seconds to create a crow’s nest.” You see him start climbing up an interior building staircase.

CAMERON: I think we probably patched Smith and Weathers into our group coms as well so that when they’re in the water they’re not accidentally blowing up one of the cannons while the other person is still right next to it.

NICK: Yeah. From Smith and Weathers you just hear, [long inhale] bubble-bubble-bubble.

CAMERON: [laughs]

NICK: Because you can’t talk underwater, that’s hard, but they can hear.

CAMERON: Yup, but they can hear.

NICK: Yeah. We’re gonna cut back to Neato, Tink, Talon and Kevin. So, you are leaving the military camp and Neato says, “So, what was the schematic again? What’s the plan? What’s the fizz bang? What’s the wizzle-wozzle?”

HUDSON: “I was hoping that we could collaborate on that.”

NICK: “Not inspiring a heaping helping of confidence there, chum.”

HUDSON: “What I meant to say was, we’re going in!”

NICK: “What does going in mean, exactly?”

HUDSON: “Well, I’m glad you asked, I was ready for this moment. What we’re gonna do is jam their communications, Step 1. Step 2, shut down all of their weapon systems. Step 3, profit.”

CAMERON: [laughs]

NICK: Kevin goes, “Man, I like the profit part. Are we privatizing here? What’s going on?”

HUDSON: “We’re an incorporation as I might have mentioned earlier.”

NICK: “S-Corp, right?”

HUDSON: “yes. Yes!”

NICK: “Okay.” [laughs]

HUDSON: “You could be a part of it too if this goes off well.”

NICK: “Nah, this is starting to sound a little pyramid schemey.”

HUDSON: “if you want to come to my house I’ll talk to you about Tupperware, but now is not the time.”

NICK: [laughs] Talon says, “Hey, if we could focus, we’re going into a life or death situation here. If your goal is to try to attack the electronic infrastructure of the Empire, the only bet we have is the technological sector to the west of the bay. I’m assuming that’s where you’re taking us.”

HUDSON: “Yes, that’s exactly where I’m taking you and you’re actually incorrect; life, death or purgatory are the three options.”

NICK: [laughs] Talon and Kevin fall into step behind you and Neato, Tink, and Neato says, “Alright, let’s get to stepping, chums,” and you take off into the city. Are you trying to be sneaky? Are you trying to be fast? What is your plan here, Tink?

HUDSON: We’re trying to be fast and sneaky!

NICK: Alright, roll me a Stealth check, then.

HUDSON: What’s the difficulty?

NICK: It’s hard. Flip me my last dark side point there.

HUDSON: You’re right it’s hard.

NICK: God damn it. That was good! [subtly sarcastic]

HUDSON: So it’s a red?

NICK: Two purple and a red, but what we’ll do is I’ll give you a blue die for Neato being with you, because he is very good at this and he is used to being with people who are not as good as him, namely Talon and Kevin, so he’ll help you compensate.

HUDSON: Hold on, I gotta parse this…

NICK: [chuckles]

HUDSON: A triumph with two advantages. [laughs]

NICK: Yep… Well… Um, good. Great. Okay… So, with your triumph, would you like to spend the triumph that you see them before they see you?

HUDSON: Yes.

NICK: Okay. You are running along this alley and Neato stops to help Specialist Kevin get up after he’s tripped, and he turns and he goes, “Wait, that alley has an ambush.”

[laughter]

[slow plucky music starts, turns into peppy jazz]

NICK: You turn around and there’s four stormtroopers who are setup with sandbags and guns in the alley that you turned down. They’re not touching their guns, they’re leaning against a wall talking. That’s the triumph, so they don’t just shoot you in the face immediately. But yeah, we’re gonna need you to go ahead and roll initiative. You’ll get one action before they start doing stuff. The current layout, you’re in the head of an alley, they see you, they’re not next to their weapons. You’ve got Specialist Talon right behind you and then Neato and Specialist Kevin are about 20 meters behind you.

HUDSON: So Vigilance?

NICK: Yep.

HUDSON: Okay.

CAMERON: What do the other buddies need to roll?

NICK: Neato is two yellows and a green.

HUDSON: Three successes and an advantage, unless there’s difficulty, which I don’t think there is in initiatives.

NICK: Nope, there isn’t.

HUDSON: Okay.

CAMERON: Neato has four successes, one advantage.

NICK: Oh shit. The two kiddos are both a green and a yellow.

CAMERON: Kiddo 1 is two successes, one advantage.

NICK: We’ll just have them both go on that one.

CAMERON: Okay. What are stormtroopers?

NICK: There’s four of them, so… These are shore troopers, so two yellows and a green. They’ll go as a group.

CAMERON: Three successes.

NICK: Ooh boy. Neato goes first, then Tink, then stormtroopers, then the kiddos. Alright, so Neato goes, “Wait, there’s an ambush down there!” and like drops Kevin, because he was half holding him up, just lets him go, he falls flat on his face. He goes running around the corner and he does a baseball slide and pulls his rifle up and goes to shoot between you and Talon and try to hit them. I’m going to need three yellows. It’s an average difficulty, because he’s medium range, but add a black die because he’s shooting through his friends and doing a super cool thing.

HUDSON: [laughs]

CAMERON: Can he aim for a blue die?

NICK: Sure.

CAMERON: Two successes, one threat.

NICK: Two successes, one threat.

CAMERON: Yes.

NICK: So, his rifle does, we’ll say it does 10. He shoots through two of them and they disintegrate into dust, and he keeps sliding and slams up into the wall of it, because he basically bet it all on being able to do that before anything happened. “Take that, you Imperial fucks.”

[snickering and laughter]

NICK: It’s Tink’s turn.

HUDSON: Alright.

NICK: The stormtroopers are currently scrambling towards their weapons. Two of them are dust.

HUDSON: As I am very skilled in melee, is there any way I can get around them to get behind them?

NICK: They’re like in a dead end alley with cover lined up, but you’re at medium range, so you could go medium to short and short to engaged if you spend a strain to do a double maneuver, so you could get right up on them. Behind them, not so much, but you could get within melee range of them.

HUDSON: That’s fine. I would like to get within melee range of them.

NICK: Okay. So, describe how you sprint down this alley at these dudes.

HUDSON: So, scream at the top of my friggin’ lungs, run with my axe in the air, and go and whack one of them.

NICK: Okay. Do you like jump over the cover or just stand in front of it and do a long swing?

HUDSON: I jump over—You said the cover, you mean like the sandbags or whatever?

NICK: Yeah, yeah.

HUDSON: I jump over the sandbags, do a summersault, and then whack sideways.

CAMERON: [laughs]

NICK: Nice. Okay.

HUDSON: So I took a strain.

NICK: Yep. That’s fine. So, go ahead and do your attack then. Difficulty is average. You know, you would think that stormtroopers would have Melee Defense considering that they’re usually fighting technologically inferior planets to them. That’s why the Ewoks wrecked them so bad, because they have no melee defense.

LAURA: Yeah.

HUDSON: Three failures and three advantages.

CAMERON: What?!

NICK: Huh…

HUDSON: [laughs]

NICK: I’m gonna be honest. I thought this fight was gonna be over very quickly. Um…

HUDSON: Not quite. I get captured, apparently.

[laughter]

NICK: So, you fail. You try to hit them and they just are actually pretty good at hand-to-hand combat. The two of them spread out so they’re on either side of you.

CAMERON: It’s hand-to-axe combat.

NICK: Hand-to-axe combat, my bad.

HUDSON: [snickers]

LAURA: Get it right.

CAMERON: Gah.

NICK: Gosh! There’s a whole chapter about hand-to-axe combat in Edge of the Empire. [laughs]

CAMERON: Exactly.

NICK: So, they spread out. One of them gets behind you and basically just interferes with your swings as you try to attack, and they work really well as a team. It’s like they’re some sort of trained military unit or something. Who’da thunk? Now it’s the stormtroopers turn, and they are going to shoot at you a whole bunch.

HUDSON: Bring it.

NICK: They’re a green and a yellow. It’s easy difficulty because he’s at engaged range to them, and they have carbines so they don’t lose difficulty for being that close. They’re gonna aim… Yep.

CAMERON: One success, one advantage.

NICK: Well, that’s 10 damage, Tink.

HUDSON: [pain groans]

NICK: They just pepper you with bullets. Don’t forget to subtract your soak.

HUDSON: Oh, thank you.

NICK: You’re welcome.

HUDSON: Wait, 10 damage, so I get 7 damage, so 10 is what’s left. Ugh.

NICK: Yeah, that’s bad. Don’t charge gunning placements with an axe and no armor maybe, but also keep doing it because it makes me happy as a GM.

HUDSON: Alright!

NICK: Yeah! So, they shoot you a bunch, and the two specialists are just like ‘ahh, what are we gonna do,’ because their thinking is if you and Neato die they’re stuck behind enemy lines without really any idea of what’s going on.

HUDSON: Typical specialist.

NICK: [laughs] Right. So, Specialist Kevin ducks behind a corner and takes cover and doesn’t do anything.

CAMERON: [huffs]

NICK: Talon draws her blaster pistol and runs up to close range with them and ducks behind a crate, so she uses her maneuver to take cover, and she pops up and she shoots at the stormtroopers. She yells, “Tink, get down!” and starts spraying.

HUDSON: I get down.

NICK: Yeah.

HUDSON: Get down tonight~

NICK: [laughs] So she is a green and a yellow.

CAMERON: Three successes, one advantage.

NICK: Dang. How much does a light blaster do, 5?

LAURA: Five.

NICK: Aw, she almost gets two. So, she shoots and she hits the one that was about to shoot Tink again in the back of the head, and the stormtrooper just drops and there’s just one left. It is Neato’s turn again, and we just get a shot of, he’s still leaning against the wall, he brings his blaster rifle back up, and we get the slow motion deep breathing and heartbeat noise, the [heart beats, pulsing, laser fire] and he shoots the last stormtrooper, hopefully.

CAMERON: Four successes, two advantages?

NICK: Dang! That last stormtrooper, Tink, you start to duck when Specialist Talon yells at you to duck and you’re singing some sort of anachronistic disco-related song while doing it, and Neato, the bolt from his disrupter rifle almost parts the fur on the top of your head and hits the stormtrooper. He gauged how fast you were ducking and fired to hit as soon as you were out of the way. The stormtrooper, you get a second of him going “Ahhh” and you lock eyes through the helmet of this stormtrooper, and then you watch from the chest out as he just turns to a hollow yellow outline of himself, and then that dissipates and then there’s a small cloud of dust and the stormtrooper is gone.

Neato stands up and says, “Wow, you’re one tough cookie, Tink. I haven’t seen somebody take that many blaster bolts since the Clone Wars.”

HUDSON: “I sure can take a blaster to me.”

NICK: “That’s not something to be proud of, friend.”

HUDSON: “Oh, I mean, like I’m resilient.”

NICK: “Right, well uh, maybe next time don’t get shot.” He pats you on the shoulder where you’ve been shot and it hurts.

HUDSON: [groans]

NICK: “Alright. Maybe I should take point,” and you continue to jog off. We get a time lapse circle wipe, and Tink and the specialists and Neato all are jogging up the steps and it looks like a university building. As you go in Specialist Talon says, “Yeah, I used to go to school here. The government equipment is on the second floor.” You jog up and you find basically slicer heaven. There’s a whole bunch of terminals and signal boosters and everything that you could use.

CAMERON: Beanbag chairs.

NICK: Beanbag chairs. Talon says, “We can run support for you. we have signal interceptors and broadcasters up on the roof of the building. You can control them all from here. It’s your go. What are we gonna do?”

HUDSON: I look like a kid in a candy shop. I look around, and I try to figure out what to do first.

NICK: Heh. There’s a bunch of terminals but one big master terminal with an extra-large screen.

HUDSON: I go to that one.

CAMERON: [giggles]

NICK: Yeah. It’s password locked.

HUDSON: “I can get through this one,” as I roll for hacking.

[laughter]

HUDSON: What difficulty is it to get into this computer?

NICK: Hard. It’s a pretty decent system.

HUDSON: Before I do that, outlaw data breaker adds two blue dice for me. I’m just making sure I don’t have anything else I can use…

NICK: This is a security defense system, but that just removes black dice I think.

HUDSON: Exactly.

NICK: And I didn’t give you any because you’re in hacker heaven.

HUDSON: Five successes, one advantage.

NICK: Oh. Yeah, you’re in. you just make it look easy. You plug your data breaker in and run a routine and turn to talk strategy with Neato and it just runs in the background. You don’t even have to think about it.

HUDSON: Nice.

NICK: Neato says, “So, you’re going for the old electronic warfare. Not really my cup of tea, but I’m sure you can figure it out. If you could turn off the weapon systems, great. If you can interfere with the star destroyer up above, even better.”

HUDSON: “Listen. Did you even hear my plan? What was the first step?”

NICK: “I’ll admit that I only paid attention to Step 3.”

HUDSON: “Talon?”

NICK: [Neato] “Kill the Imperials!”

HUDSON: “That’s not—Talon, what was the rest, what was the first step of my plan?”

NICK: “Step 1 was take down their communication.”

HUDSON: “Correct. You get a gold star.”

NICK: “Step 2 was take down their weapon systems.”

HUDSON: “Yup.”

NICK: “Step 3 was…”

She looks at Neato and he says, “Profit~!”

HUDSON: [laughs] “That is all correct! You all get high-fives from me.”

NICK: As you say that, the password lock screen disappears off the terminal behind you and says ‘Welcome, master user.’

HUDSON: “Score.”

