Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic RPG

Recap the Fourteenth

16 October 2011

Recap of the previous adventure.

The Liberation of Chazwa: Part IV: Revelations of Power

With the Sith archive destroyed, the number of force-sensitive Sith in the city dropped to a much more manageable number. Now the army could focus on taking the city with minimal loss of personnel.

Commander Nire wanted the Rangers out of the way, as he did not trust the Jedi, her faith in her religion, nor her companions. So he arranged for some unavoidable bait: a mysterious power source off in a somewhat remote section of the city, that blinked on and off on regular intervals. Sure enough, the more he insisted to the Jedi and her companions that there was nothing to it - which he knew for a fact, as he had manufactured the data himself out of some innocuous readings - the more they insisted on investigating. In the meantime, Commander Nire and his remaining forces would infiltrate the city, using the information Kistra had recovered from the Sith-controlled docking bay. The would be able to take out the entire Sith command structure in one swift stroke, thus ending the occupation for good.

To help the Jedi on her way, Commander Nire sent someone he considered expendable: a mercenary Wookie named Isshporindrrl, commonly called Ish for short. Ish would not only keep the Jedi and her team away from anything resembling the military operation, but also carried some key command codes for an orbital strike, should it be deemed necessary.

The Rangers headed off with their newest companion, Breaker and Ish comparing notes on the newest and best ways to make things explode.

The easiest and simplest way back into Iritza was the underground tunnels, so it was not too long before the team found themselves in the extremely warm power generation facility once more. This time, Shagaar wanted to take the time to explore the near-derilict computer console, and it wasn't too long before he managed to get it working. The programmers were apparently minimalists; the options were limited to a simple, three-choice interface. Evacuate, Release, Full Power. That was it. After discussing the options among themselves, the team decided to leave it alone and continue on their mission.

Things were eerily quiet in the city. The citizens had all holed up inside their homes, and they weren't going to let anything drive them out again unless it was absolutely necessary. So the team was able to get to their target building fairly easily. It was around this time that they realized that Breaker was not with them. A quick conversation on the comm revealed that he had scouted ahead.

The target building was a two-hundred story office complex, and their target floor was the ninety-sixth. Shagaar did not trust the elevators, as it would be too easy to stop or drop the car. So they took the stairs, which ended up being a longer and more exhausting trip than they were prepared for.

Once they were past the minimalist security measures, they found that Breaker had preceeded them by about half an hour, as he had a jetpack while they had the stairs. He was in a heated discussion with a Sith lord by the window. Also in the room was a glowing gem mounted on an ornate staff tied to a machine that appeared to be producing Force-sensitives.

After another quick conversation that went south fairly quickly, the Sith lord boasted that the staff housed the gem of Marka Ragnos, who had managed to find a way to imbue others with the power of the Force. If the team did not allow him to continue his work, he would show them the power that a true Sith lord held.

To demonstrate his power, he detonated a dozen explosive charges that he had concealed around the city. Those charges were in the exact locations that the Commander and his teams were attempting to locate the Sith command structure. They all perished in flames.

The resulting firefight revealed that true Sith power was otherwise lacking, and the Sith lord dived out of the window to a waiting speeder. But Ish blew up the speeder before the Sith could reach it, and a few well-placed shots to the Sith lord himself made sure that he hit the ground at terminal velocity. The gem was recovered, and put away for safekeeping.

That still left the matter of the machine that the gem was tied into. There was one remaining charge, and there seemed to be no safe way to release the charge without a target.

This was confirmed by a strange creature in an active cryo-stasis tube, also connected to the machine, that was still able to converse. Chuurga seemed the most distressed after talking with the cryogenically preserved creature, and revealed that this was the alien she had chased across time and space, the one who had tried to frame them for the murder of Reatt the Hutt, the one who had tried to kill Breaker and Shagaar while they were in bacta tanks, and generally caused a mess wherever it went. It was a creature with no shape of its own, so it took the bodies of others, ate them away from the inside, and played merry havoc with those who got in its way. Somehow, the Sith had bargained with it, captured it, and now it was nearly helpless, trapped in a cryo-tube.

