"It was supposed to be a simple job. A short hyperspace jump, a remote planet, and no blaster fire whatsoever. But simple jobs never stay simple, not on the edge of the Empire..."
The planet Gavos is a bit off the beaten hyperlanes. However this is what makes the Oridium mining there so special. The ore is rare and confined to only a few known areas of the galaxy. Most Oridium in the galaxy comes from the Belt of Arah, an asteroid belt on the Outer Rim. Gavos was where Xander, Zavi, Ymera and Roona were sent by Bargos the Hutt to inspect the newly acquired mine. The Hutt had won the mine from another Hutt, Thakba Besadii Diori, in a very high stakes sabbac game.
Passage was booked for the team on the Krayt Fang, a shabby looking and likely cheap transport, operating out of the Mos Shuuta area. With Kel Daro, put in place by Trex's boss, Teemo the Hutt, the group arrived at the mining facility on the highly toxic and dangerous planet. Gavos is small and rather inhospitable. Thick caustic clouds of ammonia and methane swathe the world and stinging acrid rain sprays down on the planet's benighted surface. Additionally the planet is close enough to the system's star that the sun's heat stirs up the cloud banks and whips them into violent storms. High winds tear across Gavos's surface, spraying anything in their path with corrosive ammonia and shedding unprotected equipment and individuals with high speed sand storms. Clearly not a vacation spot.
A double redundant set of eight generators encircles the mine at a hundred kilometer radius. Each generates a semi-permeable storm barrier, directing and slowing the raging winds around the mine. The team docked on the main landing pad and the 5-person team entered the facility. Immediately they were faced with the question of the blast scoring on the inside of the reception office and the locked barrier. Failing to access the room initially led the scout Roona to blast the manual locks that held the door closed. Signs of a blaster battle and what was likely blood greeted the team and immediately put them on edge.
The tenseness of the situation was intensified when four dead miners were found in the cantina, despite the cook droid's obvious unawareness of the tragedy that had befallen them. That was added to when Zavi found a dead Trandoshan, whose body had been jammed in a refresher. At the point, the team was on high alert.
Delving deeper into the facility, Xander suddenly noticed an R2 astromech droid roll into the corridor, spin around and quickly zip back out of sight. Following the droid brought them to the main work area for the mine and the operational office. More questionable information was found and the droid indicated that the mine had been attacked by pirates, led by a Sullustan. Roona dug up some papers that indicated the mine was perhaps not doing as well as Bargos hoped and security cameras, on the computer accessed by Xander, showed some peculiar scenes.
A scout droid left in a cloud car not 20 minutes before the team had arrived. Two hours before their arrival, the main mining shift entered the mines, seemingly unaware of any trouble. An hour before that, the freighter and its Sullustan captain arrived and were met by a tall thin droid and re-entered the cargo freighter. The fact that the camera feed ended right after that moment was suspicious. Did the freighter have the pirates that the R2 droid indicated? There were no signs of them. Except for the dead miners.
Moving deeper into the facility, the team found the cargo area and a workshop. There the R2 droid returned and buzzed at them, spouting crazy irrational binary bad-tempered babble! When Zavi tried to communicate with the R2, it seemed to calm down again some, saying the equivalent of "sorry, misunderstanding". While the R2 continued to cycle around the two large rooms, curiously, some of the team went to explore Landing Pad B. This was a slightly larger landing pad designed for cargo freighters and the ship seen on the security footage was indeed docked there still. Ominously, a dead miner was found laying behind some crates and upon inspecting the freighter, they also found the dead body of the Sullustan inside. Even more ominous, the freighter logs had recently been erased. Kel fired several blaster shots into the control pod in an attempt to incapacitate the freighter.
Deciding to try and get information from the erratic R2, the team tried to catch it but it was too quick and when Kel was twice able to get hands on it, the angry R2 zapped the bounty hunter with its built in arc welder both times and slipped away. Eventually it was hit by a stun blast from Ymera and a restraining bolt affixed. Unfortunately this did not give much information. Zavi was able to ascertain that the droid was in charge of maintaining the mining equipment, life support systems and the storm barrier generators. Strange that when asked directly about the storm barrier generators, the droid responded that it did not know anything about them.
Giving up on the apparently scrambled R2, the team moved into the mine entrance. Here a curious sight was beheld. Ten droids were hastily erecting a rough wall of heavy cargo crates. Six B1 battle droids moved boxes along with two PK worker droids as well as a binary load lifter. The droid supervisor, an EV unit, met the team and informed them that the mine was attacked by a group of mainly Aqualish thugs and went into the mines to deal with the remaining miners. The droids themselves were unable to defend the miners as they were of little use in a fight and so worked to erect a wall that would block the pirates in. A klaxon warning had indicated that the second of the eight storm shield generators had mysteriously failed.
Wind picked up more and even here at the mine entrance, the building creaked and groaned. What was causing the storm shield generators to fail? Why was the mine not as profitable as it once was? Where were the pirates that came in on the freighter? Why were they bothering to hunt down the miners? What was wrong with the R2 unit? And didn't that EV supervisor droid look a lot like the droid that met the Sullustan when the freighter initially landed?
More Debts to Pay (Session 1)
Moderator: GM Fang