Scum and Villainy.
Jul. 28th, 2011 02:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matt_doyleSo. Obviously even counting service interruptions my blogging has been absent of late, and I owe you all a chapter of Hellion Prince and my Utah travelogue. It has, however, been kind of a crazy month, so bear with my whimsy.
Right now, I want to catalogue the glorious Hell that was last night's Star Wars: Scum and Villainy session.
Last week went very smoothly for the party, smoothly enough that I didn't bother to recap at the time. The party, determined to cement an undercover ID for Loren so they can pose as Imperials, teamed up with the Bothan SpyNet to forge and insert ISB credentials for Loren. Creating the identity of ISB Captain Maclure was a wholly Bothan bit of subterfuge, as was inserting him in the right records as a roving inspector who monitors remote listening posts. All he has to do is transmit the occasional report saying that all is quiet on the Rimward front, and his cover is maintained. However. There is one piece of the identity that could not be remotely created -- the code cylinders ranking Imperial officers receive, basically a hardware version of their private encryption keys -- proof of identity and authority all in one, and a feat of complex microcircuitry that has never been duplicated by an outside source.
The Bothans maintained that there was only one way to acquire code cylinders: to infiltrate an Imperial Ubiqtorate base, and claim the old cylinders had been destroyed. Ubiqtorate bases, however, are generally regarded as having the most impenetrable security of any facility imaginable... so everything had to be perfect. Fortunately, the Second Wind is a YZ-775, the model generally used as private transport for Imperial officers. The Bothans supplied stormtrooper uniforms for the crew... though only four crew members were humanoid enough to fit into them, and ISB captains travel with an 8-man squad. Hajab, to his dismay, had to pose as a slave, while Felix was put in an improvised brig as a criminal informant. Explaining the missing troopers necessitated the rest of the cover story: that Captain Maclure had narrowly survived a Hapan ambush, but in the process, had lost half his bodyguard and taken blasterfire to the chest, with his code cylinders heroically saving his life by absorbing most of the blaster energy before they were destroyed.
To mimic this, they put Loren in uniform, clipped cylinders containing the right metal alloys (but not circuitry) to his chest, and shot him with a blaster on low power settings.
Some of the party enjoyed watching this more than was probably healthy for them, but Loren's intrepid schemes have often earned him a bit of ire, so they considered it payback.
At last, the party headed out for their destination: the least secure, most backwater Ubiqtorate base in the galaxy: Ord Mynock, homeworld of the mynocks, the galaxy's most obnoxious species of pest.
Everything went swimmingly on the actual insertion. The party had the correct clearance codes to get past the planetary shield and the fleet of Old Republic Era warships guarding the world, received landing clearance, and were escorted by stormtroopers wielding flamethrowers and sonic weapons (mynocks are resistant to blasterfire and electricity) from their underground hangar to the base. Their cover story and forged computer logs were accepted, and met basic scrutiny... and not so basic scrutiny, as an agent of the Inquisitorius was currently inspecting the base, making certain new protocols from High Command were being carried out... namely, the integration of commissioned alien officers into the ranks. Loren found that the base medic was a Ruurian ensign, fortunately well-schooled in human anatomy, who left nothing behind of his blaster burn but a scar laced with exotic trace metals. Likewise, when he was forced to take 4 new stormtroopers aboard, 2 of them were not human, but massive T'Syriel. This caused some anxiety, but pretending at Imperial racism while acquiescing to the Inquisitor's demands, the party managed to get out of system without revealing to their new passengers that they were anything but standard Imperials. Almost the only notable incident on base was 'stormtrooper' Jark (the party's gunslinging Zeltron master of innuendo) flirting with personnel and downloading shareware apps onto his helmet HUD so that he could play boardgames with other on-duty stormtroopers. Fortunately, the party had installed a remote cut-off switch to his helmet microphone so that, in an emergency, they could shut him up, so all went well...
