In the remote Outer Rim Territories, a band of smugglers and fringers work to escape a debt owed to the ruthless gangster, Sinasu the Hutt. Summoned back to the planet Tatooine, they are given a chance to loosen his grip by flying an unusual smuggling run. First, they must withstand the darkening underworld and the might of the Empire.
Dropping out of hyperspace into the sector, Xander noticed a pair of ships on long range sensors far outside the normal traffic zone for Tatooine. They were on the far side of the planet. Ymira suggested to take a look and off they went to inspect. An unidentified starship was badly damaged and pursued by another ship like their own, a GHTroc 720.
The victim was broadcasting a very garbled distress call which Xander tried to improve. But soon after, the pursuing ship's Captain cut in over the transmission. "Stand down and stay out of our way and we'll give you a reward. We have a bounty here to claim and you need to just sit tight and stay out of the way, if you know what's good for you."
The team discussed it for a few moments and decided they were not about to interfere in someone else's "bounty". Little did they know this was a pirate ship attacking a defenseless freighter. Circling out of the path of the attack, the Archelon came in behind the one-sided combat and waited until the freighter was disabled. While scanning the other ship, Xander found that the ship was registered as 'the Vermin'. The pirate captain was none to pleased about the scan but the team placated him enough and then transferred over 400 credits for their inaction. The Archelon then headed to the planet and set down atop the canyon walls above Vapor Station.
Vapor Station - once a small community of failing moisture harvesters, now a tiny community of thieves and thugs working for Sinasu the Hutt. Vapor Station lies at the juncture where a narrow, steep stone canyon forks into two smaller crevasses. Crumbling clay structures dot the dry canyon bed,
with a few fronting natural caves in the walls above. With the canyon floor too narrow and rocky for even small starships to land, a docking bay lies near the canyon rim. A rough, steep switchback path ties the landing bay to the valley floor far below.
The team soon stood in front of a dilapidated clay storage building on the valley floor, where the smaller crevasses join the main canyon. The Archelon was in the docking bay above. Before them was a heavily-scarred Rodian big game hunter called Jora. He is Sinasu the Hutt’s local mouthpiece. To either side of Jora are two battered, but reinforced, metal crates. One is roughly a one-meter cube, fully enclosed, with a top covered by an array of blinking lights and readouts. The other is much larger, two meters by three meters by two meters high. It has open slats at the top and upper sides, but the interior is too dark to make out in the harsh Tatooine sunlight. Each rests on a hovering repulsorsled.
Jora wastes no time with pleasantries. “So, you’re Sinasu’s new smugglers, eh? I can’t believe Sinasu is risking this job on you lot, but that’s not my problem. Your job is simple enough. Take these two crates to Sinasu on Nar Shaddaa within four days. They are to arrive intact. The smaller one holds a pair of krayt dragon eggs inside an incubator. I hope you’re good with machines. It’s a bit temperamental.
“This larger box holds the bigger prize. A real live young krayt dragon I captured a few days ago. I’ve got it sedated. You’ll need to keep it that way. This medpac holds enough sedative for a week, far more than you’ll need. It takes one dose every twelve hours. There are also enough liquid nutrition bags in here to keep it alive. You’ll have to switch out the bags every eight hours. Just hook them up to the dispenser behind the small door at the rear of the crate.
“Now, this datapad holds directions to Greentop. That’s Sinasu’s docking tower on Nar Shaddaa. Don’t lose it. A Mon Calamari named Lanni will meet
you to pick up the crates on arrival. There is one complication. We had forgeries of the permits to legally transport these creatures in Imperial space. The Imperial bureaucracy issued new forms a week ago, and we don’t have them. This chip holds an old form forgery, but it likely won’t hold up under scrutiny now. Try to avoid using it. “Questions?”