NICK: [laughs] And we are going to cut back to the beach. So, we get a sweeping overhead shot of these buildings that have been combed and burned out, but you can still see the hint of the idyllic city that they were before. Laying on top of a building a couple of blocks over from Karma is Hank. He is down on his front with the sniper rifle posted up on the top of the building. You can see that the rotating barrels of his rifle have retracted in and the main barrel has extended out quite a bit. There isn’t a scope on it that you can see, but there is a glowing, looks like Kit from Nightrider, a yellow progress bar that’s going up the front of the rifle and disappears and just is continually doing that, and Hank’s ocular receptors are turned off. He is aimed towards the stormtroopers. The camera zooms down to Karma who has her rocket launcher aimed out of the shattered window at these weapons platforms and the stormtroopers outside. Then it zooms to underwater where Xianna and Weathers and Smith are all swimming and are just now starting to approach the other weapons platforms. The swim wasn’t too long because they’re also moving towards you. Xianna, what are you doing?

LAURA: Swimming~

NICK: Kay. So you approach these weapons platforms, and…?

LAURA: So, the thermal detonators, would we be able to just place them like right above the water line and they work, or how high up would we need to place a detonator for it to be effective?

NICK: Do we think thermal detonators in this universe work like they do in some of the books where they’re actually nuclear warheads or do we think they work like they do in the video games where they’re just reasonably effective grenades?

LAURA: Por qué no los dos?

NICK: Small nuclear warheads. Affirmative. Okay. Yeah, you could put them like on the water line or even underneath and they would work. Underneath the explosion wouldn’t be as big, but you would assume it would rupture something.

CAMERON: Make it sink at least.

LAURA: Yeah.

NICK: You could also roll me a Skulduggery check to…

LAURA: Figure out the best placement?

NICK: Yep.

LAURA: I can do that.

CAMERON: While she’s putting that together, I still have wounds from when we fell. Yes?

HUDSON: [laughs]

NICK: Yeah. You all have those wounds.

CAMERON: Okay.

NICK: You didn’t, like, go see a medic or anything.

CAMERON: Just verifying.

LAURA: Yep.

NICK: I’m actually surprised Xianna didn’t just whip out the stim pack. She usually does.

LAURA: Well no, because it heals 5 wounds and she only has 3, so that’s not an effective use of a stim pack.

NICK: [laughs]

CAMERON: Yeah.

LAURA: Despite being Xianna, she still sometimes is pragmatic and understands resource management.

CAMERON: [giggles]

NICK: That’s very efficiency minded of you.

LAURA: What was the difficulty?

NICK: Hard. You’re trying to take out military grade hardware.

LAURA: Okay! [laughter]

NICK: I mean, you all are all at the point where if I’m having you do the thing you’re good at it doesn’t really matter what difficulty I set because you’re probably going to succeed.

LAURA: Two successes and two advantages.

NICK: Yeah, so you’re able to designate where to put these thermal detonators on these weapons platforms. I think with the thermal detonators you’re able to easily assure that two of these artillery things are well covered with that and the satchel charges. Are you hoping to stop them from moving or straight sink them?

LAURA: Straight sink them.

NICK: Yeah. You’d be able to, with 100% surety, sink two of them. The third one, you have some satchel charges and stuff left over but you’re not sure if it’s enough to actually take it down, between the three of you.

LAURA: Okay. I guess we’re going to completely destroy two and then do what we can with the third.

NICK: Okay. You’re able to do that. You can actually see as you’re doing this, we get the view of the three of you splitting up and placing your charges, I think Xianna takes point as far as pointing at where everything goes, and you can see that there’s a very clear line from where the water of the bay is very deep and where the beach begins, and if they cross that, even if you sink them, they’re gonna stay above water enough that they can still bombard the city and you’re rapidly approaching that line. So, as you get to the third one you’re able to put some on there, and then the choice is either to swim out of the blast range of when you set these off or stick around and try to arrange them just so on the third one to try to sink it, and I think you probably decide to swim away, right, so you don’t explode??

LAURA: Yes.

NICK: So, you wave them off and they look at you like ‘no, we can fix it,’ and you wave them off. We get a lot of frantic underwater gesticulation. You swim to the deeper water and you get out of the blast range, and we get this three-part panel of Xianna and her two hunky commandos treading water and all three of them are holding detonators and they’re counting down on their fingers from five, and Karma with her rocket launcher and it’s got a scope that’s blinking and the light goes red and she has it locked on one, and Hank has his rifle trained on a stormtrooper and the targeting reticle blinks red, and Tink cracking his fingers in front of this master computer and saying ‘alright, let’s make some problems…’ and that’s where we’re gonna end the episode.

CAMERON: [laughs]

ALL: Ba-naaa~!

LAURA: … Leeloo!

## 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.

Tabletop Squadron Transcript, Season 1 Episode 41:
Not That Kind of Parade Ground

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.

Okay team, let’s get to it. First of all, we have a new Patron. Carter Mckendry, welcome to the ship. It’s been really fun talking to you on our Discord and you’re a super cool person. We greatly appreciate the support.

Also, our Twitter dice bag giveaway concluded this week. Congratulations to @JSmartPig, @RoyalBlade4, and @mboing. If you haven’t already, send the @Tabletop_Squad account a DM and we’ll organize delivery for you. Thank you to everyone who chimed in with your favorite Tabletop Squadron moments. The squad and I scrolled through and read them all, and they totally made our weeks. We were so happy to hear from everyone. While the dice bags are spoken for, please don’t hesitate to reach out and tell us your favorite moments anyway. We all love talking to people about the show.

Without further ado, let’s get into the episode.

##

NICK: Hello! Welcome to Episode 41 of Tabletop Squadron. I’m your hosting game master, Nick. Good to see you. It rained for 20 seconds earlier and now it’s done. We’re gonna go around the table. Everybody say who you’re playing today, and if you spent any experience since the last time we played go ahead and let the listeners know what you spent that on. We’re gonna start off with Laura.

LAURA: Hello! I’m Laura, and I play Xianna’fan, a Twi’lek smuggler. I put my points into Coordination. I remembered.

NICK: [laughs] Good work.

LAURA: So, I got another rank in Coordination, an Agility-based stat.

NICK: Now you can do those sweet flips.

LAURA: Yep.

NICK: Great. Up next we’ve got Cameron.

CAMERON: Hello! I am Cameron, and I play karma Nailo, a Nautolan bounty hunter. For my XP I bought a dedication talent on my Skip Tracer tree…

NICK: Ohh…

CAMERON: …so I upped my Agility to a 4.

NICK: Nice. So now you shoot real, real, real good.

CAMERON: Yes.

NICK: Awesome. And up next we’ve got Hudson.

HUDSON: Hi, I’m Hudson, and I play Tink, a Gigoran slicer. With my XP I didn’t do nothin’, fool, because I HODL’ed.

NICK: [laughs]

CAMERON: What?! [laughs]

NICK: No one—I hope no one gets that reference.

LAURA: I also hope you know that it’s a known meme now that you hold all your experience points and hoard it, and people will be like ‘what is he hoarding it for~?’

NICK: There’s all sorts of theories on the Discord about what you’ve been saving up for.

HUDSON: Is there really?

NICK: Yeah.

HUDSON: [laughs]

CAMERON: I feel like you’re not, though. You just occasionally are like ‘guys, I have 50 XP, what should I buy?’ You’re not hoarding it for a specific thing. You’re like, I just need to keep it, it’s mine.

LAURA: How many XP do you have right now?

HUDSON: Twenty.

LAURA: Okay.

HUDSON: So, that’s an okay amount to hold, because the next time I can get a big stat.

CAMERON: Yeah.

NICK: Hudson, Hudson… HODL.

HUDSON: HODL.

NICK: HODL.

HUDSON: HODL

NICK: [smiling] Alright. Before we get into the recap, let’s start off with the Destiny Roll~

CAMERON: Two dark side.

HUDSON: One dark side.

LAURA: One dark side.

CAMERON: Oh no. [laughs]

NICK: I win! I win the Star Wars… So, things that happened last episode: Xianna landed in a burning neighborhood. HK-67 started acting weird, but seems to have gone back to “normal,” I’m making air quotes. Karma splashed down in a bay…

CAMERON: Ha-ha.

NICK: …and shot the heck out of an Imperial sniper, taking their com link for tactical reasons. Tink was ambushed by a squad of stormtroopers and began to fight back but was rescued by Neato, the orange Rodian mercenary. The entire squad was able to meet up again and is headed for the shield facility on the far side of the city. Am I missing anything?

HUDSON: This is the same shield facility that’s in the Avengers, right?

NICK: No.

[laughter]

HUDSON: Okay, then we’re not missing anything.

NICK: Okay. Thank you.

CAMERON: Karma did get an awesome photo of Tink and Neato doing the movie poster pose.

NICK: Yes, a very fair point. We have a beautiful movie poster style vista of Tink clutching demurely at Neato’s leg.

CAMERON: Mm-hmm.

NICK: Anyway. Yeah, fan artists, get at us. So, we open on the squad hiking through the destroyed streets of Sart. Ahead, in the distance, we see a pulsing column of blue-green light that pierces the sky, aimed towards the shield protecting the city from orbital bombardment, but also trapping the people within. As the crew climbs over an abandoned barricade of blasted out speeders, Neato stands on top of the obstacle and offers a hand to help everyone over. “Well now, watch your slippers there, chums.”

CAMERON: “How many people you got here, Neato?”

NICK: “I spend most of my time doing guerilla work back behind the scenes, you know, doing the old shadow foot one-two, but probably about 50 or 60.”

CAMERON: “Oh! Is that including us already?”

NICK: “No.”

CAMERON: “It is including you, though?”

NICK: “Always including me.”

CAMERON: “Alright. Cool. Just checking.”

HUDSON: “Neato, who’s in charge around here?”

NICK: “You’re asking who’s in charge? That’s who I’m taking you to go see, the militia general. She’s a tough customer, but she’s been keeping her people together this whole time. You’ll like her. Her name’s General Karthage.”

HUDSON: “Alright.”

NICK: “You’ll see her here in a minute, I would imagine.”

LAURA: “Wait, so, but why do we have to go see her?”

NICK: “Let’s do a little bit of cause and effect, see. You want me to work for you. I won’t leave until this fight is over. We gotta finish up the hootenanny, don’t you remember?”

LAURA: “Okay, but you would not be working for us, you would be working alongside us on a different crew for our same employer. We would be coworkers.”

NICK: “I’m not particularly worried about your corporate structure. You won’t get me off this planet until we’ve kicked the Imperials to the galactic curb.”

LAURA: “I don’t think we are incorporated.”

HUDSON: “Incorpor—Did… Who—Did I do the paperwork? Karma?”

CAMERON: “Yeah?”

HUDSON: “Are we an S-Corp or a C-Corp?”

LAURA: “We’re not incorporated!”

CAMERON: “No—“

HUDSON: “I swear I incorporated us.”

LAURA: “Wait. What? I did not sign any paperwork.”

NICK: “That’s some real business savvy.”

CAMERON: “Are we on the board?”

LAURA: “Or am I am employee? Because I did not… [exhales]”

CAMERON: “You filled out the stuff.”

HUDSON: “You’re not on the board.”

CAMERON: “Why would I know?”

HUDSON: “Listen. I’m the business mind here, so I put myself on the board. I’m also acting president, vice president, and secretary.”

CAMERON: “Okay, then why don’t you know what class we are?” [laughs]

NICK: “Statement: I am the CIO and CEO.”

HUDSON: “You know, I might have put HK as the CIO and CEO, now that I’m thinking about it.”

LAURA: “Why does HK get to get on it?”

HUDSON: “Who’s smarter than a robot?”

NICK: “Statement: Because I paid attention during the meeting.”

CAMERON: “There was a meeting?!”

LAURA: “Okay. If Karma does not remember the meting I feel like I cannot be blamed for not remembering it.”

HUDSON: “I haven’t blamed anyone yet. I’m saying that me and HK had a meeting, it was mutually decided that we were going to incorporate, and it was an S-Corp.”

LAURA: “Were the rest of us there?”

NICK: “Remembrance: Tink said we needed to have a board meeting at the resort so that we could do a tax write-off.”

LAURA: “Oh. I did not go to that.”

HUDSON: “So, that actually backfired, because we ended up not paying anything at the resort, so we didn’t actually get that tax write-off, but that was a good idea.”

LAURA: “I don’t think it was…”

CAMERON: “Eh. I mean, we have it for the future. What’s the corporation’s name, Tink?”

[laughter]

LAURA: “You didn’t just call it The Afternoon Delight, did you?”

HUDSON: “We’re ADD, the Afternoon Delight Depot.”

LAURA: “Why?!”

CAMERON: “What?!”

HUDSON: “Depots are hot right now.”

LAURA: “No they are not!”

HUDSON: “Yeah, like there’s the, there’s the, um…”

CAMERON: “Office Depot, and Home Depot.”

HUDSON: “Yeah. There, I didn’t even have to say it. You already knew.”

NICK: “Marketing Statement: We are always adding value.”

HUDSON: “That’s a great line. That’s what we came up with as our slogan, and we’re gonna make big, big credits.”

CAMERON: [laughs]

NICK: “Questioning Statement: What else did you expect from your CIO and CEO?”

HUDSON: “Exactly, and that puts me in the position of VP and secretary, and we’re all set.”

LAURA: “What?!”

CAMERON: “I still don’t understand why you were asking me about how the corporation was classified, then, if I wasn’t invited to the meeting.” [laughs]

HUDSON: “I thought you were there. You weren’t there. You know, that’s anyone’s fault. That’s not—I mean, I’m not assigning blame to anyone, I’m just saying you weren’t there.”

LAURA: “I’m putting the blame on you.”