...Until, after jumping to hyperspace, they noticed the gradual draining of the ship's power. Six giant mynocks, known to residents of the system as Mynock Ords, had clamped on to the outer hull and were now nursing at the power cables, necessitating a battle in which constant retreat was necessary, as the mynocks kept eating the energy out of blasters and even spacesuits, declamping magnetic boots. One of the new troopers received several savage Mynock bites. However, between Jark's gunslinging prowess with a slugthrower borrowed from Ama, and Loren taking the Chir'daki out of the cargo bay long enough to blast one mynock and lure the others inside (into flamethrower range), the problem was dealt with.
As for the stormtroopers... Jark got them exceedingly drunk on Quermia, stripped their armor, and left them behind after a night of debauchery that left one in jail and two in a line marriage with locals. The forged dishonorable discharges (and compromising pictures) he left behind ensured that none of the troopers would be likely to comm any Imperial bases for a ride any time soon. And that was that.
Yesterday, however, set a whole new standard for a crazy session. With Ama's player out of town and both Hajab and Loren's players exhausted after late nights, when 6 PM rolled around, only Felix and Jark were available to play... so they devised a caper of their own.
Appropriating the party's old vessel, the Poetic Justice, from drydock, they loaded two tons of glitterstim aboard from the party's recent Kessel Run, and coaxed the depressive pilot droid V6-H8 (Hate, for short) to accompany them on a little vacation. Also along for the ride was Felix's loyal Herglic bodyguard, Lacroh Vob.
Flying the Justice was interesting, as several key systems had been stripped down and transferred to the Second Wind, such as navicomputers and fire-control systems, but Felix, being a superb pilot, and having brought Hate along more as a portable nav computer than a co-pilot, managed to plot out the itinerary of their little junket. First they would go to nearby Malastare, where two previous successful capers had been pulled. Next, they would hop further into the Outer Rim to Belsavis, an isolated system with enough smuggler traffic to justify unloading a little more spice. Finally, they would head for their ultimate destination: Zeltros! Not only the best vacation spot in the galaxy, but Jark's ancestral homeworld... which he had never visited, being raised as he was by roving entertainers.
After a close call with Malastaran customs, the pair realized that they would have to buy a legitimate cargo to take to Belsavis, or risk their cover. Jark started hunting for spice markets, while Felix tried to decide what they should import to a backwater iceball whose principal industry was exporting rare fruits from volcanic rift valleys. Finally, he settled on fertilizer -- a must in any agricultural setting -- and purchaed five tons of a local Gran product called IrrigoMax.
Meanwhile, Jark found that most drugs in the capitol were run through Onog the Dug, a podrace bookie who was, as the locals said, "connected connected" to some larger syndicate. Onog proved to be as foul-mouthed as one expects from a Dug, employing a female Gamorrean who he simply referred to as 'Tits' as his clerk, and her two 'no-good rent boys' as bouncers -- Gamorrean boars with truncheons made of rebar and space tape. He was, however, an eager customer, and set up an exchange for 100 kilos of spice for the next day -- just as soon as he made arrangements to get enough cash. As a good faith payment, he had one of his Gamorrean bodyguards produce a kilo of yarrock -- smuggled between folds of Gamorrean blubber.
While Lacroh Vob spent the day betting Felix's money on podraces, the paranoid pair returned to the ship and plugged Hate into the E-Web swivel blaster they installed as external security, flipping him over to his secondary programming -- that of a Separatist pilot droid, much more laconic and violent than his usual long-winded miserable self.
Some hours after an inebriated Lacroh Vob stumbled back aboard with a considerable pile of winnings, an alarm went off aboard the ship. Felix, Jark, and Vob all stumbled blearily up to the cockpit, to find that no outer security has been breached... but an interior alarm was going off -- the one on the locked smuggling compartment.
Hurrying to the cargo bay, they found the ramp unlocked and the compartment's control panel open, but no visible intruders... until they opened the smuggling compartment, and found three Gamorreans in black, skintight intrusion suits huddling on top of the cases of spice, trying to stay quiet. Apparently this trio had not just been hired for their muscle, but the female's considerable business and criminal acumen... which proved unimportant when Lacroh Vob crushed a boar's skull with a single, well-aimed punch and a disturbing squelching sound; blaster crossfire killing the sow, and an angry Felix's disruptor cooking the remaining thief where he stood.
It was all a bit messy.