Irdis took the medpac, while Zavi checked out the controls on the incubator. The datapad that was handed to Xander gave them a recap of their instructions and a promised payment of a cool 10,000 credits. Then things went bad. Suddenly there was gunfire all around them! Several rounds strike the area around the team. One shot hits the smaller repulsorsled, causing its repulsorlift to short out and drop the sled instantly to the ground with a loud bang. Another round hits the medpac holding the sedatives and liquid food bags, piercing one of each and causing them to leak out of the case.
Jora points at the canyon rim and shouts “Tusken Raiders! Ugh, another raid! I told Sinasu they would never stop. Get those crates out of here’” He draws his blaster and dives for cover. Ymira and Roona start firing, while Irdis collects up the damaged medpac and he and Xander start pushing the larger repulsorsled up the switchback. Zavi goes to work on the repulsorsled with the incubator that was damaged, in an effort to get it moving again. Xander sent a signal to R5-D12 to get the Archelon into takeoff mode and be ready to drop one of the cargo ramps.
A group of three snipers hides on the canyon rim above the team's ship and a second group of three is similarly concealed, spread along the opposite rim. They open fire hitting Jora and Zavi, while slugs rain down around the rest. Soon the inhabitants of Vapor Station start to come and join the fray. A few of the snipers are thinned out, but there are more groups on the canyon floor looking to engage in close combat.
Zavi send a retaliatory strike and his grenade struck true, clearing one ridge. Xander took over to starting moving that sled and Irdis kept pushing the larger sled up the switchback as fast as he could. The conflict on the lower area was soon under control as the Raiders switched to fighting more of the locals. As Irdis reached the docking bay plateau, he could see that there were more Raiders here moving to cut them off from the ship. Apparently they had taken umbrage at the capture of the Krayt Dragons and attempting to stop their removal from the planet.
By this point though the team was moving in synchrony and with precision. Ymira and Roona each eliminated one of the Tuskens and then Irdis let the repulsorsled cascade slowly on its own way toward the ship and engaged the two remaining enemy. The first went down with a simple slash of his vibroknife, and the second with more of a flourish as the Chiss spun under the clumsy gaffi stick swing and sent his punch dagger up under the chin of the Raider, who quickly slumped to the ground.
The cargo was quickly loaded onto the ship and final preparations were made for lift off, as more slugs slammed harmlessly into the side of the Archelon. Its armor was too strong to be damaged by slugthrowers and only a hit in a vital area, like the engines might cause concern. Soon they whisked their way back to Mos Espa.
With damage to the food packs and sedatives, there was only enough left for their trip to Nar Shadaa. That would be about 37 hours, R5 calculated, and only gave the about a 4-5 hour cushion against unexpected events. The group decided to purchase another two days of food and sedatives in order to give themselves some leeway and they they entered hyperspace on the space lanes to the Smuggler's Moon!
Crates of Krayts (Episode 12)
Moderator: GM Fang
Re: Crates of Krayts (Session 12)
Nar Shaddaa, nicknamed the "Smuggler's Moon," was the notorious moon of the planet Nal Hutta, homeworld of the Hutt species. It was home to a large criminal underworld dominated by bounty hunters and Hutt crime lords. An ecumenopolis, the entire surface of Nar Shaddaa was covered in urban sprawl.
After they drop out of hyperspace, quite close to the planet, Xander runs a scan to find the location of Greentop. It was relatively easy to find the coordinates and Ymira piloted the ship to the location that Xander sent to her control panel.
The flight path winds through the towers and spires of the upper levels of Nar Shaddaa. All are heavily weathered and worn, with decades of dirt
and grime covering most. Turning between two enormous residence blocks, you see an eighty-story tall spire topped with four levels of five green-painted landing pads each.
Greentop is aptly named or was. As you approach, you realize the entire structure is a burned-out hulk of a building, with broken windows and a smoke
stained exterior. Whatever befell the building, it spread fast enough to engulf the speeders and starships parked on its pads. The derelict craft and debris leave no room for landing. A few stray wisps of smoke still emanate from the building and the vessels.
"Oh hell," Zavi stated from his spot in the dorsal gunner controls. The sentiment was echoed by the rest of the team.