HUDSON: “I don’t think that’s gonna help the situation at all.”

LAURA: “I think it will.”

NICK: “While I’m particularly interested in your corporate shuffle, chums, do me a favor and duck, please.”

LAURA: “Okie!”

NICK: The crew hits the deck and you hear (charge-up whoosh, release) and you all turn around to see a stormtrooper dissolve into dust at the corner of the street, like they had just turned the corner.

HUDSON: Ooh.

NICK: “The Imperials rarely travel alone, chums. We should probably be skedaddling.”

LAURA: “They do move in herds.”

NICK: “Give it the old hip-hop come on, friends. Let’s go.”

HUDSON: “If you ski, I’ll daddle.”

LAURA: “No. That’s not how that phrase works.”

NICK: “I’m particularly flattered, but we’re a little busy right now.”

HUDSON: “That’s not—“

CAMERON: [laughs]

HUDSON: [laughs]

LAURA: “He didn’t mean it the way it sounded like he meant it. He was meaning something else… Don’t worry. Or do worry.”

HUDSON: “I was taking apart your word, and I—Never mind.”

NICK: Neato shrugs and goes jogging off down the street. So, as you approach the base, you pass a line in the city where the large-scale destruction mostly stops. Large craters stop appearing in the streets, and you can see that the city of Sart was quite idyllic before the bombardment started. The buildings are all pale stucco colors with bright shutters. It looks like you’re outside the range of the artillery in the bay. The shield facility is another kilometer inland. The perimeter of peace, however, is quickly disrupted by the bodies of stormtroopers. It looks like the Imperials have tried to charge this position multiple times and failed so far.

Neato steps out ahead of the group and waves a hand around the corner of an alleyway, the entrance of which has been streaked with blood because bodies have been cleared out of the way to make sure that the passageway stayed clear. Neato steps towards the edge of an alleyway and there’s a sharp turn. He waves his hand around it into the space, and you hear him yell, “Heyo there, chums. If you could point your death dealers to the sky, we’ve got some allies soft-shoeing through the carnage.”

You hear the sound of shifting weapons and the soft call of someone saying, “It’s that military advisor. It looks like he isn’t dead yet.” You round the corner to see high piles of sandbags and durasteel girders twisted into anti-vehicular barriers. A handful of militia members man the walls with a heavy turret and some blaster rifles. They’re all wearing tan uniforms in various states of disarray. The militia members look scorched, dirty, and exhausted.

The voice from earlier comes to you from a lanky Human with dark hair and a data pad strapped to one arm. They yell to you as you approach the barriers. “Who the heck are you?”

HUDSON: “Well, we just actually remembered we’re an S-Corp, but we are the, um, Afternoon Delight Depot.”

LAURA: “No, that is not accurate.”

CAMERON: “Hey, we’re here to help.”

NICK: “Come on, chums, stop aiming at my friends. We’re here to end this little campaign.”

The head of this little outpost finally does aim his blaster rifle to the sky. “Look. Every time  you leave you take some of us with you and you usually come back alone. This is the first time we’ve ever seen you come back with different people. What happened to your contingent?”

Neato looks pretty sad for a second and wipes under his eyepatch. “They didn’t make it, but these ones definitely will this time. I’m very optimistic.” He starts to climb over the barrier. What do you all do?

CAMERON: “I too am optimistic.”

HUDSON: [cheerfully] “We haven’t died yet, have we?”

CAMERON: And I climb over the barrier.

LAURA: “No, I’m pretty sure one of us died, right?”

CAMERON: “Xianna—Xianna. Shh…”

NICK: The militia member standing on the barrier says, “You know, your best bet is probably back here with the rest of us, but I wouldn’t listen to that military advisor if I were you. He has a penchant for suicide missions, and it seems to be everyone else that doesn’t come back, not him.”

CAMERON: “I’m pretty confident in my team’s ability. Like Tink said, we haven’t died yet.”

LAURA: “And I brought extra drugs with me, so…”

NICK: The militia member just kind of shrugs. “Well, just try to take as many down with you when you go,” and steps out of the way and lets you pass.

LAURA: “Okay. It was lovely meeting you. Goodbye~”

NICK: The militia member doesn’t look at you, he’s placed his gun back down on the sandbags and is just guarding this alley, but another one of the militia members makes eye contact with you and then doesn’t know what to do and then smiles awkwardly and twiddles their fingers in your direction. “Well, bye~”

HUDSON: I do a princess wave.

NICK: Elbow-elbow, wrist-wrist?

HUDSON: Yep.

NICK: Nice. [chuckles] So, you continue another couple hundred meters through some twisting alleyways. You can see some choke points. Anybody who’s particularly military-minded would see, oh, these are great places to put explosives in case that first barrier gets taken down, or hey they could collapse this building to try to stop them. this is a pretty well-situated place. They’ve done the best that they could with basically being in a residential industrial area. So, you get through these winding alleyways and you come to an open area around this industrial shield facility. It’s a large dome shaped building probably the size of a small football stadium, and there’s open ground, gravel, and broken up pavement for about 60 meters in a perimeter around it, and that’s where the militia has set up camp. They have tents. You see people driving small speeders back and forth with supplies. A small group of what looks like volunteer civilians, honestly, they don’t have a lot of other options, standing in formation and learning to be militia members. Neato kind of waves an arm at you all. “Well, the command tent’s this way, chums. If we want to get down and dirty that’s the place to do it.”

CAMERON: “Great! We’ll follow you.”

NICK: Neato is walking through camp looking pretty self-assured and just generally at home in this kind of situation. He’s waving at people who greet him, and does a joking shadowbox thing with a large Human with a repeating blaster rifle, they joke for a minute and he ducks under a fake punch and laughs and keeps going. You come to this large pavilion. It’s made out of posts sunk into this gravel yard with camo netting draped over it just to create some shade, and there’s a holo-projector in the middle, and you see the commander of the militia. It’s pretty obvious that’s what she is. Everybody is either getting yelled at by her and then saluting and running away or trying to give her distance depending on what their position is. She’s wearing a soot-stained militia uniform. It’s got a general insignia on the shoulder. She has short cropped, dark, curly hair and a skeletal-looking prosthetic for her right arm which is missing, but it looks pretty functional if a little disrepaired at this point, and she is leaning over a holo-projector basically pointing at it with her presumably chief of staff. Neato walks up and says, “Greetings General, back from the front.” She just rolls her eyes and goes back to what she was doing. Neato looks a little deflated.

HUDSON: “Heya, General.”

CAMERON: Karma’s just gonna stand at ease at the entrance area to the pavilion.

HUDSON: “We’re here to win this war.”

NICK: “Couldn’t have said it better myself, chum.”

She rolls her eyes at Neato and says, “What exactly are you trying to achieve by bringing these civilians into my camp? We don’t have that many people. We’re almost out of supplies.” Neato just kind of shrugs helplessly.

CAMERON: “That’s kind of the point, actually. You don’t have that many people. Also, not civilian.” Flash bounty hunter badge.

NICK: “Great. You’re bringing more mercenaries into the situation. Thank you so much, Neato, the military advisor.”

CAMERON: “Not a mercenary, bounty hunter, different.”

LAURA: “Also, I am not a bounty hunter.”

CAMERON: “Yeah, that’s just me.”

HUDSON: “I’m not a bounty hunter, but I’m here… for this service.”

CAMERON: “Also, assassin droid?” Points at HK.

NICK: “Statement: I am the CIO and CEO of ADD Enterprises.”

LAURA: Oh, we’re an enter—[giggles]

CAMERON: [giggles] Dear lord.

NICK: “You brought an accounting droid?! Why does the accounting droid have a gun that big?”

CAMERON: Karma facepalms, because Cameron just did. [laughs]

HUDSON: [laughs]

LAURA: “Hank is actually very good at shooting people. I think it was first an assassin droid and then later reprogrammed for the accounting stuff. Also, I don’t actually think he is an accounting droid now that I say that.”

NICK: “Speculative Statement: I have always found that being an accountant is more a state of circuits than a programming function.”

CAMERON: “Hmm. We’ll see how it works at the corporation’s end of year reports. We’ll see how you’re feeling.”

LAURA: “Ooh! Do I get a bonus?”

CAMERON: “I don’t think we ever actually figured out if we were employed by the corporation, Xianna.”

LAURA: “Oh, well I don’t know…”

HUDSON: “Y’all are actually volunteer contractors right now.”

CAMERON: “Ooh…”

NICK: “Error. Secondary user receives zero bonus.”

LAURA: “Do I get benefits at least?”

HUDSON: “[laughs] No.”

NICK: [laughs]

LAURA: “You know what? I quit. I never even got hired in the first place, but I quit.”

HUDSON: “Okay.”

LAURA: “I think this is the first time I have ever quit an actual company.”

HUDSON: “You didn’t quit.”

CAMERON: “And you weren’t even actually hired. Anyway, yeah, General, we think that we could be of some assistance.”

HUDSON: “General, I think we could be of all the assistance. You can step aside now and—“

CAMERON: “Whoa. No~!”

LAURA: “No~!”

HUDSON: “Wait, wait, wait. Hank mostly can figure this all out.”

LAURA: “No…”

NICK: “Heh-heh…” The general pulls a cigar out of the front pocket of their uniform and puts it in. you hear a lightsaber igniting noise (whoosh) as they flick a lighter and it lights the cigar, and she takes a couple of puffs on it. “So, you think you’re in charge, huh?”

LAURA: “No.”

NICK: “Be my guest. What does it matter? We’re all gonna die anyway, right?”

LAURA: “Yes.”

CAMERON: “Eventually.”

NICK: “Neato, why have you brought these people here? Let’s just get down to it. I’m open to suggestions at this point.”

Neato says, “Well there, General, I figured with this crack squad of commandos we may be able to turn the tide against old Palpy.”

“Can you stop calling the Emperor old Palpy, please?”

[chuckling]

CAMERON: “I actually rather like it.”

HUDSON: “I like it, too.”

LAURA: “His name is Sheeven. We all know that.”

NICK: “Yeah, you gotta sock it right to Sheevie P!”

[laughter]

HUDSON: [groans]

CAMERON: “Okay, I’m not a fan of that one.”

LAURA: “Yes, Sheeven Theodore Palpatine. That is his full name.”

CAMERON: “General, look at it this way. You don’t care about us. We have guns and are willing to go shoot stormtroopers for you. what have you got to lose? If we die, no big deal, we weren’t here just a second ago.”

NICK: “Now that’s a perspective I can appreciate. On the other hand, you all look reasonably well-suited for this kind of fight, being scoundrels of every flavor that I can see.”

LAURA: “We blew up a destroyer at one point.”

NICK: “Wow.”

CAMERON: “That is true.”

HUDSON: “We did.”

CAMERON: “We do have a lot of experience.”

HUDSON: “I mean, it was mostly me, but like they were there.”

LAURA: “I am legally dead.”

NICK: “On purpose?”

LAURA: [laughs]

NICK: “You blew it up on purpose?”

CAMERON: “Yeah.”

LAURA: “Yes.”

NICK: “Oh… Okay. They blow up by accident more often than you would expect.”

CAMERON: “Actually! Actually, actually, hold up. Two of them, right?”

HUDSON: “No, just one.”

CAMERON: “Two.”

LAURA: “Well, we purposely blew up one on purpose.”

CAMERON: “We purposely shot one when we were with Val.”

HUDSON: “Yeah, yeah.”

LAURA: “We shot one. I don’t think we blew it up.”

CAMERON: “It had a big explosion. Was it 100% destroyed? Questionable, we didn’t stick around long enough to see, but we did make a significant dent.”

LAURA: “That is true.”

CAMERON: “I’mma count that as one and a half.”

NICK: “This Val person sounds like a real biscuit boxer.”

CAMERON: “Oh yeah, you’re gonna love her.”

LAURA: “Yeah.”

NICK: “I’m sure that we’ll get along like ham and mayonnaise, but before we do that, we need to get to the point. General, I have brought with me some special commandos. I found them out in the city. Don’t ask questions. The important thing is that they are all very good at what they do, and we are almost out of supplies, people, and hope. This is our only chance to do something to turn the tide.” Neato looks a lot more serious than he has since you’ve met him.”

CAMERON: “And we have a lot of granola bars and hope, and we’re here to help.” [laughs]

NICK: The general says, “Fine. What kind of plan are you looking at here?” She moves aside so that you can see the holo-map. The map has marks for the cannons that are in the bay and known troop movements. You see that the stormtroopers seem to be mostly moving in pods, groups of three to ten, and from the map movement they just appear in the city and then start to do a search pattern. You would know from your experience that has to do with the drop pods. No one is coming into this city any other way but getting hurled from orbit in basically a steel bloc. “We need to win this and push them out or we are all going to die. They have more resources, more people, and better weapons. The only chance we have is to show them that they’re spending more money than we’re worth ,and I am open to suggestions,” and she points at the map.

Neato looks at it and says, “I’m open to suggestions like your favorite diner at 2 in the morning, chums. The militia here has got sneakers, shock jockeys and bolters. If we could put all our porg eggs in one basket we could stick together and do something grandiose, or we could bundle up in these fox holes, or go for a picnic behind enemy lines. What do you think gets us the most bang for your buck, chums?”

LAURA: “Have you considered just placing bombs on all of their stuff? Just one big boom at once.”

NICK: ‘I’m all for the random shuffle explosion. That’s a lot of fun.”

LAURA: “Well, I mean, you know, it is a classic. Just didn’t know if you had already considered that one.”

CAMERON: “General, of the opposing forces currently on the ground, would you say that the cannons in the bay are the largest threat?”

