Tabletop Squadron Transcript, Jedi Adventures #2:
Throwing Their Weight Around

Transcript by Harrison (Twitter: @unabletowhistle)

## Intro

[Cameron hums space music]

NICK: Hello everyone, and welcome to Tabletop Squadron, a Star Wars: Edge of the Empire actual play podcast. I’m Nick, your game master. We’re doing something a little different the next few episodes as our crew departs on Roulette Dawn, we flash back to simpler time when the Empire was a republic and the Jedi maintained peace throughout the galaxy. Come along with us on this Jedi buddy cop adventure!

Our intro music is Tanza Depanza 77 by Juan James Juan.

Before we get started, I want to thank everyone again for the iTunes reviews. People are really starting to find the show and that’s extremely exciting. Please tell people you know about us.

For now, our secret art has been released. You can find it on Tabletopsquadron.com or our Twitter or our Facebook or our Instagram. We’ve put it everywhere.  Get out there and see for yourself. It’s some good stuff.

Anyway, onto the next part of our Jedi Adventure. We hope you enjoy the episode.

##

NICK: Hello, and welcome to Episode 2 of our buddy-cop Jedi shenanigans. I’m your host, Nick. Glad to see that you’re back for more.

Before we introduce everybody, just going to start off with an apology for the massive lawn-mowing going on outside. We just finished the last episode and like three different lawn crews showed up so I’m going to filter that the best I can, but be ready for a little bit of low drone. So yeah, apologies in advance for that and hopefully I’ll get most of it filtered out and you won’t even notice it.

And going around the table real quick for our two players today, to my right, we’ve got Laura.

LAURA: It sounded like you were unsure which one was your right and which one was your left. As Nick said, I am Laura. Today, I will be playing Darcevy. She is a Selonian and a Jedi. Yes.

NICK: And to my left, we have Hudson.

HUDSON: Hi Nick.

NICK: Hi.

HUDSON: My name is Hudson.

NICK: Hi Hudson.

HUDSON:  I’m playing Vross. He’s the best Devaronian Jedi there’s ever been or ever will be.

NICK: That’s a bold statement. We’ll see how that works out for him, Cotton.

So like I said, we’re recording these all in one go. This is a one-shot. Just broken it up into episodes for ease of release and your listening pleasure. So we will not be doing the destiny roll. We’re keeping the same score as last time which is currently standing at two dark side and two light side.

So when we last left off, our heroes had made it to Glee Anselm, the Nautolan home planet. They had landed on the capital city turtle of Pieralos. And they had managed to find the head of the diplomatic security force, whose name is Soy Latte.

LAURA: Soy latte.

NICK: Whose name is Soana Lette. And asked her some questions. Found some good solid information and leads. And we left off with them seeing the holofeed of the senator’s daughter and she looked up at the camera and the feed cut out. And when the feed resumed there was no person. So that’s where we’re going to pick up.

So the camera opens on you all walking through the sunny, crowded street of Pieralos. Like I said last episode, there is a greater amount of people out in the open than you would expect. They’re all very touristy, taking pictures of the buildings being out in the open-air. Because you now know this city is entirely underwater all the time so the population is taking advantage of a different site and probably a lot of these people came from a different cities to tour and to visit.

So you found out that she is missing. You’re not exactly sure why. Now would be a good time to figure out what you’re going to do.

LAURA: I think the plan is to go visit the hotel Quitall is staying first. Are there any shops that we see along the way that are more geared toward off-worlders? Or anywhere that might sell rebreathers? Or would we have had rebreathers on our ship?

NICK: So I would say that in your little goodie bag you probably have rebreathers.

LAURA: OK.

NICK: Because in Episode 1 have those and there’s no reason for them to have think they were going to need them because you’ll remember they were going to have a diplomatic talk. So you probably have rebreathers. Those are the little Tootsie Roll-shaped things you put in your mouth and they let you breathe underwater because Star Wars. So yeah, you have a couple of those.

LAURA: OK, if we didn’t have them on us, Darcevy would definitely make sure to go get those. And then while making sure we have them, would talk to Vross, “Do you need to buy—I think they mentioned weights? So that you may stay on the ground.”

HUDSON: “That sounds like a good idea. Let’s hit up a store.”

LAURA: Yeah, are there any stores that might sell ankle weights?

NICK: Yeah, it’d be the equivalent of a sporting goods store. Most of the shops are using different… They’re doing like seasonal stuff, because this doesn’t happen often. It’s the equivalent of getting eclipse glasses or whatever. They’re cheap. They’re only designed for this one time thing because this only happens every hundred years. But they have sunhats and sunglasses and things but you go into a shop and you’re able to secure some like ankle weights and some shoes with little sticky bottoms that would make it so you could walk underwater.

LAURA: I have claws. Ha!

NICK: So yeah, you’re fine.

LAURA: So yeah, I’m good with just the rebreather, but yeah, Vross would probably need sticky shoes and stuff.

NICK: Yeah. That being said, you probably won’t need that gear, or you would hope you wouldn’t because the diplomatic corps is leaving in two days once the Breaching ends and if you can’t return the senator’s daughter, they’re not going to be able to hide that this happened and it could potentially result in full-blown war. Or at least a diplomatic incidence.

LAURA: Cev is aware of that but she doesn’t like the idea of not being prepared. She would’ve been a Girl Scout if not a Jedi.

NICK: What are Jedi if not Girl Scouts with laser swords?

LAURA: Just militarized Girl Scouts.

HUDSON: And Boy Scouts?

NICK: You can be a Girl Scout and be a boy.

LAURA: I guess the Boy Scouts the motto is also “Always Be Prepared,” right?

HUDSON: I was not a Boy Scout.

LAURA: You were a Boy Scout for like half a day.

HUDSON: I didn’t like the outdoors.

NICK: [laughs]

LAURA: I was a Girl Scout for like 8 years so I probably should’ve known that.

NICK: Cool. So y’all are headed to the Terrapin Inn? The Terrapin Inn is a lot closer to where your ship originally landed. You’ll remember that the bellhop said that area was called the landing bay. As you are walking back, you’re up on a ridge on the turtle’s back that carries Pieralos. It’s actually more of an open-square that normally you would assume people swim through. There’s a lot of doors further up the buildings that circle up that area because people would be able to swim in and out of different parts of the building. But that this big open space with no water has been sort of used as a temporary parking space for ships. The ship you came in on left pretty much as soon as you unloaded because it’s a space bus, but you do see a small low structure that has a sign in Arabesh on it that does say the Terrapin Inn. It kind of looks like a giant brain coral.

LAURA: Interesting. We walk inside. I’m assuming it’s a standard hotel layout and approach the front desk and I ask, “Excuse me. I need to know when–” Was he a senator or a diplomat? What was Quitall Nol?

NICK: So he was the son of the diplomatic excursion.

LAURA: The son of the diplomatic excursion.

NICK: Yes. So he wasn’t super important in and of himself except that he’s the member of an important family.

LAURA: “I need to know when the Anselmi diplomats left.”

NICK: So the attendant for the hotel is a Mon Calamari—so that’s kind of a koi fish-looking person with kind of a bulbous head. They’re a lovely brownish color with salmon speckles.

LAURA: It’s Admiral Ackbar.

NICK: Yeah, so he sucks in his bulbous eyes with a slurping noise and he looks at you. And you can see him fanning himself because he’s not used to being out of water this long. He says, “Um, I’m not really at liberty to divulge that information. We’re supposed to prevent security breaches with our customer service. Yeah. No.”

LAURA: I want to—can I do a Coercion roll? And hand wave. I don’t think I have the actual hand wave Force power but that’s my in-game explanation for what I’m doing is it’ll just be Coercion but I’ll wave my hand and just be like, “You will tell me.”

NICK: OK.

LAURA: What will be the difficulty?

NICK: Average. He’s not a particularly willful creatures. So far this adventure has just been the ‘abuse the hotel staff’ the game.

LAURA: Well, that would be a triumph with a success and two additional successes and a threat.

NICK: Alright, so you’re pretty good at that. Describe how you Mind Trick this guy and if you have any ways you want to use that triumph, let me know.

LAURA: I look down at him, do the very standard hand wave, while saying, “You will tell me when the Anselmi diplomats left.”

NICK: “I will tell you when the Anselmi diplomats left. They left two days ago.”

LAURA: “Was there anything unusual about their checkout?”

NICK: “Um, they had a surprising amount of luggage and it looked almost like military gear because you know, they wouldn’t have brought military gear to a diplomatic mission. I think they just wanted to make sure their clothes stayed dry. You know, they’re particularly nice to the Nautolans.”

LAURA: “Were there any cases that were exceptionally larger than the others? Say, more than four feet in length and height?”

NICK: “Oh yeah. They had a couple of really big footlockers. In fact, it took more than a couple of people to carrying them and you probably could’ve fit a person in there. They were real big. I assumed they kept all their luggage unfolded because they all had really nice clothes.”

HUDSON: “Funny you say that a person could fit in there.” And that’s all I say.

LAURA: “No, it’s actually not funny.”

HUDSON: “Just go with me here. Alright, so where were they going?”

LAURA: “I am here.”

NICK: [laughs]

HUDSON: “So where were they headed to?”

NICK: “They were headed back to Anselm, the capital city of the Anselmi. It’s about an eight-hour boat ride from here.”

LAURA: “Was this an early checkout or did they checkout on time?”

NICK: “Well, since they’re diplomats, we extended them a pretty good amount of flexibility. They didn’t checkout like super early. It was their time to go. They don’t want to be here once the Breaching ends because they don’t breathe underwater.”

LAURA: “Yes. Has their room already been cleaned through? I’m assuming since it’s been two days.”

NICK: “Yeah, we sold the room again almost immediately.”

LAURA: “Were you aware of any unusual things found in the room or who would’ve—I’m assuming a droid would’ve cleaned. Do they have reports?”

NICK: “Well, the droids usually sweep through the rooms and just throw everything away but they’re individual compartments per room and I don’t think we’ve dumped that room yet. If you want to dig through the trash, be my guest.”

LAURA: “Vross.”

HUDSON: “Why do I have to do it?”

LAURA: “You’re better at finding things than I am.” Isn’t your thing seeker?

HUDSON: I am a seeker. I mean…

LAURA: You’re a Hufflepuff.

HUDSON: “Ugh. I suppose I do have some training in finding things that other people may not find so I’ll dig through the trash.” I walk over to the trash.

NICK: OK, so the Mon Cal attendant kind of laps into a stupor as though getting all this information pulled out of him was pretty exhausting, but you see a cleaning droid rolling by through the lobby and into a backroom. And you follow it and you see that there are big—they’re probably like two-meter by two-meter cubes and in them is a bunch of dust, paper trash, and tissues and a bunch of things in each one and there are little screens on each of the cubes. And you’re able to kind of flip through and find the finest room. It’s called the Presidential Suite and you figure that’s probably where they were staying. So yeah, you can roll me a Perception to dig through all of that if you would like.

HUDSON: I would like.

NICK: This one is gonna be hard.

LAURA: You could Force move some of the trash.

HUDSON: Would that help?

LAURA: No.

NICK: It’d just make a big dust cloud. It’d look pretty cool.

HUDSON: OK. So it looks like I have one, two, three, four, minus three. One success and no advantages.

LAURA: Ooh, right here.

HUDSON: So I have a success. I find something?

NICK: Yeah, so you spend with just one success probably about 45 minutes digging through. You get very dusty. It’s very gross. You come up several times with like weird, like, cellophane trash stuck to your horns that you have to pull off.

HUDSON: “Ugh!”

NICK: Yeah, it’s gross. But you do find a note that’s written in a very feminine hand that says, “Meet me this evening. We need to talk,” on it. It’s signed with a little heart. You find that.

HUDSON: “Hmm.”

LAURA: While he’s digging through the trash, I would ask the attendant if anyone in the group looked nervous or suspicious in any way upon leaving.

NICK: “Um… not that I noticed. I wasn’t the only one here. But everybody just seemed eager to go. I know that teenager that was with the diplomat, he did start a couple of fights. Got brought back by the peacekeepers a couple of time, but when he was leaving, he was in a pretty good mood.”

LAURA: “Thank you.”

NICK: “Of course.”

LAURA: “Vross, what did you find?”

HUDSON: “Well, I don’t know if this could be anything or not, but I found this love-note asking someone to meet them tonight. Heart. I mean the drawing was of a heart. It didn’t say the word ‘heart.’”

LAURA: “I figured. And that does seem like it may actually be something.”

HUDSON: Do I see anything else in the trash can that I dig through?”

NICK: Not really. It’s pretty cleared out. You do find some papers that are shredded and some stuff that shows that that was the right trash. It was the diplomatic corp.

HUDSON: “So the next question is if I was in young love, where would I meet my young lover?”

LAURA: “Well, I don’t know if we need to know where they met. Just that they met and are probably back in Anselm, where the diplomats went.”

HUDSON: “Good point. I’m sure they’ve met by now.”

LAURA: “It was two days ago. I’m confident they’ve already left.”

HUDSON: “Alright. Looks like we’ve run out of clues. Now where do we go?”

[laughter]

LAURA: “To Anselm.”

HUDSON: “Right. To Anselm! We’re going there.”

LAURA: Would we go back to the ship or would we charter a boat?

NICK: So your ship is gone because it was a space bus.

LAURA: Oh yeah.

NICK: So you’re going to need to charter a boat most likely.

LAURA: Charter a boat.

NICK: The good news is that the Terrapin Inn is very close to the edge of the city, the edge of the shell, and you saw a dock with some leisure boats tied up. You figure you can probably get a deal and get a trip south if you need to.

LAURA: We’re going to go down and go through and I guess find the boat that leaves soonest. Because I’m assuming we have credits from the Temple and that doesn’t really matter.

NICK: You have a decent amount of pocket change that we don’t have to do the math.

LAURA: Cool.

NICK: So you go down to the dock. You see a brawny Nautolan male basically wearing board shorts and flip-flops and that’s it. And he’s sunning himself on what looks like a cigarette boat but the back end is all tentacles and he’s there. You approach him and he says, “Hey! What can I do for you?”

LAURA: “We need to charter passage to Anselm.”

NICK: “Oh, that’s a pretty dangerous trip. You know if you get to close to there, that’s a pretty good way to get blown up.”

HUDSON: “I don’t know if you’ve seen us, but we’re Jedi so we pretty much go right into what you would call ‘danger,’ what I would call ‘Snoreville’ most days.”

NICK: “Oh, well, far be it for me to tell Jedi what to do. I will, of course, if you’re from the capital, you’ve probably got all sorts of coin. I’ll have to charge you a lot for, you know, danger and things. But I can get you to where you need to go. This boat’s the fastest one here.” And he looks pretty proud of himself.

LAURA: “Yes, that will do.”

NICK: “Alright, I hope you packed a snack. It’s going to be a long ride. If not, I’d be happy to sell you some sandwiches.”

HUDSON: “Took some Bantha Cakes from the hotel.”

NICK: [chuckles]

LAURA: “Did you take them or did you pay for them?”

HUDSON: “I paid for them.”

LAURA: “Good. What kind of sandwiches?”

NICK: The sandwiches—the camera pans away and he’s describing, it’s mostly clams and shrimp sandwiches. They’re like seafood salad sandwiches.”

LAURA: Nice. Darcevy is quite happy with this.

NICK: So we cut again to the boat. It is doing the classic speedboat overhead shot of it bouncing overhead along the waves. The speedboat, like I said, looks like a really long cigarette boat. Something that on Earth would be used to sneak around the coast guard, but standing off the back, it looks kind of like the Bongo, that little water ship they have that has like that spinning tail drive on it.

LAURA: Oh yeah.

NICK: But it’s basically like a cluster of tentacles that spins and crashes through the water. The boat has a lot of handholds and things. It looks like it could go under the water fairly well, but the pilot is keeping you up on the surface just out of respect for you non-waterbreather types so it’s more comfortable.

So the ship is very fast. You are able to eat your snacks. It is like an eight our ride. And in the back of your heads, you know just getting back before the end of the Breach is going to be pretty close. But this is probably the fastest way to get there, so your hands are kind of tied there.

So you ride. It gets to be pretty late in the evening at this point. So the pilot stops about 400 meters away from the island that you begin to see. It looks just kind of like a pitiful spit of sand. You see some like shacks just scattered around it, but otherwise it’s like extremely clear, no cover, pretty crappy, but it is the first land you’ve seen since you’ve got here.

And he says, “I can’t get any closer than this.” And you guys want to make me some Perception checks.

LAURA: Cool.

HUDSON: Yes, I would like to. What difficulty?

NICK: Average.

HUDSON: That is four successes and two disadvantages.

NICK: OK.

LAURA: Nope.

NICK: Lots of failures.

LAURA: Just nope.

NICK: A failure and a threat.

LAURA: I’m not very perceptive.

NICK: Yeah, so you don’t even bother to look, but Vross, you jump to the nose of the boat and take up a sea captain’s pose with your hand shading your eyes against the sunset.

HUDSON: That’s no less than the fourth time I’ve done that this trip.

NICK: And you can actually see very clearly that buried in the sand, there are some bumps. And you can see what looks like turbo laser batteries sticking out. It’s pretty hidden but this is a very fortified spit of sand, so that’s probably why the guy refuses to get any closer.

He says, “I can’t get you any closer than this without getting shot at and you know, your money’s good but it’s not that good, so you’re going to have to swim from here.”

LAURA: “Understood.”

HUDSON: “I believe you.”

NICK: “Great. Well, good luck, I guess. Get out of my boat.”

LAURA: Darcevy jumps in. She doesn’t even really put the rebreather on since she’s going to swim on the surface so she can just otter, just kind of like undulate in and out of the water.

NICK: Vross, do you jump in?

HUDSON: I jump in and start swimming.

NICK: Alright, I’m going to need an Athletics check from you to see if you can swim 400 meters.

HUDSON:  Oh no… What’s the difficulty?

NICK: Average. But I’m going to flip a Dark Side point and make it a purple and a red difficulty.

HUDSON: A success.

NICK: And that’s it.

HUDSON: Yep.

NICK: Just a success. OK, so you’re able to swim pretty easily. You’re a strong, fast, capable Jedi. Swimming 400 meters is not a big deal to you.

HUDSON: I mean, best in my school, I mean, academy.

LAURA: Except I most certainly am ahead and like have to kind of like float on my back a little bit for you to catch up and then start up again.

HUDSON: “I’m saving strength for the mission. That’s like Lesson #1 of the academy.”

LAURA: “No, it’s not, but okay.”

NICK: Right, so we get an aerial shot of Vross swimming well and Darcevy swimming circles around him as you head to shore. It probably takes you 10, 15 minutes to swim that far. It’s not a short swim and as you get closer,  you do see those are definitely gun placements. Even Darcevy sees, this is a heavily fortified stretch of beach. You see one person standing on the shore and it’s got its arms cross and it’s basically watching you swim up.

LAURA: When we get to shore, Darcevy waves at the person. “Hello, we are Jedi from the Jedi temple. Here to ask you a few questions.”

NICK: “Jedi?” He steps back. You can see he’s an Anselmi. He has kind of soft plates all over his skin. It kind of looks he’s covered in turtle shell and he has sunken back eyes and kind of a beaky face. But he’s also wearing like a military uniform. It’s a solid red jumpsuit with a bandolier across and he’s got a blaster tucked into the bandoleer. He says, “We have not had Jedi here at Anselm in many decades.”

HUDSON: “Well, I’m sure we’ll get a warm welcome then.”

NICK: “Yes, we respect you for your combat prowess. May I inquire as to the reason for your visit?”

LAURA: “A diplomat has recently gone missing and we believe your diplomat might have information that would make it easier to find the missing diplomat.”

NICK: “You, of course, would never imply that my noble people would kidnap anybody.”

HUDSON: “No, no, no, they’re too noble for that.”

NICK: “Yes, exactly. That is my point. I can tell that me and you are going to get along wonderfully, horned, red person.”

HUDSON: “Did you go to an academy? Do I know you?”

NICK: “I did go to the Anselm Military Academy? Is that where you went?”

HUDSON: “No, I went to a different one, but we have a connection here.”

LAURA: “You went to the Jedi Academy. Do you not understand?”

HUDSON: “No, I understand. He didn’t ask me what academy I went to. I just said it wasn’t his.”

LAURA: “Why would you assume he went to the Jedi Academy?”

HUDSON: “Some Jedi go in—it doesn’t matter.”

NICK: So as you’re having this quiet conversation, the Anselmi head is whipping back and forth, just listening. He looks kind of confused and he says, “If you would follow me to the interior, I can show you the way. The one request we would have is this is a military outpost, so please do not go anywhere unescorted by me or another officer.” And he turns and heads further onto the beach.

LAURA: I follow.

HUDSON: “You got it, chief.” I follow.

NICK: Yeah, OK, so as you get closer, these huts which from a distance look like beach huts made out of thatch and palm fronds are actually durasteel and that they’re actually angled in a way that they would be able to repel blaster fire from a distance. And your escort opens one of these with a very long keypad entry. It’s like at least 10 digits. And it slides open and there’s a lift going down and he steps down and gestures for you to follow.

HUDSON: We follow.

LAURA: Yes.

NICK: “It has been quite a long time since outsiders saw Anselm. Please follow our rules and we should have no problem.” And he puts his hand on a scanner and it scans his hand and you begin to descend very quickly.

HUDSON: “Can you explain these rules to us? I do not recall.”

NICK: “The main one being don’t go anywhere without an escort please.”

HUDSON: “You got it.”

NICK: “Also please don’t report on our military structure.”

HUDSON: “Great. Could care less.”

NICK: “Good Well, you should. We have a long and storied history.”

HUDSON: “We don’t need to hear about that right now.”

NICK: “OK.” [laughter]

We get a side swipe. You all are coming out of a lift. You’re coming out of an underground bunker. It’s well lit, but it’s all dark metal. There are Anselmi troop formation jogging around. You can see kind of a war room with—it’s those stupid screens from Hoth where they’re like the clear plastic screens with all the random lines and triangles on them for no reason.

LAURA: Oh yeah.

NICK: And there are some Anselmi leaning over those pointing at different things.

Past that, you can see a low window and a motor pool with what look like military submarines and then there’s a hallway leading down to the right. And your guide says, “You were hoping to speak to the diplomatic contingent, correct?”

LAURA: “More specifically, Quitall Nol.”

NICK: “Oh, uh, I know of Nautol Nol. That’s the head of the diplomatic contingent, but I don’t know a Quitall Nol. Nautol Nol recently returned from Pieralos.”

LAURA: “Quitall, I believe, is his son.”

NICK: “Yes, that does make sense. We don’t really deal with the diplomats much. We’re not big fans of the diplomats section. A waste of resources. But I can bring you there.” And he heads down the hall.

You pass several different areas. It’s basically one small central hallway that leads off into areas that are clearly zoned for different things so you go past the hangar which you already saw with the war room.

There’s a barracks that just looks like rows and rows of bunk beds and you can see that the lights seem to click on and off in hundred bunk blocks.

And you see what looks like may be an archive. It’s a bunch of holobanks all set up and there’s some people in military uniforms but they’re cut kind of like robes and it’s more researchy looking there.

And you pass a mess hall which is basically just a giant vat of looks like boiled fish and there’s one lunch person just handing boiled fish to one long line of people one after another.

And after the mess hall you do pass a training arena with doing hand-to-hand fighty stuff and they look slow, surprisingly slow. For an elite military force, they look average at best at hand-to-hand stuff.

LAURA: I mean, they are turtley.

NICK: Yeah. So they’re like trying hard. You can tell they have a well-regimented doctrine and everyone is trained, but physically, they’re just not up-to-snuff compared to a lot of what you’ve seen because you’ve been to several planets and seen different fighters and this is not particularly impressive.

LAURA:  Darcevy is not saying anything because she has been told she is blunt and too honest and so she often during these things is just don’t say anything, don’t talk, be quiet, because in her head, she’s just like, “They are slow and weak-looking. They should not be doing this.”

NICK: Does Vross say anything?

HUDSON: Did you say that out loud?

LAURA: No, no, no.

NICK: It’s her in head.

LAURA: That’s like in my head and purposely not saying anything because again, she has been told she is sometimes too blunt.

HUDSON: “You got a sharp-looking army here. Looks like they’re coordinated.”

NICK: “Yes, thank you. We have trained for generations to take down the Nautolan invaders. They glut on the population of our beautiful planet and someday we shall take back the watery homeland that is our due. Even if we can’t breathe underwater.”

HUDSON: “Alright, well, good luck with that.”