The next morning, they visited Onog again, only to find him hiding out back, operating the automated defenses he set up at his front door... making him an easy target to stun and stuff in Lacroh Vob's duffel bag. Seeking a quiet spot to interrogate him, they took him out to a desert spice warehouse the party had raided and shut down a year before, at the cost of Maroolchen the Madclaw's life. In the very room where their first Wookiee buddy had died, Jark and Vob questioned the Dug -- who was all too eager to bemoan his incompetent employees and direct them at his Huttese boss, Ayolla the Huun, whose small-time criminal empire was run out of a bratskellar back in the city.
Leaving the Dug to wander in the desert (and upgrading the security on the spice warehouse, in case they needed a Malastaran bolthole in the future), they returned to confront Ayolla... a disgusting being even for a Hutt, a corpulent green-brown toad-skinned specimen with the rare genetic defect that resulted in Hutts growing hair -- in this case, an unkempt mess, similar to Albert Einstein's mop and mustache. Although Einstein did not constantly gorge himself in bratskellars, resulting in some truly alarming grease stains. Ayolla, in an Afrikaaner accent, expressed his displeasure with his over-eager subordinate (and the Dug species in general), professing that a hundred kilos of spice was too little to kill for, and gave the party a lucrative price. Before he could figure out that they had twenty times that in their cargo bay, Jark and Felix concluded their deal and skedaddled for Belsavis.
Belsavis was a bust. Navigating through screaming thunder-blizzards to the port of Plawal, Felix found that his IrrigoMax fertilizer, which hydrated arid Malastaran soil, was useless in the super-humid jungle rifts of Belsavis -- the Ithorian he tried to sell it to laughed at him out of both mouths. Meanwhile, Jark found that the small size of the port and the relative poverty of all but a few offworld smugglers meant he could sell no more than 75 kilos of spice to town boss Bran Kemple -- whose prehensile tongue Jark found entrancing, almost too much so to focus on business. Hoping to scavenge some kind of worthwhile investment out of this stop, they sunk all their profits thus far into another legitimate cargo -- Belsavian vine-silk, one of the galaxy's most luxurious fabrics. Perfect for sale at their next stop -- Zeltros!!!
One hyperspace mishap later, Jark found himself commenting that this tiny planet with its super-dense energetic core, dozens of moons, and enshrouding nebula was certainly as pretty as Zeltros was supposed to be... but didn't quite match the descriptions. When while contrails of light began streaming from the moons, and catastrophic system failures began all over the ship as power seemed to drain away into nothingness, they fled, trying three times to calculate a working course to Zeltros on the fly before they could successfully manage a jump. What that strange place has been, neither of them knew.
Zeltros, on the other hand, exceeded all expectations, starting when the orbital station they passed displayed kilometer-tall blinking holographic letters reading 'Welcome to Zeltros!' in neon pink. A friendly chat with a flight controller helped them find the cheapest parking on the planet, and Jark had no sooner stepped off the ship to find criminals than nubile Zeltrons of all genders swarmed him, shouting "welcome home!" When he informed them he had never actually been here before, they insisted on giving him an... exhaustive tour, leaving Felix on his own for four days. Finding a Zeltron matron who grew plush cacti in her garden, Felix broke even on the fertilizer sale, and as part of his payment, flew the friendly, curvaceous lady around the world as he sold off the silk -- his lack of business acumen resulting in slim but definite profits, which he promptly turned to to court the lady, as part of his payment had been in restaurant coupons, spa vouchers, and discount deals on massages (not to mention access to the VIP swimming pool). While it might stretch the imagination to find ways that a Toydarian and a humanoid would be physically compatible, Zeltrons are nothing but imaginative...
Four days later, very relaxed, the pair re-united (Lacroh Vob, in the meantime, had made a killing selling exotic Gamorrean sex toys he had found on the 'no-good rent boys,' and promptly begun gambling it away). Selling spice on a vacation planet netted them profits they had not imagined... some of them still coming in the form of more tourism promotions, which they spent with a will before departing. Jark made sure to get comm numbers for several of their contacts... including a Zeltron junkie connoisseur who paid them double, and a bouncer at the Dark Moon Nightclub, Zeltros' roughest S & M nightspot ("There's something everyone likes on Zeltros... and I like hurting people!").