NICK: You hear a large, rattling boom in the distance and the general gestures with her cigar. ‘Yes, the only reason that we haven’t been completely destroyed is that we’re out of range and they haven’t been able to get them out of the bay because of the shield. Now, getting rid of those would be pretty helpful, but we also have to deal with these stormtroopers.”

CAMERON: Can you describe the setup of these cannons? I was picturing like basically battleships, because it sounded like they were in the bay.

NICK: Yeah, they’re floating in the bay. They’re Imperial landing craft. Picture the allied landing craft from D-Day but a little bit bigger, and sealed, and with the front of one of those flappy wing Lambda shuttles that the Empire has stuck to the front of that with just a big ass artillery piece sitting in the back. “So, these cannons that are in the bay, they were troop carriers that the Empire originally brought in to subjugate us. We were able to boost the effectiveness of the shield and crash them, but they float, so they just attached the artillery pieces to the top and have started bombarding us. If they get those moving again we’re in big trouble.”

CAMERON: “Are they inside the shields?”

NICK: “Yeah, they’re inside the shields.”

CAMERON: “Can they shoot to the outside of the shields?”

NICK: “No they can’t. Pretty much the only way to get in or out is to crawl under the half-meter gap between the shield and the ground.”

HUDSON: “Or dig it deeper.”

CAMERON: “This question may seem slightly weird, but do you have any aquatic personnel here?”

NICK: “No, but we do have some rebreathers. Anyone can be aquatic with rebreathers.”

CAMERON: “Fair enough. How many would you say? Also, how many cannons are there?”

NICK: You would know that. There are five.

CAMERON: Five. Okay, thank you.

NICK: The general does the Tony Stark with the hologram hand motions and pulls up a troop list so that everyone can see. “Neato wasn’t wrong, even if it’s almost impossible to understand him. We have several specialized units that are from the original militia plus all of the civilian volunteers that we could find. We’ve got some shock troops that are pretty good at holding a line, straight forward combat, heavy weapons, they’re reasonably armored. We’ve got a platoon of them. we’ve got a small group of technical engineers and slicers for electronic warfare. They’re mostly working on keeping the shield running for as long as possible, but if you needed them we could do something. Then we have two or three infiltrators. Is it two or three?”

The chief of staff from outside the pavilion says, “It’s just two~ We lost Johnson~”

“Oh, so two infiltrators. Johnson’s probably still alive, but he wandered off. We don’t know where he went.”

HUDSON: “[scoffs] Typical Johnson.”

[chuckling]

NICK: The general kind of shrugs and shows you they’ve got a bunch of volunteers, they’ve got a decent contingent of shock troops, they’ve got some engineers, and then they’ve got a couple of talented infiltrators. Neato says, “So, we could either split up and use our strengths and divide and conquer and do different options, or we could stick together, take what resources we can, and try to do it all in one big bang. Either way, we need to decide before—“ and a louder bang than you’ve heard happens, like the artillery struck closer. “Well, speak of the dark side.”

CAMERON: [laughs]

NICK: He runs out of the pavilion and you see him talking to somebody. If you go chase him, he’s talking to a scout who’s saying, “I don’t know what happened, but the artillery pieces are moving. They’re starting to get out of the bay. It doesn’t look like they can fly, but they’re getting closer.” And there’s another explosion that levels one of the buildings in the alley you just walked through.

CAMERON: “I think at least some of us are going to need to take care of those.”

HUDSON: “Let’s do the big bang plan.”

NICK: “Which one was that? I wasn’t paying attention.”

HUDSON: “It was the second one where we get all our resources together and we all go in all at once and a big bang!”

CAMERON: “Oh, I was thinking the opposite of the splitting and making many mini bangs.”

LAURA: “I was thinking we would just put detonators on everything and then blow it up all at once. So one big boom!”

CAMERON: “So, still one big bang, but splitting up, so a combo effort.”

LAURA: “Well, many little booms that happen at the same time to create one big boom.”

HUDSON: “Like fireworks.”

LAURA: “We could also put fireworks in there.”

HUDSON: “I mean, we wanna give the kids a show.”

LAURA: “It is fun. Always a good idea.”

HUDSON: “As the leader of this operation—“

LAURA: “No~”

CAMERON: “[chuckles dismissively]”

HUDSON: “Alright.”

LAURA: “I feel like you… There’s so many other people who are more qualified for that.”

HUDSON: “Hank, what do you think?”

CAMERON: “He is the CEO.”

[laughter]

NICK: “Strategic Deferment: I think that we should all agree on the best plan of action as a group.”

HUDSON: “[groans]”

CAMERON: [smiling] “I mean, yes. What is your opinion?”

NICK: “Statistical Statement: The most effective plan has a 33.3% chance of success and is tied with two other options depending on Imperial resistance.”

HUDSON: “What is that plan, Hank?”

CAMERON: “Yeah, which plan is it?”

LAURA: “Hank!”

NICK: “Error. Error. Calculations lost.”

[laughter]

LAURA: “Damn it, Hank! Ugh. I told you, he is all buggy. Something is wrong with Hank.”

NICK: And then HK-67 stands up a little straighter and cocks his head at an angle you wouldn’t expect that neck joint to be able to go to. “Listen, we could really go either way with this one. We could all split up and probably at least one of us will die, my money’s on Tink, or we could stick together and try to just blow a hole through the middle, and then we all probably die, at an equal rate to Tink, if we split up.”

CAMERON: “So I think we’re all agreed on that. What I’m asking, HK, is which one would you rather do?”

NICK: “I don’t care. You meat bags are gonna die way before I do.”

HUDSON: “He has a good point.”

LAURA: “He does have a good point.”

CAMERON: “What I guess I’m asking—Where do you rank me and Xianna’s lives against Tink’s?”

LAURA: “Yes, because we do need to start some sort of tontine so that way whoever lives wins all the money. Also, Hank cannot go on the tontine seeing as how he will not die a normal death compared to the rest of us, but I am putting my money on Tink dying first.”

CAMERON: [laughs]

LAURA: “So, I do like the odds between me and Karma of me being the last one alive.”

NICK: HK straightens back up to standing at attention like he normally does. “Ranking Statement: Xianna is a secondary user. Karma is a primary user. Boss Man is a primary user but has low odds of living.”

CAMERON: [laughs]

HUDSON: “I think that answered your question.”

LAURA: “It did not, but sure.”

CAMERON: “So, here’s my thing. Tink, this is not to be taken personally at all, but you are not gifted with a blaster. I feel like that’s more of a fact than an opinion and we can all agree on it and just move on. So, where I think your strengths really lie are going to be in dealing with computers, or in close combat, but stormtroopers are much more likely to shoot you before they get into range of your axe.”

HUDSON: “What if I could throw my axe in a way that would cut off three people’s ears?”

LAURA: “Can you? And why their ears?”

CAMERON: “Okay. One, the ears, not gonna really slow the stormtroopers down.”

HUDSON: “It’ll distract them. they can’t hear out of that side now.”

CAMERON: “Nn…”

LAURA: “But they can hear out of the other side!”

CAMERON: “But also, now you don’t have an axe. That was gonna be my second point.”

HUDSON: “No-no-no, it comes back to me like a magic boomerang.”

LAURA: “Wait. Why does the boomerang have to be magic? Does it not just do that?”

HUDSON: “Because my axe is not a boomerang!”

CAMERON: “I don’t think you got that upgrade, for the boomerang axe.”

HUDSON: “I did not get that upgrade. I’m kind of pulling your leg a little bit. I didn’t get that upgrade. I’ll go with what you say.”

CAMERON: “Okay… So, I’m thinking, you can—“

HUDSON: [laughs] I like Nick’s face during all this.

LAURA: [laughs]

CAMERON: Nick is broken. We’re sorry.

NICK: [smiling] No, I’m planning a side adventure called Tink and the Magic Boomerang.

CAMERON: [laughs] “So, I’m thinking, if you took a couple of the other techies and went and did some cyber warfare, you could potentially interfere with the destroyer.”

HUDSON: “Can I name the group I take?”

LAURA: “Sure, why not.”

CAMERON: “Sure!”

HUDSON: “Alright.”

CAMERON: “I wouldn’t recommend incorporating them, I don’t think it’s worth it at this point, but…”

HUDSON: “No, there’s not really any kind of office or website to do that from this area of the war.”

NICK: “Suggestion: You could make them an LLC.”

HUDSON: “That’s… [sighs] No. We don’t have that… Just no.”

[laughter]

HUDSON: “What I’m gonna do is, I’m gonna take myself and Hackx R Us, my group, and we’re gonna go and we’re going to perform our mission.”

CAMERON: “I think that’s a great name, Tink.”

LAURA: “I don’t, but I think it’ll work.”

NICK: Neato perks up. “If you and the hackers are planning on taking something out of commission, there are some large radio dishes over in the technological sector. If you could sneak there in one piece you might be able to interfere with their communications.”

HUDSON: “Oh… I could do that. That’s old school stuff.”

CAMERON: “So, you’re super sneaky. General, excuse me, how combat-ready are your techies?”

NICK: “They can shoot? I wouldn’t put them on the front lines if I could avoid it. Also, if you could keep them from dying that would be great, because they’re the only thing keeping this shield running.”

HUDSON: “We’ll take all of them!”

LAURA: “No…”

CAMERON: “I don’t think you need all of them. I’m just thinking—“

HUDSON: “I want a battalion of 30 people!”

LAURA: “No…”

CAMERON: “Okay, that seems excessive.”

NICK: “That’s wrong for multiple reasons.”

[laughter]

CAMERON: “You just need a couple of the best, because you’re awesome, so you don’t need a huge team.”

HUDSON: “You’re right.”

CAMERON: “You just need a small team to assist you.”

HUDSON: “Yeah, it’s mostly me.”

CAMERON: “However—Exactly. It would probably be beneficial if you had some fire support with you, though, as they are not as martially gifted as you, and as we discussed you are close combat.”

HUDSON: “Yeah, you’re right. I need some snipers and tanks and…”

CAMERON: “You need at least one heavy shot with you.”

NICK: Neato is just like whistling and looking at the sky and stroking his blaster rifle.

CAMERON: “As you are trying to sneak through a city that we are unfamiliar with, I might suggest you take Neato with you.”

HUDSON: “Neato, would you like to join my battalion?”

NICK: “What a whiz bang suggestion, Karma!”

HUDSON: “Alright. Looks like I’m going out. Bye everyone!”

CAMERON: [laughs]

LAURA: “Okay, bye~!” The moment he turns around and starts leaving, Xianna turns around. “Okay, so 20 Credits Tink dies on this mission. Who wants to take that?”

NICK: HK raises his hand to a perfect 90 degree angle. “Calculating Statement: I will give you 2 to 1 odds.”

LAURA: “Okay, so, but do you want to bet, or…?”

NICK: “Yes.”

[laughter]

LAURA: “Okay, cool. I was not sure if you were just giving me the odds in order to have them.”

NICK: “Wait. I’m betting that Tink is going to die. You think Tink will live?”

LAURA: “No. I said Tink will die…”

NICK: “Oh. No bet.”

LAURA: “…so you would be betting for him to live.”

NICK: “No bet.”

LAURA: “What? Okay. What if we do the other way around? I’ll take that.”

NICK: “Bet.”

LAURA: “Okay cool.”

CAMERON & HUDSON: [laughs]

LAURA: “So 2 to 1 odds that—“ [laughs]

CAMERON: Oh gosh.

HUDSON: Xianna thinks I’m gonna live.

LAURA: So, Hank has…

CAMERON: It turns out HK actually has so much money that we just don’t know about.

LAURA: …Tink dies…

NICK: I have a plan if I need to get 40 Credits for this.

LAURA: …Xianna has that Tink lives.

NICK: Let the listener be showed that Laura is literally writing this down in like a bookie book in her lap right now.

LAURA: Oh yeah. So, I have bet 20 Credits on that one. Okay. “Alright Hank, we’ll see. I mean, I hope he lives now, because I have bet money, but…”

CAMERON: “I mean, I hope you had hope that he’d live before. Anyway. Now that they’re gone, we—“

LAURA: “Well no, if I was betting for him to die I would have wanted the credits.”

CAMERON: “[exasperated splutter and sigh]”

NICK: At this point Neato looks up and sees that Tink is just striding purposefully back towards the perimeter of the camp. “Wait, chum! Wait. The engineers are the other way.” And he runs off to go get Tink. While you’re having this conversation you see Tink and Neato gesticulating in the background and then they turn and start jogging off towards the shield facility where presumably the engineers would be.

The general says, “Well, that gets them out of my hair, and maybe they’ll do something helpful. You seem armed to the teeth and you have a cool coat.”

LAURA: “I do! It has many pockets.”

NICK: “I would imagine if the Imperials are starting to advance on this position they’re gonna have a lot of ground troops protecting their artillery. You can go behind enemy lines, I can spare you a few troops to help, or you can set up here and we can try to take them down with the defenses we already have in place. Up to you.”

CAMERON: “What’s your stockpile of explosives looking like?”

NICK: “We have Some. Are you looking for rocket launchers or satchel charges?”

CAMERON: “I mean, a rocket launcher would be nice, but also what I was thinking was, when I fell I landed in the bay with the cannons. I would like to, A, destroy some cannons, and B, potentially steal at least one cannon.”

NICK: “Steal a cannon…”

CAMERON: “So, if I could get at least a couple of folks to come with me, but particularly some of your sturdy combat troops, and some rebreathers, and some explosives, to go do that…”

NICK: “Hey, purple girl, are you going with her?”

LAURA: “Sure, why not.”

NICK: “Great. I can give you two of my strongest point men. Does that work for you? They can at least carry things.”

