Session 6
Apr 13, 2021Testing git hook
Naturally, we do not let them out. The guy behind the door says his name is Burabon. Oren’s eyes get wide. “This guy is a hero on Ryloth. He fought for Twi’lek’s to own the mines there.” Even though that means nothing to us, we open the door.
In the cargo bay, it’s clear Burabon’s seen better days. One of his lekku is missing, he’s in a cage, and worst of all, he’s old.
We let him out of his cage, and rather than be thankful, he insists we go to Ryloth. I would usually tell him to buzz off, but MRDR informs me that the nav system on this rust bucket is ancient. It has only five planets, and of those five, only two are within range of our ship, Ryloth, and Christophsis. Christophsians kill strangers, so Ryloth it is!
Ryloth isn’t a welcoming planet. It’s full of vast deserts and volcanos. There is a beautiful forest around the equator, filled with things that eat people like us. Everyone lives underground. Burabon directs us to Nabat, a settlement under the desert.
Nabet is quite something. On the surface, nothing but a desolate wasteland but under it, a bustling city. We land the Fang and are hesitant to leave it since the last person who left it got it stolen. Burabon insists not only will no harm come of it but will be repaired and refueled. Burabon is visibly excited, almost breaking into a jog as he leads us deeper into the city. We take a break to shop around with our newfound wealth that MRDR tried hiding from us. We get some backpacks, stim packs for us, and repair kits for the metal guys.
Burabon takes us to a doorway that’s trying so hard to be inconspicuous that it’s very clearly hiding something. After some secret password exchange with the other side, they let us all in. As we are walking in, Burabon whispers, “Welcome to a secret organization designed to protected the interests of the Twi’lek on Ryloth.” I get a sneaking suspicion that refueling a ship isn’t going to cost us money.
We meet a beautiful blue-skinned woman named Nyn, who is inexplicably happy to see this old man back. It turns out that Burabon likes to run his mouth and has told her that we are having trouble with Temo the hut. Burabon is starting to get to me, so I ask Nyn, what’s the deal with him? Why does everyone like this walking pile of bones? She discusses how he’s a leader and boasts the morale of the troops he works with. I’m sure he is a great leader, but at least I have both my ears.
Nyn tells of the problems she is having with Temo as well. The miners are getting pressure from more thugs than usual, and she suspects Temo is behind it. If we help her out, she will refuel and repair our ship along with appropriate payment. It’s a bad deal, but we know we’ll need to handle Temo at some point, so we might as well get paid. We ask for dinner recommendations to discuss it amongst ourselves.
At the glowing recommendation of Nyn, we go to Palpatinos, a place with something called unlimited pasta. Oren breaks all social norms and goes to the bathroom before we even order. I thought I was helping him out by ordering for him, but I guess he does like calamari. He throws a tantrum, saying I’m insulting his Quarran culture or something, and insists on getting something else. So now we have to wait for him to get his new order while we have all already eaten.
To fill the hours this is turning into, Oren regals us stories of his imperial days. While manufacturing droids for the empire, Oren used to put protocol droids heads on battle droids' bodies by mistake. It’s quite an amusing tale, but MRDR seems to be having none of it. Without any warning, he powers down at the table. We honestly thought he died, or whatever the droid equivalent is, except he was still emitting a low humming sound from time to time. Because there is no way we are carrying a 2-ton hunk of metal, we leave him there before the check comes and head back to the hideout.
It seemed like we had just started flying through hyperspace when the Crate Fang came to a sudden stop. We sat there looking out of the cockpit, drinking in the cosmos. The problems of Temo and Tatooine seemed so small while looking into the endless black void of black.
A sudden wailing of sirens brought us out of our poetic hypnosis and back to reality. Mixed in with the alarm seems to be the sounds of someone yelling in Gamorrean. On top of the assault on our hearing, something rancid is attacking our noses. We may not be alone on this ship.
MRDR gets on the computer to try and diagnose what is going on. It seems the loud wailing is an alert to tell us we are running out of fuel. On top of that, MRDR finds a transponder emitting our coordinates every 5 minutes back to…someone. I doubt it’s to someone who has our best interests at heart. MRDR slices it to transmit every hour but can’t turn the thing off. He also finds the source of the sound, a music player. It seems like Treks had a love for Gamorrean opera. Between that and the smell on this ship, she had to have paid her crew handsomely.