After they drop out of hyperspace, quite close to the planet, Xander runs a scan to find the location of Greentop. It was relatively easy to find the coordinates and Ymira piloted the ship to the location that Xander sent to her control panel.
The flight path winds through the towers and spires of the upper levels of Nar Shaddaa. All are heavily weathered and worn, with decades of dirt
and grime covering most. Turning between two enormous residence blocks, you see an eighty-story tall spire topped with four levels of five green-painted landing pads each.
Greentop is aptly named or was. As you approach, you realize the entire structure is a burned-out hulk of a building, with broken windows and a smoke
stained exterior. Whatever befell the building, it spread fast enough to engulf the speeders and starships parked on its pads. The derelict craft and debris leave no room for landing. A few stray wisps of smoke still emanate from the building and the vessels.
"Oh hell," Zavi stated from his spot in the dorsal gunner controls. The sentiment was echoed by the rest of the team.
Re: Crates of Krayts (Session 12)
Visual scans of Greentop show a number of burned out hulks of starships, mostly of the YT-class, including several 1300s and a few 2400s as well. They eventually realize that there is absolutely no one visible anywhere on the building. No droids, salvage crews, or even scavengers remain. There are a few official notices that the structure is declared unsafe, but Roona says that shouldn’t scare away Nar Shaddaa’s downtrodden, desperate, or opportunistic inhabitants. Clearly something bad enough happened here that nobody is willing to return.
Needing a landing platform of some sort, they found three public pads in the surrounding area. Choosing the closest, as it had a direct view of Greentop, they flew over to it, about a kilometer away from their original target.
Rowo’s Landing is a massive cylindrical tower with a couple of dozen speeder and starship hangar bays. It is old, grimy and heavily dented, but still functional and busy. The team contacts Rowo's Landing and request clearance to land. They’re given the choice of a large hanger, or shared space on the open platform at the top of the tower. Ymira requests a hangar and the Archelon sets down comfortably inside.
When they land, a brightly tattooed Twi’lek immediately approaches the vessel. He is all smiles, though somewhat suspicious of them, perhaps because this is their first visit here. The Twi'lek is clearly a salesman and he rattles off the costs for various services. The docking fee is 200 credits per day without power or resupply. He insists that power will be an additional 100 credits mandatory and the group accepts.
When he asks what business they have here, Ymira asks what he knows about Greentop and this makes the Twi'lek suddenly very concerned. He immediately shuts up and tries to get rid of them as soon as possible. He’ll allow the ship to stay for one day, then he wants them to leave, or he triples the prices. Asking what the issue is gets the following response that he wants nothing to do with the Greentop disaster, or anyone involved
with Sinasu. He suggests they ask around if they want to know what happened or where to find Sinasu. He takes his payment and leaves.
With Greentop destroyed, the team has no local contact with Sinasu to fall back on. Their best hope is to find out what happened to Greentop and hope it leads back to the Hutt or Lanni, their contact. While Roona and Ymira go out in search of potential leads in the seedy parts of Nar Shaddaa, Xander locates some news story, including video and holographic recordings from two days ago, reporting the burning of Greentop. The video shows
flames at every level of the structure, some an odd greenish-blue color. The report speculates that some sort of chemical spill caused the fast moving fire, and warns local residents to avoid the building. There is no mention of Sinasu or any owner of the building. Meanwhile Irdis checks on the status of the Krayts and Zavi tinkers with the incubator to make sure it continues running satisfactorily.
Ymira and Roona take some time to cozy up in the cantinas and Roona eventually finds an infochant that she heard about previously. A hundred credits later and they learn that apparently Sinasu the Hutt is involved in a turf war with Noako the Hutt, his hated rival. Everyone thinks Noako arranged a hit on Greentop. Bounty hunters are rumored to be watching the place, which is why no one will go near it. Furthermore, speculation is that Noako destroyed Greentop to avenge the loss of his best smuggling ship, a repurposed Corellian corvette called Blackmist, which crashed into Noako’s own landing pad. After being directed to another info source, they also learned that there is very quiet speculation that one of Sinasu’s lieutenants, a Rodian named Pon, is working for Noako. Pon was seen badly burned in the fire, but no one knows where he is now. The best guess is BactaMax medical center.