CAMERON: “Sure.”

NICK: “Alright. Smith, Weathers, come here.” Two tall, buff guys with crew cuts—one’s got dark hair, one’s got blonde hair—you’re not sure which is which and the general doesn’t bother to specify…

CAMERON: Eh, that’s fine.

NICK: …snap to attention. They’ve got blaster carbines, and unlike most of them they’re not wearing the long sleeve tan coats buttoned up. They’ve got cargo pants and combat boots and are wearing the really thin tank tops in dark brown.

CAMERON: Nice.

NICK: They snap to attention, and they say “Yes ma’am” in unison.

LAURA: “Okay, so which one of you is going to let me do a piggyback ride on the way there? Because I do not want to walk. Heh.”

NICK: The one with dark hair drops attention. “Heh. Yeah, yeah, sure,” and he holds out his arm for you.

LAURA: “Yes!” Heh.

NICK: As you grab it, he judo throws you over his hip so that you land… Do you land on your feet or do you land on your butt?

LAURA: On my feet!

NICK: Yeah, you’re super agile.

CAMERON: She’s very agile.

NICK: So you land like that and he looks super surprised and lets go quickly. “Oh, sorry about that… but no, I’m not carrying you through a warzone. I figured if you made it here you’d be pretty capable.”

LAURA: “But… [huffs] But I mean I am capable of doing it, but I do not want to~ Karma! Tell one of them to let me do a piggyback ride. I am tired~!”

CAMERON: “Xianna, you can walk.”

LAURA: “I am tired…”

CAMERON: “Take some drugs. It’ll be fine.”

NICK: What did I name them? “Yeah Weathers, she doesn’t want to~” says the other soldier. [laughs]

LAURA: “Look, do not make fun of me.”

CAMERON: “Soldier, I need three rebreathers and a bunch of explosives, now.”

LAURA: “And if you make fun of me again I will shoot you.”

NICK: “Sounds like we have an understanding.” He snaps to. He doesn’t salute.

CAMERON: That’s fine.

NICK: “The armory tent’s this way. Let’s just go collect everything we need,” and they jog off.

CAMERON: “HK, you’re coming with us, I guess.”

NICK: “Statement: This is acceptable.” HK jogs off after you all.

CAMERON: “I bet I can find you some organics to kill.”

LAURA: “HK, can you swim?”

CAMERON: “We’re not putting him in the water.” [laughs]

NICK: “Absolutely not.”

LAURA: “Can you float?”

NICK: “Not even a little bit.”

CAMERON: [laughs]

LAURA: “What about floating?”

NICK: “No.”

LAURA: “Can you like sink to the bottom and walk along the bottom of the ocean floor?”

NICK: “I can sink to the bottom.”

CAMERON: [laughs]

LAURA: “But then can you walk along the ocean floor?”

NICK: “No.”

LAURA: “I feel like I saw that in a holo-vid one time, like all sorts of skeleton pirates walked on the ocean floor to get where they were going. Could you not do that?”

CAMERON: “He just wants to be where the people are.”

NICK: So, we get a shot from General Karthage’s perspective. She gets down to the last two inches of her cigar and drops it into the dirt and stubs it out. We see karma and Xianna and these two soldiers. The two soldiers are moving at double time. Karma, Xianna and Hank are walking and bantering and joking. We see Tink and Neato running up the stairs to the door, and Neato goes to hit the door panel to open the door in the distance and it doesn’t work and Tink shoves him out of the way and does something that gets the door to open and they disappear into the factory. General Karthage stubs out her cigar and says, “The Force sure works in mysterious ways.” And that’s the end of the episode!

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.

Tabletop Squadron Transcript, Season 1 Episode 40:
Dust in the Wind

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.

Okay squad mates, I have quite a few announcements this week, but they’re super awesome and even involve a giveaway so stick with me.

First of all, we have a new iTunes review. Thank you **CurseOfStew for your thorough and truly heartwarming review. The light side is strong with you, and I hope those sweet Force powers kick in soon.

Second up, we have a new Patron! Thank you to **Berek50Cal for your support. May your power armor never rust, your one-liners always be punchy, and your arch nemesis be just cool enough to make you look even cooler. Thank you so much for supporting Tabletop Squadron.

Next up, I’m excited to announce that we’re doing a Twitter giveaway! We’re giving away some dice bags hand-crafted by our very own Laura. Trust me, you want to get in on this. Laura is basically a magical artificer and everything she makes is at least a +2 modifier. These dice bags are super freaking cool. All you have to do to enter is be following the official @Tabletop_Squad account on Twitter and comment on our pinned tweet from noon CST on 8/29, that’s the day this episode releases, through September 9 with your favorite Tabletop Squadron moment. We’ll pick three winners on the 10^th. Each winner will receive two dice bags hand sewn by Laura. Again, trust me, you want to get in on this one.

Okay, last but equally important thing: This episode features a very special intro produced and acted by Aaron Catano-Saez. Aaron is an amazing friend to the show and creates fantastic content weekly on All My Fantasy Children where they take a listener prompt to create a character and use that to build their own fantasy world. It’s one of my personal favorite podcasts, and you should really give it a listen if you’re interested in world building, character creation, or RPGs. You can find Aaron on Twitter at @AaronCatanoSaez and All My Fantasy Children at @AMFC_podcast, or on their website at AllMyFantasyChildren.com. Check it out. It was an absolute gift to work with Aaron on this. If you like how it turned out you’ll love his other projects.

Music this week is Kelli’s Number and Not on the Bus by US Army Blues. Now after all, all, all of that, let’s get into the episode.

##

[power-up noise]

AARON: It’s been four hours since the bombardment started. They’ve been threatening for months to uphold the rule of Imperial Law, but I don’t think anyone expected this. **Alise, I’m so glad you are off planet. It’s going to get ugly in **Sart. The militia has mobilized as much as possible, but the Imps know what they’re doing. Communications are gone, the main base is gone, I was able to rally with this squad and one of the city’s security consultants, but we haven’t been able to reach anyone else long enough to meet up. I don’t know when I’ll be able to send this to you, but know that we’re going to fight back. Looks like it’s time to  move. [movement/rustling]

[power-up noise]

It’s been three days since the bombardment started. The Force knows you can get used to anything over time, even watching the city slowly blown to dust, but things keep changing. After the Imps started strafing us we got desperate. I managed to get a couple of the platoons together and make a run for the city shield facility. Our security consultant came up with an idea. He’s… not what I’m used to, but he bailed us out time and again. Seems like he’s fought stormtroopers before. He can guess their tactics most of the time. We boosted the shields, but something went wrong. The power source took a hit at the wrong time or something, but our engineer got fried. The shield is up, it’s way more powerful than it should be, stretches all the way out to the jungle now. Ground troops can’t land and they can’t bombard us from orbit anymore, but we can’t get out either. We’ve walled off the city. It’s just us and the Imps unlucky enough to be stuck inside. **Alise, we’re going to make them pay. I miss you.

[power-up noise]

[explosions]

It’s been, what, two months? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I don’t even know why I dug this back out. Maybe someone will hear it someday. There’s only two of us left from the original group I met with, just me and the Rodian. Oh, that’s the security consultant. He’s something else, but it doesn’t matter how good a shot you are, you can’t stop people from being blown up. The resistance forces are scattered around the city to make sure we don’t lose too many people at one time, but that’s what’s happening. We’re losing. The Rodian said we can bleed them out over time. He kept saying things about Imperial beam counters, hating to spend too much on a backwater world, but they haven’t left yet. They brought artillery, just landed these big cannons in the bay. They’re using some kind of disrupter technology to bust drop pods through the city’s defense shields. They drop in stormtroopers to take us out, and we fight hard, but they just bring more. The artillery sits on the far side of the city and they move up a little every day. If they make it to the shield facility it’s all over. We don’t have civilians anymore. Everyone’s either picked up a weapon or is long dead. I think I’m fighting out of habit more than anything else at this point.

[gunfire and explosions]

Listen, whoever finds this, tell **Alise—Kriff! Rodian, we gotta move. They dropped in behind us—[burst]

[static]

[silence]

##

NICK: Hello! Welcome to Tabletop Squadron, Episode number 40, onto the greener pastures of the next story arc. Isn’t that exciting? I’m your host and game master, Nick. Let’s go around the table. Everybody introduce yourselves and who you’re playing this fine day, starting with Hudson.

HUDSON: Hi, I’m Hudson, and I’m playing Tink, a Gigoran slicer.

NICK: Ooh. Next up we’ve got Laura.

LAURA: Hello. I’m Laura, and I am playing Xianna’fan, a Twi’lek smuggler.

NICK: Last but not least, we’ve got Cameron.

CAMERON: Hello. I am Cameron, and I am playing Karma Nailo, a Nautolan bounty hunter.

NICK: Great. We’ve got everybody assembled then. Before we do anything else, let’s do the Destiny Roll.

CAMERON: One light side.

LAURA: Two light side.

HUDSON: One dark side.

CAMERON: Agh. Hudson.

NICK: Cool. When we last left off the crew got more of a mission briefing from Tiny and Carn Horn. They were brought to the planet Fygo and the city of **Sart, and they were able to use their drop pods and get past the Imperial blockade, and then immediately exploded in mid-air and were scattered to the far sides of the city. So, yeah… Everything’s going super good.

CAMERON: I’m sure it’ll be fine.

NICK: I am sure it will be fine… So, I guess we’ll have to split this up a little bit. We’ll start with Xianna and we’ll just kinda work our way through everybody. Xianna, you regain consciousness in your drop pod. You are upside-down and you can feel the steady drip of blood coming out of the side of your head and running down one of your lekku. Take 2 wounds please. Your pod is filling with smoke, you can feel heat, and you are stuck upside-down in this drop pod. You can’t see anything. All the screens are off. What do you do?

LAURA: Look. This is not the first time Xianna has woken up, upside-down, strapped into something.

CAMERON: [snickers]

[laughter]

LAURA: She knows to look to see how high up from the ground she is and then, while holding on with one hand to a strap, release the harness so that way when she falls you roll over so your feet land because you’re holding on up at the top.

NICK: Yeah. You’re able to do that pretty easily. The straps are designed for quick release. You realize that the problem is, so there’s the hatch for the drop pod which is now buried in the duracrete of the street so that transparesteel window is shattered in and you can see that the front of the drop pod is designed to split open after you land, but it is jammed and you’re not able to get it open. How are you gonna try to do that?

LAURA: Does it look like there’s any sort of venting or anything that could be a secondary way out, or does it look like the only way is to somehow unjam the door?

NICK: It’s pretty much just that. You’re basically in a phone booth right now. [laughs]

LAURA: Yeah. Yeah.

NICK: There’s not a lot of helpful situations. You’re still just trying to get out of the way that you got to the planet in the first place. So, how are you gonna try to get this door open?

LAURA: Oh boy. I mean, is there anything to shoot at?

NICK: I mean, there’s a control panel. It already looks kind of damaged, but in Star Wars, sometimes when you shoot things they open. That is a fair point.

CAMERON: [laughs]

LAURA: Would it be maybe a Skulduggery thing to check if that’s something I could do?

NICK: Sure. To try and wire the panel to open it up?

LAURA: Yeah.

NICK: Yeah. I think that could be a Skulduggery. You’re good at opening doors. That will be hard with a black die, because the panel is kind of blowed up.

LAURA: Okay! Would you count this as a security device or a locked door?

NICK: I would count it as a locked door.

LAURA: Okay, so then I can remove a black die.

NICK: Nice.

LAURA: Two successes, two threats.

NICK: Cool. The door snaps open pretty easily, surprisingly so really, because it didn’t look like it had power, but you were able to route power through it, and you are able to skip out. You get a good look around you. You are in the middle of what looks like a housing district but it’s all just on fire. The whole thing is on fire. It looks like somebody either firebombed this area or hit a main gas line or something, but while the roads are reasonably clear, there’s smoke everywhere, you can only see the sky in patches, and most of the buildings are either hollowed out skeletons of what they once were or are actively becoming so due to all the fire. As you look around you see a stormtrooper on a scout bike who is approaching you, and the trooper sees you, and you see them hold a hand up to their ear and then start to whip the scout bike around and start to take off out of the district. What do you do?

LAURA: Oh, that seems concerning. Xianna’s gonna put her scanner goggles on to help see through the smoke, and opens up one of the coat pockets and takes out a little baggie and does some impact, because oh boy is this a weird situation. Some coping is gonna have to happen. Then, she starts heading in the direction that the trooper went in the idea that that’s maybe the best way to get out of the fire.

NICK: Okay. You walk for about a minute. You are in a town square area. It’s pretty lucky, because if you had been about ten meters in any direction you probably would have landed in the middle of a burning building, so good that didn’t happen. Then you hear some rapid blaster fire and a small explosion. Do you head towards it?

LAURA: “Ooh. A small explosion. That is probably someone I know.” [laughter] I will head that way.

NICK: You come around the corner and you see the twisted wreck of a speeder bike that is crashed up into a light post, and you see HK standing over the scout trooper who is looking dazedly at the sky. “Primary Objective: Disable radio communication.” HK just unloads into the head of this stormtrooper, and the stormtrooper stops, and the speeder bike explodes again. HK looks up and puts their rifle pointed towards the sky. “Greetings. It looks like you have not been turned into a pile of organic paste. Congratulations.”

LAURA: “Thank you. So um, do you happen to know the way out of this burning mass of buildings? Because I do not.”

NICK: “Supposition: Any direction is better than this direction. Why don’t we go that way?” HK points down an alleyway, and then a building collapses into it and more fire shoots up into the air, and HK just keeps moving their arm to point down the main street.