After some searching around the ship, we figure out the source of the smell, Wookie pelts. It seems Treks had quite an operation here. Wookie pelts are some of the most expensive items on the black market. I’m all for finding alternative methods of money-making but skinning a Wookie is just…vile.
It’s not a bad haul. I found a blaster, MRDR found 1000 credits, and attempted to lie and keep half of it. I’m a little proud of him for trying to pull one over on us. We are about to open the last cargo hold door, and we hear a “HEY, LET ME OUT”.
We are flying through space with a few tie fighters on our tail. I take control of the ship and order Lance to get into one of the gunner seats. The tie Fighters start taking shots at us, so I start doing some evasive maneuvers. Midroll, a figure comes crashing out of a side panel of the ship. Oren, the not actually dead Quarren, looks at us bewildered by what is happening. We don’t know how or why he was in there, but there is no time for him to explain. We order him to the second gunner seat.
The tie fighters don’t stand a chance. MRDR slices one of the fighter’s shields, powering them down to almost nothing. They vie for a better position, but I deftly outmaneuver them, giving Lance and Oren the perfect shots. They take the shots, and the Tie Fighters become a pair of fiery explosions.
And for the first time today, it’s quiet. We take a second to gather our thoughts. Given the choice, I would pick anyone else to be my crew, but it seems the force has intertwined our lives together. I’m not sure where we are going next, but it seems we are going together. I fire up the hyperdrive and prepare the jump.
“Buckle up,” I tell the crew. Lance Slaughterbot, MRDR, and Oren the Quarren all “take a seat in the cockpit. I start the jump sequence to an outer rim planet “with a bit of hesitation. I feel almost sad like I’m finishing a chapter of my “life. Then I remember I was in a dungeon yesterday and quickly hit the jump “button.
Nothing happens.
“Oren, did you install the new Hypermatter Reactor?” I ask. “Uh, no. I should “probably do that, right?” he replies. Literally anyone else to be my crew.
We are speeding towards the Crate Fang, ready to get off this planet.
Through no fault of the driver, the speeder lurches up, throwing Oren out of the vehicle. At this speed, he might actually be dead. We all agree corpses are gross, so it’s best not to look behind us and check.
We decide to take a quick detour into society’s gross underbelly to see what we can learn about Temo. We meet a friend of a friend of a cousin of Temo’s who informs us that Temo isn’t just a hardened criminal, he also lies sometimes. Sometimes lying to people who don’t take kindly to people lying to them.
We start to lose hope of ever finding a way to deal with Temo when a trash can starts following us. It’s Lance Slaughterbot! We go back to the ship and formulate a plan. We decide to rush the ship and kill everything in it.
With no blaster and no credits to buy one, I decide to use my exceptional driving skills to try and run the droids over. Lance gets in the speeder with me, and MRDR gets ready to rush the droids. I put the speeder in gear, and I start speeding towards the droids. The droids stand perfectly still. They are just too unpredictable, and I miss them entirely. As I’m passing the droids, GRONK flips out of the speeder in a way that only a trash can can. In mid-air, he ruthlessly kills a droid in two shots. MRDR try’s to throw off the droids by mimicking someone who can’t aim. He’s doing a stellar job.
I bring the speeder around and try to take out the remaining droid. He’s too elusive and sporadic in his movements, and I miss him altogether. The remaining droid takes out MRDR. GRNK, fueled by the hatred of seeing his droid brethren shot, kills the last droid. MRDR’s prognosis doesn’t look good. No one here has any experience repairing droids. Somehow though, I manage to mend the droid with our single repair kit. It’s as if it was the will of the force this droid to live. I give him back his gun that somehow fell into my pocket when we assumed he was dead.
Before we can regroup, Treks runs out of the freighter with droids in tow and takes a shot at me. It’s bad enough I don’t think I can continue driving the speeder. I hand MRDR the speeder, and he gives me his gun. I start to aim the gun, but the droids tag me. It’s not looking good for me. I see MRDR careening towards Treks at a shocking speed. As the walls close in around me, I see parts of Trek’s body flying through the air.
I wake up on the floor of a ship to what sounds like screaming. I make my way to the cockpit to find Lance Slaughterbot lifelessly piloting the ship away from a couple tie fighters. It doesn’t look like he’s going to shake them. We’ll have to take them out.