LAURA: “I mean, what do you plan on doing with it? It seems like you’re both using the space in an advantageous method. You have land and they have the water since you can’t breathe under the water and they don’t seem to like being on the land.”

NICK: “This is deeply offensive to my people. There is very little land on this planet. It is unfair that we are cooped here. We deserve to grow and flourish.”

HUDSON: “I think what she was trying to say was, that there needs to be better parity between the two locations meaning you guys would get it.”

LAURA: “No.”

NICK: “I like you a lot.”

LAURA: “That is not what I mean. I mean, if you cannot breathe under the water, what do you plan on doing with the water?”

HUDSON: “How close are we?”

NICK: “We’re very close.”

NICK: “Great!”

LAURA: I’m assuming this conversation takes place while we’re walking through the described location.

HUDSON: Yeah, exactly.

NICK: Yeah. He says, “We plan to develop technology to live underwater and use the space, but the Nautolan hordes push us back whenever we try to develop it. Also you, the red one with horns, as an honor for visiting us.” And he hands you like a big silver coin with an Anselmi face carved into it and he palms it and gives you the coin.

HUDSON: “Ah, yes, thank you. I will cherish this token.”

NICK: “Yes, as you should. It is a great honor. Oh! Look! We’re here.”

And he leads you—he pulls a plush curtain back and leads you into a room that looks like it was decorated by a different kind of person. There are a lot of cushions and leather couches. It looks very officey. And there are some desks and you see some Anselmi around. They’re all not in military uniforms. They’re wearing just formal robes and things and they’re writing. And you can see towards the back, there are some living spaces like the people who work here mostly just stay in this area. They don’t go to the barracks or anything like that.

And your escort plants himself by the door and just kind of says nothing. You would say he pushed his lips together tightly, but he has a beak so it’s hard to tell, but he just kind of gestures quietly toward the big room.

LAURA: “Yes, thank you.”

HUDSON: I walk in.

NICK: Great, so you walk into this big room. There are some people sitting around desks that appear to be working and toward the back there are some living quarters. Everything’s kind of partitioned off with curtains. You can see some of the curtains are pulled back just a little. They’re like big cubicles filled with apartment stuff in them and you can see people living back there.

LAURA: I go up to whoever looks most in-charge.

NICK: OK.

LAURA: And say, “Hello. We are looking for the diplomat Quitall Nol.”

NICK: “Uh… Quitall Nol.”

LAURA: “Son of Nautol Nol.”

NICK: “Yeah… uh… we—how did you get here? Look, we’re diplomats but we’re not used to people being on our home turf. This is very weird.”

LAURA: “We took a boat. And then swam.”

HUDSON: “We’re honored to be visiting your beautiful planet and we have some important business we were sent here for by the Jedi Council and we think Quitall could be a big help.”

NICK: “Uh…” You can see him kind of relax after your speech. “Yes, our beautific homeland is often a sight that surprises outsiders. If you head down the hallway to the very back, I believe he’s in the recreation area.”

LAURA: “Thank you.”

NICK: Yeah, so you start to head to the back and you hear someone clear their throat behind you and your escort who is by the door is looking at the diplomat and looking at you and looking at the diplomat and the diplomat says, “They’re within the diplomatic confines now. They do not need an escort.”

And your escort shakes his head frustratedly but doesn’t enter the room at all.

And so you’re able to walk toward the back. Like I said, once you clear the curtains, there’s a bunch of—they’re like large, bedroom-sized cubicles with comfortable-looking beds and there are couples and some children you see just hanging out there. They all look more relaxed and a little less focused than the people you saw out in the military area. There’s also way less of them. This was a very huge facility and this diplomatic section seems like a small portion of the population.

And you head toward the back and there’s a big steel blast door and as you walk close, it seems to be on a motion sensor and it swings open and you see like a big open room and towards the back wall, there is a younger looking Anselmi doing target practice, shooting at a target with a blaster pistol. And as soon as the door swings open, he like stops with the pistol and hides it behind the back. You notice as you walk up to the door, you could not hear any blaster fire at all. Then when the door open, you heard one cut off and you see some of the people living near the door look up and look confused. And he sees you and gives you the like shrugging, wide-eyed what-are-you-doing-here look?

LAURA: “Hello, are you Quitall?”

NICK: He gestures like, “Alright, alright, come in, come in. Get away from that door.”

LAURA: “OK.” Then I walk in the door. Vross does as well?

HUDSON: I do.

NICK: Yeah, the room is like 50 meters deep. It’s pretty big. So you walk in and as the door swings shut, he calmly holsters the blaster pistol at his side. It’s a very sleek, chrome kind of gun. You haven’t seen one before. To your practiced eyes, it doesn’t look very durable, but from the half-shot that you saw, it seems to be like it does damage. It’s a blaster.

So as you get closer, he says, “Who are you? And how did you get to the middle of Anselm?”

LAURA: “We are Jedi. From the Jedi Council. First we flew here from Coruscant on a ship then landed on Pieralos, then from Pieralos, we rented a boat, then from the boat, we swam.”

HUDSON: “Thank you for all of that information.”

LAURA: “You are welcome.”

NICK: “Alright, thank you for the travel itinerary.” And he starts to like gather himself and he looks a little less guilty. And he kind of shakes himself and goes, “Where are my manners? My name is Quitall Nol. I’m an apprentice diplomat for the diplomatic embassy here.” And he looks expectantly at y’all.

LAURA: “We know. I am Darcevy. And this is my–”

HUDSON: “Vrime Vross.”

LAURA: “Is that your name? Vrime Vross?”

HUDSON: “I am Vross.”

LAURA: “Oh, I was worried I was using the wrong name.”

HUDSON: “No, there is a nickname that my–My master called me Vrose at points. We have an odd relationship.”

LAURA: “I will continue calling you Vross. Anyway, Quitall, we have some questions that we would like to ask you. Is this a good place for that?”

NICK: “Sure. This is probably the most private place we could possibly have, so yeah, ask away, I guess.”

LAURA: “How acquainted were you with the diplomat Kira Toondely?”

NICK: Make me a Xenology check please.

LAURA: Oooh….

HUDSON: I got this. What difficulty?

LAURA: Yes.

NICK: This one’s going to be hard, because this is not a common race.

LAURA: I’ll go first.

HUDSON: OK, she is going first.

LAURA: Nope. Oh, sorry, one threat.

HUDSON: I have one threat.

NICK: One threat. So you see between his shell panel things that he seems to darken a little bit. And he looks kind of angry and as you ask about that, he says, “Well, she was a valuable diplomatic contact, of course, but there’s not much else to tell. I don’t know why you’re coming all the way here just to ask about her.”

LAURA: “Are you aware that she has been missing?”

NICK: “She—what?! No.”

LAURA: What would it be to guess if he’s actually surprised?

NICK: I guess a Perception.

LAURA: Is that Perception or Vigilance?

NICK: Probably Perception.

LAURA: Perception.

NICK: I would say Perception.

LAURA: OK, Perception. I need to put points in Perception.

NICK: I call for that a lot.

HUDSON: I’m a boss at perception.

LAURA: I’m so unperceptive.

HUDSON:  What difficulty?

NICK: This one would be average. But with a black die.

LAURA: I want to flip a Light Side point.

NICK: OK, to upgrade your check.

LAURA: To upgrade my one dice. I am not very cunning or perceptive.

HUDSON: I’ll go first. I have two yellow and two green for my perception. Three successes and two advantages.

NICK:  OK. Let’s see what Darcy gets.

LAURA: A threat.

NICK: OK, so Darcy, he looks pretty suspicious to you with his answers like he’s hiding something. Vross, you see a couple of things. You figure out that that darkening of color is him probably blushing, and that his answers one, looks surprised that she went missing like he doesn’t really know what that might be about, but two, he’s probably hiding something about her. From the way he’s reacting, his emotions are a lot stronger than they should be. You can sense that through the Fo~orce. ooOOooh!

HUDSON:  ooOOooh!

LAURA: I take out the note that we found that says, “Meet me tonight.” And I show it to him and go, “Does this mean anything to you?”

NICK: “Where did you find that?”

LAURA: “It does not matter. It was in the trash. But does it mean anything to you?”

NICK: “Uh, err, I don’t have to answer that. You’re in my home here. I think it would be best if you left now. Thank you. Good day.” And he turns around.

LAURA: “You realize this makes you seem suspicious.”

NICK: “Uh… Well, I—it’s not suspicious. It’s– I mean, maybe—OK, look.”

HUDSON: “You really should stay and answer our questions.”

NICK: I’m going to need some kind of roll so you could either be Coercing him at this point or Charming him at this point.

LAURA: Oh, I’m gonna do Coercion.

HUDSON: Yeah, do Coercion. I’m gonna let you do Coercion.

LAURA: I’m gonna do…

NICK: Bully Jedi Episode 2.

LAURA: Coercion and I’m going to use my Intimidating skill to downgrade the difficulty of this check. What is the difficulty?

NICK: So it was average. It’ll be easy. This poor goober.

LAURA:  One success and two advantages.

NICK:  Is there anything specific you’d like to use those advantages on?

LAURA: I would like to use some of my advantages to maybe now figure out that he was being somewhat sincere.

NICK: Yeah, I think you could use those for that. You get a little bit better feel for him through the Force.

LAURA: Yes.

NICK: Yeah, so you’re real scary. You’re tall and you’re wearing–

LAURA: I am very tall.

NICK: Like kind of damp robes still and he has never seen a Selonian before. So he stops slowly as you say, “You should answer our questions,” and he kind of turns around. He puts his hands on his hips, near his blaster, but he doesn’t appear to be going for it. He says, “Alright, listen, Kiara was special and I was trying to promote diplomatic relations and…” Hudson is over there wiggling his eyebrows as hard as he can.

LAURA: So many wiggles.

NICK: “I was trying to promote diplomatic relations and I asked her to meet me to talk about global policy. That’s what was going on.”

HUDSON: “Really? Global policy?”

LAURA: “Is that what the heart stands for?”

NICK: “Yeah, the singular heart of our people being combined. That’s what that was.” You don’t need to roll. He’s clearly lying. This is very obvious.

LAURA: “It seems to me you had feelings for this Kiara.”

NICK: “I mean…” He like leans back against the wall and put his hands behind his head in a dreamer pose. “Yeah, like we knew each other, but she was going to go back to Coruscant. She’d probably never come back again because this was the one big Breaching. And yeah, I mean, maybe we met a few times. It’d be useful to know her. She was real pretty. We kissed. You know, it’s no big deal!” And he’s turning really dark behind his patches. He’s blushing furiously at this point.

HUDSON: “It would really be in your best interest to give us anything you thought that was out of the ordinary or suspicious that would end up in her becoming missing. Otherwise, things are going to look real bad for you.”

NICK: “Yeah, well, I have a vested interest. Me and her got along pretty well. It’d be good if she was fine. You know, the day before I left, she thought that we were alone but I got stopped by the head of her security and she threatened me. She actually hurt me quite a bit.” And he pulls his robes down and there’s a big bruise around his collarbone. “She told me that I was supposed to stay away from her because we were going to meet up one more time. We were supposed to meet in the lobby, but the security officer told me that I needed to leave so we left a day early after that. But that’s kind of weird, right? We weren’t doing anything wrong.”

LAURA: “How did your father feel about you spending time with her?”

NICK: “Can I be honest with you folks for a second?”

LAURA: “Yes.”

HUDSON: “You have to be.”

NICK: “Oh OK. My father encouraged me to attempt to become amorous with her in the first place as a power move by the Anselmi. I never expected to fall in love.” And he gazes off into the mental distance. “But this started as his plan. You know, there is one thing we could maybe do.” And he reaches down into a bag that’s sitting off to the side. It’s like an athletic bag. And he starts skimming through and he goes, “We actually planted a bug in the lobby of the Tortillian. Let’s see if I can see anything.” And he starts flipping through and he goes, “Oooh, kriff.” And he turns it around.

And you see from a slightly different angle, the shot that you saw before of Kiara coming down and reaching past the Bantha Cakes for some Ewok jerky and about where the static would happen, you see Soana Lette walk down the stairs and put her arms around the young Kiara and start leading her toward the door and they seem to get into a little bit of an argument. Then she bodily shoves her out the door. And then the lobby is empty after that.

LAURA: So Soylana goes out with her as well?

NICK: Mhmm.

LAURA: OK. Can we see is there a speeder or anything that’s like waiting out there? Or we just see them go outside?

NICK: You see them go outside.

LAURA: OK.

HUDSON: “That is interesting. You think you could make us a copy of that?”

NICK: “Yeah, I can do that. Just don’t tell anyone where you found it.” And he presses a button and he ejects like a little SD card and gives it to you. A Holo SD card.

HUDSON: A Holo-card.

NICK: Yeah, and so he says, “You know what we can actually do? This is really our chance to repair relations. Let’s go to the surveillance unit and get some more information.”

And that’s where we’ll end the episode. Ba-naaa~!

HUDSON: Ba-naaa~!

LAURA: Ba-naaa~!

## Outro

CAMERON: Thanks for listening to Tabletop Squadron. If you enjoyed the show, please consider logging into iTunes and leaving us a 5-star review. 5-star reviews help new listeners find the show.

Darcevy is played by Laura Penrod and she can be found on Twitter at @Cheerio_Buffet.

Vross is played by Hudson Jameson. He can be found on Twitter at @HudsonJameson

Soana Lette was played by me, Cameron Robertson. I can be found on Twitter at @MidnightMusic13.

Our game master was Nick Robertson. He can be found on Twitter at @Alias58.

Follow the show on Twitter and Instagram at @Tabletop_Squad. And check out our website at www.tabletopsquadron.com.

Please reach out to us and let us know what you like. We love to hear from our listeners. See you next time.

Tabletop Squadron Transcript, Jedi Adventures #1:
Asking the Important Questions

Transcript by Harrison (Twitter: @unabletowhistle)

## Intro

[Cameron hums space music]

NICK: Hello everyone, and welcome to Tabletop Squadron, a Star Wars: Edge of the Empire actual play podcast. I’m Nick, your game master. We’re doing something a little different the next few episodes as our crew departs on Roulette Dawn, we flash back to simpler time when the Empire was a republic and the Jedi maintained peace throughout the galaxy. Come along with us on this Jedi buddy cop adventure!

Our intro music is Tanza Depanza at 77 by Juan James Juan.

Before we get started, I’d also like to take a second to thank Colds Folds for the iTunes review. Here’s to you, new good internet friend. I’d also like to thank Agent Cid for your iTunes review. You’re super great and everyone likes you on the internet.

Friends, a big announcement: that makes ten reviews. We did it. The art has been released. You can find it on Tabletopsquad.com or our Twitter or our Facebook or our Instagram. We’ve put it everywhere. Get out there and see for yourself. It’s some good stuff. Thank you all for helping us make this first milestone. It will be the first of many.

Anyway, onto this Jedi Adventure. We hope you enjoy this first episode.

##

NICK: Hello, and welcome to Episode 1 of our Jedi buddy-cop adventure series. This is supplementary. I don’t know when this is coming out but I’m sure it’ll be awesome. So it’ll be the same players that you’re  used to hearing, but they’ll be doing different characters. And this is a different time in the Star Wars timeline so there will be some hints. Maybe you can figure out when it is. WooOOoo.

So today, I’ve got two people with us playing main characters that made us some Jedi today. So we’ll go around the exact same-sized table with less people on it and we’ll start with Laura!

LAURA: Hi.

NICK: [chuckles] Hi.

LAURA: I’m playing a Jedi today.

NICK: That’s exciting. That’s fun.

LAURA: Her name is Darcevy Sivulur. She’s a Selonian, which are just giant otters. Just in your head, picture a giant human-sized otter. Don’t try to change that. You got it.

NICK: Sounds about right. You got it.

HUDSON: Darcevy for short?

LAURA: Darcevy.

HUDSON: Darcevy.

LAURA: The first name is Darcevy. Sivulur is the last name.

HUDSON: What about Darcy?

LAURA: You could say Darcy or Cev or Cevy.

HUDSON: I’m trying to take shortcuts with your names.

LAURA: Cev would probably be the shortest one.

HUDSON: OK

NICK: Alright. And the other voice you’re hearing is Hudson.

HUDSON: I’m playing—wow, I named my character Vross, but I wrote Vrose like in a romantic way accidentally. So my character’s name is Vross, also known as Vrose suddenly, who is a Devaronian seeker.

NICK: Cool. And a Devaronian looks like what?

HUDSON: A dee-vil.

NICK: A devil, yes. OK. Just picture the bad guy…

[laughter]

LAURA: Ow, this hurts. My stomach. Just the way you said devil really got to me.

HUDSON: I was hoping it would have an effect.

NICK: So picture the bad guy from The Pick of Destiny or just standard caricature of devil, just not with furry legs.

LAURA: Or google it.

NICK: Or yeah, you could google it. Just imagine devil horns.

Alright, so before we get started on this adventure, let’s get started with the Destiny roll. It’s even more important in this one.

LAURA: One dark side.

HUDSON: Is it even called the Destiny roll in the other one?

LAURA: Yes!

HUDSON: Oh, I thought it was like a Force roll.

NICK: No. [laughs]

HUDSON: How many times have we gone through this again? I should know by now.

NICK: How long have we been playing this? One dark side.

LAURA: It’ll be fine.

NICK: Since the there’s just three of us, I’ll roll one too. Two light side.

LAURA: Yay.

NICK: Let’s go ahead and get started.

##

NICK: You are sitting at a noodle cart in the middle of Coruscant, not to far from the Jedi temple. It is a humid afternoon. It’s pretty shady down here. It would look more like sunset really. And you are seated next to a human who says, “Thank you for joining me.” She is a short blonde woman and has hair in a curly mop on her head. She’s wearing brown robes over informal linen garments. A silver tube is inset with a small glowing panel and sits on her hip. She slurps her noodles. I’m not making that noise.

“This mission is highly sensitive. We suspect that the Temple is being monitored and need to send someone lower profiled. Someone new who hasn’t gotten the attention of the Galactic Intelligence community yet. You both have a few missions under your belt, but you’ll need to work together on this one. The daughter of the Nautolan senator for the Galactic Republic returned to Glee Anselm for the Breaching.”

You can roll me a Xenology check if you want to figure out what the Breaching is.

HUDSON: I would love to roll a Xenology check. How many do I have in it? I have two and my Intelligence is level two.

LAURA: I have Education.

NICK: Bummer. This one is very weird.

HUDSON: Oh, it’s cocked.

LAURA: Was there difficulty involved in that?

NICK: This would be hard.

HUDSON: So no.

LAURA: Definitely no.

NICK: A lot of failures coming out from y’all. Well, you’re a Devaronian and Selonian so yeah. So you failed the Xenology check.

“She was supposed to return last week but never arrived. The senator has heard nothing, but suspects that this is some political maneuver. Return the girl to Coruscant. I would recommend you start your search with her security detail. They’re still on-planet.” And she goes back to slurping her noodles.

HUDSON: “So you need a low-key team to go in and rescue this girl?” I say a little too loud.

NICK: [chuckles] She like stops mid-noodle and nods slowly and says, “Your ship leaves in an hour. We’ve already arranged for you to have a traveling cabin.”

HUDSON: “I’ll be taking my noodles to go.”

NICK: [laughs]

LAURA: Darcevy just kind of shakes her head at you.

HUDSON: I go to get my noodles to go.

NICK: There’s a four-armed alien in the cart wearing like a straw hat that’s really small. It looks like a fez. He’s carrying multiple spatulas and knives and he says something in some language you don’t know and pulls out a little plasteel box and it’s a gray plasteel box about five inches wide–

LAURA: Oooh.

NICK: It would look very familiar to the watcher if they had seen something like this similarly. And then he starts scraping all of your noodles into a box, folds it up nice, and starts to hand it to you, stops, and takes a little paper umbrella and plunks it on top, then hands it to you.

HUDSON: “The umbrella was a nice touch. Thank you.”

NICK: It does some weird gurgly, gargly words that you don’t understand.

HUDSON: “Back atchya.” I walk back to Darcy.

LAURA: “We should go. Are you done with your noodles?”

HUDSON: “No, because they’re to-go. I’m not going to–” And I start eating them while standing. It’s a good idea. I wasn’t going to admit it, though.

LAURA: “Then what was the—OK.” We head to the ship.

NICK: OK, so as you turn to leave, you notice in the shadow of this little alley that you’re on, a huge, probably seven-and-a-half foot tall figure standing in the shadows. It has like a pointy horn sticking out. It’s wrapped in a cloak. You can’t really see what it is. And it slowly nods to you as you walk by. And as you leave, it turns to approach this small woman that you were talking to.

We have a swipe unless there was something you wanted to spend your hour doing, getting ready or anything you needed to procure. The Jedi Temple will provide you with general supplies and things, but if there’s anything specific you wanted to grab.

LAURA: No.

HUDSON: No.

LAURA: Darcevy travels light.

NICK: Cool. So we have a swipe cut and the camera stays pretty high up and you see a standard transport ship. It’s usually used for low profit merchants or colonists or just traveling. It’s a space bus essentially and it’s parked next to a landing pad and there’s a stream of people going up and we see two cloaked figures walking up the ramp. You guys are wearing probably standard Jedi clothes, but are there anything about your appearance or dress choices?

LAURA: Darcevy wears the smallest skimpiest Jedi robes you’ve ever seen because Selonians don’t wear clothes in their normal dens and tunnels.

NICK: Hmm.

LAURA: They don’t think it’s necessary because they’re covered in fur being, you know, otter-people. Also it’s almost entirely a female society so they just don’t wear clothes and they don’t understand the point of clothes. They wear them to make others feel more comfortable.

NICK: So are you wearing like a linen bikini with a Jedi robe?

LAURA: No, not like a bikini. Just like a vest. It doesn’t have any sleeves. It’s really just the folded over pieces with the belt and then little like bloomers almost, not the full Jedi pants, just kind of little bloomers with a hole for her tail.

NICK: Great.

LAURA: And no shoes.

NICK: Makes sense.

LAURA: Or anything like that.

NICK: Great. Do you have the cloak, the brown robe-y cloak they all wear or not?

LAURA: She probably has one but doesn’t wear it as frequently as other Jedi do. But if it’s raining or something, she might wear it.

NICK: OK. What about you, Vross?

HUDSON: So I’m wearing traditional Jedi robes. However, I do have a few tattoos, namely one written on my left arm, like the upper part of my left arm, and it’s written in a language I clearly don’t understand but, you know, I can kind of pull that off as saying whatever I want it to mean when I’m, you know, meeting women.

LAURA: Anonymous sex is OK, just no relationships!

HUDSON: Consensual anonymous sex with Jedi.

LAURA: Yes. But no relationship.

NICK: [laughs] That’s what it says above the Temple in Arabesh. “Jedi Temple: Consensual, Anonymous Sex.” Great.

HUDSON: [Laughs] So I have traditional Jedi robes. I do, however, like kind of try subtly but sometimes it’s a little too bright like highlight my horns, like my horn nubs up there. Like get some blue coloring around it.

NICK: OK, so you have like eye shadow for your horns?

HUDSON: Yes, but on a bad day or when I’m applying it wrong, it just looks like I took a really powerful highlighter and just rubbed it around there.

NICK: [laughs] Great.

LAURA: Is today a good day or a bad day?

HUDSON: Today’s a bad day, but I’m overly confident like it’s the best I’ve ever done.

NICK: Alright, the camera zooms in. Does a cool sweep where we get a good view of everything and you swagger your way up onto this ramp. I imagine that people get out of your way. On Coruscant, they recognize Jedi pretty easily, but most places, because there’s probably only about 10,000 Jedi, they’re more myth and rumor. So you’re pretty used to being able to walk around wearing Jedi robes and people just assume those are like clothes some people wear. Because in the Jedi universe, no one wears a cloak unless they’re trying to be anonymous but then if you see someone in a cloak, that’s fine and normal apparently.

We get a nice shot of you all going. The Jedi temple has paid for you to have a separate booth. It’s like a train cabin so there’s a sliding door and you walk in. There’s a couple of bunk beds on one side, a couple of chairs on the other. It’s small. These ships don’t go very fast. The trip’s going to take a couple of days. But you can spend that time meditating, doing research on where you’re going, anything like that that you would want to do.

So you have some time. You both are about the same age. You joined the Jedi Temple very young as most Jedis do and were kind of tangentially aware of each other. You would see each other in some classes, but you wouldn’t interact a whole lot so now might be a good time to get to know each other a little better. Or not.

LAURA: Once we sit down, Darcevy looks over at Vross and goes, “Your horn highlighters are done poorly.”