LAURA: “Yeah. That way seems nicer. Yes, let’s go that way. Have you heard from any of the others?”

NICK: “Negative.”

LAURA: “No? Okay. This is going to be very fun. Okay, Hank. Question. Can I ride you like a backpack?”

NICK: “I am not particularly strong. That is not part of my design.”

LAURA: “Okay, then never mind. I just did not know.”

NICK: “I think that you would prefer for my gun to be free in case we run into more opposition.”

LAURA: “That is a decent point. I am sorry I asked. I just, you know, I thought that maybe… I don’t know. I didn’t want to assume anything, Hank.”

NICK: HK straps their rifle to their back. You see, as he takes off, he stops doing his normal protocol kind of shuffling droid walk and takes on a really organic gate. “We’re all kriffed anyway. I don’t even know where we’re going to go. Who has those stratopacks? Whose drop pod were they in? Do you know?”

LAURA: “Um, one, are you okay? You seem a little weird.”

NICK: “Why do you say that?”

LAURA: “You just do not seem like your usual self. You seem too, how you say, casual. Also, I have no idea who has the stratopack things. Probably Karma, I would assume.”

NICK: HK scratches at the back of his head with a rusty kind of grating noise. “I don’t really see a reason for formality when the world is literally on fire.”

LAURA: “Excuse me, Hank. Did you just scratch yourself?”

NICK: “Oh. Um…”

LAURA: “You know you don’t have nerve endings to feel itchy.”

NICK: “Supposition: There must have been some damage to my chassis.” And he heads off.

LAURA: “I’m sure it is fine.”

[chuckling]

NICK: We’re gonna cut away from Xianna and over to Karma. Karma, you’re underwater.

CAMERON: Oh!

NICK: You regain consciousness in pretty much total darkness, and you can smell shorted out electronics, and you’re underwater. You’re breathing water. It seems fine. You can smell underwater. That’s a thing Nautolans can do, I’ve decided.

CAMERON: Mm-hmm!

NICK: You appear to have sunk to the bottom of something pretty deep.

CAMERON: Oh great.

NICK: What do you do? You’re still strapped into your drop pod.

CAMERON: I unbuckle my seatbelt. The pod’s not open yet or anything?

NICK: Nope.

CAMERON: Okay. I press the release next to the doors.

NICK: It shorts out, and the doors open slightly but are otherwise stuck.

CAMERON: I kick the door.

NICK: Alright. Make me an Athletics chick, check to—

CAMERON: An Athletics chick?

NICK: An Athletics check to bust down the door and get out.

CAMERON: What’s the difficulty of this athletic chick?

NICK: Hard.

CAMERON: Hard athletic chick. One success!

NICK: Nice. It takes a little bit. You’re able to kick the door open, and you actually feel, you have to switch legs because you feel that one of them is pretty banged up. You are going to take 2 wounds, ignoring soak, and you realize that in the landing and the tumbling and the sinking something must have gotten kind of messed up in there.

CAMERON: Ow.

NICK: But you’re able to break free. Do you swim towards the surface?

CAMERON: Yup. Was there anything else in my pod with me?

NICK: No.

CAMERON: [laughs] Then yes, I leave the pod and swim up. Not necessarily to the surface, I don’t pop above the surface, but I swim up to where enough light is coming through the water that I can kind of see where I’m at.

NICK: Yeah. You swim up to where you can kind of see where you are. You figure from how big this is and the temperature of the water and various currents and things, you must be in the bay. You’re not in a well. You can see the underbellies of those five landing crafts, and occasionally the water shutters with an extremely powerful shot, and the ship sinks about a meter into the water and then floats back up. You are directly underneath the Imperial bombardment right now.

CAMERON: Cool. I do draw out my sword in case there’s anything else living down here, and I’m gonna swim away from the Imperials towards the shore.

NICK: Okay. It’s a large curving bay. The landing crafts are kind of to the edge of the bay where it dumps out into the ocean, so there are some options here. Do you just swim directly away from them or do you poke your head up and kind of see where you’re at?

CAMERON: Eh, I’ll poke my head up, I’m green.

NICK: You poke your head up. You don’t really see much.

CAMERON: It’s just a turtle. It’s fine.

NICK: With a bunch of head tentacles.

CAMERON: It’s fine. [chuckles]

NICK: You can see… You’re floating and treading water, and you are faced away from the ships, and you can see to your right an area that’s extremely on fire…

CAMERON: Nope!

NICK: …with a big haze of smoke rising up. Directly in front of you it looks like a docking area where there’s a lot of transportation pods and things like that. It looks like docks. To your left, past a thin strip of docks, you can see what looks like fluted columns and museums and art galleries in the fancy part of town. Parts of it are bombed out, it doesn’t look like what it used to, but those are kind of your options. Ooh. I should also point out that far in the distance to your left, past the arts district, you do see a thin column of smoke that looks very different from the normal explosion smoke, like maybe some sort of jet rocket exploded.

CAMERON: So, I’m swimming towards the docks and then I look to my left like, wait, and I turn and I swim towards that.

NICK: Yeah. You figure that must be where one of the drop pods went down. You’re able to get to shore without too many issues, and you just head toward the column then?

CAMERON: Yep, kind of keeping to the shadows, trying not to be too out in the open.

NICK: That sounds like a Stealth check, doesn’t it?

CAMERON: It does?! What~?

NICK: Mm-hmm.

CAMERON: What would the difficulty of my Stealth check be?

NICK: Hard.

CAMERON: I get two blue dice, because I’m a Stalker.

NICK: Cool.

CAMERON: Oh my gosh. Okay… Oh no. Wait, no, it’s okay. never mind. Three successes, two threats.

NICK: Okay. You get through the docks with  no problem. you get through about half of this arts district with no problem. Then, [jazzy danger music starts] you are shot at by a scout trooper that’s on a roof with a blaster rifle, and you are forced down to cover as it is shooting at you. You can see them, but it’s a long shot, and you’re kind of pinned down where you are. Somebody saw you as you went.

CAMERON: How rude. I’m going to shoot them back.

NICK: Alright. Make me a check. It’s at long range, so that’s gonna be a hard shot.

CAMERON: I’m going to aim.

NICK: Makes sense.

[music volume pulses]

CAMERON: A triumph, six successes, and one threat.

NICK: [laughs in disbelief]

HUDSON: Wow.

NICK: Yeah. You just plug this trooper through the face mask and they slump to the ground.

CAMERON: I have an idea for my triumph.

NICK: Okay.

CAMERON: Actually, can I not shoot them in the face and get them in the chest instead? I want their helmet to be recoverable so I can take the coms unit out so that I can hear troop movement to avoid them going forward.

NICK: Sure. You shoot them in the chest. They slump over. Their helmet falls off and lands at your feet, because it’s a triumph…

CAMERON: Ha-ha~!

[trouble music ends]

NICK: …and you’re able to scrape the coms out, which you notice your coms have been pretty quiet so far, but you slot that in your other… Nautolans have ears?

CAMERON: Yeah! Just stick it up underneath the head tentacles and I can hear stuff.

NICK: Yeah. You’ve got troop movements. It’s a lot of automated information just detailing patrols, not a lot of chatter, but you have that if you need it. You continue on towards the column of smoke. We’re going to cut away to Tink. Tink, you are in your chair from your drop pod. You are upright. Your ears are ringing and your head hurts pretty bad. Go ahead and take 2 wounds for me.

HUDSON: “[groans] Oh, my head.”

NICK: The top half of your drop pod is gone. You’re, like, sitting in basically half of a cracked open egg.

HUDSON: Humpty Dumpty, where did it go?

[laughter]

NICK: There is a lot of smoke and things. It looks like you crashed outside of some sort of research facility. It’s built kind of like a bunker. It looks pretty deserted. You can see a column of smoke coming up basically around you making it pretty hard to breathe. What do you do?

HUDSON: I take off my seatbelt and jump out as fast as I can, maybe a little clumsily, actually.

NICK: Yeah. [laughs] You’re able to get out. You get out of the column of smoke. Your eyes start to clear. You see kind of sticking out of the wreckage of your drop pod, that big footlocker with the stratopacks on it, yours was the one that had those attached so you may want to grab that.

HUDSON: I go and I grab that, put that with my other stuff.

NICK: Cool. Yeah. It’s basically like a backpacking backpack. It will be kind of heavy, but you’re strong enough that it won’t mechanically affect you in any way. You also see that it looks like in that rattling landing it took some damage, and as you’re starting to wonder what that might mean in the future…

[danger music starts]

…you hear “Stop! Hands up!” and you see five stormtroopers gathered at the edge of the road all pointing their blasters at you.

HUDSON: “Hey y’all. Uh… Listen. Let me get my bearings. I just, uh, I just arrived.”

NICK: “Get down on your knees and put your hands in the air. Put everything on the ground. You’re under, uh, arrest I guess. I don’t know.”

CAMERON: ‘You are being detained!’

NICK: Yeah. [laughs]

HUDSON: “I’m being detained?”

NICK: “Eh, kriff it. Blast him!” [laughing] And they start shooting at you.

HUDSON: I dive.

NICK: Okay. Go ahead and roll me a Vigilance check, please. Could you roll me two yellows please, Cameron?

CAMERON: Three successes and one advantage on the yellows.

HUDSON: Just Vigilance, straight up?

NICK: Yep, just Vigilance, straight up.

HUDSON: Three advantages. [chuckles]

NICK: Yeah, okay. You go to dive and they get the drop on you. Roll me an average check, two greens and a yellow, please.

CAMERON: Two successes, three threats.

NICK: Ooh boy. So, as you dive to cover you get shot and with two successes you take 6 damage.

HUDSON: Oof.

NICK: Yeah.

CAMERON: That’s not a very good gun.

NICK: No.

HUDSON: “Ow!”

NICK: Heh. You dive behind cover. They’re using these stripped down E-11 blasters. They look like they’re designed for clearing buildings and to be light and easy for, say, if you were dropping into a planet, something like that, so it’s a modified weapon. Yeah. You’re shot, and you are pinned down. It’s your turn. What do you want to do?

[music stops]

HUDSON: Hmm. Do I have my vibro-axe?

NICK: Yeah. You got all your stuff.

HUDSON: Do I have a pistol?

NICK: I don’t know. Do you have a pistol?

CAMERON: Yes? You should have a pistol.

HUDSON: Yeah, I have a pistol on me generally.

NICK: Okay, then yeah.

HUDSON: Ooh. Alright. I stay behind my cover, but I shakily raise my hand with my gun, with my pistol, over the side and without looking shoot three times toward their direction.

[laughter]

NICK: Okay. Pew-pew-pew! Are you hoping to hit them or just to make them… Eh, just roll. Let’s see how this goes.

HUDSON: Roll, what was it?

NICK: Your light weapon skill at average difficulty.

CAMERON: Ranged: Light.

HUDSON: Ranged: Light has 0.

NICK: So just your Agility then.

HUDSON: One advantage.

NICK: One advantage. We’ll say that they kind of duck back out of this square for a minute. Your advantage can be that they have a black die on their next time trying to shoot you. At this point, they duck back behind cover, and you see a stormtrooper looking around the corner, and you begin to hear this high-pitched whine. It’s not the tinnitus. It’s a different one that seems to be coming from a rooftop nearby. You hear it go (charging up whoosh), and the stormtrooper looks around, and there is a flash of orange light, and the stormtrooper just turns into dust and floats away.

[jazz music starts sharp and turns calm]

It kind of looks like that scene from The Avengers.

LAURA: He’s been snapped!

NICK: But yeah, that stormtrooper is vaporized, and then there’s another high-pitched whining noise, [charging up whoosh] and then another one, there’s a flash of orange light and it turns into dust. One of the remaining stormtroopers goes “Sniper! Sniper, retreat!” They start to just run. A third one is shot and vanishes before the two manage to get behind a building and run away.

HUDSON: “Am I safe?!” I yell.

[giggling]

NICK: You hear a light chuckling from a building nearby. “Hold on there, chum. Let me get down there and see what’s going on.” And we’re going to cut away. So, Xianna, you managed to exit the fires and you find yourself kind of on the border between an industrial area and the docks. You’re pretty near to the bay. Occasionally you hear a really low but powerful boom as one of the ships in the bay arcs a plasma bolt up over the city and it comes down at various points seemingly at random. Every time that happens the whole ground shakes. Really the only thing you can see is one column of smoke far in the distance kind of ahead of you through several districts that looks like it may have come from some sort of rocket propulsion explosion. Actually, having been in a drop pod before that crash landed, it sure looks like what happens when a drop pod lands in a populated area. [laughs]

LAURA: “Okay. Okay hank. I think that is one of the other drop pods. Let’s go that way. And, uh, can you stop being weird, please? It is really freaking me out.”

NICK: “Advice: Showing that much stress this early on in the mission is a sign of weakness.”

LAURA: “Okay. One, it is not stress, it is drugs. Two, I did not actually have a point two. I figured I would figure one out on the way and I did not, so uh, yes.”

NICK: “Acknowledged. I will follow the secondary user.”

LAURA: “Okay. Thank you. Again, let’s just go that way. Like 98% sure that is where another drop pod landed, so it would be most likely Karma or Tink unless someone else is also in a drop pod doing the same thing…”

NICK: Hey, flip me a dark side point, would you? As you say that, you hear a high-pitch shriek and smashing into the building next to you is a very large looking metal cube and it crushes through the front of this warehouse and there’s a hissing noise as the front pops open, and four stormtroopers in mat black armor with red night vision scopes over their eyes, or they’re probably infrared scopes, pour out and they just lock eyes with you. “Drop squad initiated. Attack!” Roll for Vigilance.