Entirely satisfied with their vacation, they headed home.
Right now, I want to catalogue the glorious Hell that was last night's Star Wars: Scum and Villainy session.
Last week went very smoothly for the party, smoothly enough that I didn't bother to recap at the time. The party, determined to cement an undercover ID for Loren so they can pose as Imperials, teamed up with the Bothan SpyNet to forge and insert ISB credentials for Loren. Creating the identity of ISB Captain Maclure was a wholly Bothan bit of subterfuge, as was inserting him in the right records as a roving inspector who monitors remote listening posts. All he has to do is transmit the occasional report saying that all is quiet on the Rimward front, and his cover is maintained. However. There is one piece of the identity that could not be remotely created -- the code cylinders ranking Imperial officers receive, basically a hardware version of their private encryption keys -- proof of identity and authority all in one, and a feat of complex microcircuitry that has never been duplicated by an outside source.
The Bothans maintained that there was only one way to acquire code cylinders: to infiltrate an Imperial Ubiqtorate base, and claim the old cylinders had been destroyed. Ubiqtorate bases, however, are generally regarded as having the most impenetrable security of any facility imaginable... so everything had to be perfect. Fortunately, the Second Wind is a YZ-775, the model generally used as private transport for Imperial officers. The Bothans supplied stormtrooper uniforms for the crew... though only four crew members were humanoid enough to fit into them, and ISB captains travel with an 8-man squad. Hajab, to his dismay, had to pose as a slave, while Felix was put in an improvised brig as a criminal informant. Explaining the missing troopers necessitated the rest of the cover story: that Captain Maclure had narrowly survived a Hapan ambush, but in the process, had lost half his bodyguard and taken blasterfire to the chest, with his code cylinders heroically saving his life by absorbing most of the blaster energy before they were destroyed.
To mimic this, they put Loren in uniform, clipped cylinders containing the right metal alloys (but not circuitry) to his chest, and shot him with a blaster on low power settings.
Some of the party enjoyed watching this more than was probably healthy for them, but Loren's intrepid schemes have often earned him a bit of ire, so they considered it payback.
At last, the party headed out for their destination: the least secure, most backwater Ubiqtorate base in the galaxy: Ord Mynock, homeworld of the mynocks, the galaxy's most obnoxious species of pest.
Everything went swimmingly on the actual insertion. The party had the correct clearance codes to get past the planetary shield and the fleet of Old Republic Era warships guarding the world, received landing clearance, and were escorted by stormtroopers wielding flamethrowers and sonic weapons (mynocks are resistant to blasterfire and electricity) from their underground hangar to the base. Their cover story and forged computer logs were accepted, and met basic scrutiny... and not so basic scrutiny, as an agent of the Inquisitorius was currently inspecting the base, making certain new protocols from High Command were being carried out... namely, the integration of commissioned alien officers into the ranks. Loren found that the base medic was a Ruurian ensign, fortunately well-schooled in human anatomy, who left nothing behind of his blaster burn but a scar laced with exotic trace metals. Likewise, when he was forced to take 4 new stormtroopers aboard, 2 of them were not human, but massive T'Syriel. This caused some anxiety, but pretending at Imperial racism while acquiescing to the Inquisitor's demands, the party managed to get out of system without revealing to their new passengers that they were anything but standard Imperials. Almost the only notable incident on base was 'stormtrooper' Jark (the party's gunslinging Zeltron master of innuendo) flirting with personnel and downloading shareware apps onto his helmet HUD so that he could play boardgames with other on-duty stormtroopers. Fortunately, the party had installed a remote cut-off switch to his helmet microphone so that, in an emergency, they could shut him up, so all went well...
...Until, after jumping to hyperspace, they noticed the gradual draining of the ship's power. Six giant mynocks, known to residents of the system as Mynock Ords, had clamped on to the outer hull and were now nursing at the power cables, necessitating a battle in which constant retreat was necessary, as the mynocks kept eating the energy out of blasters and even spacesuits, declamping magnetic boots. One of the new troopers received several savage Mynock bites. However, between Jark's gunslinging prowess with a slugthrower borrowed from Ama, and Loren taking the Chir'daki out of the cargo bay long enough to blast one mynock and lure the others inside (into flamethrower range), the problem was dealt with.