HUDSON: “You do bad introductions.”

LAURA: “I’m just telling you. You should redo them. It sends a bad message about the Jedi. You should look more put-together.”

HUDSON: I kind of frown, but then I give it a second thought like, “No, it looks just fine. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.” So I kind of give a stern look and stare at you for a second, but don’t respond though.

LAURA: She just starts like preening her fur. Gotta make it look nice. That’s pretty much what she’s going to do for most of the trip is just…

NICK: Comb yourself?

LAURA: Comb herself, preen herself, and then like clean her lightsaber pike.

NICK: Ooh, yeah, because you have a lightsaber pike. So what color is it? And what does that look like?

LAURA: So the main staff of it is sort of a metallic brownish gray. Just a very neutral color. And there’s a little bit of decorative swirling on the ends of it. And—ooh, what color do I want it? It’s gonna be green. The blade is green.

NICK: You’re fairly new to being Jedi Knights. You’ve been on a few missions, but the reason you were selected for this one is because you haven’t done anything hugely of note or that would’ve gained a lot of renown on Coruscant. So you spend some time thinking about missions you’ve completed so far, either with your Master when you were Padawans or when you were newly minted Jedi Knights. So I’d love for you both to tell me one mission that you’ve been on and how that went.

HUDSON: Do you want an over-embellished mission as I usually go or?

NICK: Yeah, OK, so we have a flashback shot to Vross sitting in a bar with his sleeves rolled up to show off his tattoo, talking to a Twi’lek lady who looks pretty bored and uninterested, telling this story of a mission he went on.

HUDSON: Are we going to have to be friends with a Wookie in the immediate future?

NICK: I don’t think so.

HUDSON: OK, great. I mean, even if we were, this would be fine. “So there I was, me, a planet I’ve never been, Tatooine, and there was this rabid Wookie army. Alright, just me there, remember this. I get out my guns, my saber. Gun in one hand, saber in the other hand, I go bantha steak on them.”

That’s the story, the flashback story. I keep it very vague because none of that happened. Really I’ve done a lot of supply missions and, you know, simple, you know, simple guarding politicians and stuff. Nothing bad ever happens to them as they go to different planets.

NICK: OK. So in the flashback, the Twi’lek yawns and the camera zooms in on her mouth till the screen is black and zooms out and we’re back in the cabin and you just have like this happy look on your face as you’re reminiscing.

LAURA: Most of Darcevy’s previous missions, yeah, have been pretty similar. The most interesting one was when she was on Salukami because as we found out it’s not Salu-kami, it’s Saluk-ami.

NICK: Really?

LAURA: Really. They say it in one of the episodes of Clone Wars.

HUDSON: Salukami sounds better.

NICK: No, it doesn’t.

[laughter]

LAURA: And it actually took me a second because I was recognizing stuff in the images and I was like, “Wait, is Saluk-ami what we were calling Salu-kami the same planet?” They were.

The most interesting mission Darcevy would’ve gone on was when she and her master were on Salukami in a foresty area and became surrounded by a clan of—a gaggle? I’m not sure what a group of these are called—of Noonos. These large rock crabs.

HUDSON: It’s a murder of Noonos

LAURA: A murder of Noonos

HUDSON: Yes. I mean, technically if you’re a real Star Wars fan.

NICK: [laughter]

LAURA: Yes, but they have incredibly thick shells that look like rocks and that’s why she and her master didn’t notice them. They just thought they were walking into a circle of rocks and then had to fight giant crab monsters.

NICK: Cool.

LAURA: That’s why she has a small section on her tail that doesn’t have fur.

NICK: Oooh.

LAURA: Because one of them grabbed her tail so there’s like a thin line probably about halfway down her tail that is like just shiny skin with no fur.

NICK: Hmm, interesting. OK, we get some shots of you all reminiscing just sitting there. You lay down to go to sleep. We’ll fade to black.

We’ll fade back up to the transport flying low over Glee Anselm and it’s a beautiful ocean planet. You look out through a view port and see sparkling blue water. The ship leaves a wake behind it which makes nice white capped waves and you see a city in the distance. And as you get closer, you see kind of a hill in front of the city and then the city itself is all white buildings. And as you get closer, you see all of the buildings are actually gray stone but they’re all crusted over in barnacles and like dried out sea life. It looks kind of like limestone when it’s got a lot of fossils and stuff in it. And as the ship flies directly over that hill, you see it’s actuall the giant head of a turtle. And the camera pans out wide to see the city is built on the back of a giant, currently-swimming sea turtle that is slowly, oh so slowly paddling through the water.

And the ship swoops down to a landing pad and lands. And then we have a shot of you all walking off carrying your bags of Jedi goodies and you remember the Jedi master who had given you your mission had suggested you go and talk to the security detail and you had some maps of general things around the city. You know where the hotel where she was staying is. You know a couple of bars where she was going around. You know where the diplomatic core is. And you know like where the market center and stuff is, too.

So where would you like to go?

LAURA: “Where do you think we should go?”

HUDSON: He takes a long pause to think.

LAURA: Also, while she’s saying that, she’s kind of like looking at the ground and with the end of her lightsaber pike, kind of just like poking it like, “Are we on a turtle? Why are we on a turtle? This is weird.”

NICK: So the ground that you’re walking on, it looks kind of like concrete. It’s actually ground up stone that’s been made into a slurry and hardened. You’re not walking on a shell right now.

LAURA: I know but she’s still not comfortable with the idea that of a city on a floating turtle.

HUDSON: So is there like something that was said, like a clue, that she was taken from the hotel?

NICK: You don’t know.

HUDSON: Oh OK.

NICK: You just know her general whereabouts. There’s been very little information spread about this. It’s being kept very much on the down-low. You don’t know a lot about Glee Anselm. You guys failed that real hard. But you would probably want to make some sort of contact with someone and ask them some questions to get kind of a good rundown about what’s going on.

HUDSON: “Let’s start with the things that can answer us real questions: the security detail.”

LAURA: “Good.” We will go talk to the security detail.

HUDSON: Yeah, we will.

LAURA: Yes, that is what I said.

NICK: And you all walk down the street towards the hotel where the security detail is most likely and shove at each other a little bit as you walk by. The crowd doesn’t really part around you or anything but you also don’t find yourself slowed. You’re able to move very easily as though you could sense what their intentions are and step where they are not stepping ‘cause y’all are Jedi Knights and you’re good at stuff.

LAURA: We are?

NICK: Yeah.

LAURA: [gasp] We’re good at stuff!

NICK: So you come to the hotel that is called the Tortillian. It is a large grand building. The windows on all bubble out like submarine view ports. They all look pretty hard but also kind organic. The whole shape looks like it was carved out of a giant conch shell, just really big, and it has these doors that swing open and the weird thing is that as you come into the entryway, there’s like a woven rug that seems fixed to the ground and the doors on the inside slide up into the roof but only after the door has shut behind you and it takes a little while. Just a weird design feature.

And as you come into the lobby, you see mostly brown wood with some stone highlights in it and some comfortable chairs. You also see that there’s some chairs like halfway up the walls like like if you could sit up really tall, you could sit up there and it’s all spread around. There’s no fireplaces or anything, but there are some nice view ports that look out into the city and some nice skylights that look straight up. And there’s a desk and behind the desk, there’s a Nautolan wearing the stereotypical bellboy outfit. It’s red with gold braiding all over it and he is currently trying to affix the little fez between all of his head-tails trying to get it to stay and seems to be struggling with it.

LAURA: What was the name of the person that we’re…?

NICK: You don’t know.

LAURA: Oh, we don’t know?

NICK: It’s just the head of their security detail.

HUDSON: Did you mean the person who was kidnapped?

LAURA:

NICK: Yes, you guys forgot to ask questions.

[laughter]

LAURA: Yes, we did.

HUDSON: We did. Wait, how did we get to the security—never mind. I don’t want to bring that up.

LAURA: Darcevy walks up to him and says, “I would like to speak to the head of your security.”

NICK: The Nautolan looks at you kind of confused and says, “Well, this is just a hotel. We don’t really have security, but if you’re talking about the diplomatic detail security, I could page them for you. I don’t know if they’ll respond. They’ve been real secretive lately. I don’t really know what’s going on with that. I probably shouldn’t have said that.” And he touches his hat nervously.

HUDSON: “Hey, calm down little guy. Just call the detail.”

NICK: He looks at you kind of confused. “It’s not everyday that I see non-aquatic species here. It sure is lucky that you came during the Breaching. But alright, yeah, let me give them a call.”

HUDSON: “What’s the Breaching?”

NICK: “You don’t know what the Breaching is?”

LAURA: I know what the Breaching is!

HUDSON: I know you know what the Breaching is. I do not know what the Breaching is.

NICK: [cracking up] Your character doesn’t know!

LAURA: My character doesn’t know.

HUDSON: Your character doesn’t know.

LAURA: I have put two and two together.

HUDSON: It’s like I said space Titanic running into an asteroid.

NICK: Yeah, that’s what it is.

LAURA: Clues were given.

NICK: Oh, I’m feeling so vindicated as a GM right now. So you want him to call the security detail for you?

LAURA: Yes.

NICK: So he pulls up a conch shell and turns a nob on it for a minute. You can it’s kind of glowing on top and you hear him whisper into it then hold it up to his ear then whisper into it again. And its not like he’s trying to be secretive. It’s like it picks up a certain frequency so he has to sub-vocalize to get it to go through. Then he puts it back and goes, “Well, um, most of them aren’t answering but I was able to get hold of the security chief. Her name is Soana Lette and she should be down in a minute. She asked for description of you all and I just said she’ll just have to see for herself.”

And he put the conch shell down and turns around and looks very busy like arranging mail and keys in cubby holes behind the desk, but isn’t really doing anything and you can feel through the Force, he’s very nervous. It’s been very tense here lately. You get that vibe off of him. Because you’re Jedi Knights. That’s a thing you can do. It’s pretty cool.

HUDSON: Did he just ignore my question about the Breaching?

NICK: Yeah.

HUDSON: OK.

NICK: Well he went, “You don’t know what the Breaching is?!” and called the security guy. Or security lady.

So you wait for about five minutes then you hear somebody walking down the stairs to the left of the hotel. You get a sense that the hotel is very old, but looking at the stairs, they all look pristine like very little wear or tear on them. They have that same woven rug that seems like attached down to the ground and it doesn’t seem particularly durable, but it still looks new and it still looks great as if people don’t walk on it very often.

And the security captain walks into the room and she is a bulky Nautolan with her head-tails pulled back tightly out of the way. She’s wearing heavy armor and carries a trident-shaped weapon that looks wickedly sharp and also like it might also shoot blaster bolts.

LAURA: “Hello, you are the head of the diplomat’s security?”

CAMERON: “Yes, who are you?”

HUDSON: “I’m Vross!”

LAURA: “Yes, he is Vross. I’m Darcevy. We are Jedi.”

CAMERON: “Oh! Wonderful,” she says and looks slightly nervous. “I’m so glad y’all are here. Please, um…” She looks to the bellhop. “We’re going to be using your office.” And just walks behind the desk past him and into the room behind him. “Please come this way.”

LAURA: Darcevy confidently follows.

HUDSON: “I more confidently follow.”

CAMERON: “I’m not looking at you so I don’t notice.” The door swooshes shut behind us. “So what brings y’all here?”

HUDSON: “Well, it’s just a shame that she came up missing, but we have a series of questions that we hope will get us closer to finding her.”

LAURA: “What he means is that the diplomat should have already returned to Coruscant so we are requiring as to why she has not returned.”

CAMERON: “Yes, well, I’m assuming the senator sent you.”

HUDSON: “Yes.”

LAURA: “Yes.” I’m just going to repeat everything you say, I guess.

[laughter]

HUDSON: Well, it really was the senator, right? I hope I’m

NICK: Maybe.

HUDSON: Oh, we didn’t ask.

[laughter]

HUDSON: Oh no!

LAURA: I thought another Jedi but maybe not.

HUDSON: Suddenly we spend six episodes on a different arc.

NICK: So the lady you were talking to was very clearly a Jedi master.

LAURA: Yes.

NICK: You forgot to ask who was asking the Jedi to intervene but you would assume the diplomat who’s missing is the senator’s daughter that it was probably the senator. But you’re not sure.

LAURA: “We were sent by the Jedi Temple.”

CAMERON: “Fabulous. Kira has been missing for several days now.”

HUDSON: “Excuse me, can we get a full legal name?”

CAMERON: “Kira Toondely. She is the senator’s daughter. They do have the same last name.”

HUDSON: “Just making sure. Go on.”

CAMERON: “Alright, as I was saying, Kira has been missing for several days. We were supposed to return to Coruscant. About a week ago, we were held up slightly then she disappeared and we’ve been searching for her but so far we’ve been unsuccessful.”

LAURA: “Do you have any leads?”

CAMERON: “Everyone loves her. This is our capital city. Everything was going smoothly. We visited orphanages. She spoke to the city leaders. They all seemed pleasant. We very much like the senator. He’s been doing good things for Glee Anselm as a whole. She participated in the Breaching parade as the turtle queen,” she says proudly.

“Then she did the ceremonial dance to open up the new hospital. The only thing that could possibly play into it was that the last few days before she went missing, she was spending a lot of time with the Anselmi diplomat who was also here for the Breaching. They’re visiting from Anselm, their capital on land. She seemed pretty taken with Quitall Nol, the son of their diplomat, but beside that I have—she’s a smart girl. She knows that the Anselmi are not to be messed with. They’re a terrible war-like creatures.”

HUDSON: “I think you haven’t looked at a different angle for this thing. You know, some people like Kira become rebellious. Sure it’s not a runaway?”

LAURA: “Yes, I’ve been told that sometimes people run away with their paramours.”

CAMERON: “They’re not paramours. As I said, she’s a girl with good sense. She would not align herself with them. However, you do bring up a good point. I did train her in self-defense myself so the likelihood of her being taken unawares or without raising a scene at all is lower than it would be than most girls her age.”

HUDSON: “And her age is?”

CAMERON: “She’s 22.”

HUDSON: “Ah, thank you. I was just making sure.”

[laughter]

HUDSON: “I was right ‘cause I knew that.”

LAURA: “Yes.”

CAMERON: “You do not seem to have a lot of details.”

HUDSON: “See, we’re just being very thorough about the details we already know.”

LAURA: “Yes.”

CAMERON: “OK.”

LAURA: “May we see her room?”

CAMERON: “Yes, you can.” She smooshes the door back open and heads back up the stairs she came down.

LAURA: Darcevy almost certainly walks upstairs on all fours because Selonian can walk on all fours if they want to and I totally imagine that for stairs she does crawl up them. I don’t know. I find the concept of Selonians so cute and fun. They’re just giant otters.

NICK: We definitely get a scene of Darcevy going up the stairs first and her tail like whacking back and forth in Vross’s face and him trying not to get hit by it and Darcevy just enjoying going up the stairs because it’s more comfortable to walk on four legs than two.

LAURA: Well, especially for stairs.

NICK: Yes. OK, so you go down the hallway. It’s several flights of stairs up and you get to the top. The building, you notice, is smaller on each floor and at the very top, there’s the penthouse and the doors irises opens like a cool portal so they swing open.

[portal sound effect]

NICK: Yeah. And there’s a sandy pit with blankets thrown over it that looks to be the bed area and there looks to be a bathroom off in the corner. Most of the walls are transparisteel and there are shell-like ribs going through all of it so you can still see the shape of the shell and you have a really beautiful view of the city and the Nautolans walking around. You notice almost the entire population here is Nautolan and they’re all walking around kind of like tourists. People are taking holos of the areas and looking up at the sun and there are a lot of people on the streets like they’re celebrating and you figure it has something to do with the Breaching.

So, yeah, what are you looking for in this room?

LAURA: I want to search for any journals, datapad, maybe find any trinkets like seashell necklaces, you know.

HUDSON: I pounce onto the scene like really quickly and I just dart my head around and look.

NICK: [laughs] OK, I could use that for both of you actually. Unless you’re looking for hidden things then that would be Skulduggery.

HUDSON: What’s the difficulty?

NICK: Average.

LAURA: That’s the same roll for me either way.

HUDSON: Three successes and a threat.

NICK: With three successes and a threat, we’ll wait to see what she rolls first.

LAURA: A failure.

NICK: A failure. So Darcevy is looking for wherever she would put her favorite things in this room.

LAURA: I am most certainly digging in the sand a little bit, being like “Obviously you would bury–” Up by the head if there’s like pillows, I’m digging in the sand like, “Obviously you would bury it next to your bed. That is the most safe place to keep personal items.”

HUDSON: Do you say that aloud?

LAURA: I probably do tell you like, “The safest place to put personal items is to bury it next to the head of your bed. That is where I’m going to check.”

HUDSON: “That is a great idea. I’ve wanted to do that but I just didn’t see anyone else doing it.”

LAURA: “Yes.”

NICK: So you say that and as you’re doing that, Darcevy, you can’t quite tell if he’s being sarcastic or not with that statement because as he does that, he elbows a wall panel which falls open and there’s a leather-bound journal with kelp leaf pages with what looks like a cord with a seashell wrapped around it. And he picks it up and waves it at you.

LAURA: “Or that. I guess not all species dig.”

HUDSON: “Yep.”

LAURA: “That would make sense.”

HUDSON: “Some have trapdoors.”

LAURA: “Yes.” So I get up and walk over to Vross and we open up the journal.

CAMERON: Soana walks over and slaps it shut. “You cannot be reading this.”

LAURA: I look down at her a little bit, because Darcevy is quite tall, and go, “Excuse me. Do not impede upon our investigation. There could be pertinent information inside this journal.”

CAMERON: “I’m not sure y’all are even Jedi at this point.”

HUDSON: I do an open-hand wave to try and scare her a little bit but it actually doesn’t exude any powers.

LAURA: You don’t actually try?

HUDSON: I don’t actually try at all. I just do my hand wave like, this should show you that we do this wave just right that we are Jedi.

CAMERON: She hits her giant trident thing on the floor. Does not look intimidated by you.

LAURA: Darcevy is going to use Coercion and, while towering over her a bit, turn not like at her but like holding to the side turn on her pike for a second or two and be like, “We are, indeed, Jedi. Do not make us Forcefully remove you from this room.”

CAMERON: She snorts.

HUDSON: Who’s holding the journal?

CAMERON: I’ve got the journal. I snapped it shut.

HUDSON: I Force move it from your hand.

NICK: Alright, we’ve got a lot of rolls going here. So for Coercion first, it’s going to be an Imposed roll. What is your Coercion stuff?

LAURA: So my Coercion roll is three greens and a yellow and I can suffer a strain to reduce the difficulty?

NICK: Ooh. Is it to reduce the level or downgrade?

LAURA: To downgrade difficulty of Coercion checks or upgrade difficulty of when targeted by Coercion checks.

NICK: Interesting. OK, so it will only be against two purples and a red if you suffer your strain. Otherwise, it’s two reds and a purple.

LAURA: Oh yeah.

NICK: I was not expecting that ability.

LAURA: It’s called intimidating. That would be three successes and two threats.

NICK: Oh, so close. She backs down a little bit and loosens her grip on the journal and, Vross, you said you were going to pull the journal out of her hand with the Force?

HUDSON: Yep!

NICK: Cool! We get to do a Force roll, you guys. This is super neat.

HUDSON: Do I need to pull out the book for this because it’s part of a tree?

NICK: Yeah, so it’ll tell you exactly how to do this move.

HUDSON: Give me the book because we didn’t print off this part of the book. So the Force user can move small objects is my first one.

NICK: So roll me a Force die and we’ll…

HUDSON: What is a Force die again?

NICK: That’s the white one.

LAURA: The white one.

HUDSON: OK, perfect.

NICK: We get to actually do that now.

HUDSON: I saw new dice out here and it made me nervous.

NICK: Yeah, no, you’re good. Great, so you can absolutely pull that away. The Force flows through you—he got two Light Side for the record—and you’re able to pull it straight out of her grip and into your hands and she looks very nervous.

HUDSON: “So are we Jedi now?”

CAMERON: “Your behavior beside the magically moving thing does nothing to support that statement.”

LAURA: “Please ignore my friend here. He sometimes gets carried away with himself.”

HUDSON: I get a little tinge of excitement. We’re friends.

[laughter]

HUDSON: That’s exactly what I wanted. A partner who likes me.

LAURA: “Again, we are indeed Jedi. We are here to assist you in finding Kira. We would like to do everything we can to find her and that includes looking inside this journal.”

CAMERON: She shrugs and takes a step back. Is not looking as helpful as before.

LAURA: “Just like I’m not sure what more beside Force powers and lightsabers you need as proof.”

HUDSON: “You know this tattoo on my arm? It says Jedi. I wouldn’t do that to myself unless it were true.”

CAMERON: “It does not. I know what language it speaks. It is.”

HUDSON: “Dammit.”

NICK: Is it in Nautolan?

CAMERON: It is in Nautolan, yes.

LAURA: Darcevy like the moment you say that is like, “I suspected that.”

CAMERON: I don’t tell you what it says though.

LAURA: Ooh! But what does it say? Is it something like it says, “Taco dog,” or something completely nonsense? Or does it actually mean…?

NICK: So I would assume–well, here’s a question for Vross: Where did you get your tattoo from? Did you get it on Coruscant? Did you get it on a mission? What was the artist?

LAURA: Like a hole in the wall on Tattooine? Or…?

HUDSON: During Jedi academy training on Coruscant I got pressured into it by people who I thought were my friends who pressured me into getting a tattoo and they said they’d take care of it and I was a little nervous so I just let them pick the tattoo and pick the area of my body and I just went with because I’m no weakling.

NICK: Alright, if that’s the case, it’s probably something disparaging that one padawan would call another padawan, but we’re not going to say what it is.

HUDSON: A padawanker.

NICK: I was thinking like a padawan forever, but it’s not good. So do you flip through the journal at all?

HUSDON & LAURA: Yes.

NICK: OK, are you like starting at the end? Are you looking for anything in particular out of this? Because it’s like her journal. It’s not just her journal for this trip. There’s a lot in here.

LAURA: I would start at the back just because that’s where new information would most likely be seeing how it’s at the end and that is the newer pages, but it might have more information about Quitall because Darcevy is pretty convinced she ran away with this boy.

NICK: Right, so you do notice that, flipping through the last couple of entries, she does mention Quitall, specifically one passage about he seems quite nice and she seems taken with her and she hopes to promote positive relations between their two species and that the discomfort that they have, she laments that they are stuck to the land while they get the full freedom of the sea and she hopes to have some sort of exchange program. She has a lot of naive and high-concept thoughts about what she can really do to change her planet and it seems to start with convincing him that Nautolans don’t mean anything again the Anselmi and they should be friends and he seems kind of open to it.

But it’s clear from the entries that he’s really more interested in her than Nautolans as a whole. And you see some things about that she did the ceremonial dance at the hospital opening and she feels so light on her feet with the gift from her father and there’s like a sketch of a headband thing that she’s wearing that just makes her so happy when she wears it and she just talks about how the people are so nice and even though she was raised away from home that everyone here is great and how lucky she was that the Breaching of the capital of the planet happened during her lifetime. And yeah, it’s just a lot of flowery, happy rich girl thoughts.

LAURA: “We should definitely talk to Quitall.”

HUDSON: “Yep, I understand all this forbidden love.”

LAURA: I turn and look at Soana and go, “Please give me more details about this ‘the Breaching.’”

CAMERON: How often do Breachings happen like once a century?

NICK: Yeah.

CAMERON: OK. “So you may have noticed as your ship came in that the city is on the back of a giant turtle.”

LAURA: “I did see that. It makes me uncomfortable.”

CAMERON: “No, it’s quite steady. This turtle has been around for eons. Still going strong. But the Breaching, once every century or so, the turtle rises to the surface to breathe and stays up for around a month normally, and that is the Breaching. All of the cities, of course, breach at different times as each different turtle has a slightly different lung capacity, but this Pieralos’s Breaching.  The moment.”

LAURA: Darcevy nervously looks at Vross and looks back at Soana and goes, “Um, how long has it been since the Breaching?”

CAMERON: “About a month. We’re going to need to leave in probably a few days.”

LAURA: “Yes. OK.”

HUDSON: “I was about to ask if we need to perform any actions for this.”

CAMERON: “You might. You may need to, depending on how long you’re planning on staying, find some additional gear to wear. I am not super well-versed in Selonians but I assume you would be fine being underwater.”