LAURA: [smiling] Okay. I put a point in Vigilance.

NICK: Ooh, smart.

CAMERON: What does Hank need to roll?

NICK: Two yellows and a green.

CAMERON: Dang.

NICK: I made him very good at certain things.

LAURA: Alright. One success, three advantages.

CAMERON: HK got a triumph, three successes, and two advantages.

NICK: Oh… Could you roll me two yellows, please?

CAMERON: Two successes, one advantage.

NICK: Cool. Anything you want to spend the triumph on as far as making this fight easier, Xianna?

LAURA: Can there be something for Xianna to roll and duck behind?

NICK: Absolutely. There’s cover all over the place. This is a shattered, war-torn city. I’ll give you two options. There is a blown out crater that you can jump into foxhole style, and then there’s a knocked over front of a building with a waist-high wall that you can crouch behind.

LAURA: Wall.

NICK: Okay. With that many advantages and stuff you can start in cover.

LAURA: Xianna, while rolling over the wall, will be like, “Hank, shoot them!”

NICK: What did the troopers get?

CAMERON: Two successes, one advantage.

NICK: Hank says, “Order acknowledged. Preparatory Statement: Suppressing fire! Suppressing fire!” The gun starts to spin up and he just starts to spray in a steady arc towards the troopers and they scatter and run for cover. Roll me a… what is it here, heavy weapons, he’s very good at this… two yellows and two greens, and it’s gonna be a hard for this skill that he’s doing. For the listeners,  I changed the way Hank’s gun works because I didn’t like the way it was working, which was that it just murdered everything.

CAMERON: [goofily] It was too powerful.

NICK: Well, that and, it was too powerful but not in the way I wanted it to be, so now his repeater thing has a special ability called Suppressing Fire that lets him assign black dice to things, so let’s see how he does.

CAMERON: Two successes, and an advantage.

NICK: Two successes and an advantage. So, we’re going to say that is going to give two black dice to the stormtroopers next round, because they’re pinned down by this massive firing. Also, Hank’s just standing in the middle of the street, just (repetitive blast noises). He’s gonna do that all day. He’s in his comfort zone. It is the troopers’ turn. They’re going to shoot at Hank, because he’s real scary. That’s gonna be two yellows and average difficulty, but they have two black dice because they are suppressed.

CAMERON: One failure and one threat.

NICK: Okay. They are very suppressed. They try to shoot, but it’s kind of like how when Tink was shooting at the stormtroopers a minute ago. They’re holding their guns up and shooting, and I think with the threat one of the guns gets grazed and—

CAMERON: We get the cool side-by-side shot, because this is all happening at the same time, of them all just shooting.

NICK: Yeah. Everybody is shooting. Everybody is fighting. It’s going great. It was supposed to be a stealth mission… [sad laugh]

CAMERON: I feel like that wasn’t included in our briefing notes.

NICK: Eh, that’s fair. So, the troopers don’t hit jack. Xianna, it’s your turn.

LAURA: Xianna’s gonna poke up over the wall a little bit, find the closest distance stormtrooper, aim, and shoot.

NICK: Are you back to using your pistol or do you still have…?

LAURA: I’m back to using my regular pistol, yeah.

NICK: So, it’s medium range. You could try and move up, but then they’ll also be at close range to you, so they might be more likely to hit you.

LAURA: I don’t want that.

NICK: Okay.

LAURA: Two successes and one threat.

NICK: How much damage does your pistol do?

LAURA: So, that damage… It will be 9, because I get a success and a threat at the first shot of each encounter, so I actually have three successes, two threats.

NICK: Nice. You’re able to pretty quickly, from where you dove to cover, it’s at an angle from the cover they’re trying to take against Hank so they don’t really have cover against you, and you’re able to hit one of them and he just drops. You know that high-pitch noise the scout troopers make when they get thrown into trees on Endor? That’s the noise it makes, and the guy just drops. You’re able to wing another one. He doesn’t go down, but he turns and says “There’s multiple combatants. Flank! Flank!” They start to dive to different cover to try to get away from you. It is back to Hank’s turn. I think Hank’s gonna throw a grenade. That will be Light: Ranged, which he’s not very good at. It will be three green versus two purple and a black die, because they have cover. Oh wait, four green, sorry. His Agility is four.

CAMERON: I was confused why the number of dice changed. Is he aiming his grenade?

NICK: [smiling] You can’t aim grenades.

CAMERON: [laughs] Worth a try. Just one success.

NICK: One success. He blows up the one that you winged, so now we’re down to two stormtroopers, because one success isn’t enough to kill multiple because it doesn’t have blast activated because he doesn’t have advantages. Yeah, he chucks one and then he starts to move up, so he’ll use his maneuver to get closer for next time. It is the troopers’ turn. They are going to radio for assistance. So, across the city, Karma, you hear on the stormtrooper one, the standard troop movement one, which you had heard there was a countdown going and you weren’t sure what that was and then you saw the boom of something going in, but as you’re moving across you hear, “We found enemy combatants. Assistance needed! Assistance needed!” And then you can hear blaster fire and stuff in the background as you’re making your way towards Tink, and they’re going to shoot at Hank because he threw a grenade at them and he’s still kind of just standing in the open. That will be a yellow and a green. They lost one of their upgrades because they’re at half strength. Versus two purple.

CAMERON: Nothing.

NICK: Nothing! We get a really cool shot of an explosion and Hank standing there with his big rifle and blaster bullets going all around him, and not hitting him, and him looking completely unphased and frankly kind of bored because that’s how his face looks. It is Xianna’s turn.

CAMERON: He has resting bored face.

NICK: [smiling] Yeah.

LAURA: What range is the closest stormtrooper at this point?

NICK: They are still medium, and they are under cover against you, but you could move up to short range if you wanted to.

LAURA: I’m not going to.

NICK: Okay.

LAURA: But I am gonna aim.

NICK: You do have a black die, because they’re in cover now. Now that you’ve shot one of them they moved so that there are rocks in the way.

LAURA: Would scanner goggles do anything against that?

NICK: Not against rocks, so much…

LAURA: rocks, yeah.

CAMERON: [laughs]

LAURA: I had to try.

NICK: No, that’s fair. If it was because of the occlusion from the smoke in that fire area, yes, but that didn’t happen.

LAURA: Okay. Two successes and an advantage, so 8 damage.

NICK: That’s enough to kill one. You down to one, and that one you managed to graze. You’re just systematically picking them off at this point. The one trooper is left, and it’s Hank’s turn, isn’t it?

CAMERON: Mm-hmm.

LAURA: Yup.

NICK: Hank’s just gonna shoot him. Heh. The trooper stands up and looks like he’s going for a satchel charge at his belt to try to throw it, and Hank’s gonna move up, so it’s just gonna be an easy shot. He’s gonna aim, so he’ll take a strain to do that. Hank basically runs up to right next to this guy and unloads.

CAMERON: He’s finally getting to shoot organics.

NICK: Yeah, he’s pretty happy. They kind of look like robots though.

CAMERON: Three successes, one advantage.

NICK: Oh boy. That’s 12 damage. Yeah, so Hank just unloads into this stormtrooper’s chest. They are thrown backwards by the force of the gunfire into a far wall, and Hank says, “Tactical Assessment: The threat is eliminated.” The gun starts to spin down. So, you have managed to clear the stormtroopers. Hank says, “Question: Secondary user, what is our next objective?”

LAURA: “Okay… Um, oh boy. Should we try the coms? Have we tried that yet?”

NICK: “Ooh. I am very good at making com calls.”

LAURA: “Okay. You call either Karma or Hank. No, you’re Hank. I’m very tired now. You call Karma or Tink, or maybe do like a conference call and get both.”

NICK: “Dialing the crew of the Afternoon Delight.” Everyone’s coms start to ring including Xianna’s.

LAURA: “Ello~”

NICK: “Hello. This is HK-67.”

LAURA: “Yes, I know, Hank—“

CAMERON: “Hello?”

LAURA: “—I told you to call! Heh.”

NICK: “Hello, primary user Karma.”

CAMERON: “Oh hey, HK. How are you?”

NICK: “This is HK-67 calling for a tactical update.”

HUDSON: “Hi. Uh, new com, who this?”

LAURA: “Tink! You know who this is!”

HUDSON: “I know.”

CAMERON: [laughs]

NICK: “Greetings, Boss Man. This is HK-67 calling for a tactical assessment. I have killed two stormtroopers so far. More organics are incoming.”

LAURA: “Yes. Hank and I ran into some stormtroopers, but they are dead now so it’s okay.”

NICK: “Scratch that, three stormtroopers, I also killed the one on the speeder bike.”

CAMERON: “Alright. If we’re keeping a tally, I’ve killed one. I don’t know why this is an important update, but I’ll go with it.”

LAURA: “Did I get two or three, Hank?”

NICK: “Admonishment: You got two, but winged two more.”

LAURA: “Okay!”

NICK: “I finished them off. I get the credit.”

LAURA: “I get two assists. That’s how that works.”

NICK: “We can count assists in loser town.”

LAURA: “Well no, assists are just a separate stat in addition to points.”

NICK: “If that makes you feel like you are contributing, that is fine.”

LAURA: “And then you also have a stat for attempted point.”

CAMERON: ‘Okay. I feel like we’re losing track of this tactical conversation. Where are y’all at? Where did y’all land? Is everybody okay? How’s everybody feeling?”

LAURA: “We’re in a different spot than where we landed. Where we landed was literally on fire.”

CAMERON: “Oh, I saw that place! [laughs] I went away from there.”

LAURA: “Yeah, we did too.”

CAMERON: “If you were in the fire place, then Tink, I think I’m headed towards where your drop pot hid.”

HUDSON: “Oh yeah—“

CAMERON: “Drop pod hid? Drop pot hit. What? Wait, no.”

NICK: Drop. Pod. Hit.

CAMERON: “Sorry, I think the smoke is doing weird things to my vocal cords. I’m not even gonna try to say it again.”

LAURA: “Hank, where are we currently?”

NICK: “Hell if I know.”

HUDSON: [chuckles]

LAURA: “Okay. We don’t know where we are.”

CAMERON: “Are you moving away from the fire? Not in the water.”

NICK: “We are moving towards the column of jet smoke in the far corner of the city.”

CAMERON: “Okay cool. I think that’s Tink. I am also headed there.”

NICK: “These look like docks, I guess.”

CAMERON: “Oh cool! Yeah, I saw that too. Alright. I’m to the left of y’all.”

NICK: As this conversation is going on, Tink, you feel a hand touch the side of your head and hang up your com. “Sorry friend, I’m going to need your undivided attention.” We’re going to just cut out of the split screen phone call thing to standing next to you. That must have scared the bejesus out of you, because this guy just showed up and was silent.

HUDSON: I got a lot of questions.

NICK: So, standing in front of you, you see Neato the Rodian mercenary. He’s wearing scuffed up old style body armor, it looks like Clone Wars era armor, and is wearing an eyepatch and has a disrupter rifle, which kind of looks like a handheld vacuum cleaner with some piping stuck into it and is pretty much the most illegal gun in the Star Wars universe.

[soft jazz music starts]

HUDSON: It’s also really expensive, right?

NICK: It’s very expensive. It’s very illegal. No one makes them. you’re not supposed to have them. just knowing where they are can get you sent to jail. They’re very bad. But you’ve seen what they do, which is turn people into dust, so they’re very good for sniping and things, and his has a big scope on it. Neato holds out his hand. “Well, I guess I should introduce myself. My name’s Neato, chum. Looks like you’ve found yourself in a bit of a hootenanny. Mind if I step in for a song? Takes two Geonosians to tango, after all.”

HUDSON: [quietly] “What’s a hootenanny…?”

[giggling]

NICK: “It’s a whiz bang, a fist fight, fisticuffs. A mix-up. A slam down!”

HUDSON: “So… You’re Neato.”

NICK: “Right. Now you’re getting the song I’m singing.”

HUDSON: “[groans]”

NICK: [laughs]

HUDSON: “Why do you talk like that?”

NICK: “This is how I talk. You got a problem with the way I am, chum?”

HUDSON: “… Nope.”

NICK: [laughs]

HUDSON: “Not at all, Neato. You are what we came here for, uh, it seems.”

NICK: “That’s a bit foreboding. What brings you here? I’m trying to free this fair city from old Palpy’s Imperial troops.”

HUDSON: “Well, looks like some fire has happened.”

[music stops]

NICK: “I wasn’t saying that it was going swimmingly.”

HUDSON: “So, what stage are you at in that plan?”

NICK: “You know that stage right before losing where the few ragtag people can band together and fight back against impossible odds? We’re at that stage.”

HUDSON: “Ahh. Yes. I see.”

NICK: “That’s what I said earlier, a hootenanny.”

HUDSON: “Still don’t know what that means.” [laughter] “I think you should meet the rest of my team. They’re a bunch of great folks.”

NICK: “Well whiz bang. I thought you were using the Imperial we. Glad to hear you’ve got some chums yourself, chum.”

HUDSON: “Yes…”

NICK: At this point I think karma jogs into the square looking at the rooves. “Is that one with you, friend, or is there more of a firefight to conflagrate?” He aims the rifle at Karma.

HUDSON: “Oh, no-no-no, put that down. We know—That’s Karma.”

NICK: “Karma! Friend or foe?”

CAMERON: “Friend. This is slightly off from the pose. Tink, could you kind of like drape yourself along this little run and grab his leg for me, please?”

NICK: “Oh! You’re a fan of the holo-talkies.”

CAMERON: “I just need to confirm that you are the correct orange Rodian I’m looking for.”