With our hands on the hyper matter reactor ignitor, we set off to the spaceport in search of Captin Trek’s ship.
And by “search,” I mean in a dump like Mos Shuta, it’s hard to miss the giant dirt lot they’ve deemed a spaceport. As a pilot by trade, I quickly recognize the ship as the YT-1300. Despite looking like it would burn up entering a planets atmo, the YT-1300 does fly adequately. They only occasionally burn up entering a planets atmo. Yet this is the only thing resembling a spacecraft in this town that can make the jump to hyperspace, so we have to steal it.
We have the part needed to repair the ship, and Oren claims he can “fix it” if we get inside. Thusly we simply have to slip past the armed droids parked in front of the loading ramp. Machines that don’t eat, sleep, or breathe or do anything except sit in front of a loading ramp, pointing blasters at anyone who walks by. Just slip right on by. Looking at the ship, it has a set of docking clamps. Docking clamps won’t let the ship take off and can only be released by a computer in the control tower.
So things are going well.
MRDR comes up with a brilliant plan. We should just walk up to the droids and pretend we are from Vorns to install the hyper matter igniter reactor. He continually insists that we should also make Treks pay for the part. I thought we were all in agreement that we needed to put as much distance between us, and Temo and his daughter as possible. Not recoup a measly 400 credits! Unfortunately, we are stuck with this plan.
Surprisingly, droids are less hard to trick than expected and wave us in. We come face to face with a Trandoshan who questions why we’re on his ship. Based on his sunny disposition, this is probably Treks. MRDR puts on his protocol droid charm and says, “We are from…The workshop place…to install your thing”.
He’s always so eloquently spoken, that MRDR.
This droid’s memory banks are so fried he can’t remember where we were minutes ago! Treks, and the previously immovable droids, point their blasters at us. Treks says, “I don’t know who you are, and I don’t care. Give me my part and get off the ship”. So we leave. Even morons know to listen when you are at the wrong end of the blaster.
We know it’s steal this ship or hang from Temo’s walls in carbonite. So we set our sites on the docking clamps, hoping the Treks situation solves itself, like all good problems do. The command center has a huge open front door, and we correctly decided not to walk through it. We case the joint and find a side door. It’s locked. I’ve found that my line of work tends to open doors—particularly locked ones.
We slip in and hidden in the back of what looks like the command room. We see a stern woman clearly in charge. The workers address her as Bren. Listening in, we overhear her ushering an imperial cruiser. Just what we need, some bucket heads. Oren the Quarren sets his sight on the nearest computer and makes quick work of the clamps. This guy is not as terrible as everyone says. We slip out unnoticed.
Some boys in white are making their way through the crowd in front of us. MRDR and I slink deeper into the crowd. No good can come from being seen by the empire. Oren, however, just walks up to these guys looking for a hug. “Hey guys, I was on the deathstar with you! How’s it going?”. The Stormtroopers yell, “It’s one of Temo’s prisoners. Get him!” They throw his gun on the ground, and miraculously, someone in the crowd kicks it towards me. Oren continues talking to them like old drinking buddies as they put him in handcuffs. Now I understand why he’s so terrible…
Well, bye forever, Oren. Too bad he’s going back to jail. I tell MRDR lets ditch calamari man and get back to the ship, but he interjects: “We have to save him. He’s the only one that can fix that freighter!” The glob of grease has a point We start following the troopers from a distance, planning on the fly. Another explosion seems unlikely, so a jailbreak is out of the question. Whatever the plan is, it has to happen now. I say we take the 3 Stormtroopers head-on. Lance Slaughterbot is a ruthless killing machine, and with him on our side, I think we can take him. I wait for the affirmative GRONK, but nothing escapes his trashy hole. MRDR tells me he’s been gone since we got the part from Vorns. Damn, that murder machine was growing on me.
We hatch a plan. MRDR will shoot from within the crowd at the Stormtroopers, hoping they will investigate. I’ll swoop in and pick Oren up with a speeder, and we will rendezvous near the freighter. There are 3 speeders nearby. I expertly hotwire one, only destroying two in the process. I wait for MRDR to fire.