LAURA: So I can probably hold my breath a decent amount and swimming would be pretty easy, but I would need a rebreather because Selonians mostly, even though their planet is mostly water or the main homeworld planet is mostly water, they still live in tunnels and burrow underneath the oceans. I read about them. They’re interesting. One of them fights Han Solo.

“Yes, we would probably need to buy rebreathers.”

Can you swim?

HUDSON: “I mean I was only top in my school but it’s been a few years.”

LAURA: “Top? Do you mean top–”

HUDSON: “My academy.”

LAURA: “For swimming? Or just in general?”

HUDSON:  “Both actually.”

LAURA: “OK.” Darcevy’s like, “How long did we spend on swimming?” like trying to think back, like, “Did I like miss that day? Because I remember them teaching us how to swim, but not like a whole school, but OK.”

HUDSON: I quickly try to divert back to something.

LAURA: She’s sure she just missed that week or something.

CAMERON: “If swimming’s not your strong suit, you’ll probably also—and as you’re not used to breathing underwater, you’ll probably also wish to buy some weights to keep you planted to the turtle as it begins its descent.”

HUDSON: “So I have a question about this Bleakening.”

CAMERON: “Breaching, yes.”

HUDSON: “Breaching, sure. So my master collects those stupid little annoying spoons. Somehow they’ve survived all these years, his collection, and so I’m-a need one the Breakening.”

LAURA: “The Breaching.”

CAMERON: “The Breaching?”

HUDSON: “Yeah, the Bleakening.”

CAMERON: “I’m sure there are several carts in the streets that are selling them.”

HUDSON: “Ah, perfect.”

CAMERON: “You should have no problem finding any.”

HUDSON: “Oh, that’s great.”

LAURA: “We would like to keep the journal. We will return it to you, but we would like to keep it in case we need to reference any of it.”

CAMERON: “OK.”

LAURA: “Do you know where this Quitall Nol is staying?”

CAMERON: “Yes, he left with the delegation a few days ago.”

LAURA: “Left to where?”

CAMERON: “Anselmi, their capital. I’m assuming they went home.”

LAURA: “Do you know where he was staying when he was here?”

CAMERON: “They were staying at the Terrapin Inn by the landing bay.”

LAURA: “Thank you.”

CAMERON: “Mhmm. Do you have any other questions?”

LAURA: Let’s see. So we’re pretty sure Quitall’s an important part of this, I mean, just a hunch. Did we learn what species Quitall Nol is?

CAMERON: An Anselmi.

LAURA: An Anselmi. OK. Which ones are those? I forgot what Anselmi look like.

NICK: Oh, oh! Roll me a Xenology check.

LAURA: OK, I don’t have much Xenology.

HUDSON: I’ve Xenology for days.

LAURA: What difficulty?

NICK: Average.

LAURA: Can do. Nothing.

NICK: So you don’t know much about the Anselmi. Let’s see if Vross does.

HUDSON: Vross like lives and dies for Xenology. That would be two disadvantages and a success.

NICK: Alright. So you know that the Anselmi are the other native race to Glee Anselm, hence part of the name. You know that they have been at war. You will not find a picture of them.

LAURA: I was about to say, there’s no photo.

NICK: Oh no, I spent a long time looking. Anyway, you know that they basically have been at war with the Nautolans for basically the entire existence of the planet because the Nautolans can breathe underwater and the Anselmi can’t so the Anselmi are stuck on what little land exists on Glee Anselm and the Nautolans can swim everywhere.

Fun story two. This would particularly interest you. The Anselmi are not as strong or gifted fighters as the Nautolans so whenever they wage war on them, they tend to lose pretty heavily but they look kind of like turtle-frog people. They have—you’ve seen them before on your journeys, it’s not a huge population spread around the galaxy, but they have a kind of tortoise shell pattern that’s semi-flexible so they have plating everywhere and they have eyes sunk deep back in their heads. But they’re otherwise humanoid.

LAURA: Cool, so we know he’s Anselmi.

HUDSON: “So has Kira had any prior relationships we know of?”

CAMERON: “No, she’s pretty sheltered. Although sheltered in the high society. She has a lot of friends. She’s very sociable but being a senator’s daughter, being surrounded by security detail, you do tend to not get approached a lot by the non-children of other delegates.”

LAURA: “Has she ever been known to sneak out at night or break away from her security detail?”

CAMERON: “No, she’s actually been pretty good about it. We set up the rule that she’s able to wander the hotel as she wishes as the hotel’s secure. We checked it before we arrived. And she’s been very good about making sure she grabbed myself or someone from my squad when she wishes to leave. She knows that it’s for her own safety and we don’t cramp her style too much.”

LAURA: “How did you realize she was missing?”

CAMERON: “So she had gone downstairs to—you may have noticed as you entered, there’s a small snack area like next to the main desk.”

LAURA: “I did not.”

CAMERON: “Well, there’s one there. It’s rather small and it’s kind of round the corner so that makes sense. But she’d gone down to grab a snack and then never returned back up so we eventually wandered back downstairs to find her and have not been able to trace her since.”

HUDSON: “What about any camera footage?”

LAURA: “Yes, are there any holo-cams?”

CAMERON: “Of course.”

HUDSON: “Can we take a look?”

LAURA: “Yes.”

CAMERON: “I unfortunately do not have the power to grant you that access as this is not my hotel.”

LAURA: “We will ask the hotel.”

CAMERON: “You can certainly speak to the management.”

HUDSON: “On the way out, yeah.”

LAURA: “How many times has she met with this Quitall Nol during her visit?”

CAMERON: “So he was, of course, present at the Breaching parade that I mentioned then also at the hospital opening as they were here as a delegation. There were several council meetings. Times that they actually interacted, I’d say three or four times. Always in a public space with multitudes of other people around. She didn’t ever seem to seek him out specifically.”

HUDSON: “Are there any tracking devices on her?”

LAURA: “I’m assuming no.”

HUDSON: “Such as a holo-phone?”

CAMERON: “That’s not how that works.”

HUDSON: “Oh, they don’t have cell phones?”

LAURA: You have a data-pad and a comm link.

HUDSON: Using that, you can triangulate the data.

LAURA: Not in Star Wars really. Remember like…

NICK: The calls are basically radios.

HUDSON: Oh, OK.

LAURA: Remember, 70s. Because you can’t even truly do comm links like across planet. It’s what you need it to be.

NICK: 80s opera. I need it to not be trackable.

HUDSON: [laughs]

CAMERON: “Unfortunately, she has no tracking equipment on her.”

HUDSON: “Darn.”

CAMERON: “As this has never been a problem before, it did not occur to us.”

HUDSON: “The long con.”

LAURA: “Were there any items in this room that were missing or any items that she’d normally take that are still here?”

CAMERON: “Well, you’re holding her journal.”

LAURA: “Well, yes, but sometimes people don’t take their journals with them.”

CAMERON: “I mean, she walked down for a snack—if I was packing to leave, there are numerous things that are still here that I would’ve taken. From what I can tell, she left with just the clothes that she was wearing and the only piece that was really special or anything that she was wearing was the ceremonial dance circlet that she’s been wearing off-and-on since we’ve gotten here.”

LAURA: “That does make it less likely that she ran away and more likely that she was coerced.”

HUDSON: “Eh, yeah, I still think it’s still a runaway case.”

LAURA: “Please come with us when we go watch the footage as you are more familiar with her and might pick up on personal body language or clues that we would not.”

CAMERON: “Of course.”

HUDSON: “Let’s see how well you actually know her. What kind of snack would she pick out when she’s down?” I say suspiciously.

LAURA: “Is this information relevant?”

HUDSON: “Yes, because we need to know her loyalty and if she actually is close enough to her as her security detail.”

CAMERON: “I don’t quite follow your logic, but it would definitely be bantha cakes.”

HUDSON: “Hmm, everyone loves bantha cakes. Let’s go see that footage.”

LAURA: “I do not. I find bantha cakes overly sweet. Not enough shrimp.”

NICK: OK, so you leave the room and head back downstairs. The camera zooms in on the iris door as it opens and as the door opens, it’s onto the next scene in the lobby and the nervous desk attendant, basically just you steam roll over him and he’s adjusting his headset and says, “We can look at the holo-footage is you want. I have no questions for you and of course, whatever Soana Lette wants Soana Lette gets. Ha ha ha ha ha.”

And he leads you around a corner and down a hallway to a sparse room. This one’s durasteel which is interesting with all the like aquatic, pastoral ambiance the hotel has and so because we’re doing camera shots, we don’t have to watch you guys watch hours of footage. It goes very quickly to a scene and you see a pretty young Nautolan girl. She has sharp features. She’s pretty small but lithe and she’s wearing her headband. It’s a silver circlet. As she comes down the stairs you see the back. It’s got a bunch of individual fronds that wrap around her head-tails.

LAURA: Nice.

NICK: It’s got a bright red stone in the center. It matches well with her outfit even though she appears to be wearing—it’s like a mix of board shorts and pajamas. Just very comfortable clothes. She pats down the snack rack.

So we get a shot over the shoulder as Vross and Darcy lean over the nervous bellhop as he’s clicking through and the young Nautolan girl is reaching around on the rack and she reaches for some bantha cakes and then goes next to it to grab some Ewok jerky and looks up at the camera and then it just cuts to static for about two minutes of footage and when the static goes away, the room is empty. There’s nobody else in the screen. There’s no attendant. There’s no nobody.

LAURA: “What happened to that footage?”

NICK: “Um, I’m not sure. You know this is all set-up for underwater so with stuff being exposed to air for the first time in a hundred years, it’s likely just some sort of short. We’ve been having problems with it.”

LAURA: “It seems highly coincidental that she looked at the camera as it went out.”

NICK: “Sure does.”

HUDSON: “What’s that snack she was holding?”

NICK: “Looks like Ewok jerky. I think that was the last bag, too. I usually buy that for myself.”

HUDSON: “It’s obviously a sign to cut the film.”

NICK: “Maybe.”

LAURA: “Or it could’ve just…  Anyways.”

HUDSON: “Are you saying the security detail was lying about her favorite snack?”

LAURA: “No, I’m saying someone cut the feed on purpose especially since she looked at the camera, right at it as it was being cut. Most people don’t look directly into cameras like that, especially when they’re just picking out tasty snacks.”

HUDSON: “Those are points.”

NICK: OK, so the bellhop rewinds the footage again to the grainy shot right before the static completely takes over the screen and it zooms in on Kira’s face and that’s the end of the episode. Ba-naaa~!

LAURA: Ba-naaa~!

HUDSON: [humming] Longest time—whoa-oh-oh!

LAURA: Whoa-oh-oh!

## Outro

CAMERON: Thanks for listening to Tabletop Squadron. If you enjoyed the show, please consider logging into iTunes and leaving us a 5-star review. 5-star reviews help new listeners find the show.

Darcevy is played by Laura Penrod and she can be found on Twitter at @Cheerio_Buffet.

Vross is played by Hudson Jameson. He can be found on Twitter at @HudsonJameson

Soana Lette was played by me, Cameron Robertson. I can be found on Twitter at @MidnightMusic13.

Our game master was Nick Robertson. He can be found on Twitter at @Alias58.

Follow the show on Twitter and Instagram at @Tabletop_Squad. And check out our website at www.tabletopsquadron.com.

Please reach out to us and let us know what you like. We love to hear from our listeners. See you next time.

Tabletop Squadron Transcript, Season 1 Episode 6:
I Have Altered the Deal

Transcript by Tyler (Twitter: @Tyler_MoonSage)

Note – Laura’s character Xianna’fan speaks in an accent. Most of her soft I’s sound like “ee,” and most of her TH’s sound like Z’s. Example: “this and that” = “zees and zat”

## 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, a fringer, and a slicer as they explore the galaxy helping a mysterious benefactor and each other.

I just wanted to take a second to thank MolarDuck for his very kind iTunes review. Only two more to go and we get to release our secret art. Please get out there and review the show.

We hope you enjoy the episode.

##

NICK: Hello, everybody, and welcome to Episode 6 of Tabletop Squadron. I’m your host, Nick. I’m gonna go around the table, and everybody introduce yourself and your character, and if you spent any experience since last time please tell the audience what you did. Starting off with Laura.

LAURA: I’m Laura. …

NICK: Hi Laura.

LAURA: (light laugh) I play Xianna, she’s a Twi’lek, and I bought another rank in the skill Underworld.

NICK: Because you have Streetwise.

LAURA: Well, I already have Streetwise. This is Underworld. It’s an Intelligence skill. Streetwise is a Cunning based skill.

NICK: Right. Of course.

LAURA: In case you wanna know how this game works.

NICK: Yeah. If you wanna know how the game works, look at our Instagram. We have all the rules.

CAMERON: Tabletop_Squad

NICK: Yeah. That’s gonna be in the outro. And next, Steven.

STEVEN: Hello.

NICK: Hi Steven.

STEVEN: Hi, I’m Steven.

NICK: Hi.

STEVEN: Hi. I am playing the Togruta, Sabos, and also doing what I can to make Nick’s life harder.

NICK: Of course you are. Great. Have you spent any experience?

STEVEN: Oh yes, yes I did. See, this is the part of making it harder I was talking about. Yeah, I upgraded my Survival, which is a Cunning skill, to 2.

NICK: Ooh, smart.

STEVEN: No, Survival.

(laughter)

NICK: And, next up we have Hudson.

HUDSON: Hi. I’m Hudson. It’s great to be here, Nick.

NICK: Great. Good to have you.

HUDSON: I’m playing a Gigoran named Tink. I did not use any of my experience points, opting to hoard them.

(laughter)

LAURA: Like some sort of fluffy dragon.

HUDSON: Yes.

NICK: Great. Last up, but not least, we have Cameron.

CAMERON: Hello~

NICK: Hi!

CAMERON: I’m Cameron. I play Karma. She’s a Nautolan bounty hunter, and I upgraded my Cool skill to Rank 2.

NICK: Nifty keen. Alright, let’s go ahead and do the Destiny Roll.

STEVEN: Sure. Why not?

HUDSON: No…

STEVEN: Okay. We’re going good so far. One dark side.

CAMERON: Agh.

STEVEN: Okay, another dark side.

LAURA & STEVEN: And another dark side.

NICK: Oh, am I gonna win the game?

STEVEN: I’m gonna try to save y’all here. And another dark side! We did great!

NICK: Yes. Excellent!

LAURA: These dice didn’t listen to us. We tried to get the bad rolls out…

CAMERON: It didn’t work.

LAURA: …and then we primed the dice by putting the two light sides up to encourage it and let it know what we expect out of it.

NICK: How did that work out for you?

LAURA & CAMERON: Not well.

STEVEN: We have lots of dark side.

CAMERON: None of us rolled two dark sides, so…

NICK: Well, there you go. Mediocrity. Wonderful.

STEVEN: I mean, we did pretty good at failing, just not as good as we could have.

CAMERON: Four dark side.

NICK: Great. I’ll be happy to use those this session. I’m sure it’ll come up.

CAMERON: Great.

STEVEN: I’m sure you will.

NICK: So, if you remember, last time we went on an adventure into the jungle, a little bit of a man hunt. You got into a gun fight with Lira and Williams, the stormtrooper and the officer. You murdered Lira by having a tree eat her, proving that Mills was not crazy, and that the trees actually are alive and extremely dangerous, and you opted to let Williams go and fake his death without Mills noticing. Then, you loaded a corpse into the back of your speeder and you are headed back to the outpost. We’ll pick up there.

STEVEN: What model of speeder?

NICK: It’s a big one.

CAMERON: (laughs)

STEVEN: Good.

NICK: A six-seater with off-road skids.

HUDSON: Say it’s the Model T Ford, may the trouble, may the people wanna go, wanna get, wanna get, wanna get up and go!

LAURA: No!

(laughter)

STEVEN: I’m liking where this is going.

NICK: Ah… Alright. We open on a jungle treetop with the reddening late afternoon sun overhead. You hear the drone of a single speeder beneath the trees. one of the trees groans and begins to lean, but another tree whips its branches around tangling with the trunk. The trees snap at each other. There’s the sound of a blaster rifle being fired. Bolts blast up through the trees which stop moving, and some strange monkey creatures with lobster tails go skidding along the canopy.

Our viewpoint drops through the trees into the dim jungle. A speeder is whipping through the undergrowth, dodging fallen logs and underbrush. Occasionally, the elevation changes and the speeder lurches upward on the metal skids that cover the bottom, designed for just that purpose.

Inside the speeder we see our heroes, with Mills, their companion. The speeder roars past the camera, and from the rear we see a large crate affixed to the back. The speeder hits a bump, and a bloody arm in stormtrooper gear falls out of the trunk swaying back and forth in the momentum of travel.

So, you are driving back.

CAMERON: Did we pick up Spark Duelson when he died, or did we just leave him lying there? I don’t remember.

NICK: That’s a good question. You never really mentioned it.

CAMERON: I looted his body, behind the speeder… I’m going to say I tossed him up on the back of the speeder.

LAURA: I would not have.

NICK: Okay. Is he just like Weekend At Bernie’s in the backseat right now?

CAMERON: Yeah. I just felt bad. I mean, I’m sure he has a mom somewhere who’s worried about him, and this is really gonna hit her hard that her son was both a failure in the Empire and is now dead. So, you know…

NICK: Mm-hmm. So, I know Tink is driving, we settled that last time, Mills is in the seat next to him, and then who’s stuck in the backseat with the corpse?

CAMERON: Sabos.

LAURA: Yeah.

STEVEN: It’s touching my fourth head tail.

(laughter)

LAURA: In case you haven’t noticed, Xianna likes to call things, and she almost certainly saw Karma putting the body into the backseat and immediately was like “Middle seat! I call middle seat! I do not want to sit with the dead body…”

STEVEN: “I don’t want to either.”

LAURA: “Yes, but you see, I called it first. So, that is how that works.”

HUDSON: “Those are the rules.”

NICK: Mills slots his blaster rifle into the little cubby under the dashboard, and you all have those big helicopter earphones on with the wrap around microphones so you can talk to each other over the noise of the speeder. He says, “Well, that was interesting. I’m glad you got to see what the plant life of this planet can really do.”

LAURA: Do any of us have ears…?

CAMERON: (bursting laughter)

LAURA: Like, real ears? Are these made for human ears? I have ear cones, so they probably would stick out on the ear cones, and thinking about it, no one knows if Togrutas and Nautolans have actual ears or what, and he’s just fur… so I’m sure he has ears somewhere in there.

HUDSON: They’re buried in there, though.

CAMERON: He probably knows where they are though, so if he was putting on a headset…

LAURA: He just like smooshes them in and sways them side to side.

NICK: He just has them strapped to his nipples in the front, that’s where Gigorans hear from.

CAMERON: Oh, weird…

HUDSON: Not quite. (laughs)

LAURA: I’m sure they’re on his head, and he just has to like circle them around to get the hair out of the way, but the rest of us are probably having them awkwardly positioned around tentacles and ear cones to try and make them fit.

CAMERON: Yeah. So, I have a com link, and I have one of the ear ones that’s hidden so it’s not like on my wrist, but it’s just somewhere up in my tentacles with wherever the ear is… So, I probably have a couple of tentacles in front of them and a couple behind them and they’re weirdly far back on my head.

NICK: This is great. So, everybody’s wearing their earphones just kind of at a weird angle.

CAMERON: Yeah.

STEVEN: It makes my first and fourth head tail more prominent, because it pushes it up.

CAMERON: Well, how do yours work, because you have the montrals on top?

LAURA: That’s not where your… I don’t think he understands how the head tails work. (laughs)

STEVEN: Yeah, I don’t know. (laughs)

CAMERON: You have them, like, to go in between the two pointy bits you have like one on your nose and one on the back of your head. (giggles)

STEVEN: It’s tough.

LAURA: No, it’s probably angled so that the band that connects them is on the forehead.

STEVEN: It’s just on my forehead. Yeah.

CAMERON: Or he’s one of the super cool guys that—

STEVEN: Yes.

CAMERON: –who has the band below his chin, and it’s like a beard.

STEVEN: It’s special headphones with cut-outs for…

NICK: These are just standard.

CAMERON: No. we’re at an Empire outpost. They don’t particularly like aliens. None of these were made for anyone with tentacles.

NICK: Yeah. They’re definitely designed for humans.

STEVEN: Eh. Eh…

NICK: Do you guys have anything you want to debrief about while you’re on the speeder back?

CAMERON: I’m leaning against the wall of the speeder with my head in my hand breathing deeply. I don’t look too good.

NICK: Yeah. You got shot a whole bunch last episode.

CAMERON: Yeah. I’m looking a little green.

NICK: Ah… ha ha.

LAURA: Haaa…

CAMERON: But it’s because I’m a Nautolan, not because I’m sick.

NICK: There are some char marks going down the side of the inside of the speeder from rubbing off of the massive wounds that you have.

CAMERON: Both in the back, I think. I think I got shot in the back twice.

NICK: Yeah.

CAMERON: Yup. So, I’m kind of leaning away from the back of the seat, too, so I’m not leaning against the wounds. I don’t look particularly chatty at the moment.

LAURA: I do look at Sabos, and go “You owe me four stim packs.”

STEVEN: “I’ll get right on that.”

LAURA: “I healed you. You should owe me.”

STEVEN: “I don’t disagree.” I shuffle through my bag, looking through my inventory, it does not include any stim packs.

LAURA: “Then buy them.”

STEVEN: “We’re not at a store right now.”

LAURA: “We will be.”

STEVEN: “Noted.”

LAURA: “That is why I said you OWE me. Future tense.” (giggles)

HUDSON: “Sabos, I think she wants you to get some stim packs for her.”

STEVEN: “I will get some stim packs as soon as I get enough credits to buy the stim packs.”

CAMERON: “You all sound like my kids.”

STEVEN: (laughs)

NICK: (smiling) We’ll use that as the transition.

LAURA: (laughs)

NICK: So, the speeder goes whipping off through the trees, and we have a swipe cut. The speeder goes right to left on the screen and the transition swipes with the speeder to reveal the clearing for Outpost 4. As you pull in to the clearing you see that there are three stormtroopers posted outside of the Afternoon Delight, your Starwind pleasure yacht. While they are obviously on guard duty, they don’t react as you burst out of the final growths of the jungle and into the clearing around the outpost. There are two more scout troopers by the main gate which is still open, and they wave you through without incident after a hand signal from Mills.

He has taken off his bandana and is using it to wipe the camouflage paint from his face. He says, “Park us in the square. I’ll take the body to the morgue, and you go report to Falx.”

CAMERON: “Bodies.”

NICK: “Oh. Right. Sparks.”

CAMERON: “Yeah.”

NICK: “Yeah, okay, I’ll take the bodies to the morgue.”

CAMERON: “Thank you.”

NICK: So, the speeder, Tink, I guess you set it down in the square in the middle of the outpost?

HUDSON: Yeah. Throw the keys in.

NICK: Okay. Mills immediately piles out and detaches the big crate that’s on the back and just starts dragging that off to the side, and then remembers Sparks and goes back. “Well, that’s the third one this month…” and grabs the guy and starts dragging him towards a low sloped building off towards one of the barrier walls. You hear him mumbling about having to make multiple trips, and he doesn’t seem particularly enthused.

CAMERON: “I’m not surprised they don’t last long if that’s the level, the caliber of people they’re at.”

LAURA: “Only three a month?”

CAMERON: I’m trying to get out of the speeder. (laughs)

LAURA: “That seems low.” (giggles)

STEVEN: Have you seen those trees?

LAURA: Like yeah, those trees!

HUDSON: “Karma, do you need some help getting out of there?”

CAMERON: “Yes, please.”

HUDSON: I picked up Karma.

NICK: You just pick her up?

HUDSON: I pick her up to bring her wherever we’re going.

STEVEN: Her blood soaking into your fur, staining it forever.

HUDSON: Not forever, I have space Tide.

(laughter)

LAURA: He’s got some space bleach.

NICK: He’s got a Tide pen that’s a laser.

HUDSON: In the future Tide pods are actually edible.

(laughter and groaning)

CAMERON: Oh no.

NICK: Okay. You head toward the mansion, I guess?

HUDSON: Yeah. We head toward the mansion to report back.

LAURA: Before we go in, Xianna does look at Sabos and Tink, and points at both of them. “Neither of you two talk. Be quiet. Be seen but not heard.”

HUDSON: “What did I do?”

STEVEN: “Nothing happened.”

LAURA: “You two are bad at the talking.”

CAMERON: (laughs)

HUDSON: “What?!”

STEVEN: ‘I’m a really good driver.”

LAURA: “Sure. Sure you are, yes, but the talking you are not good at. Please let me talk, and maybe Karma. She can talk.”

