STAR WARS: SCUM AND VILLAINY.

[matt_doyle]

STAR WARS:  SCUM AND VILLAINY
EPISODE III:  SCUM HARDER

In our first episode, four reprobates from the backwater world of Kalarba beat a gang of thieves and kidnappers, leaving one of them alive in exchange for their ship, a used Skipray Blastboat named the Narrow Margin.  Finding the cramped quarters, lacking cargo space, and poor maintenance a dealbreaker, after a few short voyages they traded in that wreck (and some lucrative salvage) for a brand-new YT-2400, which they named the Poetic Justice, and set about modifying with a will.  As their bank robbing, anti-Imperial piracy, pro-Hutt syndicate thuggery, and attempts to defraud Lando Calrissian escalated, the increasing attention of bounty hunters forced our remaining crew members to flee(a berth on the Justice has not tended to be a healthy long-term investment). 

In Episode II:  Pirates Gone Wild Space, the party attempted to lay low in the fringe worlds of the civilized galaxy, but soon found themselves ill-suited for such a sedate existence.  After further fights with bounty hunters assured them their cover was well and truly blown, they recruited/were recruited by a Corellian treasure-hunter, who lead them deep into the Unknown Regions of space on a prolonged hunt for a cache of ancient technology that might well make their fortunes.  After some mixed success on that venture, but with plenty of lucrative resources and data, they returned to 'civilization,' found their deaths had been faked on the galactic broadcast of a bounty-hunting reality program, avenged themselves on the bounty hunter in question, and found that, with the pressure gone, there was very little keeping them together.  Half the crew sold their shares in the Justice back to the only remaining original investor, and departed to further their own careers.
 

Dramatis Personae for Episode III:

Amareyn, alias Ara Tyris:  a Force-sensitive Miraluka engineer, Ama is a skilled infiltrator and slicer, but her true passion is building and designing droids.  Most of her piracy money goes toward construction of an assembly line, and she hopes to eventually make black-market droids on commission for the galaxy's richest criminals.  Her alleged best friend on the ship is the sinister, silent modified droideka she calls QT, whose very existence violates 8 separate parts of the criminal code in both New Republic and Imperial space.  Ama is the only remaining member of the original crew as Scum Harder begins, and owns an 80% share in the Justice.

Hajab, alias Iljon:  this reclusive Mon Calamari is less of a mad scientist... he's merely a very disgruntled hyperdrive engineer.  A former Imperial slave who was press-ganged into a top secret hyperspace research program called Project Neebray, Hajab has radical notions about hyperdrive technology that mainstream academics find laughable.  Despite his species' disdain for smugglers, Hajab left home and became indebted to a Hutt while attempting to further his research.  Once the party rescued him from a life of indentured servitude, Hajab began to see the advantages in funding his experiments with pirate treasure... and testing his devices aboard a pirate ship.  Antisocial and paranoid, Hajab is rarely seen outside the engine room.

Loren Marq:  high-stakes gambler, master of disguise, and Corellian treasure hunter, Loren is the newest addition to the crew at the end of Pirates Gone Wild Space.  Half crew member and half patron, he knows that his pseudo-archaeological exploits require more muscle and blasters than he can provide personally.  Often superior and amused, even more often in over his head, Loren combines skeptical sarcasm with a willingness to embark on the most ill-conceived schemes imaginable with zest, verve, and a luxury shuttle called The Sarlacc Express.

RECENT CREW:

Channa:  Chadra-Fan gun-bunny and weapons engineer, she and her partner Baroolchen now co-own their own pirate vessel, the Cry Uncle.  Channa has a checkered history as a gun-runner, including a lot of freelancing for Black Sun -- something she drew the crew of the Justice into doing as well.

Baroolchen:  a Wookiee drunken master, Baroolchen assumed his dead relative Maroolchen's life-debt to Channa on the condition that she keep him in drinking money. 

Soren Tyrell:  foul-mouthed drug-addict Imperial deserter and pulp novelist turned petty crimelord, Tyrell 'retired' from piracy to run a black marketeering and information brokering racket on Nar Shaddaa, because the Smuggler's Moon is, as he said, "where the drugs live."  When he left, Soren extended the party some extra money, on the condition that they would occasionally do him a favor.
FORMER CREW:

Felix the Toydarian: a two-bit pirate and shipjacker, Felix had a lot of skill but an unbelievable run of bad luck.  After accepting several independent commissions, he was caught by the New Republic, and though the party shelled out money to get him a decent lawyer, he was still convicted and sentenced to three years' hard labor in the spice mines of Sevarcos, where he lost an eye.  Felix still owns 20% of the Justice.