Needing a landing platform of some sort, they found three public pads in the surrounding area. Choosing the closest, as it had a direct view of Greentop, they flew over to it, about a kilometer away from their original target.
Rowo’s Landing is a massive cylindrical tower with a couple of dozen speeder and starship hangar bays. It is old, grimy and heavily dented, but still functional and busy. The team contacts Rowo's Landing and request clearance to land. They’re given the choice of a large hanger, or shared space on the open platform at the top of the tower. Ymira requests a hangar and the Archelon sets down comfortably inside.
When they land, a brightly tattooed Twi’lek immediately approaches the vessel. He is all smiles, though somewhat suspicious of them, perhaps because this is their first visit here. The Twi'lek is clearly a salesman and he rattles off the costs for various services. The docking fee is 200 credits per day without power or resupply. He insists that power will be an additional 100 credits mandatory and the group accepts.
When he asks what business they have here, Ymira asks what he knows about Greentop and this makes the Twi'lek suddenly very concerned. He immediately shuts up and tries to get rid of them as soon as possible. He’ll allow the ship to stay for one day, then he wants them to leave, or he triples the prices. Asking what the issue is gets the following response that he wants nothing to do with the Greentop disaster, or anyone involved
with Sinasu. He suggests they ask around if they want to know what happened or where to find Sinasu. He takes his payment and leaves.
With Greentop destroyed, the team has no local contact with Sinasu to fall back on. Their best hope is to find out what happened to Greentop and hope it leads back to the Hutt or Lanni, their contact. While Roona and Ymira go out in search of potential leads in the seedy parts of Nar Shaddaa, Xander locates some news story, including video and holographic recordings from two days ago, reporting the burning of Greentop. The video shows
flames at every level of the structure, some an odd greenish-blue color. The report speculates that some sort of chemical spill caused the fast moving fire, and warns local residents to avoid the building. There is no mention of Sinasu or any owner of the building. Meanwhile Irdis checks on the status of the Krayts and Zavi tinkers with the incubator to make sure it continues running satisfactorily.
Ymira and Roona take some time to cozy up in the cantinas and Roona eventually finds an infochant that she heard about previously. A hundred credits later and they learn that apparently Sinasu the Hutt is involved in a turf war with Noako the Hutt, his hated rival. Everyone thinks Noako arranged a hit on Greentop. Bounty hunters are rumored to be watching the place, which is why no one will go near it. Furthermore, speculation is that Noako destroyed Greentop to avenge the loss of his best smuggling ship, a repurposed Corellian corvette called Blackmist, which crashed into Noako’s own landing pad. After being directed to another info source, they also learned that there is very quiet speculation that one of Sinasu’s lieutenants, a Rodian named Pon, is working for Noako. Pon was seen badly burned in the fire, but no one knows where he is now. The best guess is BactaMax medical center.
Re: Crates of Krayts (Session 12)
Finding out that their contact, Lanni, was also wounded in the blast, the hope was that she might also be at BactaMax. Irdis went there with his medpac and doctor's coat and attempted to bluff his way in. BactaMax is a large corporate medical center, filled with the sick and injured from around the planet. It is formal, reasonably secure and difficult to move around in without authorization. Lanni initially proves difficult to find, as Irdis doesn’t know her last name, and the staff won’t volunteer any information.
Irdis makes up a name, which obviously doesn't bring up any results and he claims they are either looking wrong as this is his patient or the computer is incorrect. Being a Chiss helps him doubly intimidate and charm the human and pantoran staff at the check-in desk. He eventually manages to get them to allow him to come around and look in the computer himself. After some time, he manages to get the computer to bring up her record and they give him a map to her location deep inside BactaMax.