STEVEN: “So should we not mention how we got the…”

LAURA: “No.”

STEVEN: “Oh.”

LAURA: “Do not talk. Do not say anything. Look pretty. Okay?”

HUDSON: “She can’t talk because she’s bleeding to death in my arms. I should be able to talk because I’m fine.”

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: “No. No no no. Just be pretty, do not talk, okay?”

HUDSON: “I’m covered in blood. I’ll neither be pretty nor will I refuse to talk.”

LAURA: “(defeated sigh)”

CAMERON: “I don’t look very pretty right now either, Tink. It’s alright.”

NICK: With that, we’ll cut to the next thing. There’s a star wipe. Why not? We’ll do a star wipe.

CAMERON: Ooh.

NICK: It cuts to the group standing in a well-appointed office. It’s all fur and dark wood. Falx is leaning back in a chair behind a large desk with his feet up. He’s wearing a black Imperial uniform that seems to have been tailored to make him look athletic and imposing. He takes a sip from a martini glass and gestures for you to speak.

STEVEN: “Falx!”

NICK: “Well hi! It seems like you made it—Whoa. What happened to your fishy friend?”

LAURA: “Oh, do not worry about her. She will be fine.”

NICK: “I could call for a medic or something.”

CAMERON: “Yes. Yes, please. Yes, please.”

STEVEN: “She might—“

LAURA: “Ye— That would be good. Thank you.”

HUDSON: “Do that.”

NICK: Alright. He reaches under the desk and presses something, and a little while later you see someone in what looks like an officer’s uniform, it’s all white and has a little red cross on it. That person says “Lean the patient over here, please. Put her down in this chair. I’ll see what I can do.” There’s a chair, and he folds the back down so it’s more of a stool. As Karma sits on it he starts to take out bacta and peel back the armor, and probably helps you out of the outer layer and starts stitching you up and doing random medical things.

CAMERON: Fun.

NICK: Could somebody make me a check with three greens and a yellow, please?

CAMERON: What difficulty?

NICK: Just a simple check. This is for the medic. Medic checks are simple.

CAMERON: Four successes, two advantages.

NICK: Great. You’re gonna get 4 health back. Then, he also uses a bunch of bacta on you so you get 10 additional health back, because bacta packs are awesome.

CAMERON: Oh yeah.

NICK: So, you should be back to full, but that’s gonna be over the course of the scene. You’ll be under medical attention for the whole time.

CAMERON: Okay.

NICK: You hear the medic kind of mumbling to himself as he sees under the armor about how he’s having to use all this bacta, and who knows when the next shipment will be, and he starts stitching… It hurts, but this has happened before. You’re pretty used to this.

CAMERON: Yup. No biggie. It’s better if you don’t move.

NICK: So, Falx kicks his feet back up onto the desk and takes a sip of his martini. “So, it appears that you met some resistance. What happened?”

STEVEN: “Did you know the trees move?”

NICK: “Oh yeah, unfortunate feature of our lovely home, Unroola Dawn. I probably should’ve told you about that beforehand.”

LAURA: “Well, yes, but… The people we were sent to obtain, they fought back a little bit, and they are both dead.”

NICK: “Wow… Okay.”

LAURA: “One of the bodies was together enough to bring back. The other one, just some little bits.”

NICK: “Did you bring the little bits?”

LAURA: “I think so.” (giggles)

CAMERON: I feel like Karma has them in her pack.

NICK: Okay. Do you show them?

LAURA: I’m pretty sure we got the hat and his insignia.

CAMERON: We got the hat, some bloody uniform, and his… rank thing.

LAURA: Yeah, his rank insignia.

STEVEN: “The tree claimed most of the little bits.”

CAMERON: I try not to move, and I just pull a pouch that has them in it off my belt and gently toss it to Xianna, because I’m being stitched.

LAURA: Xianna kinda pulls back, like “Ew.”

CAMERON: “It’s in a pouch.”

LAURA: Still, she’s like ‘ick,’ and like picks it up with two little fingers and puts it on his desk. “I threw a grenade… Sorry.”

NICK: Falx opens the bag and very nonchalantly pulls out the bloody scraps of fabric. “Ew. Gross.” And puts it back in the bag.

LAURA: (laughs) ‘I know.”

NICK: “I’ll have to ask Sparks about exactly what happened. Where is he?”

CAMERON: (seethes)

LAURA: “Oh, by the way… Sparks is also dead. One of those weird furball scorpion crab thingies got him while we were being attacked by the trees.”

STEVEN: “Tasty creatures, but feisty.”

NICK: “Y-Yeah… Wow. Racked up quite a body count on this pretty simple job.”

LAURA: “We were not aware the trees were murderous.”

CAMERON: “Your five troopers are dead, too.”

NICK: “Yeah. That’s why I sent you all.”

LAURA: “Mills also seemed to have some sort of war flashback and ran off into the trees for a bit.”

NICK: “Ha-ha! Oh, that Mills, such a card. He was probably testing you. He does that to me from time to time.”

The camera cuts to Mills in the morgue, and he’s just dumping Spark’s body into a freezer container but it looks kind of like a dumpster, and one of the legs is sticking out at a weird angle. “Man, someday I’ll have to stop doing this…” and he’s like hitting it down with a broom to try to get it into the freezer, and the camera cuts back to you all.

(nervous laughter)

HUDSON: Wow…

CAMERON: I’m glad none of our characters saw that.

NICK: “So, there’s no one to collaborate your story.”

LAURA: “Mills was there when I accidentally blew up Williams. He also saw Lira get murdered by a tree.”

HUDSON: “Did you say collaborate the story?”

NICK: “Co-oberate the story.”

HUDSON: “Corrob— Ah.”

(shushing)

NICK: “Corroborate.”

(laughter)

NICK: “Ah! Tink! You finally speak!”

LAURA: She’s like poking Tink, and she’s like, (whispered) “No…”

HUDSON: I glare.

NICK: “I thought from all the blood stains that maybe you’d been wounded.”

HUDSON: “Oh no, just carrying Karma.”

NICK: “Ah—Oh… Right. Well, I’m glad you all made it back. I kinda sent you on a suicide mission, and then right after you left I felt sort of bad, which is weird for me.”

LAURA: “Um, thank you?”

(laughter)

STEVEN: “Yeah… We’ll just take the payment.”

NICK: “Right. Yeah, we can probably make that happen. So, just to recap: The officer I trusted died beforehand, and the two people I sent you to get died, and one of them you brought back a hat, and Mills who honestly is not the most reliable of fellows will have to answer this later. Did I miss anything?”

LAURA: “Um… Wait. Duelson was a trusted officer? I thought he was like, a private. He was, like, so young.”

NICK: “By trusted I mean he was too scared of me to lie to me.”

LAURA: “Oh. I understand now. (giggles)”

NICK: “I don’t know if you could tell, but he was my snitch, my patsy, the one to tell me what was going on.”

LAURA: “Oh no. it is never good when you lose your snitch.”

CAMERON: Karma thinks back on all the information that Spark Duelson told us before he died about secret codes and leaving the base and everything, and is like yeah, I could see how he’d be a good snitch, but says it silently to herself.

NICK: Mm-hmm. I’m gonna need a Deception check probably from Xianna and one other person.

LAURA: Can do!

NICK: Tink or Karma can help, because you two were the ones that talked the most.

STEVEN: That’s good, because I don’t deceive.

CAMERON: Do you have any Deception?

HUDSON: No, I have none.

LAURA: What’s the difficulty?

NICK: It’s gonna be three purple.

CAMERON: Are we both making checks, or am I helping Xianna?

NICK: It’s an assistance.

CAMERON: Okay. Take a blue, because you’re better at Deception than me.

STEVEN: Everything I said was 100% true, weird monkeys, weird trees.

CAMERON: Phew.

LAURA: Three successes.

NICK: Alright. He thinks for a minute and scratches at one of his head spikes. “Well, sounds pretty trustworthy to me. Glad you made it back in one piece.”

STEVEN: “Are you?”

NICK: “Yeah! I think we’re friends.”

LAURA: “Yes. Yes we are.” Xianna smiles.

CAMERON: Karma gives a pained look as something happens to her back.

STEVEN: You got shot a lot.

NICK: Yeah. The medic kinda tugs on one of your head tentacles.

CAMERON: (seethes)

NICK: “Stand still.”

CAMERON: “I’m sitting.”

NICK: “Or sit still.” He’s got a lot of blood, probably up to his elbow as he’s digging around in there.

CAMERON: “And I’m not moving, you’re wiggling.”

NICK: “Look, we could do this the easy way or the hard way. Either way, it’s gonna hurt.” You flinch again as he digs deeper in there. You’re not sure why he’s digging in there, because it wasn’t bullets, so there’s nothing in there to dig out…

LAURA: Tree bark.

NICK: Could be. Making sure it’s not infected… with his hands.

STEVEN: Aren’t there weird tree spores and shit?

NICK: Yes, there are.

CAMERON: (laughing) Yes, that’s true. He’s disinfecting.

NICK: Oh, speaking of the weird tree spores, in the office you notice one of those humming heat lamp things that they use for them is hanging from the ceiling. You didn’t notice it at first because it was behind a light fixture, but it’s the same kind of technology. It’s the kind of thing where Falx, in his home setup, would basically be able to be decontaminated constantly, all the time.

“Well, this would be a well-executed mission except for a couple of small things.” He presses a button under his desk, and you see the pudgy quartermaster from before walk in. Falx says, “Why don’t you tell my good friends what you told me, quartermaster?”

The pudgy quartermaster goes, “(huffs) Okay. So… I was thinking back about these transactions that these people made with me and realized I recognize that Togruta.” He points at Sabos. “When I was the quartermaster at Outpost 2, he’s the one that came and tried to make some trade agreement for his little colony.”

STEVEN: “Not little. Well, I mean, smaller than… Okay, fine.”

LAURA: The moment he starts talking Xianna immediately sighs, because in her head she’s like (exasperated) you always deny everything, you stay silent, you deny, you ask for a lawyer!

STEVEN: “You mean (muffled speech) Osaron?”

NICK: “Yeah. That’s the stupid place. Look, he said they were going to trade exotic goods for basic supplies, and we sent a good faith payment, and he never sent anything back. It happens from time to time. Then, that idiot came back.”

STEVEN: “I assure you I did send my side of the deal back. I sent one of my best pilots.”

HUDSON: … Roll Deception?

NICK: Yeah.

CAMERON: (laughs) Did you, actually?

STEVEN: No. (laughs) I don’t have anything at all.

LAURA: At this moment, Xianna’s leaning over to Karma and whispers to her. “Wait, is he actually a con artist? That would make so much more sense.”

STEVEN: How hard is it?

NICK: Three purple.

CAMERON: Karma whispers back. “He’d be better at lying.”

NICK: Also, two black die because he’s already done a bunch of research on this ahead of time.

STEVEN: Sure.

HUDSON: If you pass this check, I’ll like, get naked and do cartwheels.

NICK: Oh, and wouldn’t it be cool if you had some light side points to flip, which you don’t, so let’s go ahead and flip a dark side point.

STEVEN: Damn it. This isn’t Streetwise or Knowledge. That sucks. (laughs nervously)

LAURA: (groans) That is a sad, sad roll.

STEVEN: Okay, this is fine.

CAMERON: Three greens, two black, two purple, and one red.

STEVEN: “I totally sent your shipment with one of my best pilots…”

CAMERON: You did not…

STEVEN: Okay, so there’s a lot of advantages, but I did end up failing a couple times. I have two failures and two advantages. “Uh, I’m lying. It was not actually one of my best pilots.”

CAMERON: (laughs)

NICK: Yeah, so be thinking about how you want to spend those advantages, and it’s not that you can make people believe you. Falx’s smile gets real wide. “That’ll be all, quartermaster.”

The guy huffs. “Thanks for using my lunch break,” and wanders out.

Falx says, “So, obviously, you owe the Empire quite a bit of money. Standard support package, that’s about 100,000 credits.

LAURA: “What?!”

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: Xianna previously had her elbow on an armchair, like forehead in her hand, just sighing down, and then immediately goes, “What did you do with that?”

CAMERON: Karma hisses again.

STEVEN: “Let’s just say, I was busy executing other trade deals, and uh, well I haven’t yet come up with my side. As soon as I get back to Osaron, I promise I’ll do it. What type of thing would you be interested in?”

NICK: “We’ll deal with that here in a second. There’s gonna be an easier way to repay your debt.”

STEVEN: “Oh. I’m happy.”

NICK: “But before that…” He presses something under his desk and you see a holo-camera pop up. He presses a button. There’s like the little dialing tone which is like a little spinning Imperial gear logo, and then a hologram of a guy’s torso facing towards Falx shows up. You can see a reflection in the window behind him, so you can see the whole guy.

It is a large gentleman with a little bit of a paunch wearing a black Imperial uniform, very similar to Falx’s, and he’s got bushy hair and really big mutton chops that also look like his hair. He has kinda like Whoville looking hair if it was combed down and then big mutton chops, and then he has a big eyepatch that takes up about a quarter of his face.

“Ah yes, Regional Governor Silpin. I remember you sent me a missive a little while ago. Could you explain to me again about that robbery last year? I may have found a lead for you.”

LAURA: (quietly) “Oh shit…” (laughs)

NICK: Silpin starts talking, and he has a low but kind of whiney voice. “Well, you know that we had this problem a while ago with some sort of Twi’lek con artist thief, and she came in and she seduced me, and she stole a whole bunch of documents that should not ever see the light of the sun, and then she stole all my wife’s jewelry. She almost left me because of that. I had to spend so much money to get it back. It was a purple Twi’lek, and I don’t remember her name, but it was pretty bad. She wore this big coat, and she was real pretty, and look what happened to me now. I used to be stationed somewhere nice, and now I’m here on Unroola Dawn because of the embarrassment. You know all of this. I’m sure you’re just trying to make fun of me, but if you do have any information I will kill the heck out of that person and have them tortured for a very long time. I’ve been developing torture droids specifically for this.”

Falx says, “Tell you what, my friend, I’m gonna dig into that a little more and get back to you,” and he slides the camera back down into its compartment.

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: The moment he puts it down, Xianna holds her finger up. “Okie, in my defense, the wife gave me most of the jewelry. I don’t think he wants to know that I also was seducing her.”

NICK: “I think in the long run that may be a little irrelevant.”

LAURA: ‘It may actually make things worse, now that I think about it. He might not appreciate that fact.”

NICK: Falx pulls a few tumblers up from under his desk. His desk is pretty much clear, but for some reason all the storage seems to be just under it. He pulls some tumblers out and pulls a decanter of blue, clear fluid, and pours in a circle. It spills on the desk a little but it fills up the glasses. He kind of taps them towards you all.

Karma, at this point the medic kind of slaps on your back, and it doesn’t hurt because of all the bacta, it’s pretty numb and cold. It kind of feels like when you put that aloe gel on a sunburn, where it’s cold and a little stinging but mostly numb.

CAMERON: Mmm. Nice.

NICK: The medic says, “That’s the best I can do,” and he walks out of the room. You realize that his face never changed at all during that whole process, like he’s very practiced at not listening or at least not reacting to these things, and he’s gone, and you can put your armor back on.

Falx says, “You might as well have a drink, because we have a lot to talk about.”

STEVEN: “I like your style, Falx.”

NICK: “That’s great. I don’t particularly like yours. You don’t seem to be very good at this.”

STEVEN: “Well, I’m doing the best I can for my small little colony.”

LAURA: While this is happening Xianna takes a glass for her and then takes one and hands it to Karma, and like shoves it into her hand, and has to like pull her hand up into the glass to hold it.

STEVEN: I’ll take a drink off the desk, pretty immediately.

HUDSON: I take the drink off the desk.

CAMERON: Karma leans back into the armchair, keeps on holding the drink but doesn’t drink it.

NICK: Okay. If you take a sip of it it’s teeth-hurtingly sweet. You can’t taste alcohol in it at all, but your vision lags slightly. It’s very, very, very strong.

HUDSON: I pour a little bit of it onto the blood on my fur and rub it around to see if it gets the blood out.

NICK: It turns purple, because of the red-brownish blood it turns this weird purple sludgy kind of color, and just kind of stains you like a Teletubby.

HUDSON: “Can I get a towel?”

(laughter)

NICK: Falx shakes his head to himself and says, “Lovable scamp.” He claps, and the protocol droid from the night before waddles out with a really nice napkin, like before.

He says, ‘Oh, you rang?”

Falx says, “Give him the napkin.” The droid, whose face doesn’t move, still manages to look mortified and hands it over, hangs his head, and then waddles out of the room.

HUDSON: I wipe the blood off and thank Falx.

STEVEN: I see him do that, so I dip my head tail in the glass too, just to see what happens.

HUDSON: (snorts)

NICK: Um… It’s like… dipping your forehead in Windex. It’s blue and drippy.

STEVEN: Yeah…

CAMERON: Why? (laughs)

LAURA: The moment they start doing this, Xianna just looks down into her glass… and then just downs the whole thing.

NICK: It’s good. It is very good. It is extremely strong. You’ve had it before. What is it called?

LAURA: Ooh! Okay…

CAMERON: You said it’s blue?

NICK: It’s blue and clear.

LAURA: It’s blue, and it’s strong… Hmm.

STEVEN: It’s not the star thing, is it?

CAMERON: No.

LAURA: A Naboo Sky.

NICK: A Naboo Sky? Because yeah, Falx is the kind of guy who keeps named mix drinks in a decanter. That makes sense.

LAURA: Yeah.

CAMERON: He’s got a thermos with martini in it.

LAURA: Well, they’re the kind of alcohol mix drinks that are all alcohol, so you can just keep it in a decanter.

NICK: Yup.

LAURA: Yeah.

NICK: So, you have A Naboo Sky. You know that these things are like, if you wanna get super drunk you have one, and he just poured out quite a bit. He finishes his martini, pours some of the blue drink into it, and has a sip of that. “So, obviously the deal has changed. It’s a pretty strange coincidence that you all are here, but at the same time the galaxy seems to work in mysterious ways. I could have you killed. I could have you detained. That doesn’t really serve my purposes. So, here’s what we’re gonna do.”

He points to a large crate by the doorway with a briefcase on top of it. You didn’t really notice it on the way in. “That large crate contains the Stone Breaker. Take it. Do whatever you need with it. I wouldn’t be able to sell it anyway. I’m sure Sentinel will get in touch with you pretty soon after you’re out of here. Here’s the catch, before you do whatever you’re supposed to do with him, I need you to deliver that briefcase to some of my business associates.” He reaches under the table and pulls out a small data pad and slides it on the desk to where you can reach it easily.

“The coordinates are on here. You make this payment for me, and do it quickly, and I’ll ignore some of these other coincidences that have popped up. You delay my delivery, force me to get involved with the people that want that briefcase, and I call back Regional Governor Silpin, give him all the knowledge I have, and tack on the money that this Togruta owes the Empire to help him finance a task force. He’s a boring man, but tenacious. I’m sure you know all about that.” He winks at Xianna.

LAURA: Xianna’s like, “Hmm. Very boring. Yes.”

NICK: “I’ll give you a head start, but it would be inconvenient, maybe fatal, for you all to rebel.” He leans back in his chair.

LAURA: Xianna is nodding, takes the data pad. “I understand. We will do your briefcase delivery first, ASAP.”

STEVEN: “What’s in the briefcase?”

NICK: “I wouldn’t worry about that.”

CAMERON: Karma’s now worried about it.

NICK: (laughs)

LAURA: Xianna’s fine because it’s a briefcase, so there’s probably no people inside of it.

CAMERON: That’s why Karma’s worried.

HUDSON: “Just to make sure we don’t know these business partners, who are the business partners?”

NICK: “Oh, it’s just a small crime syndicate from the outer rim, some people who have done some runs for me in the past. You know, what comes around goes around.”

LAURA: “The briefcase, it does not have volatile materials, does it? Should it not be near an open flame? Should we not move it around too much?”

NICK: “Well, you may notice that’s pretty nice bantha leather. I’d prefer you didn’t burn up the briefcase. You could use that again. Otherwise, the material’s fine.”

LAURA: “Okie. I was making sure it was not like a bomb or something that we would need to be careful with.”

STEVEN: “Yeah. You’ve seen my style for how I like to roll into planets.”

CAMERON: Gosh. Karma starts running through a list of all the members of crime gangs from the outer rim that she’s turned in.

NICK: There’s a lot.

CAMERON: Yeah.

NICK: Most crime syndicates and gangs know about you, do not like you.

CAMERON: Yup.

NICK: The good news, I would imagine being an alien in the Star Wars universe, even one that’s fairly popular, unless you have a really obvious calling card, since most species don’t recognize each other with a ton of detail they’re not gonna see somebody and be like ‘oh, that’s Karma.’ The reason people all recognized Jango and Boba Fett is because they have super obvious Mandalorian armor so they can be recognized. Most people aren’t gonna be like ‘hey, that lady with the antenna is Aurra Sing,’ although that’s not a great example because she’s the only one that looks like that.

LAURA: Because she literally is her own thing, and they won’t release what her race is, because she is a hybrid that’s just there!

NICK: Yeah. A better example would be if you see a giant Wookie walk into an area, unless you’re very familiar with a certain Wookie you’re not gonna be like oh look, that’s Chewbacca, that famous Wookie.’ You’re just gonna be like, that’s a Wookie. So, yeah, it’s possible if you personally arrested somebody, they would probably recognize you, but if someone had just heard about you, you’d probably be okay. So, not the best of situations, but not an obvious faux pas.

CAMERON: Okay.

NICK: “So, you all onboard? Tink my man, you willing to deliver my briefcase?”

HUDSON: “Doesn’t look like we have a choice.”

NICK: “Yeah. This is why me and you understand each other. You’ve done this kind of thing before.”

HUDSON: “Wait, is this gonna come into some weird story that brings back my past?”

NICK: “Um, I don’t know why you would think that. It shouldn’t.”

HUDSON: “You sounded foreboding.”

NICK: “Oh, well yeah. I’m an Imperial governor working against the law. Of course I sound foreboding from time to time.”

HUDSON: “It wasn’t a complaint. It was an observation.”

NICK: “And you’re quite an observant fellow. So, anyway, I’ll give you a pass out of here. I would recommend against coming back, seeing as you left and then Imperials ended up dead, but I’ll delay the full investigation until after you’re gone. I’m seeing some confused looks. Even if they were deserters, you killed Imperials. Probably not great.”

STEVEN: “The trees killed Imperials.”

LAURA: “Um, yes. To be fair, the one, the trooper, was killed by a tree.”

STEVEN: “A monkey killed one.”

LAURA: “Me killing the officer was an accident. I saw he had a gun, I accidentally threw a grenade. You know how these things happen. My bad.”

CAMERON: “And the monkeys got Duelson.”

NICK: “Wait a minute. Did you say you quick drew a grenade? You were in a gunfight and you threw a grenade?”

LAURA: “It was what I had in my pocket.”

NICK: “That’s concerning.”

LAURA: “I didn’t have my gun at the moment.”

STEVEN: “Yeah, we actually didn’t have guns in the gunfight.”

CAMERON: That’s not even a deception. That’s actually true. (laughs)

LAURA: That’s actually what happened! (laughs)

CAMERON: She set her gun down. She had grenades. That’s what she had.

LAURA: “I did not have my gun. So…”

NICK: “So, um, I don’t know how familiar you are with the Imperial Justice System, but speaking as someone with a pretty high place in it, my organization is super racist. It probably doesn’t matter what you did.”

LAURA: Xianna is just kind of staring at him, like, you realize you’re talking to someone whose planet has been occupied, for like ever.

CAMERON: Karma’s look says, ‘you realize you’re an alien, right?’

LAURA: Wait! We are all aliens! (laughs)

CAMERON: None of us in this room are human. (laughs)

LAURA: Karma and Xianna are both having this at the same time. ‘You realize you’re talking to aliens?’ Xianna has the, ‘I’m from Ryloth…’ and then, looking around, ‘wait, we’re ALL aliens.’ (giggles)

NICK: So, he just kinda waggles his eyebrows at you all. He gets it, and still. He has realized how to work within that structure and has been pretty successful.

STEVEN: Yeah.

NICK: He says, “So, you’re mostly patched up, you have your particularly important package, so be gone, or whatever.”

LAURA: Xianna has the data pad with the coordinates, and then she goes and takes the briefcase, and is kinda looking between Karma and Tink, back and forth, and then slowly starts handing it to Karma.

CAMERON: Karma takes the briefcase.