Session One:  The Sevarcos Shuffle.


Months pass, and our crew lays low, pursuing their hobbies.

Amareyn, Hajab, and Loren come to the conclusion that, no matter how hot-rodded she may be, the Justice just isn't enough ship for the jobs they dream of pulling.  Using all the proceeds from their Unknown Regions expedition, they purchase a YZ-775, christen it the Second Wind, and proceed to arm and armor it as though they were going to war.  Crime is like war, right?  Amareyn builds or salvages an extensive droid crew to assist them, Hajab installs a dangerous hypermatter annihilator for a reactor and a Tobal lens Nubian stardrive that will lower their hyperdrive multiplier to .9, and Loren steals the best Ortolan cook from the royal court of Bnarr Orthellis, the obscure colony world where they have their hideout.  Still.  Something is missing...

Shortly thereafter, they receive two messages.  One is Soren Tyrell, in person, bearing a gift:  a medical stasis container locked on a randomized timer with a Zeltron gunslinger named Jark frozen inside it.  Jark, an enthusiastic employee of Tyrell's, has exasperated his boss and drawn down a considerable amount of heat.  Once he thaws out, though, he can provide some of the much-needed firepower the party lost when Channa cashed out... and if he lives long enough, he might even learn enough to become a useful employee again.  Unenthused at the prospect of babysitting, the party parks his stasis chamber in the laundry room and ignores it.

Their second message is from Black Sun.  There's a job waiting for them... something lucrative, but too high-profile for Black Sun to risk direct involvement.  And the payoff is sizable.  After all the money they sunk into the Second Wind, frankly, they can't afford to turn it down...

Here's how it is:  carsunum spice comes from only one place in the galaxy:  under the harsh, wind-wracked deserts of Sevarcos.  The Empire uses the potent drug as a combat stimulant, and keeps the planet under high security, making smuggling extremely risky.  Black Sun, though, isn't run by amateurs -- they've had a secure supply line for fifteen years.  But that's about to end.

Fifteen years ago, they suborned the chief medical officer at the mines.  Short-term prisoners receiving their physical exams get offered a deal -- allow the doctor to implant hermetically sealed packets of carsunum in their body, and when they go offworld, Black Sun will retrieve it, in exchange for a generous cut of the profits.  Corpses being shipped offworld are subject to a similar 'deal,' but not too many people want to pay the freight cost on a dead spice miner, even if he or she used to be a relative, so the short-term crowd is the more lucrative line.

Two days ago, the CMO died of a drug overdose.  His replacement, scheduled to arrive in twelve days, is not on the take, and a quick review of the dead doc's records will lead to the whole operation crashing down.

The party's mission, if they choose to accept it, is to get down to the surface of Sevarcos, find and destroy the doctor's records, and by whatever means necessary, remove any prisoners who have already been implanted.

One of those prisoners, of course, is Felix.

Posing as ISB inspectors, Loren and his 'stormtrooper escort' Ama managed to get on-site, link Hajab into the computer system, procure the data needed, and re-assign all the prisoners to the same location.  There were a few hitches along the way -- namely, the party recognized the names of a few other prisoners not lucky enough to have drugs in their body cavities.  Woboe, a crooked Rodian mine foreman, was simply an old contact... but one they felt fondly enough about to add to their extraction list.  The other name, though, was a former 'colleague' of Hajab's -- a Givin mathematician named Effex Digammin who had been enslaved alongside him in Project Neebray.

The extraction went not just well, but superlatively well, without the need of any gun being fired, and without any last-minute jump to hyperspace.  They simply snuck the ship out to the desert, and the "ISB agents," citing a leak in secure data that needed to be squashed, escorted the prisoners out of the mines, one by one, for interrogation and 'execution.'  A few of the prisoners tried to turn the tables, but quick, hushed explanations that this was a rescue made sure that things ran smooth.  The only difficulty came when, on the way offworld, a customs inspector located their smuggling compartment, currently crammed full of panicky miners... but rather than opening it, the officer simply waited for his customary bribe, operating on the assumption that their contraband was a few containers of spice.  Feeling like criminal masterminds, the party turned over their fugitives to Black Sun, everyone got their money, and Felix signed back on with the crew, bringing with him a prison buddy, the slightly dense Herglic Lacroh Vob, who acted as his bodyguard and valet.