As for the stormtroopers... Jark got them exceedingly drunk on Quermia, stripped their armor, and left them behind after a night of debauchery that left one in jail and two in a line marriage with locals. The forged dishonorable discharges (and compromising pictures) he left behind ensured that none of the troopers would be likely to comm any Imperial bases for a ride any time soon. And that was that.
Yesterday, however, set a whole new standard for a crazy session. With Ama's player out of town and both Hajab and Loren's players exhausted after late nights, when 6 PM rolled around, only Felix and Jark were available to play... so they devised a caper of their own.
Appropriating the party's old vessel, the Poetic Justice, from drydock, they loaded two tons of glitterstim aboard from the party's recent Kessel Run, and coaxed the depressive pilot droid V6-H8 (Hate, for short) to accompany them on a little vacation. Also along for the ride was Felix's loyal Herglic bodyguard, Lacroh Vob.
Flying the Justice was interesting, as several key systems had been stripped down and transferred to the Second Wind, such as navicomputers and fire-control systems, but Felix, being a superb pilot, and having brought Hate along more as a portable nav computer than a co-pilot, managed to plot out the itinerary of their little junket. First they would go to nearby Malastare, where two previous successful capers had been pulled. Next, they would hop further into the Outer Rim to Belsavis, an isolated system with enough smuggler traffic to justify unloading a little more spice. Finally, they would head for their ultimate destination: Zeltros! Not only the best vacation spot in the galaxy, but Jark's ancestral homeworld... which he had never visited, being raised as he was by roving entertainers.
After a close call with Malastaran customs, the pair realized that they would have to buy a legitimate cargo to take to Belsavis, or risk their cover. Jark started hunting for spice markets, while Felix tried to decide what they should import to a backwater iceball whose principal industry was exporting rare fruits from volcanic rift valleys. Finally, he settled on fertilizer -- a must in any agricultural setting -- and purchaed five tons of a local Gran product called IrrigoMax.
Meanwhile, Jark found that most drugs in the capitol were run through Onog the Dug, a podrace bookie who was, as the locals said, "connected connected" to some larger syndicate. Onog proved to be as foul-mouthed as one expects from a Dug, employing a female Gamorrean who he simply referred to as 'Tits' as his clerk, and her two 'no-good rent boys' as bouncers -- Gamorrean boars with truncheons made of rebar and space tape. He was, however, an eager customer, and set up an exchange for 100 kilos of spice for the next day -- just as soon as he made arrangements to get enough cash. As a good faith payment, he had one of his Gamorrean bodyguards produce a kilo of yarrock -- smuggled between folds of Gamorrean blubber.
While Lacroh Vob spent the day betting Felix's money on podraces, the paranoid pair returned to the ship and plugged Hate into the E-Web swivel blaster they installed as external security, flipping him over to his secondary programming -- that of a Separatist pilot droid, much more laconic and violent than his usual long-winded miserable self.
Some hours after an inebriated Lacroh Vob stumbled back aboard with a considerable pile of winnings, an alarm went off aboard the ship. Felix, Jark, and Vob all stumbled blearily up to the cockpit, to find that no outer security has been breached... but an interior alarm was going off -- the one on the locked smuggling compartment.
Hurrying to the cargo bay, they found the ramp unlocked and the compartment's control panel open, but no visible intruders... until they opened the smuggling compartment, and found three Gamorreans in black, skintight intrusion suits huddling on top of the cases of spice, trying to stay quiet. Apparently this trio had not just been hired for their muscle, but the female's considerable business and criminal acumen... which proved unimportant when Lacroh Vob crushed a boar's skull with a single, well-aimed punch and a disturbing squelching sound; blaster crossfire killing the sow, and an angry Felix's disruptor cooking the remaining thief where he stood.
It was all a bit messy.