STEVEN: Aw…

NICK: Sabos reaches for the briefcase, and then looks sad that he doesn’t get it.

STEVEN: Yup. I take the data pad.

HUDSON: I take the data pad, because I’m actually driving.

(laughter)

LAURA: How are you guys getting the data pad? I am holding it, and it is probably in a pocket. Do you wanna search my coat?

HUDSON: It wouldn’t be the first time. Oh wait—Never mind.

STEVEN: No…

CAMERON: (laughs) No, wait, it would be, hold on.

HUDSON: Cut! Cut! It would be the first time.

LAURA: I mean, if you wanna try, go for it.

HUDSON: “Could I have the data pad, please””

STEVEN: “Can I have the data pad? I’m a better pilot.”

LAURA: I’m assuming you both say it at the same exact time…

STEVEN & HUDSON: Yeah.

CAMERON: And then Sabos adds, ‘I’m a better pilot.’

LAURA: (reluctantly) Xianna takes it out…

STEVEN: “And I’m from the outer rim.”

LAURA: Like, is it just coordinates that are pulled up?

NICK: Nothing’s pulled up, it’s blank, but if you tap through it, it’s pretty much a ‘Welcome to your new technology’ pop-up screen. You can see one file on it that’s just coordinates. This is a very cheap throwaway data pad.

LAURA: Okay. Since it just has coordinates, she begrudgingly hands it to Sabos.

STEVEN: “That’s right.”

LAURA: Because she thinks he is capable of flying.

STEVEN: I am. (laughs)

CAMERON: Oh yeah. (laughing) She’s not sure if he was flying or not.

LAURA: She’s still not sure. She doesn’t like Sabos that much right now, but she thinks he can fly.

STEVEN: I take it and nod assuringly.

HUDSON: I turn and go, “Really?! Really…?”

LAURA: “You are not the pilot! Unless… Are you the pilot?”

HUDSON: I am the pilot!”

STEVEN: “Do you have any Astrogation abilities at all?”

CAMERON: (laughing) Karma turns to Falx.

LAURA: Xianna turns to Karma. “Wait, which one is the pilot? I thought Sabos was flying with you. Is Tink now flying with you?”

CAMERON: Karma turns to Falx. “So, what are the names of the people, or call signs if they don’t go by names, that we’re trying to find? That kind of hid us this time. I’d like to avoid it.”

NICK: “Yeah. That makes sense. I don’t really operate like Sentinel does. I’ll straight tell you. You’re gonna be wanting to meet up with Quiggle the Quarren.

(giggling)

STEVEN: Oh god.

NICK: “It’s him and his small crew of smugglers.”

STEVEN: That was, that was out of character, just, oh god.

(laughter)

NICK: “I don’t know why you’re laughing. Quiggle the Quarren is a perfectly respectable name.”

CAMERON: “… Yup.” (laughs)

LAURA: “His name is… ‘Quee-gell’?”

NICK: “No. No sweetness, like this. ‘Quiggle’!”

LAURA: “Quigell!”

NICK: “Quiggle!”

LAURA: “Quee-GELL!”

(giggling)

NICK: “Closer. Closer.”

CAMERON: “Anyway. The coordinates, are they taking us to a warehouse, a club, do they know that we’re coming?”

NICK: “Well, they’re expecting us shortly, and by us I mean you, because I’m not going. Those coordinates lead to a small asteroid belt in the middle of nowhere towards the outer rim. They probably are waiting now, which is why you need to go there first. If you make them wait too long, they’re gonna come to me, I’ll be forced to kill them, lose a business avenue, and then I’ll be sending our good friend the Assistant Governor out to go find you.”

CAMERON: “Yeah, that seems rough.”

STEVEN: “Is he governor the gorren, gig, giggle, the governor…”

NICK: What?

CAMERON: What…?

LAURA: (laughing) What? No!

STEVEN: I’m trying to make up names, damn it.

CAMERON: Nope. Different, different, different.

STEVEN: There’s Quiggle and giggle… (musically)

NICK: “Oh, you’ll remember that the governor’s name was Regional Governor Silpin.”

STEVEN: ‘Oh!”

CAMERON: “We like, just heard from him.”

STEVEN: “Yeah…”

NICK: “He was the guy with the eyepatch, and the sick mutton chops.”

HUDSON: “He doesn’t pay attention.”

STEVEN: “I didn’t have any business with him.”

LAURA: “No. I did, but do not worry. We will go to this asteroid belt right away, and drop off your briefcase first.”

NICK: “Wonderful.”

HUDSON: “Thanks for fueling up our ship before we go.”

LAURA: “Why would you say that? Just why?”

(laughter)

STEVEN: Oh, I love it. That’s wonderful.

NICK: “Yeah. We totally did that. Just don’t check your fuel levels.”

CAMERON: (giggling) I heard feeling up our ship. Thanks for feeling up our ship before we leave! And I was like, what?!

LAURA: Oh, wait! Is that not what he said? Oh!

MULTIPLE: Fueling!

LAURA: Oh! I straight up just heard ‘feeling up our ship,’ and that is why I said ‘why would you say that?’

(laughter)

HUDSON: That would make a lot less sense than fueling.

LAURA: I thought he was referencing the fact that, they like,

LAURA & CAMERON: They searched the ship.

CAMERON: Yeah.

LAURA: That’s what I thought you were saying, because you’re you!

NICK: “Well, to be fair, we did feel up your ship, but we did not fuel up your ship.”

STEVEN: “It’s a nice ship.”

HUDSON: “Aw… Well, how are we gonna get off this planet?”

NICK: “You’ve got enough fuel. Star Wars doesn’t have rules for gas.”

STEVEN: (laughs)

CAMERON: That’s true.

LAURA: Yeah. Until a ship breaks down, because he decides. Then we have to figure it out.

NICK: “The only time you’ll run out of fuel is when it’s helpful for the story!”

HUDSON: (laughs)

NICK: He turns his swivel chair around and gazes out the back window over the sunset that’s going over the jungle of Unroola Dawn, and we get a nice camera angle of you all silhouetted looking at his silhouette looking out the window in this pretty office. Was there anything else that you all wanted to do in Outpost 4 before you leave?

HUDSON: No.

STEVEN: Not particularly.

LAURA: Nn… No.

CAMERON: Did Tink want to try and fix the ship again before we leave?

HUDSON: I thought they fixed it.

NICK: They did. They did fix it.

CAMERON: They did fix it? Okay, cool. Never mind.

NICK: They sent those engineers to investigate the ship slash duct tape that piece back down.

CAMERON: Fabulous.

HUDSON: Yeah, because I told them that it was basically, maybe fixed. Right? Yeah? Maybe? And then like, they fixed it.

CAMERON: Cool.

LAURA: Okay. Xianna is going to go through her room when we get back on the ship, just to do a thorough search of if they took anything, because I did have a few things in the room still, and like if they left anything.

NICK: Yeah. So, the camera cuts to you all getting back on the ship. It opens with Sabos in the pilot seat looking really proud of himself, flipping all the overhead switches to On, fiddling with do-dads, turning a wheel that doesn’t seem to be attached to anything…

STEVEN: Yes.

NICK: …and the ship making the whooshing, charging noises as it cycles up.

CAMERON: Karma’s going right behind him and flipping off the ones that don’t actually need to be turned on for the ship to work. (laughs)

NICK: It’s Sabos going (repetitive plinking noises), and Karma coming behind and like on every fourth one going flip, flip, adjusting the ship to normal levels. That’s great. Cut to Xianna in her room, looking around. What are you all specifically worried about?

LAURA: I’m gonna check the weird mask in a box thing that I have. Just, you know, making sure that’s still a mask inside a box. And, I just wanna go through everything to make sure they didn’t leave any trackers or listening devices or anything.

NICK: Sure. What a great idea to check your room for trackers or listening devices. Make me a Skulduggery check, please.

LAURA: Can do! What’s the difficulty?

NICK: Hard, because you’re doing a deep search.

LAURA: Hey. That is a full triumph, that has its success, and then two advantages.

NICK: Okay. How would you like to spend that triumph and the advantages?

LAURA: Okay. I would like to find if they put anything, first of all.

CAMERON: (giggles)

NICK: Well yeah, that goes with the success.

LAURA: If they put anything, I would like to find that. I would like to figure out the vent, that I previously thought was a vent, is actually a garbage disposal.

CAMERON: (laughs)

NICK: Aww.

LAURA: I would like to know that. I would like to accidentally press a button and hear it whirl, and be like, “Oh! Ooh, good thing I did not put anything inside of there.” And then like shout out, “Everyone! This vent here is not a vent. It is a garbage disposal. Be careful.”

NICK: So, what that is, you open it just to see if anything’s in there, and as you open it you hit the little button on the side and you actually see the grass below the ship, down below, like behind your ray shield, and you go ‘oh, that’s what that does.’ So yeah, now you know that’s a direct, like, get this out of the ship chute.

LAURA: Good.

NICK: Okay. You could use your triumph on that, since that cancels out the despair that you had earlier. That’s a bummer. I had plans for that, but that’s fine.

LAURA: Ha-ha!

NICK: You do find one tracking device slash surveillance unit. It’s pretty big, and they had it up under the bed, hooked into the material that makes the bed spin. On it in Sharpie basically it says ‘You can’t blame us for trying,’ and has a little signature that looks like Falx’s name.

LAURA: I toss it down my newly discovered garbage disposal, and then shout out to everyone. “Uh, you should check your bedrooms. If you are not good at the searching, I will help, but they probably put tracking devices, or maybe recording devices. Check the refresher. They maybe put video cameras in that one. They do that sometimes. Is funny.”

CAMERON: You hear from the cockpit where Karma is doing damage control on Sabos trying to turn the ship on. “Hey Serene, could you please check out my room while I’m up here with the Togrutan?”

NICK: We’ll fast-forward through any rolls that’ll happen there. You were successful enough. There is a video camera under the toilet seat of the refresher pointed straight up.

(laughter)

LAURA: The moment Xianna finds it, Xianna just holds her arm out and shouts for the rest. “See! I told you! It is always a camera in the refresher!”

NICK: That’s pretty much all you find. It seems like, to you, with how successful you were, the engineers definitely put stuff in there but did not try very hard, and that it was mostly because Falx had to follow those procedures, not that he was actually all that interested in tracking you, especially considering that if they track you to his illegal dealings you may have some problems, so it was pretty obvious.

LAURA: Yeah.

NICK: Like, you could see the camera when you lifted the toilet seat. It was right there. Is anybody else doing anything on the ship before you take off?

STEVEN: I’m gonna pilot.

NICK: Okay.

HUDSON: I’m in the engine room, and I’m kind of muttering to myself, upset that I’m not piloting the ship. That’s all I’m doing.

STEVEN: Since I can listen to the engine room, I say down to the engine room, “You’re a better engineer than I am, so stay down in the engine room.”

HUDSON: “Someday I will pilot.” That’s all I say back.

NICK: (laughs) You shake your fist at the sound of the Togruta.

HUDSON: I shake my fist up at the piloting area, cockpit.

STEVEN: I say, “You very well might,” and turn off the feed.

CAMERON: Karma flips it back on.

NICK: Okay. (laughs) The ship takes off. I’m not gonna make you do a Piloting check for a basic takeoff.

STEVEN: Good.

CAMERON: (laughs)

NICK: Uh, yeah. Very good.

STEVEN: That’s awesome.

NICK: You fly up, and the camera cuts to you all in orbit as you’re starting to do an Astrogation check on where you’re going to go…

STEVEN: Sure.

NICK: …and you see a little alert saying that you have an incoming message, but that instead of being routed to the cockpit it’s routed to the holo-theater in the Afternoon Delight.

LAURA: Ooh.

STEVEN: Oh…

NICK: It’s showing on the dashboard, there’s a little blinking light. After looking at it for a minute you figure out that it means there’s something in the holo-theater right now.

CAMERON: I hit the acknowledge button and say, “You got this,” and I walk back to the holo-theater.

LAURA: Yeah, Xianna’s gonna be in there, too.

HUDSON: I go in there.

CAMERON: We’re in orbit, so it doesn’t matter.

NICK: You’re in orbit. It’s the equivalent of being parked. You can go if you want.

STEVEN: Yeah. Yeah, why not.

NICK: Okay. You all go to the holo-theater. It’s kind of set up like a planetarium. It’s round and has a domed ceiling, and it has those weird step benches that you see in the auditoriums where you sit on them but they’re just big, too-tall steps, and they’re carpeted in thick, red, shag carpeting, and there’s some gold highlights running through the ceiling.

LAURA: Nice.

NICK: As you all sit down, a holo-projector pops on, and you see a full body image of Sentinel. He’s sitting in a chair and he has a brown, shapeless robe on. He has his gray hair slicked back. He says, “Ah, so you managed to complete the first part of your task. Wonderful. Well, I guess you need to know what happens next, don’t you?” And he eyes the camera. That’s where we’ll end the episode.

(all make dramatic noises)

HUDSON: (musically) The longest time, the longest time…

## Outro

CAMERON: Thanks for listening to Tabletop Squadron. If you 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.

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

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

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

Sabos Nix was played by Steven Schroeder. He… does not exist on the internet.

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

Our intro song is Space Jam by Pablo Ribot.

Additional music by James Gunter.

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

Tabletop Squadron Transcript, Season 1 Episode 5:
Death Doesn’t Fall Far From the Tree

Transcript by Tyler (Twitter: @Tyler_MoonSage)

Note – Laura’s character Xianna’fan speaks in an accent. Most of her soft I’s sound like “ee,” and most of her TH’s sound like Z’s. Example: “this and that” = “zees and zat”

## 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, a fringer, and a slicer as they explore the galaxy helping a mysterious benefactor and each other.

Additional music this week is: In Suspense by Psychedelic Pedestrian

STEVEN: Hey Squadron. Just so you know, we’ll be releasing the drink and food recipes we mention in the episodes on our website, www.TabletopSquadron.com. Check it out.

NICK: We hope you enjoy the episode.

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

##

NICK: Hello, and welcome to Episode 5 of Tabletop Squadron. I’m your host, Nick, and I am sitting here with the whole squad yet again. You’re still here. Are you okay?

Go around the table and say who you are and what character you’re playing.

STEVEN: Hi. I’m Steven. I’m playing Sabos the Togruta.

HUDSON: I’m Hudson. It’s great to be here. I’m playing Tink the Gigoran.

LAURA: Hi. I’m Laura. I play Xianna. I’m a Twi’lek.

CAMERON: Hi. I’m Cameron. I am playing Karma, and I’m a Nautolan.

NICK: Great. We’ve gotten some experience points since the last time we played. Everybody has spent some, so we’ll go around the room and just say how you have upgraded your character.

STEVEN: This is Sabos. I bought Streetsmarts and Grit.

NICK: Good work.

STEVEN: Yup.

NICK: I’m sure that will come in handy.

STEVEN: It probably won’t.

NICK: It might. You don’t know. You’re in a jungle right now, but it could happen.

HUDSON: This is Tink, and I upgraded to Level 2 on Melee.

SEVERAL: Ooh.

HUDSON: Super, Smash, Brothers~!

NICK: Now we’ll get sued. Next.

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: This is Laura. I just play Xianna. I guess those two are like going full Daniel de Louis up in here and becoming their character.

CAMERON: (laughing) Could you not tell by Hudson’s fur suit?

STEVEN: I do have four head tails.

LAURA: (grinning) They are really going for it. I bought ranks in Cool and Deception.

NICK: Alright. Now you have one of those flat rim baseball caps, and shutter shades?

CAMERON: (laughs) No…

LAURA: Uh, I’ve popped my collar, and yeah, put on some shutter shades.

NICK: Nice.

CAMERON: For Karma, I upgraded Melee to Rank 2 and Vigilance to Rank 2.

STEVEN: Ooh.

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

HUDSON: I’ll go first. I’ll go first.

CAMERON: Okay.

HUDSON: One light side.

LAURA: One light side.

STEVEN: One dark side.

CAMERON: (groans) One dark side.

LAURA: That side of the table is not doing good.

NICK: Good work, everybody. We’re all very proud.

HUDSON: Or not.

LAURA: I’m not.

(laughter)

STEVEN: I am.

LAURA: This side of the table rolled light side, so we’re proud of ourselves.

NICK: Makes sense.

CAMERON: I still support you, Steven.

STEVEN: Thanks, Cam.

NICK: You shouldn’t.

CAMERON: (laughs) Not in character, though.

NICK: Things that have happened recently: Falx gave you all a job in exchange for the contraband that you were sent by Sentinel to go and fetch. He sent you after some deserters that may have blown some stuff up and killed some people on their way out of town. They’re hiding out in the jungle somewhere. You fought really weird centipede monkeys with lobster tails, and some people got stabbed.

STEVEN: Just one.

NICK: Someone got stabbed… and your guide Mills ran off, and the last thing that happened was he came back with a bunch of corpses of more millipede monkeys, and said, “We’ll scatter these around to make sure that we have a moment. We need to take a second to plan.” That’s where we will take it back up again.

He immediately starts shredding up some of these monkey guts. The good news is they all have big blaster holes in them, so he just kinda reaches in and routes around, and he starts scattering it around like a flower girl at a wedding in a circle around this clearing.

CAMERON: Nn—

NICK: “That’ll keep the trees back. Hey, could someone go to the back of the speeder? There is a silver shiny box in there. We’re gonna need that for a minute.”

HUDSON: I run back to the speeder and get it.

STEVEN: “You mean the Stone Breaker?”

NICK: “I don’t know what that is.”

LAURA: “Shh! Do not say things.”

STEVEN: “I got stabbed.”

LAURA: “I thought we talked about this last time. Do not talk, ever.”

STEVEN: “I’m recovering from the monkey wounds.”

LAURA: “Just… be quiet.”

HUDSON: I go get the box.

NICK: Okay. You head over to the speeder. It is a large speeder with room for everyone that is setup for off-road, so it’s got skids under the repulsers in case it bottoms out. On the back there’s a big crate. You head to the back and open it up, and you see a silver cubic case with some latches on it, and on the ground next to you, you see Sparks who you may remember was the junior officer that was riding with you.

CAMERON: Oh yeah…

NICK: And there’s a monkey on his chest chewing through his neck right now. So, I need a Vigilance roll from you on how quickly you respond as it looks up at you and hisses, and gets ready to jump at you.

HUDSON: Oh no.

STEVEN: Not Spark Duelson!

HUDSON: One success.

NICK: One success, okay. You can roll an attack against this thing before it gets to you.

HUDSON: Yay. I’d like to roll an attack against it. That’s going to be two yellows and a green. What’s the difficulty?

CAMERON: Melee is always two.

NICK: She’s right.

HUDSON: So, we have three successes and an advantage.

NICK: Okay. How much damage does your massive vibro-axe do?

HUDSON: Six.

CAMERON: So, +3.

NICK: Plus your Brawn, right?

HUDSON: Nope. My Brawn +3 is 6.

NICK: Okay. So 9 damage?

HUDSON: Nine damage.

NICK: Yeah, you just slice this thing in half. It hisses, and squeaks, and just kind of falls apart. Mills walks up behind you. “Oh, you’re adding to the circle. Great.” He looks down and Sparks the junior officer is super dead, like his throat is chewed all the way back to the bone. He’s just on the ground not even twitching. Mills looks down and goes, “Oh… Eh,” and he just keeps walking around. He says, “Grab that case, and let’s go.” He finishes the circle and stands in the middle of the clearing.

CAMERON: I walk back over to the back when I see Mills walk back there, and see Spark on the ground. I feel sad for a minute because he’s had the same length of life as my sons and that’s sad. I pull him to the side a little bit so the speeder is blocking Mills’ view, and I search his pockets.

NICK: Oh. Okay. Uh…

LAURA: Xianna walks over like, “Is there something behind the speeder?”

CAMERON: “Yup.”

LAURA: “Oh… That’s sad.”

CAMERON: “Yeah.”

LAURA: “I was going to mess with him.”

CAMERON: “Yeah… Well, the monkeys did first.”

NICK: Searching his pockets, I would need an average Skulduggery check from you.

CAMERON: Hey, I have a Skulduggery. That is a success and an advantage.

NICK: Okay. You find not a lot, you find less on this guy than you would expect for somebody who was going on an expedition with potential hostiles in a hostile environment. You do find a really low clearance Imperial code cylinder in his pocket, and he had a light blaster pistol in a holster, and he had a couple of ration bars, just cracker bar things.

CAMERON: How many?

NICK: Three…

CAMERON: Three? Three crackers.

NICK: Yes. Really, that’s it. He was pretty light on gear. It’s almost like he got assigned this very quickly and didn’t have time to pack, or didn’t understand where he was going. One or the other.

CAMERON: Cool.

LAURA: What rank was he, again?

NICK: He was a petty officer.

HUDSON: We do have his clearance card now, right?

NICK: Yeah. You have his code cylinder. It probably opens some things, maybe.

CAMERON: I tuck the code cylinder into my jacket, put the crackers in whatever bag I’m carrying, and then strap the light blaster to my other hip that doesn’t have my heavy pistol on it.

NICK: You’re just collecting guns, huh?

CAMERON: Yep. I have a light blaster, a heavy pistol, and a blaster carbine.

NICK: The good news is, you’re strong. The bad news is, eventually encumbrance may be a thing.

CAMERON: I’ll start handing out guns to other people as they deserve them.

(laughter)

HUDSON: I don’t have a gun.

CAMERON: I feel like you’re good with your axe, though.

HUDSON: I can’t shoot a gun either, but I don’t have one.

CAMERON: Maybe we’ll have a training session.

NICK: You’re handing out guns like a kindergarten teacher hands out star stickers.

CAMERON: Yeah. Good job! You gain a gun on your chart.

NICK: Okay. (laughs) So, Tink, do you bring the silver box to the middle?

HUDSON: Yes.

NICK: Alright. Mills says “thanks” as he wipes his hands on his pants. You see he’s made a pretty decent circle out of monkey guts. Maybe you’re imagining it, but the trees do seem to be kind of leaning back a little bit from the circle. It’s probably just a trick of perspective. I wouldn’t worry about it.

Mills, with a click, snaps the four latches off and pulls the top off and the four sides of the box fall open like an industrial flower. Inside there’s another one of those heater lantern things like you had in your guest quarters / tool shed.

CAMERON: Garden house?

NICK: Garden shed? Yeah. He turns on the heater and the warm light makes you feel a little better. He says, “These trees put spores out and we don’t want to track those back to the base. Also, you know, they eat flesh, but it’s not a big deal, this will bake them out, so we’ll take a minute here to do that. Shame about Sparks, at least that’s probably what I’m supposed to say. I don’t really like the Empire that much. One of the officers is dating my sister.”

CAMERON: “Ah.”

NICK: “He seems pretty milk toast. I don’t understand.” He pulls bits of guts out of his chest hair from his shirt.

CAMERON: Ew.

NICK: He flicks them into the heater and they sizzle and vaporize. “I’m just working for them because they’re the only people here at this point. They’re probably bunkered down somewhere up ahead, that might be why there’s so many bug monkeys around, so maybe if we can find their camp you can take these guys out, or whatever you’re supposed to do. What’s the plan?”

LAURA: “Do any of you know, like, how to track people, or hunt, or you know, do things in the wilderness? Because I do not.”

STEVEN: “One could say I have limited survival skills.”

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: “Mm, define limited?”

STEVEN: “More than you?”

HUDSON: Ohh.

NICK: Mills goes, “Ohh!”

LAURA: “I mean, maybe.”

CAMERON: “She did just say that she had very limited nature things…”

LAURA: “I tend to stay in cities. That is where there are people, you know, to steal things from.”

CAMERON: “Normally my bounty hunting jobs aren’t this remote. Normally criminals hide out where there are other people. I am pretty good at sneaking up on people.”

HUDSON: “I nominate Sabos.”

STEVEN: ‘I’m pretty experienced.”

LAURA: “I am good at the sneaking. The sneaking I can do. The tracking…”

CAMERON: “The finding?”

LAURA: “The finding.”

STEVEN: As an explorer I probably do have some survival, very limited…

LAURA: Do you have a rank in Survival?

STEVEN: I do.

LAURA: That is what I am asking about.

CAMERON: (laughing) I was answering you and I almost said ‘you have a rank in ze sneaking.’

LAURA: ‘I do have a rank in ze sneaking. I have ranks in ze Streetwise and ze Skulduggery.’

CAMERON: (laughing) I’m just gonna slowly start picking up Xianna’s accent.

LAURA: If you have ranks in Survival you should try tracking.

STEVEN: Yeah, I have a rank in Survival.

CAMERON: How Cunning are you?