In another system, far away, when orders and data-files were checked and cross-checked, the ISB opened a new investigation log on a group of unknown impostors, and began quietly revising their security protocols.


Session Two:  We Could Be Heroes.

Before moving on to other business, the party makes a brief stop at Ithor, almost getting crushed between docking herd-ships  at The Time Of Meeting, and cuts a deal with a local honcho to sell an integral tree they found in a nebula in the Unknown Regions.  There's a bit of a disturbance as Jark wakes up from his stasis pod, but that is quickly resolved, and after the party members all pretend not to notice when he makes a pass at each of them in turn, they turn the ship around and head to base.

Transporting Effex Digammin and Woboe back to their home, sweet home on Bnarr Orthellis, the party hears an intriguing story.  Though it has been four and a half years since the death of Emperor Palpatine, Project Neebray has kept running, on mobile labs in uninhabited systems, and they're making breakthroughs... and "recruiting" new staff through the exotic slave trade run through Asylum Station.  Effex was 'cycled out' and shipped off to die in a mine after suffering creative burnout... but she knows that the advances into new hyper-technology are starting to pay off.

While not exactly moral giants, the party is generally opposed to slavery, vaguely considers the Imperials to be worse at government than the New Republic, and guiltily admits that they may have a line on this whole Asylum Station thing.  Over a year ago, they flagged a slaver ship called the Asylum Breakout as a possibly-lucrative piracy target, and planted a homing beacon on it.  Tracing that beacon now leads them to a puzzling result:  the co-ordinates it broadcasts show it to be in an un-navigable system, within the energy shell of a centuries-old supernova, and only a few light-years from Dac, home of the Mon Calamari.  Upon reaching Dac, they manage to pinpoint a tight-beam message station sending and receiving broadcasts from the un-navigable system... using the highest level of military encryption the New Republic has, but when they crack the encrypt, the transmissions all appear to be civilian letters to distant relatives, censored to remove any mention of location.

So consumed with curiosity that they don't care whether there's any profit involved, the party stages a data raid on a local communications center, and discovers the secret of the transmissions -- during the height of the Galactic Civil War, the Alliance found hidden worlds that could serve as a refuge for committed pacifists wishing to escape the Empire -- Alderaanians, Caamasi, and many Mon Calamari among them.  This secret world, called Sanctuary, is defended only by how well it is hidden -- making it an ideal target for slavers.  Some clever navigating later, and the party arrives in-system just in time to see the Breakout breaking atmo.  Sensors show over two hundred life-signs aboard, in a vessel that can be crewed by only eight people.

Obviously, a harrowing space battle ensues, with the slavers doing their utmost to destroy the Second Wind, while the party is determined to disable the ship and take it intact.  After disabling its primary power with wave after wave of ion fire, the party (taking QT the droideka with them) boards, and quickly dispatched half a dozen thugs.  While QT watches their backs, the bulk of the party heads for the cargo bay, while Loren slips off to the engine room to see if he can restore power.

In the cargo bay, there are 200 slaves, half of them in force-field holding cells, the other half herded into the middle of the bay, under the watchful guns of a mutilated Swokes Swokes named Larka Larka, and a sadistic droid with clawlike hands, called 'Forks'.

Behind them, hovering menacingly, is a stolen taxi... with a gattling blaster installed on its underside.  The slaver captain, a Huralok with a temper problem, demands the immediate surrender of the party, or he will begin massacring his prisoners.  He promises that if they surrender they will be kept alive... after all, they could fetch quite a high price.

The party freezes, uncertain of what to do... except Loren, watching from remote access in the engine room, who calmly reverses the polarity of the ship's gravity and activates the fire suppression systems.

Everyone falls dramatically to the ceiling, six meters away, and is promptly half-blinded by a mist of suppressant foam.  While there are many contusions and broken limbs from the slaves, most of whom are running around in a panic, the party manages the presence of mind to focus fire on the taxi's guns, disabling it before the Huralok can get over his shock and the accompanying mild concussion.  A brief but vicious fight ensues -- Felix taking to the air to snipe, Jark running for the taxi, and Ama engaging the droid and the Swokes Swokes in close-range combat, after the droid demonstrated that its hands could, in fact, be employed as grappling hooks, and would Ama care to witness a hands-on demonstration?

