A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…
The starfield shifts downwards to reveal a frozen world lit by a distant red star. The blue haze of atmosphere is visible along the curvature of the world and enormous swirling storm clouds can been seen in the skies below.
A large ship tumbles into view with pieces of it breaking off as small explosions burst outwards from the hull. Smoke streams from many places along its body and cargo canisters and other wreckage follow the ship downwards towards the planet. Pieces of debris begin burning as they enter the atmosphere. The front of the ship itself starts to glow as friction increases, but stays mostly intact as it descends.
[Interior of the spaceship]
The flight deck is filled with smoke and sparks fly from consoles and wall panels. One person lies slumped over a panel and another person, the pilot, is struggling with the ship’s controls. A metallic-blue protocol droid stands behind them. Through the viewport, a plasma cloud can be seen flaring angrily. The pilot suddenly looks up, just as the windscreen glass bursts inwards and flight deck fills with white-hot gas. The droid is thrown backwards as everything flares to white.
[Cut to the planet’s surface]
The whiteness resolves into swirling blizzard of ice and snow raging across the landscape. An orange glow shines through the clouds from behind, rapidly getting brighter and brighter and a howling roar is heard above the wind.
Pieces of wreckage burst through the clouds and crash into the ice-covered ground. Seconds later, the main part of the ship itself thunders out of the clouds and smashes into the ice, gouging a vast trench into the permafrost before eventually skidding to a halt. More wreckage slams into the ground for several seconds and then suddenly, everything stops – a moment of silence after the intense destruction. Then the snow storm closes in again and all wreckage is lost from view as everything fades back to white.
The Pitch:
Lured to the planet Tenga-B IV by the promise of a untouched wreck, the crew of the Didn’t See That Coming discover the ship hides more than they were expecting.
The Setup:
Tenga is a binary star system off the beaten track in the Outer Rim territories. The primary star, Tenga-A, is a G-class yellow star orbited by seven major bodies. Its companion, Tenga-B, is a red dwarf star with 5 planetary bodies of its own. A third set of planets, eleven in total, orbits the pair of stars.
Of the 23 planets and moons, only two are inhabitable – Tenga-A III and Tenga-B IV, and the latter is little more than a dirty, wind-swept snowball. Tenga-A III has a settlement on it (Parsine Station) that provides support to numerous mining operations in the outer worlds and asteroids. The remaining planetary bodies are either gas giants or crater-scarred planets and moons. Mining in this system has been ongoing for many years and the resources are drawing close to being exhausted. Countless minor moonlets orbit the gas giants.
A mid-sized freighter, the The Pride of Soral, was reported lost in this system 15 years ago (15 BBY). Since no record of its arrival was received, the assumption was that it was en-route to Parsine Station when it mis-jumped and vanished with all hands.
A sniff of a rumour circulated at the time that a degraded beacon signal was detected in the vicinity of Tenga-B, but searches of the asteroid belt mining region (since closed down) amounted to nothing. You have heard this rumour before but dismissed it as wishful thinking. But while hunting down another wreck, you picked up a clue about the beacon that wasn’t widely circulated at the time. The signal apparently included a voice message that had a single discernible word in it – “winds.”
The only world in that system that has any winds on it is Tenga-B IV. Not much to go on, but here you are, about to enter orbit around the planet.
For background details about the lead up to this session, take a look at this blog post. Star Wars RPG – Background
Session 0
We started the evening off by getting to know each other’s characters. I had asked each player to answer a few questions about their characters:
- what they secretly thought of the Empire and the Alliance.
- what they were willing to tell other people about how they feel about the Empire and the Alliance.
- what they owed and to whom/what. This is intended to give them some obligation/debt that they owe and will come back at them at some point in the future
We then spent a bit of time working on the quirks of their ship. The Didn’t See That Coming is a junk-heap welded onto a scrap-pile, with an engine. I borrowed a starship quirks table from here (link) and adapted them to the Star Wars universe. Rolling randomly, the players determined that the ship A) had a faulty airlock, B) a power plant that tends to cut out at inconvenient times, C) a leaky viewport (Soontir used a TIE Fighter canopy as a viewport for a makeshift salvage control deck – oddly enough, it leaks), and D) the water recycling system is faulty. There is one other fault that the players haven’t discovered yet.
Next, we determined that Cate (R2-C8) the astromech droid has a number of quirks too. It is nervous around humans, it dislikes Jawas intensely, it hates extreme cold weather, its batteries run down very quickly and it has a garish colour scheme (purple and orange).
After these preliminaries, we started the game.
Chapter 1 – Break and Enter
The crew found the wreck in the lee of an ice-volcano. The bulk of the ship was buried deep in the ice, but the nose was exposed enough to return a reading on the sensors. Landing their vessel close by was easy enough, despite the strong winds, but crossing the 100 meters to the wreck site was a little tricky. Using a system of ropes and pitons hammered into the ice, the team made their way to the darkened shape ahead. Cate refused to step outside and was left in the ship to monitor the environment and provide early warning of any threats.
Each crew member was dressed in extreme weather gear to counter the -80C temperatures, but the lighter gravity (0.8 standard) made things a little easier. I didn’t think of it at the time, but due to the bulkiness of their gear, any dexterity-based action should be -1D.
As they entered through the shattered flight deck, they were presented by a wall of ice. Several strange holes, about 30cm in diameter, were drilled (melted?) through the ice leading into the interior of the ship, each one curving away after about a meter or more. Soontir tossed a small piece of metal in one of them, but it appeared to have no effect.
With no explanation presenting itself (poor Planetary Knowledge skill roll), the team shrugged and decided to cut their way in. Soontir lit up his plasma torch and melted through the ice quickly, pooling water at their feet and then freezing again within seconds. The ice wall was around 2m deep and they were through it without any problems. An eerie silence met them inside the ship. The bridge was a melted ruin and none of the controls were recognisable, let alone salvageable. Beyond the flight deck, the walls and floor were covered in a slippery layer of ice, making movement slow. A corridor led inside the vessel, past the galley and a briefing room.
As they peered inside, a rapid movement was sensed by our Scout (Simon). Whipping his blaster rifle around, he saw a weird crystalline creature, shaped like a serpent but flying through the air (think Ice Wraith from Skyrim), coming at him. Two more of these creatures came out of the rooms at the same time, attacking the party from three sides. Jow roared inside his helmet and fired two shots off with his bowcaster. The first one hit and wounded the crystal wraith, which dropped to the floor before it had a chance to attack. Simon’s blaster rifle took care of the second and Jon’s blaster pistol was in his hand ready to fire as he dived inside the briefing room. Soontir was fascinated by these creatures and stood by with his plasma cutter at the ready (he was unarmed).
It was around this time that my phone decided we had been going for long enough and cut out. I had a bad transmitter (“TK 421 why aren’t you at your post?”) and we had to end the session.
So overall, it was a fun session and we all had a good time. The players got to roll some dice, I had a chance to ad-lib some situations, and we all got to test out the rules. I’m looking forward to the next session.