LAURA: I have lots of Cunning, so I could help.

STEVEN: Good Cunning, actually.

CAMERON: Oh yeah, you got 3 Cunning. You’re good.

LAURA: I have 4 Cunning, so I can always assist.

NICK: Yeah. When people help and someone has a better base stat but someone has better training, you get to use the best of both. If Xianna helps Sabos to track, you get three green dice and a yellow.

LAURA & CAMERON: Yes.

STEVEN: We should do that. Let’s track things. I guess we are looking for the escaped Lira and Williams.

NICK: Yup. You’re looking for Lira and Williams.

STEVEN: We don’t know what they look like other than they’re a guy and a lady.

CAMERON: One of them is a trooper.

STEVEN: One is a trooper, one is an officer.

CAMERON: Lira is a trooper, so she’s probably in trooper uniform.

STEVEN: Maybe.

CAMERON: Williams is an officer. He’s probably not in trooper uniform, but there are also three missing troopers.

STEVEN: Okay. I’ll just look around the circle (muffled)

NICK: You’ll remember last session you found a small blood trail leading off from there.

STEVEN: Yeah. Oh yeah, that’s right.

CAMERON: Then the monkeys attacked!

LAURA: Yes.

STEVEN: Let’s continue to track the blood trail.

CAMERON: What’s the difficulty? I don’t think you’re rolling any difficulty dice right now. (laughs)

LAURA: Yeah. You need difficulty dice.

NICK: Hard.

STEVEN: That’s three?

CAMERON: Yeah.

NICK: You already found the general direction last time.

CAMERON: Nice!

STEVEN: That worked out well. I have one success and one advantage.

NICK: You tracked. You got one success and one advantage. Is there any particular way you would like to spend the advantage?

STEVEN: Uh, not encountering monkeys.

LAURA: I’m assuming we’re gonna try to be sneaky when we approach them. Can the least sneaky of us have a blue die when they make a Stealth roll?

NICK: I think that is a great tactical decision. How would you explain that using cool descriptions and story stuff?

CAMERON: We’re gonna put them in the back, and the people in front will sneakily fold down any foilage or anything that’s in the way.

NICK: Foliage?

LAURA: Yeah.

CAMERON: Foliage. Whoa, there we go. Fold down any foilage—(laughs) Oh gosh.

HUDSON: Any foilage?

STEVEN: You know, foil.

CAMERON: We’re gonna fold down any plant stuff that’s in the way! So that there’s less crinkle noises when the people behind us walk.

LAURA: Yeah. Xianna would make sure that Sabos is in the back, maybe not completely in the back, walking next to someone, probably Karma…

CAMERON: Who can throw her arm out and stop him and stuff.

LAURA: …and then Tink and Xianna would be more in the front, because surprisingly Tink is kind of sneaky.

HUDSON: I am pretty sneaky.

CAMERON: You do blend into the jungle, as a giant white fluffy thing?

HUDSON: Well, more than that. I’m just sneaky in general. Give me some credit.

LAURA: I think it’s his feet are very soft and padded with all the fur, so he doesn’t make a lot of sound when he walks.

CAMERON: Ohh.

HUDSON: Speculation will just confuse the mind. Just know I’m sneaky.

CAMERON: (laughs)

STEVEN: My fourth head tail just rubs all the branches the wrong way.

NICK & CAMERON: (groaning and laughing)

LAURA: I think that’s just Sabos in general.

NICK: Ooh.

STEVEN: It’s the fourth head tail.

CAMERON: That does seem to be his defining characteristic.

LAURA: It’s like the only one.

STEVEN: And being a male Togruta. That too.

LAURA: There are many male Togrutas.

STEVEN: No there’s not. There’s like many female Togrutas.

CAMERON: There’s also many male Togrutas.

LAURA: There’s also many males. You’re not like a Selonian.

NICK: No, it’s an actual thing. There are less.

LAURA: It’s an actual thing, but it’s not like Selonian level.

STEVEN: It’s like 15% to 85%. It was pretty darn stark.

NICK: Well, the Selonians, it’s like one per 100 or something.

STEVEN: Oh, yeah.

NICK: Yeah. The otter people.

LAURA: Yeah.

NICK: So, based on your success and the fact that you’re staying in the back where you’re not gonna break a bunch of branches and be super obvious, you can tell from the blood trail and the age and everything that it’s probably going to be about an hour trek through the jungle, or you can take your speeder and try to drive closer. Which would you all choose to do?

STEVEN: I’m pretty comfortable hoofing it, but—

HUDSON: I’ll grab the speeder!

NICK: You wanna drive?

STEVEN: “I can drive.”

CAMERON: “You’re not driving.”

HUDSON: “I can drive, for I have the necessary skills required.”

STEVEN: “As do I.”

CAMERON: ‘I feel like if we’re trying to sneak up on people not being in a speeder would be beneficial.”

HUDSON: “But my stealth carries over to speeders. Duh.”

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

CAMERON: “I’m pretty sure it still makes noise.”

LAURA: “I think the speeder still makes noises.”

STEVEN: “We should chance cube it.”

LAURA & CAMERON: “No!” (laughs)

HUDSON: “If we want to, we can just walk…”

LAURA: “We should walk. It is more sneaky.”

HUDSON: “Fine.”

NICK: Okay. There’s a swipe cut to you all doing a nice, pleasant hike through the jungle.

CAMERON: The jungle that can eat us. (grinning)

NICK: It’s very Vietnam war movie-esque with people moving in a line. Mills doesn’t really walk with you so much as like action roll through the bushes. (laughter) He is getting covered in mud, and looks very Predator. He’ll pop up out of a bush next to you, which is surprising and discomforting, and he’ll make a bunch of hand signals and then disappear back into the underbrush. No one knows what the hand signals mean, but he looks pretty confident that you all are headed in the right direction.

You lose the trail a couple times, but you’re able to find it again and continue onward, so you do lose a little bit of time. Surprisingly, Tink does blend in quite well. The shadows model on his white fur, and he is able to slip from tree to tree, like a ghost.

HUDSON: Dam right.

(giggling)

CAMERON: Should we make a Stealth check?

NICK: Yeah. Right around now I’m gonna need a Stealth check.

LAURA: What’s the difficulty?

STEVEN: Did I get the blue die for this?

CAMERON: Yeah. You suck the most.

NICK: Yes. You get a blue die. The difficulty is average, but everyone has a black die, because stealthing through a jungle is difficult.

HUDSON: That’s a wash, right?

CAMERON: Yep. Tink just gets a wash.

NICK: You get nothing. Okay. I take back what I said.

STEVEN: Sweet. I have a success and an advantage. Sabos. Me, Sabos.

NICK: Yeah. That blue die was super helpful.

STEVEN: It was. It would have been a wash otherwise.

LAURA: Three successes.

CAMERON: Great. Karma also has a blue die because of her Stalker talent, so she gets a blue die on Stealth and Coordination checks.

NICK: Ooh. That’s really neat.

CAMERON: It is. That is a success and a threat.

NICK: Okay. You walk for quite a while. Mills is pretty quiet, but every once in a while he pops up in weird places so you jump a little bit, because he’s a scary looking dude. After about 45 minutes you see a stormtrooper helmet driven on a spike on a trail, and that stormtrooper whose helmet is on the spike is lying face down in the underbrush. Do you investigate the stormtrooper?

STEVEN & CAMERON: Yes.

NICK: You roll him over. He’s got a blaster hole in his chest. It looks like he got taken down in a run. You actually see the other two stormtroopers scattered in the brush. They’re along the trail where you’re heading, but they’re all basically just down. It looks like they were in a running gunfight and got the worst of it. They have been stripped of their supplies and weapons, and they don’t have any.

Another weird thing, Karma you would know this, I don’t know if anyone else would, they look like they’ve been dead for about five or six days so they’re kind of gross and they don’t smell great, but they also have like saplings sprouting out of their exposed skin.

CAMERON: “Weird.”

LAURA: “Ew. That is gross.”

NICK: We get a shot of Karma reaching down and kind of rolling one over, inspecting it, and as you see that doesn’t have anything worth salvaging and you step away, all of the saplings that are growing out of the stormtroopers all kind of lean towards you a little and then go back up. It’s probably just the wind.

LAURA: “That is very gross.”

CAMERON: “I would put the time of death at five or six days ago.”

STEVEN: “I can concur.”

CAMERON: “Based on the… trees sprouting…”

HUDSON: “So, does this mean that our fugitives are murderers?”

LAURA & CAMERON: “Yes.”

STEVEN: “Yeah, they are. Yeah.”

LAURA: “Probably.”

STEVEN: “I think that’s information we were given.”

CAMERON: “There were five troopers that went out after them. Two troopers have already been found dead. These are the remaining.”

HUDSON: “Oh, I see.”

CAMERON: “Yup.”

NICK: Mills appears behind you all with no noise. “Well, I guess murder depends on your point of view,” and he’s like passively cleaning his gun.

LAURA: “I mean, that is true. Yes. I mean… Yes.”

CAMERON: “I don’t know if it really depends on point of view.”

LAURA: “I think it does. I mean, from a certain point of view you could say self-defense.”

NICK: “You back a loth-wolf into a corner, you can’t be surprised when it bites. I would imagine. I’ve never been to Lothal.” (laughter) And he walks off down the trail.

LAURA: “Is very dry.”

CAMERON: “On Lothal?”

LAURA: “Yes.”

CAMERON: “Okay.”

NICK: “Everyone always says oh, but it’s a dry heat.” And everyone’s been sweating at this point. It’s—

LAURA: Oh- No- Not me?

(rewind effect)

NICK: Oh, you don’t sweat?

LAURA: I don’t. Being a Twi’lek, I get to remove setback dice due to arid or hot conditions, because Ryloth is a desert. It is just a fucking desert planet.

NICK: So, this should be very uncomfortable for you because it’s a jungle.

CAMERON: It’s a wet heat.

LAURA: So, the humidity is getting to me—the wet heat—but the heat itself is fine.

NICK: Yeah. That’s the thing, it’s probably only like 90 degrees. I’m exposing that we’re from Texas, and 90 degrees is not a big deal. It’s probably only like 90 degrees, but the humidity—

HUDSON: For our international viewers—

LAURA: I was about to say—

LAURA, CAMERON & HUDSON: Ninety degrees Fahrenheit. (laughter)

LAURA: It’s like a nice spring day!

STEVEN: It’s only like, what, 38 Celsius?

LAURA: It’s 38-ish.

NICK: I don’t know. I don’t speak Metric. Well, that’s  not super relevant, so anyway!

LAURA & STEVEN: This is super relevant!

LAURA: What are you talking about? Our, like, one international listener is going to need this information!

CAMERON: (giggles) Yeah.

NICK: Hi Ted!

STEVEN: We don’t have the Google.

CAMERON: I’m glistening.

NICK: Yeah, you’re glistening…

STEVEN: My fourth head tail is dripping.

CAMERON: (surprised laughter)

LAURA: Ew. Xianna sees that and is like, “Ew… Gross!” And she like legitimately seems grossed out, whereas when she saw the dead body she was like “Ew, gross.” This is visceral like, “Ew! Gross! Ew! No!”

STEVEN: I grab it and wring it out, shake it off.

CAMERON: (groans)

HUDSON: I’m pretty gross right now. My hair’s matted. (laughter)

NICK: I would imagine it’s gotten frizzy, too.

LAURA: I’d imagine you smell like a wet dog at this point.

HUDSON: Yeah. Yup. Absolutely.

NICK: It does get covered up by the corpses, but everyone’s giving you a little more space. That’s part of the reason you’ve had trouble stealthing, you’re in the middle of the group but they’ve given you space, so you’re misjudging your steps a lot because you think people are closer.

HUDSON: Yeah.

(fast forward effect)

NICK: So, you continue down the trail, you see a couple more warning signs like sticks tied together, no more skulls on sticks or anything, but general trail signs for like ‘go away.’ A tree has been burned out, or tried to, it’s mostly just been blackened because it’s so humid it’s hard to get stuff to burn. You come to a clearing, and there is a sled looking thing. It looks like a repulser sled with some supplies and stuff on it.

You see some guns, and you see a very skinny guy with short, dark hair that’s started to grow out, already out of regulation, and he’s wearing one of those khaki army uniforms that you saw some people wearing in the camp, but it’s really shredded up and it’s dirty. The only reason you would recognize it is because you’ve already seen it. He’s got a bandage over one leg, and he’s sitting by one of those heater lamps like Mills gave you.

Mills says, “I’ll cover the back exit,” and disappears into the undergrowth and starts to loop around. That’s what you can see.

HUDSON: I whisper, “They didn’t say dead or alive, specifically. Someone should shoot him.”

STEVEN: “Yeah. I remembered to clarify. They were cool with either.”

LAURA: “Yes. They said either one works, so they did specify.”

HUDSON: “Well, I should say they didn’t specify they wanted one over the other.”

LAURA: “True, but that is what dead or alive means.”

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: “It means either or both work.” (giggles)

NICK: Wait. How do you do both?

(rewind effect)

LAURA: … No, both work. Okay. No.

STEVEN: You put them in a box. Oh? You don’t mean that?

CAMERON: Not at the same time.

NICK: Oh. Got it, got it, got it.

LAURA: Both work. Not that you bring them back in a Schrödinger’s box.

NICK: We made that joke already. (laughs)

CAMERON: Yeah.

LAURA: It’s that both work: either one, and or. (laughs)

NICK: Got it.

CAMERON: What it is, there’s two of them, so if one of them is dead and one of them is alive, that’s okay.

LAURA: Yeah.

CAMERON: That’s okay. That’s how that works.

NICK: Right. Yeah. I already sent Mills around the clearing, so I couldn’t ask in character. (laughs)

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: I guess you could in a way do both if you brought them in with a mortal wound.

CAMERON: Yeah, like they gon’ be dead.

LAURA: Like, they’re gonna die, but they’re currently alive.

NICK: Dead-ish alive.

CAMERON: Yeah.

LAURA: Dead-ish. Mostly dead.

(fast forward effect)

NICK: You’ve got him in the clearing. He’s got like a snack bar, and it has one little bite out of it, but he looks like he’s just kind of staring into the lantern and thinking thoughts.

LAURA: “Where is the other one? There is a second one…”

STEVEN: Can we see signs of the second one?

NICK: (chuckle) As you wonder that, you hear a blaster click on and directly behind you is a very large woman with short cropped military hair that hasn’t grown out too much, and she is wearing about half of a stormtrooper uniform. She’s got the chest plate and the arm pieces, but the rest of the body suit is exposed, and the helmet is gone but she has one of the lenses from the helmet strapped over one eye, and you can see a bunch of wires from the inside of the helmet going down into the armor. She’s got cargo shorts on over the body suit on the bottom, and it looks like they’re stuffed with supplies.

She says, “The other one is right here.” She points her gun at you all. she got the drop on you, because she could hear.

LAURA: Oh. Hello~”

CAMERON: (laughs) Because she could hear Tink.

LAURA: (cheerily) “How are you doing?”

NICK: “I’m doing great. I’d appreciate if you stepped into the clearing please.”

LAURA: “I mean… Okay.”

STEVEN: “You mean that clearing?”

LAURA: “What clearing do you think she means?”

STEVEN: “Well, there was the nice one that we were at previously.”

LAURA: “Why would she mean that one?”

STEVEN: “Just checking.”

LAURA: (huffs)

NICK: She whacks Sabos on the back of the head with her blaster rifle—

LAURA: “Thank you.”

NICK: –and it hurts real bad. As you bend over and go ‘ow,’ she—

STEVEN: My fourth head tail absorbed it.

CAMERON: (groan)

NICK: She boots you in the butt, and you stumble forward into the clearing. “Please move, and leave your guns in the pile by the lamp.” She steps back out of range to cover you.

As Sabos goes stumbling in, the officer that’s there goes, “Ah!” and puts the bar down and looks around. He still hasn’t noticed anyone outside the clearing. He only sees Sabos.

LAURA: Okay. Xianna puts her gun down, but just kind of like has her hands by her side, because it doesn’t really look like there’s anything in her coat, because it doesn’t really look like there’s pockets.

NICK: Makes sense, and she didn’t try to search you.

LAURA: And her utility belt doesn’t really have anything on it.

NICK: Mm-hmm.

STEVEN: Same. I kind of have to disarm my blaster rifle, because I don’t think it’s not obvious.

NICK: No, it’s huge, yeah.

STEVEN: But I’m gonna keep my vibro-knife.

LAURA: Well, like, do you have your vibro-knife hidden?

STEVEN: Yeah. It’s not on my belt. It’s like in my pants.

LAURA: Why do you keep a knife in your pants?!

CAMERON: (snickers) For situations like this, Xianna!

STEVEN: That’s the only place I had to keep it.

LAURA: You don’t have like boots or something?

CAMERON: No. his knife is strapped to his fourth head tail.

LAURA: Mmm…

STEVEN: That’s definitely not it. That’s a sensitive head tail.

(giggling)

LAURA: I mean, you could strap it to the underside.

CAMERON: Yeah, so you could just only see it from the outside.

NICK: He touches it too much. He started that, but he kept cutting his fingers.

CAMERON: Well, you put it in a sheath.

STEVEN: Eh… Oh, no.

LAURA: I also like that you act like your fourth head tail is the only one back there, when you would have the third and fourth ones evenly spaced in the back.

STEVEN: It’s the one I give the most attention to.

(rewind effect)

CAMERON: How do you know which one is your fourth one?

LAURA: Yeah.

STEVEN: It’s the one everyone else doesn’t have.

CAMERON: Yeah, but like—

LAURA: But you have two.

CAMERON: Most Togrutans normally will have one coming over each shoulder and then one in the back. You have two in the back. Is it the left or the right one that’s the fourth one?

STEVEN: The right one.

CAMERON: How do you know that, though?

LAURA: Or, is it kind of like when people have a third nipple?

STEVEN: Yes.

LAURA: So the fourth one is really tiny and weird looking, so you know that’s the fourth one.

CAMERON: (laughs)

STEVEN: My head tail is adequate.

NICK: I’ve been picturing it as if it just kind of branches off of the main back one, just kind of dangly. (laughter)

STEVEN: No. it’s a fully functioning head tail

LAURA: No, I’m picturing a stubby little extra one.

STEVEN: It’s fully functioning. Okay?

LAURA: Maybe with like a tooth or something on it, because it was definitely absorbed from a second- like, from a twin that you ate in the womb.

STEVEN: Just like my hands, everything up there is just fine.

CAMERON: (laughing) What?!

STEVEN: You know, orange, I’m orange…

HUDSON: You know Sabos, you could get into the adult entertainment industry with that fourth head tail.

(laughter)

NICK: Okay. Anyways. And, we’re back!

(fast forward effect)

LAURA: Yeah. Xianna walks into the clearing but kind of keeps her hands nonchalantly by her sides. She doesn’t put them up or anything.

NICK: Okay. You drop a pistol in the pile?

LAURA: Yeah.

NICK: There’s already a little pile of the stormtrooper E-11 blasters on the ground. You look back behind you and you see the stormtrooper lady gesture towards the pile and you drop your pistol down. Sabos, you put your rifle there and you go in the clearing. What do Karma and Tink do?

HUDSON: I put my vibro-axe down but do not reveal my grenades.

NICK: Are they in your fanny pack?

HUDSON: They’re on my strap, but yeah, in my fanny pack.

(giggling)

NICK: I know you have a backpack and a utility belt, but for whatever reason I’m picturing your utility belt as just a fanny pack.

HUDSON: Well, it kind of is actually, if you look at my picture.

NICK: Oh, maybe that’s why I’m picturing that.

LAURA: I’m imagining it has like little pockets.

HUDSON: Yeah.

LAURA: So there’s some little pouches on it instead of just being…

CAMERON: It’s like a cool fanny pack.

LAURA: Yeah.

HUDSON: It goes across and around.

CAMERON: It’s a utility fanny pack.

NICK: Okay.

LAURA: Because it also doubles as a little holder for his vibro-axe in the back.

HUDSON: So I don’t take that off, I just drop my vibro-axe.

NICK: Okay, so you drop the obvious weapons, and Karma? Cameron’s got a look on her face. She’s about to do something.

CAMERON: Heh. So, I walk out. I detach the light blasters that I have on both hips first. (laughs)

NICK: Okay.

CAMERON: And then to remove my blaster carbine I have to take it off my back and swivel it around to the front, and as I do that I’m gonna shoot the dude.

NICK: Okay. I need a Cool check to see if you can do that before anybody gets the drop on you.

CAMERON: Cool. I’m fine with that.

NICK: The bounty hunter knows never disarm and change location.

CAMERON: yeah. I’ll change location, but I’m not taking all my guns and shit off, and I still have my vibro-sword in its sheath.

LAURA: Yeah. That’s why you don’t take off ALL your weapons.

CAMERON: I took off the two that I’m not good with, which were the light blasters. (laughs) To make it look like I was complying, up until the point where I am shooting the dude. So, a Cool check… Two successes.

NICK: Okay. So, guy is freaking useless. He’s just one green die. I just want to see if he sees anything.

CAMERON: One success.

NICK: Hey, good for him. Then, lady is two greens and a yellow. I should call them by their names, but you don’t know what their names are necessarily.

CAMERON: Three successes and an advantage.

NICK: Three successes and an advantage, which does make sense thematically since she’s had a gun aimed at you.

CAMERON: Mm-hmm.

NICK: You are going to get that shot off, but as she sees you do it you hear her very emotionally go “No!” and she goes to shoot you. That is going to be two greens and a yellow with an average difficulty, please, but I’m going to give her a blue die because she was aiming at you.

LAURA: Xianna’s just over here shaking her head and rolling her eyes. “(sigh) You wait until they are not looking at you. That is when you shoot them.”

CAMERON: My gun is on stun.

NICK: Okay. Good to know.

CAMERON: Because that is it’s default setting.

NICK: Hers isn’t.

CAMERON: That’s fine. I just—Since I’m also going to shoot the dude.

LAURA: At this point, Xianna does have her hands in her pockets.

NICK: This is all happening very quickly. This is going to be the beginning of an exchange.

CAMERON: That’s two successes and an advantage.

NICK: Okay, so hers does 8, because you wouldn’t have noticed but there are some spores growing in it… When you’re out in the jungle.

CAMERON: Ew. That’s why you always clean your gun.

NICK: So 8 and two successes, so that’s 10 damage.

CAMERON: And I soak 5 of it.

NICK: Oh, wow, okay. I forgot you have like armor and stuff.

CAMERON: yeah.

NICK: And are stronk.

CAMERON: Muy stronk.

NICK: You rotate your rifle around and snap up for a shot. Right before you pull the trigger you take a pretty good hit in the back. Your armor absorbs most of it, but having been shot multiple times in the past are very aware that you have been hurt. Before anything else happens you are able to pull the trigger and shoot at our good army officer friend. That’s going to be an average difficulty because you are very close, but it’s also going to be a black die because you were getting shot while you pulled the trigger.

CAMERON: A success, so that’s 10 stun damage.

NICK: Ten stun. You blow him backwards off of the stool he was sitting on. He doesn’t go completely unconscious, but he looks extremely phased by that. Ah, what a great pun.

CAMERON: Boo.

NICK: But he starts to sit up a little. Now I guess I need initiative rolls out of everybody, so that’ll be Vigilance. Now shit’s gone down. You had two successes?

CAMERON: Yes.

NICK: Do you want to just use that as your initiative roll, or do you want to roll again?

CAMERON: I’m good with two successes.

HUDSON: I rolled one success.

LAURA: Two successes.

STEVEN: One success.

NICK: Okay. He had one success, and she had three. I’m gonna make her roll again, because she used her thing up.

CAMERON: It was two yellows and a green?

NICK: Yeah.

CAMERON: Two successes, a triumph, and two advantages. I liked her other roll better. Can we use that one? (laughs)

NICK: She’s gonna go first, Lira, and then two PC slots, and then an NPC slot next, and then it’ll be two more PC slots.

Lira shoots you in the back. You stumble. She sees you shoot her good, good buddy, and she says “This is why we should’ve kept moving!” She shoots at you again, Karma. Same roll as last time, but she’s gonna use her maneuver to aim.

CAMERON: I remembered what the dice were. (laughs) Holy shit.

NICK: Ooh.

CAMERON: That’s three successes and four advantages.

NICK: Four advantages… So, she’s going to pull the trigger, shoot you in the back again, so that’s 11 damage coming at you. She hits you, the blast reflects off a piece of the paneling in your armor and starts bouncing around the clearing in a comical ricochet moment, and everybody kind of ducks so it’s distracting, so you all will have a black die on your next checks that you do. Everybody make sure you have a black die. That was her. Karma, how are you doing?