Larka Larka proves to be a brutal martial artist, but when Felx successfully disables the droid and Ama steps back to pull her blaster, he reluctantly states that, while he prefers more artful solutions, he is willing to lower himself to their level... and pulls a disruptor pistol.  a lucky dodge saves Ama's life, and focused fire from her and Felix puts the slaver lieutenant down.  Meanwhile, the captain attempts to subdue Jark with a stokhli stick, who shoots him repeatedly and comments that he usually doesn't get tied up until the second date.  Felix, yet again, has the final word, proving to the party that his luck has changed. 

Before a New Republic task force can arrive and demand an explanation, the crew of the Second Wind steals and wipes the Breakout's nav data (including two unmarked systems, either of which might be Asylum Station), pries the best turbolaser cannon off the Breakout's hull, ferries the captives back down to the surface, and jumps to hyperspace.

Somewhere along the line, they realize they may have just done something altruistic, and are properly horrified.  Oh well.  At least they got the turbolaser.

And the taxi.
 


Session Three:  The Things We Do For Fun.

There's a little excitement on the way out of the system.  While in hyperspace, the party experienced a navigational glitch, and snagged a Q-ball out of the supernova's energy shell.  As long as they remain faster-than light, that's fine -- it's merely a clump of tachyons.  But the moment they drop out of hyperspace, that super-dense chunk of matter goes baryonic again, and they've got a fist-sized piece of neutronium in their hyperdrive manifold.  Thinking quickly, they manage to shunt the Q-ball into their back-up drive, un-install the backup drive, toss it in the airlock, and cycle it.  There.  One system down but otherwise safe, they return to realspace and contemplate their next move.

Loren does not want to take on a secret Imperial project without a considerable ace in the hole, so he departs from the Second Wind -- not to abandon their goal, but to take the Sarlacc Express to track down some old friends of his in the Bothan Spy Network, and see if they can help him solidify his ISB disguise with some genuine credentials.

The rest of the party, not possessing any clever schemes, goes shopping on Nar Shaddaa.  Once stocked up on various illegal commodities, and still not having heard back from Loren, they decide to kill some time... by doing their first Kessel Run.  Never a bunch to divide their eggs into multiple baskets, they collect over two-thirds of their personal treasure and ship's operating funds, by a modest cargo of food and liquid oxygen to import to the mines and give them a good excuse, and light out for Kessel.  The local customs inspector knows that they're up to no good, but, alas, cannot prove it, and clears them to land.  After several dubious stops and starts, they positively stuff their smuggling compartments with glitterstim, courtesy of a local crooked Imperial, and take off... only to find three very suspicious customs cruisers awaiting them in orbit.  Not wanting a prolonged gunfight, they flee at top speed, going straight for the Maw, and try to discourage pursuit with a few volleys of ion cannons.  The customs pilots are good, however, and stick to them, blasting away with turbolasers... and each customs boat has four.  Twelve turbolasers chew away at the party's shields rather quickly, however, and they start employing every trick they can think of -- jamming targeting sensors, aiming pinpoint blasts at their pursuer's engines... all to no avail.

Then, they begin re-routing power to engines.  Their reactor -- the hypermatter annihilator -- has power reserves to spare, power they have never tapped out of respect for such a volatile power source, but now they pour more and more energy into thrust.  Two electrical fires start.  A stabilizer breaks loose.  Engine room sensors predict a 21% chance of critical malfunction.

Felix looks down at his readouts in disbelief.  The Second Wind is currently traveling faster than a TIE Fighter at full throttle.

One last, triumphant volley of ion cannons disables their lead pursuer, who was falling behind anyway.  The remaining vessels, narrowly avoiding a collision, pull back... as the Second Wind enters the black hole cluster known as the Maw.  Frantically bleeding off speed, they skate through the edges of distorted space, playing a constant call-and-response game as Hajab calculates the safest trajectories and Felix wrestles the controls into obedience.  At these speeds, these gravitic stresses, the fabric of space itself bends... when they finally emerge in the asteroid cloud known as The Pit, through the worst of it but not safe yet, Felix and Hajab again consult their star charts.  According to their navigational data, the Kessel Run threads through the Maw for 18 parsecs... but the ship's recorder claims they did it in only 11.7, only .2 parsecs shy of Han Solo's unbelievable 11.5 run.  That's right... they've completed a Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs.  Once they get out of The Pit, they can jump away safely, and sell their cargo for a cool half million credits... almost double that, if they skip the approved wholesalers and parcel it out to local dealers and distributors on the Rim worlds.