The cryo-tube could be adapted to run on its own power source, and be disconnected from the machine fairly easily, especially with Breaker's and Ish's combined abilities in computers and mechanics. But there seemed to be no safe way to discharge the remaining power in the machine without choosing someone to take in that power. So Shagaar volunteered.

The Liberation of Chazwa: Part V: Cleanup and Restoration

Shagaar was definitely stronger in the Force now, but also a little more rash and quick to judge. So it should come as no surprise that as the team were headed out of the city, and they came across the very warm power generation room, Shagaar felt like poking at the computer console again.

First, however, Chuurga insisted that they destroy the cryo-tube that they had been transporting, as the heat from the trapped fire snake was so intense that even Breaker, in his climate-controlled body armor, could only approach a little ways. Using the Force, Kistra and Shagaar moved the cryo-tube closer and closer to the fire snake, even as it began to lose power, and then the metal began to melt, and the body inside was set afire. For safety's sake, Ish fired a few blaster bolts into the still-quivering body, but it was not long before all that was left was ash.

So now it was time to poke around the computer console some more. Shagaar selected the "Evacuate" option, and saw that it resulted in little more than an alarm and a digital voice asking everyone to evacuate the city. So he selected the "Release" option, and the giant fire snake - the snake so large that a single one of its scales seemed to be an entire lake of lava, the snake so warm that it powered an entire city - was free once more to burrow its way through Chazwa's crust. After that option was selected, the power for the entire city, save for the evacuation alarm and emergency lighting, went out. So the team never did get to discover what "Full Power" did.

The team exited the tunnels, and were pressed upon to provide instruction and command for the nine million refugees from the city and the ten thousand soldiers remaining in the rendevouz compound. Kistra, exercising her right as a general of the Republic, field-promoted a capable-looking Commandant, as the Rangers preferred to be on the forefront of battle rather than leading an army from the rear.

The newly-promoted commander in the field directed the Rangers to investigate some reports of destruction on the far side of the city. The details as to the scope of the destruction at first seemed to point to a rampaging fire snake out for revenge, but investigation proved otherwise. The governor was not as heartless as he had appeared; he had ordered several scientists to investigate alternative means of power. One of these alternatives was a micro-singularity, which, during the power outage, had escaped containment. A droid managed to temporarily contain the experiment, but doing so had damaged its circuitry in such a way that it opened its containment at regular intervals, resulting in a huge swath of devastation as it wandered randomly about the city. Through quick thinking and after a couple of missteps, the Rangers managed to contain the micro-singularity and confirm that the rest of the city was in fine shape for re-habitation. The refugees would, at most, have to spend only a few days out in the freezing cold.

With the most powerful Sith Lord on Chazwa defeated, the capitol city liberated, and the fire snake confirmed to be miles away, the team decided that they had done all they could to ensure that Chazwa would remain a Republic world. There were a few minor problems to clean up, but now that the Republic had air superiority, it wouldn't be long before the Sith gave up the world and moved on to other battles.

Rejection, Plans, and Stealth

The party returned to Coruscant to report to the Jedi Council. Shagaar in particular was anxious for the meeting, as the Council had said that they would have fully considered him for training. However, it was not too long after he had entered the Council chambers that he exited, fuming. He had been rejected for being too "dark," "fearful," "angry," "impulsive," and a long list of other traits that he was sure training was supposed to help with, rather than be criteria to be judged upon.

Kistra remained in the Council chambers. She had accompanied Shagaar as moral support, and was as disturbed as he at their rejection. She would remain, she said, until either the Council changed their minds or they had changed hers.