CAMERON: I have 3 health.

NICK: So not great.

CAMERON: Not great. I’m fine.

NICK: Is Karma the kind of person who is calm under this sort of pressure?

CAMERON: (severe) Yeah, I’m fine.

NICK: (nervously) Okay.

CAMERON: I’ve had worse. (laughs)

NICK: Okay. That was Lira. Two PC slots. Who wants to go?

LAURA: Hey, how close are you to her?

CAMERON: If she was following me to the weapons thing, then I’m probably short range.

NICK: I’ve been treating it medium range. She was trying to stay out of range.

CAMERON: Oh, okay. Medium range!

LAURA: Oh. Is anyone within short range of her?

NICK: No. They’re all ahead.

LAURA: Okay.

HUDSON: I know what you’re thinking.

LAURA: … I pull out a grenade.

NICK: Okay.

(laughter)

LAURA: And I throw it at her.  Which is ranged, light… I’m going to throw the grenade, yell “Fire in the hole!” and jump away.

NICK: Great. Thank you black die for keeping my NPCs alive, he said angrily at the blank die.

LAURA: So, three successes and an advantage. That’s not enough to do a blast I don’t think. It’ll be 11 damage.

NICK: Ooh-hoo-hoo. Okay. You basically bounce the grenade off her chest and it goes off immediately and blows a hole in that chest plate that she had. You can spend those advantages that her armor is gonna be a lot less for the rest of the fight.

LAURA: Yes, please.

NICK: I figured you would want to do that. She is in bad shape.

CAMERON: You never take off the armor.

NICK: The grenade goes off and blows a big chunk of her armor off. She basically just has the arm plates on now, and it does that broken plastic splintered look on the armor but most of it is gone. She has her rifle still up but is leaning against a tree and holding her side, so she’s shooting one-handed now. That was real bad. Also, part of the jungle is smoldering and you see some columns of smoke rising. Another PC slot.

HUDSON: I turn, and I throw a grenade.

NICK: At Lira again?

HUDSON: Yeah.

NICK: Okay. … That’s fine.

HUDSON: What would that be, ranged light?

LAURA: (hands covering mouth) Ranged light.

HUDSON: Oh great. With the difficulty of hard?

CAMERON: Two.

NICK: Yeah, just two.

CAMERON: With a black die.

HUDSON: Oh…?

CAMERON: Crap.

LAURA: Nope.

HUDSON: Two threats.

NICK: How do I wanna play with thrown grenades being bad?

HUDSON: No failures, though.

NICK: But two threats.

LAURA: By it being a wash you technically fail.

CAMERON: By not having any successes that still counted as a failure.

NICK: So, your threats are going to be that it kicks up a lot of dust, and when the dust clears… It’s hard to see her. She dove into the bushes somewhere to get away from the explosions. She’s gonna be harder to track down. But, no one got exploded, so that’s good. (musically) Grenade explodes in the bushes~

Now it’s Williams’s turn. He sits up. He looks very dazed, but he grabs for his pistol and he goes to shoot whoever is closest, who would probably be Sabos because he was the first one in the clearing. He yells “Lira!” and takes a shot. It’s just two green die versus one purple die, because they’re very close together.

CAMERON: Does he also have a black die for the bullets flying everywhere?

NICK: Nope.

CAMERON: Okay. He’s not ducking?

NICK: Nope.

CAMERON: Okay.

NICK: He was already on the ground prone (dramatic bass noise), because you blasted him off his chair. Also, if threats also affect your teammates they’re not as useful.

CAMERON: Right? This) (showing dice pool)

NICK: Yup. He’s not very good at shooting.

CAMERON: Okay. I kept forgetting. Yeah, he’s not very good at shooting. It’s a failure and an advantage.

NICK: Okay. The advantage is, he shoots, misses wide, Sabos just kind of looks around, and then he rolls under the repulser sled and takes cover under there. He uses his advantage to take some cover. That was him. He’s not very good. Two more player slots.

STEVEN: Sure. Is it—I forget how movement works.

NICK: You get a movement action.

STEVEN: Can I get close enough to under the sled to use the vibro-knife?

NICK: Yeah, absolutely you can.

STEVEN: Alright. I’m gonna run up under the sled and just try to stab him with the vibro-knife.

NICK: Okay. Go ahead.

STEVEN: Which is—Oh, I actually have Melee. Hey.

CAMERON: Nifty.

STEVEN: How hard is it?

CAMERON: Melee is always two.

NICK: Yeah, but you’re gonna have a black die, because to get under there, he’s prone (dramatic bass noise), so you run up and slide under with him, but now you’re like lying next to someone with your head on your elbow…

STEVEN: Oh, I don’t really want to get under it, I just kind of want to… I’ll still take a black die.

NICK: Okay. Laying prone and trying to side stab at someone is a little bit harder.

STEVEN: Yeah. That’s fair. Oh? Success.

NICK: A success. That does the weapon damage plus your Brawn, which is what?

STEVEN: Four.

NICK: Four damage. Okay, so you cut his arm pretty bad and he retreats back underneath while seething in pain. He’s just looking around panicking really hard. Karma, you’re up.

CAMERON: Great. Alright. Since chicky-bird shot me twice, I flip my blaster to kill. The dude is okay still, stun him. She’s going down. She shot me. So, I have a black die from existing…

NICK: Yeah. You gotta spend a maneuver to aim?

CAMERON: For my maneuver, I’m gonna go take cover behind a tree, specifically blocking her shot at me. Then I’m going to shoot at her. Average with two black dice?

NICK: Mm-hmm.

CAMERON: And I’m going to flip a light side point to upgrade, to shoot her gooder. I’m glad that was useful.

LAURA: (sympathetic groan)

CAMERON: Two failures, two advantages.

NICK: Okay. You slam your back into a tree. You can feel your back bleeding…

CAMERON: (laughs) Okay.

NICK: …and hitting up against the tree is uncomfortable, but the cover is worth it. You lean around the corner and the stormtrooper peppers some blaster spray at you. You go back around the tree, you lean back around and take some shots, but you guys are basically just shooting back and forth with each other. You don’t hit anything. You said you had some advantages?

CAMERON: I have two advantages. I wanna piss off the tree that she’s hiding behind, and I want the tree to go after her.

NICK: (laughs)

LAURA: Hey, the trees are just supposedly, maybe, possibly sentient.

CAMERON: Possibly eating people.

NICK: Will you roll me one green die please, for the tree’s initiative, maybe possibly.

LAURA: One success.

NICK: Great. Hey, what a coincidence.

CAMERON: That’s next. (laughs)

NICK: Gonna go ahead and add the tree to the initiative order.

LAURA: Maybe.

CAMERON: Possibly. Who knows.

NICK: Maybe possibly.

LAURA: It’s not confirmed.

NICK: It’s a rumor that the trees exist.

LAURA: It is an urban legend.

CAMERON: I don’t think it’s a rumor that the trees exist. (laughs)

LAURA: Yeah, the trees exist.

CAMERON: The tree is definitely there.

LAURA: It’s a rumor that they eat people.

NICK: So, describe to me how you shooting at the tree might make it aggressive.

LAURA: She shoots it.

CAMERON: So, we’ve been exchanging fire back and forth… I keep shooting the tree right next to where she is, and it has decided, supposedly decided—

NICK: Allegedly.

CAMERON: –allegedly, that there is something on that spot that is hurting it, that it needs to go after.

NICK: Okay. So, it’s the tree’s turn. (laughs) We don’t even have to roll for this tree. It’s like a piece of environment. The bark peels back up and it’s like these long, ropey spikes. You see them basically just rearrange, and there’s a crunch, and then Lira stops shooting. There’s no more noise coming from behind the tree. That’s the tree’s turn. (giggling)

Then the tree’s roots start pulling out of the ground, and it starts spaghetti-legging away into the brush, and you see Lira with a bunch of stab wounds on her just lying on the ground bleeding. That tree just starts knocking other trees out of the way and walking off. It does the noise of a groaning ship and cracking wood as it disappears. (several make long groans) Well, that’s the noise that ships make now. (laughter) Great.

Okay, yeah, so Lira is down. She is not moving anymore. It was hurt turn, but she’s down, so we got a PC slot. All that’s left is Williams hiding under the sled, bleeding, looking very close to being unconscious.

STEVEN: Yeah. I’m gonna stab Mr. Williams again.

NICK: Alright, you go right ahead.

STEVEN: Or, or… Can I drag him out?

NICK: Yeah, you can try. You can make me a Brawl check.

STEVEN: Sure. How hard is it?

CAMERON: Brawl is always two, like Melee.

NICK: Well, for this one it’ll be contested, because you’re trying to like wrestle him out.

CAMERON: Oh. Fair.

NICK: He only has one green in Brawn.

CAMERON: So one purple.

NICK: Yeah. He’s not very good at things.

LAURA: Poor guy.

CAMERON: Hey.

STEVEN: A success and an advantage.

NICK: Yeah. You’re able to kind of grab him round the scruff, and he tries to slap you away, and you just drag him out from cover. He’s kicking and screaming. “Where’s Lira?! What are you doing?! Aaagh!” Next PC slot.

LAURA: So… Lira’s ‘dead’ dead, or just out?

CAMERON: She’s down?

NICK: She is down, she has multiple stab wounds, and she has been exploded.

LAURA: Yeah. She’s most likely dead.

CAMERON: Or mostly dead.

LAURA: Or mostly dead.

NICK: Your experience would prove to you that it would be very rare for someone to survive something like that.

CAMERON: Okay.

LAURA: I’m gonna go over to Sabos and Williams, and take out binders and slap them on Williams.

NICK: Okay. You don’t have to roll for that. He’s pretty freaking out of it. You got him locked up.

HUDSON: We should figure out why they ran in the first place.

CAMERON: Yeah. I swing my blaster back around my back, take out my vibro-sword, and walk over to Lira and check her pulse.

LAURA: “Well, they were lovers. I feel like that was obvious?” I look at Williams. “You two, you were, uh, how you say, banging? Yes?”

NICK: He’s just crying, like silent tears going down his face.

LAURA: “yes. I’m going to take that as a yes. I believe they were lovers.”

NICK: You check Lira. She is dead. She is no more. Most of her insides are on her outsides. That tree messed her up real good.

At this point, Mills jumps out of the opposite side of the clearing. “Alright! I’m ready to g—Oh.”

LAURA: “Thank you. You are a very big help.”

NICK: “Well, I held some of the trees back, so at least we had that. My job was just to keep you alive, not to capture anyone, so… Oh hey, that was Lira? Wow, that’s crazy.” He just walks across the clearing to her and looks down. “Man, she owed me 10 credits.”

STEVEN: (laughs)

NICK: He sets about basically packing up the camp to take it with him.

LAURA: “You could check her pockets.”

CAMERON: “Yeah. I’m going to.”

NICK: “I mean, it’s sorta, my culture frowns on that kind of thing.”

CAMERON: I check her pockets. I make eye contact with him as he says my culture frowns on this, and then look down and start checking her pockets.

NICK: Okay. You find 10 credits.

CAMERON: I hand them to him.

NICK: “Hey thanks, now I owe you 10 credits.” And he pockets it.

CAMERON: “That… That’s definitely how that works. Yes.”

LAURA: “Yes. That is how it works. You owe us 10 credits now.”

NICK: Williams says “Are you done robbing my friend? What are you even doing?”

LAURA: “Friend? Or—Was she not girlfriend? Partner? However you wanted to label it?”

NICK: “Look, we didn’t like labels. Okay? We were just trying to go. We were just trying to leave, and then getting hunted by your coworkers is really crazy, and Lira just started becoming one with the jungle or whatever… but she was really, she—Oh gosh, it’s was…” He breaks down and cries for a little bit.

CAMERON: “That kind of continued to the tree did get her.”

STEVEN: “That’s true.”

LAURA: “The tree…”

CAMERON: “Yeah…”

LAURA: “I mean, I did throw a grenade at her, but… The tree.”

NICK: “Look, I guess nothing really matters. We were just trying to get to a different outpost and get off the planet. Maybe that was just wishful thinking. I’m imagining Falx sent you after me? He always has his weird smuggler friends do stuff like this. Well, get it over with.” He just kind of closes his eyes and puts his head to the side.

CAMERON: “Why are you trying to get away? Well, why ‘were’ you trying to get away?”

LAURA: “Have you seen the Empire?”

NICK: “I mean, she’s got a point. It basically is one of those ‘have you seen ze Empire’ kind of things.”

CAMERON: “I have, but have not seen how brainwashed everyone is in the Empire. They’re very good at that.”

LAURA: “Eh, they are. They are okay.”

CAMERON: “The defecting is rare. The people being controlled by the Empire? Yeah, those running make sense. People within the organization? Normally very much drink the space Kool-Aid.” (giggles)

LAURA: ‘In my experience there is not a lot of deserting, because the Empire gets everyone in one way or another, eventually. It’s hard to run from a regime that has the entire galaxy.”

NICK: “That’s, uh, pretty morbid, but—“

LAURA: “Yes!” (giggles)

NICK: Williams has the binders on and he’s trying to apply pressure to the knife wound in his arm.

CAMERON: Oh. I lean down and help.

NICK: “Th-Thank you.”

LAURA: I lean down to Williams. “If we bring you back alive, how badly will they torture you?”

NICK: “You know, Falx doesn’t really go for torture all that much. He’s sort of efficient like that. Either I’ll get sent to a labor camp, or if they don’t want to waste the food waiting for a shipment they’ll probably just shoot me. Honestly, it’s weird that he didn’t just tell you to kill me. This is a bummer. This was my first posting. I had such high hopes, and now look at me.” He just looks bummed out.

LAURA: “That is why you do not desert. But so, are you okay being sent back alive?”

NICK: “Uh, yeah, I guess it’s a 50/50 shot.”

LAURA: “Okie.”

NICK: “I’ve always been pretty good at brown-nosing. That’s how I got here in the first place, so.”

LAURA: “If they were going to horribly torture you, I mean, we could shoot you now.”

NICK: “Ugh. It’s tempting. I mean, you just murdered the woman I love, but…”

LAURA: “I mean—“

CAMERON: “I think you’ll find that was the tree, and she did shoot me first, to be fair.”

LAURA: “They would kind of probably kill us if we did not.”

NICK: “Yeah. I mean, you’re dooming me to a life of slave labor at the best case scenario, so you should feel bad about that and I don’t appreciate it. There’s still a chance—“

LAURA: “So, do you want me to shoot you now? Because like, I will.”

NICK: “Wha- No. you could just like let me go, and…”

LAURA: “You have a choice. … Okay, so here’s a thing. If we let you go,” and I look over at, what’s his name, Rambo dude.

SEVERAL: Mills.

LAURA: Mills! How close is Mills to us?

NICK: He’s still just kind of patrolling the perimeter. He can hear, but you can’t tell if he’s paying attention or not.

LAURA: I want to kind of whisper, probably mostly to Karma. “So, is there any way we could, you know, act like a tree got him and just bring back Lira’s body, and maybe a bloodied helmet or shirt, and just say we saw him die?”

CAMERON: “Probably. The thing with that, though… Sweetie, you look pretty banged up.”

NICK: He looks suddenly hopeful, like surprised hopeful, like a teenager who meets Santa Claus hopeful. “I can make it!”

CAMERON: “Realistically hun, I’m concerned with you lasting out here.”

LAURA: Xianna looks at Karma. How many wounds does he have?

NICK: Four.

LAURA: Okay. “I have a stim pack, so I could fix him up…”

NICK: “I like this plan. I mean, you could tell—I don’t mean to brag-“ He tries to like brush his hair.

LAURA: Xianna already has the stim pack out and is like watching Mills, and shoots Williams up with it, and puts the empty one back in her pocket.

NICK: He gasps as the pain killers take effect.

LAURA: “Shh!”

NICK: “Well, you know, I am ruggedly handsome and independent.” He is not ruggedly handsome or independent looking.

CAMERON: “Mm-hmm.”

NICK: This is a very scrawny junior officer just out of school.

LAURA: “Sure. Yes. Sure you are.”

NICK: “But, yeah, I just… You could take one of the stormtrooper bodies or something. We’re about the same level of ripped. It should work.”

CAMERON: (snickers)

LAURA: ‘Okie. Someone is going to have to go distract Mills, and then we will make a bunch of noise over here.”

CAMERON: “Sabos and Tink, go, y’all are distracting.”

LAURA: “You go make distractions. Go, go.”

CAMERON: “Go talk inappropriately about your head tail or something.”

STEVEN: “That was the plan.”

(laughter)

LAURA: “One of you go and get in a tuffle with a tree. Try not to get actually killed.”

HUDSON: ‘Hey Mills, uh, I was wondering, um…”

NICK: “Yeah. What?”

HUDSON: “You seem to have a lot of experience out here. What was, um, one of your hardest fought battles you ever had?”

(laughter)

NICK: “Oh, well let me tell you about it. There was this one time I had a whole grove of trees between me and my sister…”

HUDSON: “Oh, do tell.”

NICK: “…and I was trying to set her up with my friend, Smithson, and—“

LAURA: “Is this the distraction? That is just a story.”

HUDSON: (low, grunted) Yes.

CAMERON: “As long as he’s facing away from us, we’re good.”

NICK: At this point Mills throws his arm around Tink, which is mostly up, and points away from y’all to gesture broadly at the trees. “There was a couple of spruces and two jungle deciduous, and I was able to take ‘em down with an incendiary grenade,” and he just goes on and on about killing trees.

LAURA: While they’re doing this, Xianna gets Williams up to his feet, takes off the binders, and puts them back in her pocket. Is he wearing anything that Mills would have seen on him to identify?

CAMERON: He’s wearing an army uniform, right?

NICK: Yeah. He has one of the little blue squares, because he’s a super junior officer.

LAURA: Xianna goes over and plucks the little blue square off of him…

CAMERON: Make sure there’s blood on it.

LAURA: …and kind of rubs it on his leg a little.

CAMERON: There you go. Way more convincing.

NICK: He groans in pain.

LAURA: Does he still have his cap or anything?

NICK: No. he doesn’t have his cap. His uniform is all shredded. You could pull pieces off if you want.

LAURA: Yeah. She takes a few pieces and any large things. If he had a holster, she takes that.

NICK: As you take his insignia, he’s like, “Wait, wait, wait,” and he goes over and takes it from you. He does something you can’t tell, and the bottom pops open. He shakes something out of it and puts it in his pocket. “Okay, great. Thanks.”

CAMERON: “We obviously can’t send him… We can’t let you keep the sled.”

NICK: “Aw.”

CAMERON: “It would be useful, but he has seen it. So, let’s pack you a bag.” (laughs)

NICK: “Okay.”

CAMERON: “Some useful stuff.”

LAURA: “So, pack a bag very quickly, and then we will have you hide off to the side, and I will throw a grenade, sprinkle this stuff, and say a tree was getting you and you were getting away, and so I panicked and threw a grenade.”

NICK: “Okay! Sounds awesome.” He basically just takes a pile of those ration bars, he takes one arm and brushes them into a piece of cloth he makes into a satchel, ties it around a stick, and just takes off into the trees.

At this point Mills has Tink by both shoulders and is shaking him and staring really close in his face. “And there were bug monkeys! Bug monkeys everywhere!”

HUDSON: “Waaaaagh!”

CAMERON: Karma starts counting with her hands, one, two, three…

LAURA: Xianna is doing that little face, like, ‘okay… and, scene!’ (laughter) And like throws the grenade at a random tree, and then is like “Oh shit!” and then right after the grenade throws all the scraps she took off of Williams, and then falls back. (laughs)

CAMERON: We both fall back like ‘ah, grenade explosion, it threw us!’

NICK: So, the camera cuts to Mills holding Tink, and he’s staring at Tink but facing towards the explosion, so you just see the cool grenade explosion silhouetting Mills and Tink. “Oh—What?” He looks over and goes, “What… What happened?”

LAURA: “Oh! So, the officer, Williams, he started getting away, and then a tree started attacking, and I panicked, and I threw a grenade. I think I killed him.”

NICK: I’m gonna need a Deception roll from you.

LAURA: Can do!

NICK: Against I guess it would be his Perception.

LAURA: Which would be?

NICK: Two purples. Mills is good at seeing. Not as good as you are at lying.

CAMERON: Can I assist, since I’m acting with it?

NICK: Yes.

CAMERON: I think it’s the same. You have more Cunning, but we both have 1 Deception.

LAURA: I have 2 Deception.

NICK: So you just add a blue die, then.

CAMERON: I’m like walking over, and carefully picking up scrap pieces of things.

LAURA: One success and two advantages.

NICK: Okay. With the success, Mills goes, “Oh. Uh… Well, I mean, he’s dead. I guess that’s what’s important. It saves us the blaster charges. I’m just gonna put him down…”

LAURA: “I am sorry.”

NICK: “Well, ugh, you know, you Twi’leks are… I have zero experience with them, but I have now decided that they’re bloodthirsty, so great work.”

LAURA: “I panicked! It was scary! It was a big tree.”

NICK: “I think I saw a holo of Twi’leks with sharp teeth one time. It’s always kind of…”

CAMERON: (laughs)

LAURA: “That is just the men.”

NICK: “Oh, well… Yeah.”

LAURA: ‘It is considered attractive.”

CAMERON: “Is it?”

NICK: “Oh? Do you think I should file my teeth?”

LAURA: “No. it is just for the Twi’lek men that it is attractive.”

NICK: “Oh. Well…”

CAMERON: “So it’s attractive to other Twi’lek men or Twi’lek women?”

LAURA: “Well, I mean if they are of that orientation, yes. It is attractive for the men to have pointy teeth.”

NICK: “I don’t know why we’re talking about this. You just blew someone up. Uh, that’s good to know. Thank you for expanding my cultural horizons. I appreciate that. Just scrape that stuff into a bag or whatever. We’ll put it on the sled and bring it back to Falx.”

LAURA: “yes. Okie.”

NICK: He turns around, leaving. He’s been digging through the cart for a couple of minutes and he pulls out this big spray bottle. It looks like a cockroach bomb, like an aerosol can with a dispersal thing. ‘Oh man, they did manage to get one of these.” He takes the metal spike out of his pocket and jams it into the top, and it starts misting everywhere. “That’ll take care of the trees.” You see them actually start to spread back and clear away. “It’ll be a lot easier getting back.”

CAMERON: “Oh…”

LAURA: “The fuck is with this planet…”

NICK: “Let’s try and get back to the outpost.”

CAMERON: I have collected the bits of Williams’s uniform that Xianna had thrown in one hand, and then I walk over and I hoist Lira up over my shoulder and toss her onto the sled.

NICK: She does a ragdoll flump that’s pretty gross and starts dripping into the supplies a little bit.

CAMERON: I put her on, like, not on food stuff. I shift uncomfortably and wipe the blood off of my shoulder. Then I remember, and the adrenaline starts to wear off, and I lean against the sled and put my hands on my knees, like “whoa…”

NICK: Mills sees you doing that. “Great. That way we don’t have to carry her. You got shot, a lot.”

CAMERON: “I noticed.”

LAURA: “Oh yes. Uh, so do they have an infirmary at the outpost?”

NICK: “Uh, yeah, they have that. I also have some medical supplies in the speeder that we can use.”

LAURA: ‘Okay, because I do not want to waste my stim pack.”

CAMERON: Okay. Before we head out, I’m gonna make a Cool check to try and recover some Strain. I’m going to use my Hardboiled talent. When I’m recovering strain after an encounter, I can spend advantages up to ranks in Hardboiled to recover one wound per advantage spent. I could heal one wound back this way.

NICK: Okay. Hopefully you get an advantage.

CAMERON: Hopefully, because I didn’t lose any strain. What’s the difficulty?

LAURA: Simple.

CAMERON: Simple? Fabulous. Hey! An advantage.

NICK: You got a wound back, and two strain.

CAMERON: I didn’t lose any strain, but I’m up to 4 health now!

NICK: Good work! You make it back to the speeder without any crazy things happening and you pile in. you toss Lira’s body into the trunk, there’s still some space back there, and you drive off into the jungle headed back towards the outpost. That’s where we’ll end the episode.

(all make dramatic noises, noises turns discordant)

CAMERON: Oh dear…

## Outro

CAMERON: Thanks for listening to Tabletop Squadron. If you 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.

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

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

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

Sabos Nix was played by Steven Schroeder. He… does not exist on the internet.

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

Our intro song is Space Jam by Pablo Ribot.

Additional music by James Gunter.

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