NICK: Neato throws a leg up on a pile of rubble and puts the gun on his shoulder. “Now chum, you need to be down here on the right side. It balances the tableau.”

HUDSON: “Oh… Right. Yes.” I do that.

NICK: [laughs] Okay.

CAMERON: [laughing] Karma takes out her camera and takes a picture and puts it back in her mom bag, because there’s a camera in her mom bag. Just how mom bags work.

NICK & LAURA: [laughs]

NICK: Holo-camera.

CAMERON: Yeah. I’ll get that printed at Eckerd’s later.

[laughter]

LAURA: Gonna frame it and put it on the wall of the ship.

HUDSON: If I knew tonight we’d have an Eckerd’s reference, I’d have looked forward to it more.

[laughter]

NICK: “Well, it’s good to see that we have more chums. I seem to have run out of the old ones.” Neato looks actually sad for a second and looks down. You can see, it looks like a young soldier who has been partially crushed by rubble. They are very dead, and there’s a holo-recorder smashed up next to them. Neato just kind of shakes his head and makes a hand sign of respect. “But you know, war is a fickle mistress. At least now we’ve got some new compatriots. What’s the plan?”

CAMERON: “Well, I’m kind of coming into this conversation half way. I don’t know what y’all have talked about so far.”

HUDSON: “So uh, this chum, right here…”

CAMERON: “Uh-huh?”

NICK: “Yes, I’m a chum!”

HUDSON: “…is trying to liberate the people of this area.”

NICK: “It’s a real hootenanny.”

CAMERON: “Oh yeah. Okay. Right, got it.”

HUDSON: “Oh—Well.”

CAMERON: “We’re in the stage where all of the ragtag group are gonna have to get together and fight back against oppression, right?”

HUDSON: “Yeah…”

NICK: [laughs]

HUDSON: “Yes.”

CAMERON: “Yeah, that’s just common word usage.”

HUDSON: “I didn’t know that.”

NICK: “Now we’re dancing to the same song.”

HUDSON: [groans] … I don’t know if that was me or Tink.

[laughter]

CAMERON: Y’all can’t see Hudson grimacing, but it’s great.

HUDSON: “Well, I guess we’re missing our last two members of the squad here. Do you know where they are?”

CAMERON: “They were over in the docks when we were on the phone. You kind of left. They said they were gonna keep heading here though, and then we all just kind of hung up.”

HUDSON: “Alright. Snack break?”

CAMERON: “Okay! Do y’all want granola bars?” [laughs]

NICK: “If they’re down by the docks they may have some real problems. Maybe we should run to them.”

CAMERON: “Okay!”

NICK: “Can’t let Palpy get a leg up on us.”

CAMERON: “Alright. Do y’all want the granola bars as we run?”

HUDSON: “Yes.”

CAMERON: “Okay. Here you go.”

HUDSON: “Oh, yes! Chocolate chip!”

CAMERON: [chuckles]

NICK: So I guess they jog off, and we get back to Hank and Xianna. I think Hank is in the middle of saying, “Diagnostic Statement: Left servo at 67%, right servo at 83%, ocular vision 48% occluded by smoke,” and he’s just listing a bunch of numbers.

LAURA: “Okay Hank, what if I give you my scanner goggles? Would that make your vision better than 40-something percent? Do you not have that built in? Can we just…”

NICK: “Admonishment: I actually do not know how that works.” He holds out his hand for the scanner goggles.

LAURA: Xianna takes her goggles off and walks past his hand and puts them on his head.

NICK: As you put them on his head you hear microphone feedback and a static noise. “Panicked Statement: Ouch! Ouch! Take it off! Take it off!”

LAURA: Okay! I take it off! I take it off!

CAMERON: [laughs]

LAURA: “Okay. That is not working.”

NICK: “Evaluation: Those goggles interfere with my ocular sensors, 48% is still roughly 50 times better than most organics.”

LAURA: “Oh, okay… Well, um, you know, if you get worried about any of your percentages, you know, let us know. I don’t know what we can do for you, but let us know.”

NICK: “It is okay. My empathy for organics is still default to 0%. We will be fine.”

LAURA: “Okay!”

NICK: You all walk off. I think you make it through the docks towards the edge of the art district and you all are able to kind of triangulate. You don’t run into more stormtroopers or anything. You do occasionally hear the loud, rumbling boom of another artillery strike and the occasional shrieking whistle of an Imperial drop pod coming down, but none of them are close to you. It really gives you just a general vibe for this war of attrition going on. You all meet up in the bombed out lobby of an art museum. Xianna and Hank walk in as Karma and Tink are eating granola bars, sitting on the reception counter, and Neato has his leg up on a tipped over statue and is dramatically shielding his eye and looking out, surveying the scene. As you pull up he says, “Well, it looks like the gang’s all here, chums.”

LAURA: “Ello.”

HUDSON: “This is Neato.”

LAURA: “Yes, I know that.”

CAMERON: “Neato, this is Xianna, and that’s HK.”

NICK: “Oh. You’ve got yourselves one of those fizz bang assassin droids, I see.”

CAMERON: “Sure do~”

LAURA: “His name is Hank.”

NICK: “They may be quick on the trigger, but they’re nothing for an experienced blaster on the hip.”

LAURA: “I don’t know. You have not seen hank shoot people yet.”

NICK: “Well hopefully we’ll see that happen. Gotta put the fight to old Palpy.”

CAMERON: “Yup.”

LAURA: “Yes.”

HUDSON: “So, Xianna has an accent, so it’s not Ank, it’s Hank.”

LAURA: “’Zat’ is what I said. ‘Ank.’”

HUDSON: “Mm.”

NICK: “Thanks for the clarification, chum.”

HUDSON: “You’re quite welcome.”

NICK: “Looks like the old jumpsuit’s got some breathing room, so let’s talk strategy. You’re trying to hire me, right?”

CAMERON: “Indeed we are. Did Tink give you any information before we met up?”

NICK: “He just said I’m the one he’s looking for.”

CAMERON: “Well, that is true.”

NICK: “It is flattering, and I do feel some romantic tension there, but we should really be focused on the fighting.”

HUDSON: “Oh…”

CAMERON: “I’ll give you a copy of the picture once I have it developed.”

NICK: “Well thanks, it can go on the wall of glory~”

CAMERON: “Great. So anyway. Yes. You are the one we are looking for. We’ve been sent by our, employer? I guess.”

LAURA: “yes! Sentinel.”

NICK: “You said that strangely questioningly. Is there a question about if your employer in question is actually your employer?”

CAMERON: “Yeah. I don’t- I don’t…”

HUDSON: “You know how like some people are contractors and some people are employees and some people are day laborers?”

CAMERON: “Yeah, it’s kind of one of those situations.”

LAURA: “Yes.”

CAMERON: “I’m not sure if we—I don’t think we ever signed a contract, so I don’t think we’re employees. I think we are contracting.”

LAURA: “I think we are more on the day labor, because even a contractor is called that because they sign a contract.”

CAMERON: “Oh, well that’s a very valid point.”

NICK: “I’m freelance.”

LAURA: “I think maybe we are more freelance.”

CAMERON: “Alright. Maybe we’re freelance. Yeah.”

HUDSON: “Yeah. I think we’re all freelance.”

LAURA: “But he is employing us for this mission.”

CAMERON: We’re consultants…?

[laughter]

LAURA: “Also, we don’t have confirmation that he is directly the one paying us, or funding us I guess. It could be someone else who is providing the funding.”

CAMERON: “We’ve been sent by, our buddy, to come and see if you would be willing to join a high-ranking cool team of, I don’t know, really talented people.”

NICK: “Well, if they’re not real biscuit boxers yet, give them a month with me and I’ll make them some.”

LAURA: “Oh no, the one can punch so good.”

CAMERON: “That’s true. We have met one of the team members.”

LAURA: “She did beat Tink in a fight.”

HUDSON: “Whoa. I think that was more of a—“

LAURA: “She punched you so hard.”

HUDSON: “—friendly scuffle.”

LAURA: “I mean, it was, but it was also a fight and she definitely won.”

CAMERON: “She beat you so hard in that friendly scuffle.”

HUDSON: “I think there’s a philosophical question of if anyone wins when there’s fighting going on.”

LAURA: “No. I won money off of it, so yes, she did win.”

HUDSON: “Alright…”

NICK: “Now this is very interesting for the group dynamic, but more importantly…”

LAURA: “Yes. As far as I know, Tink is single.”

NICK: “I’m not one to put pleasure before business. What are you paying me?”

LAURA: “To date Tink?!”

NICK: “No, for the job.”

LAURA: “Oh! I have no idea. Heh.”

CAMERON: “So, the payout, TBD on when it would actually get paid out, I’m not sure exactly…”

NICK: “I’m pretty used to that.”

CAMERON: “Yeah, you get it. I’m a bounty hunter, I also get it. It would be 15,000 Credits.”

NICK: “Fifteen grand? That’s a lot of scratch.”

CAMERON: “Yes. We were talking earlier about how you’re in the hootenanny stage of this mission.”

NICK: “Yep. Can’t abandon a hootenanny.”

CAMERON: “Exactly.”

LAURA: “Is this a hootenanny or a shindig?”

NICK: “No, a shindig is like two stages before, you’re starting to lose but the teams are still fairly balanced, right now we’re full hootenanny. This is almost a lost cause, but with you all here we may have a shot.”

HUDSON: ‘How…”

LAURA: “Wait. No. I thought a shindig is at more like step one or two, where you gather everyone for the first time and start the rebellion…?”

CAMERON: “No, that’s a hoedown.”

LAURA: “Oh, that’s a hoedown! Okay.”

CAMERON: “It also has to take place in a barn.”

LAURA: “Okay. Okay. Yes. Yes.”

NICK: “Don’t forget that any of these can be overwritten by just yelling ‘it’s party time’ while shooting the enemy.”

LAURA: “Okay, no-no, yes. So a hootenanny is towards the end where you have to gather hope and really push for it.”

NICK: “Yes. We all know what a hootenanny is.”

LAURA: “Yes. Ryloth has been on the hootenanny stage for like two decades now.”

NICK: “Ooh. That’s a long hootenanny.”

HUDSON: “We all know it now. I don’t know how you all knew it earlier.”

[laughter]

LAURA: “You had never heard of these?”

HUDSON: “No!”

CAMERON: “So you don’t have as much experience in combat stuff.”

HUDSON: “I don’t talk like—“

CAMERON: “This is common lingo.”

HUDSON: “I don’t talk like a weirdo.”

LAURA: “Yeah, a hootenanny, a shindig, a hoedown, you know.”

HUDSON: “Egh. I thought they were all synonymous.”

CAMERON: “Mm. Slight differences, and they make a big difference.”

HUDSON: [laughs] “Alright. We’ll go with that, sure.”

NICK: “Well chums, if you want me to join your little soiree, first we’re gonna have to sidle up to something heroic. These civvies here have a lot of heart but no durasteel, if you know what I mean. We’re gonna need to help them out, because I’m not leaving until this hootenanny is no longer a hootenanny one way or another.”

LAURA: “Well, I mean, half the city is on fire.”

NICK: “Always a good start. We can probably use that.”

LAURA: “Okay. Yeah. If you think so.”

NICK: “So, I should clarify, I am not the only combatant in this city right now.”

CAMERON: “Okay. I was getting concerned. You were the only one we’d seen.”

NICK: “**Sart has a militia, not much of one left anymore, but they’re real scrapers, real scrappers. They’re out by the shield facility.” [smiling] The camera turns, and something that we haven’t described so far, as far from the bay as you can get before the jungle starts there’s this giant domed looking factory with a huge blueish-green laser shooting out of it, and that’s the source of the space shield. That’s been there the whole time. “Yeah, so they’re all hold up at that shield facility over there. We should probably meet up with the general of the militia, see if we can get them for one final push, because if they continue this attrition situation this hootenanny is gonna turn into a disaster real quick.”

LAURA: “Okay!”

HUDSON: “Sounds good to me.”

CAMERON: “Sounds like a plan. I do have an Imperial com if that would be beneficial.”

NICK: “That’s helpful. Yeah, that should be pretty good. We’ll sock it to old Palpy, get out of here somehow, and then—“

CAMERON: “Oh, we got a plan for that part, too.”

NICK: “Oh. Awesome. Does it have something to do with that big old backpack on your friend, the white Wookie?”

CAMERON: “Why it just might.”

HUDSON: “I… Yeah, no, I… just have a lot of… nah, I’ve tried to make… It’s been a long day.”

[laughter]

LAURA: “No, the stratopack thingy.”

HUDSON: “Yeah, I got them. I got them in there.”

NICK: “You all really look like you took a couple of hits to the thinkers there. Rough entry?”

LAURA: “I woke up upside-down bleeding, and the outside was all on fire, so yes.”

HUDSON: “I was in a cracked egg.”

CAMERON: “I was underwater.”

NICK: “Sounds like my standard Tuesday night!”

CAMERON: “I’m very glad I was the one who ended up underwater and not one of y’all.”

LAURA: “Tink, you were in an egg?!”

HUDSON: “No. My ship cracked like an egg.”

LAURA: “Ohh! Okay.”

CAMERON: “[sweetly] You’re like a baby bird, all fluffy.”

LAURA: “I was a little confused by that.”

NICK: As you’re walking through the art district headed towards this shield facility you actually find the top half of Tink’s drop pod several kilometers away including part of his chair that was still attached to it.

LAURA: “Oh kriff!”

CAMERON: “Oh. Here’s your headrest.”

HUDSON: “Yeah, that was a close’n.”

NICK: “Well, let’s get to it and sock one to old Palpy.” You all head off towards the shield facility, and that’s gonna be the end of the episode.

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.