Breaker was thrilled at the news; finally, Shagaar could put all this silly Jedi stuff behind him and focus on piloting, smuggling, and credits - the three great things that made life worth living. But Shagaar had to disappoint his life-long friend, as becoming a Jedi was important to him. Breaker tried to be supportive, but after a couple of days, with Kistra still in consultation with the Council, and Shagaar looking wistfully at the Jedi Temple, Breaker just couldn't take it any more. He and Chuurga gathered up their savings, purchased a ship, and bid the team farewell. The Rangers may have provided a steady paycheck, but not the kind of adventure or dealings that they thought they needed.

Ish, on the other hand, was glad to finally get some sort of stability, even if that only meant a somewhat familiar starship at the end of the night. Not to mention that striking out on his own again would cause certain problems, as he discovered when he went on a supply run with Zeka the first night. There had been a number of Wookie escapees from the local Czerka Corporation / Edean Holding Company facility, and bounty hunters were out in force to bring the "animals" in before they could find a way off-world. The fact that Ish was not one of the escaped Wookies was only a minor fact in the way of a large payoff.

Another minor fact, this time in the way of Shagaar's peace of mind, was the Exchange. They did not appreciate that Shagaar was flaunting the ownership of a known Exchange asset - that is, the ship that the team had "liberated" from Castell and renamed Breaker's Loss. However, they were willing to overlook this indescretion if Shagaar handed over the hyperspace generator. The Exchange would provide another generator of equal or greater value, but without the secret smuggling compartment.

Shagaar really had no choice; he agreed to the swap. And was not entirely surprised when, after handing over the core of his ship, he received a very large box - with a note saying "some assembly required."

Meanwhile, Zeka and Ish were poking around the underbelly of Coruscant attempting to locate someone who could forge ownership papers. Wookies were not considered a sentient species, and Edean - known as Kashyyyk to the natives, but the Czerka Corporation preferred their name for their asset - was outside of Republic space. So ownership papers were the only way Ish would be left alone.

Their investigations led them to a man in a Wookie suit - who just wanted to impress - a few seedy bars, and finally a forger who said he could put together the requisite documentation. Zeka paid him up front, but when they returned the next day, they found the forger's office covered in blood, and pieces of the forger scattered around the place. They left hurridly.

But not discreetly. They had been seen, and they spent the next couple of days as prime suspects of a murder. It was only because of their known association with a Jedi Knight that they were eventually deemed to be above suspicion, but it would be a long time before Zeka or Ish would be able do anything on Coruscant that was even remotely associated with the underworld.

After all of this, Ish was approached by a Kashyyyk sympathizer who was seeing to the escape of several Wookies - a kind of interstellar underground railroad. He provided coordinates for a meetup, where a ship would take away any Wookie who wanted to go. Ish smelled trouble, and convinced Zeka to help him stake out the meetingplace. After warning away the other Wookies who had come in hope of escape, a firefight broke out. It was a trap, organized by the bounty hunters!

Zeka and Ish were pinned down by blaster fire, but were managing to hold their positions. Shagaar took a break from assembling his new hyperspace generator to assist in the battle, and flung some of the smaller vessels around the spaceport to get rid of any wayward bounty hunters. After every last bounty hunter was properly discouraged or dead, they realized the scope of the destruction their battle had wrought, and ran back to the ship.

There they found Kistra, fresh from a multi-day session with the Jedi Council. After all of the arguing she had to do in order to convince them to accept Shagaar as a padawan, and this is what she returned to.

After a short dressing-down to her team, Kistra let Shagaar know why he had been rejected by the Council. There was a prophecy that soon, there would only be two Jedi left in the galaxy. The Council was concerned that the legacy of the Jedi would be preserved, and they had already seen the Manadalorian Wars and this Jedi Civil War claim almost two-thirds of their number, so it was clear the prophecied day was coming. They wanted to make sure that, although they may not be able to choose the two remaining Jedi, that they would at least be able to make sure that Fate would have only the cream of the crop to select from.