Irdis soon discover she is still in a bacta tank. She is groggy, but conscious. Even better, she knows who the team are, as she was going to handle their arrival and offloading. She can direct them to Sinasu’s likely hideout, which is an outlaw mechanic’s shop called TechTank. It’s concealed in an enormous underground water tank that is part of Nar Shaddaa’s massive support system. It is about ten kilometers from Greentop.
Lanni also asks about the damage at Greentop. She confirms her suspicions about the sabotage, implicating Pon. She thinks Sinasu is unaware, because she saw the Hutt direct his underlings to take a badly burned Pon onto his escape speeder. She is somewhat concerned about the bounty hunters, but given her low status, she doesn’t think she is worth tangling with BactaMax security.
The team debates between taking land speeders or the Archelon to the TechTank location. The final choice is made when they obviously cannot take the crates of krayts on speeders. Lanni told Irdis that finding TechTank is difficult. They cannot fly directly to the point indicated on a map. They must fly their ship or speeder into a sprawling water recycling and treatment complex covering several square kilometers. They must find their way through enormous pipework, with pipes up to three meters in diameter, clouds of steam from venting pipes, and other obstructions. Ymira fresh from flying around the lava streams of Sullust is confident in her ability and the ship takes off.
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No XPs awarded yet as the mission is not concluded.
Group spoils (update)
8964 credits (gained 400 from bounty hunter, spent 200 on sedatives, 1980 on dragon food, 300 on docking fees, 220 on speeder rental, 100 and 50 on infochants)
Gear: quick sale value in ()
2x Blaster Rifle (450 ea)
1x Holdout Blaster (100 ea)
2x Laser Pistol (200 ea)
1x Stun grenades (45 ea)
Tool Kit (175)
Glow Rod (5)
Brass knuckles (10)
5x Breath Masks (25 ea)
Irdis makes up a name, which obviously doesn't bring up any results and he claims they are either looking wrong as this is his patient or the computer is incorrect. Being a Chiss helps him doubly intimidate and charm the human and pantoran staff at the check-in desk. He eventually manages to get them to allow him to come around and look in the computer himself. After some time, he manages to get the computer to bring up her record and they give him a map to her location deep inside BactaMax.
Irdis soon discover she is still in a bacta tank. She is groggy, but conscious. Even better, she knows who the team are, as she was going to handle their arrival and offloading. She can direct them to Sinasu’s likely hideout, which is an outlaw mechanic’s shop called TechTank. It’s concealed in an enormous underground water tank that is part of Nar Shaddaa’s massive support system. It is about ten kilometers from Greentop.
Lanni also asks about the damage at Greentop. She confirms her suspicions about the sabotage, implicating Pon. She thinks Sinasu is unaware, because she saw the Hutt direct his underlings to take a badly burned Pon onto his escape speeder. She is somewhat concerned about the bounty hunters, but given her low status, she doesn’t think she is worth tangling with BactaMax security.
The team debates between taking land speeders or the Archelon to the TechTank location. The final choice is made when they obviously cannot take the crates of krayts on speeders. Lanni told Irdis that finding TechTank is difficult. They cannot fly directly to the point indicated on a map. They must fly their ship or speeder into a sprawling water recycling and treatment complex covering several square kilometers. They must find their way through enormous pipework, with pipes up to three meters in diameter, clouds of steam from venting pipes, and other obstructions. Ymira fresh from flying around the lava streams of Sullust is confident in her ability and the ship takes off.
-----------------------------------------------
No XPs awarded yet as the mission is not concluded.
Group spoils (update)
8964 credits (gained 400 from bounty hunter, spent 200 on sedatives, 1980 on dragon food, 300 on docking fees, 220 on speeder rental, 100 and 50 on infochants)
Gear: quick sale value in ()
2x Blaster Rifle (450 ea)
1x Holdout Blaster (100 ea)
2x Laser Pistol (200 ea)
1x Stun grenades (45 ea)
Tool Kit (175)
Glow Rod (5)
Brass knuckles (10)
5x Breath Masks (25 ea)