The next morning, they visited Onog again, only to find him hiding out back, operating the automated defenses he set up at his front door... making him an easy target to stun and stuff in Lacroh Vob's duffel bag. Seeking a quiet spot to interrogate him, they took him out to a desert spice warehouse the party had raided and shut down a year before, at the cost of Maroolchen the Madclaw's life. In the very room where their first Wookiee buddy had died, Jark and Vob questioned the Dug -- who was all too eager to bemoan his incompetent employees and direct them at his Huttese boss, Ayolla the Huun, whose small-time criminal empire was run out of a bratskellar back in the city.
Leaving the Dug to wander in the desert (and upgrading the security on the spice warehouse, in case they needed a Malastaran bolthole in the future), they returned to confront Ayolla... a disgusting being even for a Hutt, a corpulent green-brown toad-skinned specimen with the rare genetic defect that resulted in Hutts growing hair -- in this case, an unkempt mess, similar to Albert Einstein's mop and mustache. Although Einstein did not constantly gorge himself in bratskellars, resulting in some truly alarming grease stains. Ayolla, in an Afrikaaner accent, expressed his displeasure with his over-eager subordinate (and the Dug species in general), professing that a hundred kilos of spice was too little to kill for, and gave the party a lucrative price. Before he could figure out that they had twenty times that in their cargo bay, Jark and Felix concluded their deal and skedaddled for Belsavis.
Belsavis was a bust. Navigating through screaming thunder-blizzards to the port of Plawal, Felix found that his IrrigoMax fertilizer, which hydrated arid Malastaran soil, was useless in the super-humid jungle rifts of Belsavis -- the Ithorian he tried to sell it to laughed at him out of both mouths. Meanwhile, Jark found that the small size of the port and the relative poverty of all but a few offworld smugglers meant he could sell no more than 75 kilos of spice to town boss Bran Kemple -- whose prehensile tongue Jark found entrancing, almost too much so to focus on business. Hoping to scavenge some kind of worthwhile investment out of this stop, they sunk all their profits thus far into another legitimate cargo -- Belsavian vine-silk, one of the galaxy's most luxurious fabrics. Perfect for sale at their next stop -- Zeltros!!!
One hyperspace mishap later, Jark found himself commenting that this tiny planet with its super-dense energetic core, dozens of moons, and enshrouding nebula was certainly as pretty as Zeltros was supposed to be... but didn't quite match the descriptions. When while contrails of light began streaming from the moons, and catastrophic system failures began all over the ship as power seemed to drain away into nothingness, they fled, trying three times to calculate a working course to Zeltros on the fly before they could successfully manage a jump. What that strange place has been, neither of them knew.
Zeltros, on the other hand, exceeded all expectations, starting when the orbital station they passed displayed kilometer-tall blinking holographic letters reading 'Welcome to Zeltros!' in neon pink. A friendly chat with a flight controller helped them find the cheapest parking on the planet, and Jark had no sooner stepped off the ship to find criminals than nubile Zeltrons of all genders swarmed him, shouting "welcome home!" When he informed them he had never actually been here before, they insisted on giving him an... exhaustive tour, leaving Felix on his own for four days. Finding a Zeltron matron who grew plush cacti in her garden, Felix broke even on the fertilizer sale, and as part of his payment, flew the friendly, curvaceous lady around the world as he sold off the silk -- his lack of business acumen resulting in slim but definite profits, which he promptly turned to to court the lady, as part of his payment had been in restaurant coupons, spa vouchers, and discount deals on massages (not to mention access to the VIP swimming pool). While it might stretch the imagination to find ways that a Toydarian and a humanoid would be physically compatible, Zeltrons are nothing but imaginative...
Four days later, very relaxed, the pair re-united (Lacroh Vob, in the meantime, had made a killing selling exotic Gamorrean sex toys he had found on the 'no-good rent boys,' and promptly begun gambling it away). Selling spice on a vacation planet netted them profits they had not imagined... some of them still coming in the form of more tourism promotions, which they spent with a will before departing. Jark made sure to get comm numbers for several of their contacts... including a Zeltron junkie connoisseur who paid them double, and a bouncer at the Dark Moon Nightclub, Zeltros' roughest S & M nightspot ("There's something everyone likes on Zeltros... and I like hurting people!").
Entirely satisfied with their vacation, they headed home.