Nevertheless, Shagaar would be allowed to be trained by Kistra. In addition, Kistra and her Rangers had a mission: get rid of the gem of Marka Ragnos. They would not be able to simply destroy it, as that could have untold consequences on the Force, and thus all life in the galaxy. But they could hide it from those who would dare to use it.

The party took off from Coruscant, the new prototype hyperdrive working better than anyone could have hoped, and headed off to the "south-east" Outer Rim, as far away from the known reach of Sith space as they could get.

Explorations and Spies

Scouting new hyperspace lanes is a dangerous and profitable business. If you manage to discover a new lane to a habitable world, you could sell the route to colonists or mining interests. If you discovered a new civilization, the Republic offered a bonus if that civilization became a member, and a smaller bonus if they were an ally. The danger came in that you were essentially in the unknown, with only the star charts to guide you. There was no accouting for a sudden dark matter nebulae that could strand you for weeks, or a hostile civilization, or eddies in the time-space continuum.

It was especially dangerous at the edge of the galaxy, a region known by veteran scouters as "Wild Space." Hyperspace lanes acted strangely at the edge, whipping around like strands of hair on the wind. A path in hyperspace would not necessarily lead to the same place twice, and if you were to venture into a lane at just the wrong moment, you could be sent hurtling several light-years into the intergalactic void. There were theories about whole civilizations trapped at the edges of Wild Space, but no one who had explored the area had returned.

Fortunately for the party, there was much of the Outer Rim that was unexplored, and for the most part they fared well. They discovered several systems, the most notable of which was home to a single satelite orbiting a white dwarf, home of some "off-shore" accounts managed by a representative of the Exchange. The post was a lonely one, and the station manager was all too happy to entertain visitors, swap stories about exploring the Rim, and trade for essentials.

It was on a resupply trip to this station that they discovered that they had a couple of stowaways on board. The Exchange rep loaned a simple life-signs detector to the party, and with it they chased the stealthed Sith all over the ship, and then all over the station. Shagaar eventually had enough, chased the Sith off the ship one last time, and electrified the hull of his vessel. The result was one dead Sith in an advanced stealth-suit, and one battle on the bridge with the other Sith. They knew that the party had the gem of Marka Ragnos, and had been tasked with its retrieval. They were originally going to wait until the party had dropped it off somewhere and then claim it, but taking it from their corpses was looking like the better plan.

Of course, things didn't work out so well for the Sith, and he was defeated but not killed, though he definitely put up a fight. The fight's only casualty was a canopy window, which had to be sealed with durasteel in order to make the ship space-worthy. Once the prisoner was secured, the party returned to civilization - of a sort - in order to drop the Sith off at the nearest Jedi temple for questioning.

It had taken several days to get back to the known hyperspace lanes, and during this time the Sith had been using the Force to reduce the effects of the drugs the party had applied to keep him under control. Thus, just as the party was about to send their prisoner off with a Jedi representative, the Sith attempted to escape.

The escape was thwarted, but the attempt had cost them both time and attention. During the ensuing firefight, Ish was hit with a sniper's dart, which flooded his system with a debilitating poison. The party rushed him to a medical facility. There was no antidote available for the poison, but it was possible that the poison from a Hydra, typically found on the moons of Yavin, could counteract the dart's poison. Yavin was, of course, deep in Sith space. This was clearly a setup by the Sith to lure the party into hostile territory so there would be a greater chance of retrieving the gem of Marka Ragnos.

However, Kistra had heard of a powerful Jedi master who could manipulate the force on the atomic level. By doing so, she could create an antidote for the poison, once given the theoretical molecular makeup of such a drug. The party took off at once, as Ish had only a week to live.

Instead of going directly to Lannik, where the Jedi master could be found, the party elected to continue to explore uncharted space in an effort to dispose of the gem. Though Ish's life was trickling out of him, Shagaar and the others played the odds, bargaining that they would be able to locate a hiding place and save Ish within the time frame.