MRDR takes the shot. The somnolent afternoon crowd springs to life. Transhdosans and Rodians and the like are yelling and running amuck. Some run for cover, while others seem to use the opportunity to settle scores with each other. The stormtroopers try and push their way through the frenzied crowd toward MRDR. It’s utter chaos.
Success.
I zip next to Oren and shout, “GET IN NOW.” I worry he wants to stay with his mates, but reality seems to finally have set in for him. I shove the blaster in his stomach and tell him, “Use this next time.” The stormtroopers take some shots at us as we speed off, but I deftly avoid the shots. We head towards the freighter, with a new sense of urgency to be off this planet.
I’ve been in my share of hairy situations, but this one is definitely one of the fuzziest. I’m stuck in a cell in Temo the hut’s prison in some outer rim dump called Tatooine. This is the type of place the lowest of the low-end up. Or the just plain stupid.
It’s too dark to see anything, but I’ve made friends with a few of the scumbags down here. Oren the Quarren, you know those squid looking things? What a piece of work. He was a former death star worker, but that’s just the start of his problems. He claims his time on the death star was him just trying to get by. There are worse ways to get through life, I suppose. It’s not entirely clear how he ended up next to me, but here he is, asking for whatever a peanut and tomato sandwich is.
I’m not quite sure why Temo imprisoned droids, especially considering the ones I found here are undoubtedly more useful as scrap. There is this protocol droid, a former hyperdrive parts “negotiator,” who goes by MRDR. It’s a ridiculous name; he has never even killed anyone. Apparently, it’s an aspirational name. One day, MRDR got tired of being a glorified salesman and decided he would be the galaxy’s best assassin. So he didn’t kill anyone, why’s he here? Selling a spaceship part for half price? A protocol droid with a dream to be an assassin, only in a jail cell at the edge of the galaxy could you find that.
He’s not entirely worthless. He translates GNK11’s incessant gronking. This trash can only communicate with, what as far as I can tell, is a single sound, though MRDR translates it to Galactic Basic for us. GNK11’s wiring isn’t quite right. He insists on being called Lance slaughter bot, the full title! I called him Lance once, and he gronked until the nerfs came home. Lance slaughter bot has big dreams of freeing his droid brethren, and I’m not convinced he didn’t get convicted to do just that down here.
There was an explosion, and the next thing I know, I’m running through the streets of Tatooine with killbot, killcan, and squid head. I don’t know what caused the explosion, but Temo certainly sent some grunts after us. We dive into the first building we see. It’s a cantina with a mean-looking Devaronian behind the bar. Well, not mean, just regular Devaronian looking. If I wasn’t running for my freedom, I would complain about the music. It all sounds the same in these backspace dumps.
MRDR talks to big and beautiful behind the bar, and he graciously offers to take 40 credits from us in exchange for hiding in the storage closet. In the storage closet, we can see a group of Gamorreans pop in, guns were drawn. Temo’s grunts must have seen us come in. If the pig heads didn’t find us, they’d be back with more of Temos men. With some protests from MRDR, we decide to get the jump on them. I have no idea why he calls himself MRDR if he just wants to talk his way out of everything.
Oren shot first, and MRDR bot followed up and finally earned his first kill. Lance sticks a blaster out of his…mouth? And blows the socks off the last two. A few claps from the patrons in the bar, but most barely look up from their drinks. It is a common enough event around these parts.
Devil Man behind the bar lets out a laugh. He says, based on who we seemed to have pissed off here, we’re going to need a way off this planet. He tells us about captain Trek, one of Temos men who’s freighter has a broken hyper matter reactor. We can probably find one at Vorns junk shop. The rust buckets want to kill this bartender.
We hurriedly made our way to the junk shop. Vorns is just like every junk rat, old and ornery. He opened with he can sell us anything, but after finding out we need a hyper matter reactor, he can’t. It’s been promised to Captain Trek already. MRDR, like the good protocol droid he is, lies to the man and tells him we’re Trek’s crew, here to pick up the reactor. The old man buys it, I guess we do look like a bunch of lowlifes, but the Trek hasn’t paid for it. Vorn wants 500 credits for it! I’m sure none of us has that money. The droids start to consider more blaster centric options when Oren the money fish drops the credits we need. Now we just need to break onto a large freighter, manned by people who would kill us, fix a hyper matter reactor, and just fly away. Easy.