One of the systems they explored was the home of a derelict meditation sphere orbiting a jungle world. Shagaar's attempts at landing on the planet met with resistance - systems began shutting down and alarms sounded if he so much as broke the thermosphere. Temporarily foiled, the party decided to explore the small meditation sphere.

Inside, they found the Force spirit of a Jedi Knight, who had been waiting for them to arrive and complete his mission. A thousand years ago, he had been part of a Great Hunt, pursuing rumors of a Terentatek clutch. His two companions, fellow Jedi, were killed, and he was grievously wounded. He managed to escape to his ship, docked with the meditation sphere, and then died of his wounds. His spirit refused to become one with the Force until the ones destined to destroy the beast arrived.

The party agreed to destroy the beast, provided that he could do something to help Ish. The Force spirit placed the Wookie into a Force-induced deep hibernation, which would slow the poison's effects and extend his life expectancy to three weeks.

Using the Force techniques advised by the spirit, the party landed safely on the surface of the planet and tracked down the dark beast. After defeating it, Shagaar declared the location a safe place to hide the gem of Marka Ragnos, and the party set about burying the stone, going so far as to cause several life-threatening avalanches to seal the cave from prying eyes. Just as they were about to walk out of the cave, however, the powerful spirit of Marka Ragnos created dark-side copies of Zeka, Shagaar, and Kistra, and the six engaged in a furious battle.

It was not until Shagaar was near his last breath, suffering from critical wounds, that he realized that his dark self was not nearly as hurt as he. Kistra at long last tapped into the Force and recognized the dark spirit as a reflection of her inner anger and turmoil, and stepped away from the fight to meditate. When her dark side attacked her, it was no match for a calm and peaceful Jedi mind.

With Kistra's help, Zeka and Shagaar also managed to transcend their darker selves, even if it was only as long as it took to vanquish the spirits conjured by the long-dead Sith lord. The three companions left the cave unmolested, and wished the spirit of the Jedi Master a peaceful return to the Force.

The gem safely secreted away on a location known only to the Breaker's Loss navigational computer, the party headed to Lannik in search of the Jedi Master who could cure Ish.

As they jumped into hyperspace, Shagaar screamed in pain. The link that had been established on Chazwa between himself and the gem of Marka Ragnos, the same link that was powering half of the Force-sensitive Sith in the galaxy, was forcibly severed. He lost his additional power in the Force, but, as he was no longer within a light-year of the gem, so did every Sith that had been augmented by the gem. They had struck a clear and decisive blow against the Sith empire.

Cures and Awakenings

Lannik is a heavily industrialized world, and has been a member of the Republic for millenia. They have never been taken by a hostile force, and was used during the Jedi Civil War as a crucial lynchpin for supplies to the front and rendevouz to battles along the nearby border of Sith space.

So it was with some surprise that the party noticed that the navigational beacon was nowhere to be found, which meant that exiting the system without a recently updated star chart was tantamount to suicide. There were also no transmissions coming from the planet; not so much as a homing beacon for landing ships. Unable to contact anyone, the party elected to land and investigate.

Once again, Shagaar found that approaching the planet caused his systems to shut down. Using the Force, he and Kistra were able to successfully land the ship with only minimal damage to the support pylons. They were greeted by a division of Republic soliders, who escorted them to the Jedi Master in charge.

Jedi Master Nwython, a Twi'lek, was exactly the person they had been searching for. She was more than willing to heal Ish, with two conditions: that they never tell Ish who had saved him - she had a bad history with Wookies offering her life debts - and that they investigate a temple nearby.

It was suspected that the dampening field around the planet, which caused anything with a powercell to become inoperative, had been set off by a trio of archaeologists somehow. No sign had been seen of the archaeologists for more than a week. A small squad had been sent to investigate, but had not returned, either. Master Nwython had ventured near the temple to begin her own investigation, but found a Force-dampening field around the temple itself. Cut off from the Force in such a way, Nwython was not sure she would be useful, and retreated to the Republic camp to meditate on her options.

The arrival of Kistra, Ish, Shagaar, and Zeka proved to Nwython that the Force provides. They could investigate the temple, disable the dampening fields, and thus restore the planet to its previous state.

The temple was a day's hike to the north. The party made it to the border of the Force-dampening field, handily represented by several large stone markers thrust into the ground. They decided to camp at the edge for the night, during which time Kistra deciphered some of the etchings on the stone markers. The writing was in Rakatan, and spoke of a terrible enemy imprisoned behind the walls of the temple. The party decided that any enemy of the Rakatan was an ally of the Republic, and continued inside at first light.

The first obstacle was a large chasm a hundred feet wide and seemingly bottomless. Try as they might, the party could not determine a safe way to cross. Kistra and Shagaar, with their connection to the Force virtually severed, could not leap across the gap. Eventually, it was Zeka who decided to simply leap into the pit, followed closely by Kistra.

After falling almost a mile, the two women were ensnared in very sticky and flexible webbing, and seemed to have garnered the attention of a large spider droid. Shagaar and Ish, meanwhile, climbed down the cliff face, and engaged the droid in battle. After the droid was dispatched and the women freed, the party discovered that the droid had a direct line to a powerful generator that was operating beyond peak efficiency in order to overcome the dampening field around the planet.

The next trial involved monofilament wire strung across their path, as evidenced by the unfortunate archaeologist who fell victim to it running away from the spider droid. Using frag grenades to dislodge the wire and portions of webbing to detect the remnants, the party was able to clear the path and pass safely through to the other side.

The last door in the temple led to a simple room. Inside, directly opposite the door, was a throne with a ten-foot-tall, four-limbed statue sitting down. To either side, five statues of similar build attended to the throne. To the right of the door sat a large gong, and in front of the throne was a large, red button. Everything was covered in at least an inch of dust. Over the door from which the party entered was another etching in Rakatan:

Risked death, conquered fear,
Much you have risked to wander here.
If all is dust, and no foes remain,
Ring the chime and stake your claim.

Without hesitation, Zeka rang the gong. Shagaar and Kistra nearly passed out from the sudden, startling re-introduction of the Force, and were almost overwhelmed by the power that now coursed through them. As the gong's echo rebounded through the chamber, the ten attendant statues crumbled to dust, and the figure in the throne came to life.

A simple touch on Shagaar's head was enough to allow the creature to learn how to speak Basic. She informed the party that she was what they called a Celestial. They had been trapped for tens of thousands of years by the Rakatan in a surprise attack that had left them defenseless, but entirely aware. It was only through their telepathic link with one another that they were able to maintain sanity, and their immense power in the Force - which they called the "power of the gods" - allowed them to utilize the life force of a population of billions in order to maintain the life energy of ten thousand. All ten thousand, the Celestial assured, were now awake and active.

Though the dampening field affecting the Force had been shut down by activating the gong, the field affecting power cells was still active. The Celestial offered to call down the might of the gods to shut down the field, if only to repay in some small measure the debt to her rescuers.

Before the Celestial could do much more than show the party a secret door to another room, an enormous sentry burst through the wall and began attacking the Celestial. Most of the party joined in the attack against the sentry; Ish, however, took this as a final sign that the Celestial was bad news, and attempted to fire upon her. Though none of his shots did more than graze her, the Celestial nevertheless took afront and used the Wookie as a missile against the sentry. The damage done was more on the Wookie's side than upon the sentry, but the point was made: attack the Celestial at your own peril.

After recovering, Ish joined in the fray against the sentry. Shagaar leaped onto the colossus, ripped into it with his sword, and made his way inside. Using the last bits of power remaining in his lightsaber, he spun the double-bladed weapon around, slicing the head off the sentry and ended the threat.

Grateful, the Celestial transported the party back to their camp outside the temple grounds. She promised that the Celestials would soon restore their glorious empire to its height before the scourge of the Rakatan came. They may only number ten thousand now, but time would tell.

The Adventure Continues ...