Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic RPG

Recap the Second

12 July 2010

Recap of the previous adventure.

Death and Crawlspaces

Alora and Kistra crawled from the wreckage, their passengers having been warned to jump as soon as they rounded a corner. The mission completed and the pursuers off their track, the two heroes returned to Zirias.

Zirias was slighly miffed at the trouble surrounding the extraction, but was understanding in that the problems were of Snivvian origin. Seevi would have the protection of the Exchange for as long as he lived.

Unfortunately, that was not long. The Jedi returned to Seevi's shop only to find it in ruins. Seevi was only barely alive. Even with the judicious use of medpacs, he was only conscious long enough to describe his attacker: a menacing man in dark flowing robes. The Sith had escaped, and had come looking.

Fortunately, Seevi was a clever Rodian, and managed to hide his progress in decyrpting the data cube. The Sith left with the original cube, but Seevi had made a backup, and it was this information that he passed on to the Jedi.

The results were grim. There was certainly another console here on Nar Shaada, deep in the bowels of the city - and the Sith had a head start.

They returned to Zirias and asked for his help. Though puzzled at why anyone would want to go into the forgotten depths of the city, he was able to procure for them a map that should take them roughly where they wanted to go. With that map, they were able to make up some time as they descended.

Eventually they reached a disused sewer with a large hole worn away along the bottom of the piping, which revealed a very long drop. All indications were that their objective was ever deeper, but even Alora's senses could not discern how far down the hole went. They elected to slice off a part of the pipe and use the Force to carry the platform down at a controlled pace. Though it was difficult to concentrate on using the Force under such conditions, the two Jedi managed to make it to the bottom unscathed.

At the bottom, more tunnels. The Jedi made their way through, crawling where necessary, until they heard a strange noise. Lightsabers at the ready, they ventured carefully forward ... to see a service droid constantly bouncing into a wall

After a quick field repair, the droid revealed that he was owned by another Jedi who had ventured further into the tunnels. He was informed to wait, but heard something happen in the tunnels ahead. Concerned, he went forward to see if he could find his mistress, but a minor cave-in disrupted his spacial awareness circuits. He had no idea how long ago he had been left, but volunteered to accompany the Jedi should they need him.

The trio continued forward, eventually finding the ruins of a familiar-looking temple. The entrance was blocked by a series of complicated runes. Only four runes would fit at a time in the lock, and the pictures depicted were of strange sights. Some runes showed brightness and life, while others showed death and suffering. Eventually the Jedi discovered that the only runes that fit the lock were those that celebrated the followings of the Sith: power, jealousy, rage, terror. Disgusted at their findings, they moved inside.

Tendrils of dark force energy blocked the way to the console the Jedi expected to find here. There was a tear in the very fabric of the universe, with no apparent way around to see the source. After much debate and musing, eventually the Jedi followed their curiosity and leapt into the rift to see if they could find a way to close it from the inside.

Time Enough for Empire

After a harrowing and painful journey, the Jedi awoke to find themselves on a vast plain with tall grass. In the distance, a temple was apparently under construction. Oh, and several soldiers were headed their way.

The soldiers spoke an unknown tongue - though apparently the service droid had been programmed with this particular language. With the droid translating, the Jedi admitted their confusion as to their current whereabouts. After a few minutes of this, the lead soldier had enough, and directed the prisoners to the barracks with the rest of the prisoners.

It was in these barracks that the Jedi learned of their situation. The soldiers were of the Infinite Empire, the dark hand of the Rakata that stretched to encompass the whole of the galaxy some ten thousand years before the founding of the Republic!

The barracks were full of would-be colonists, sent from their homewords on sleeper ships to explore the greater cosmos. In a time before hyperdrive, the only way to move between the stars was at sublight speeds - unless you had the secrets of the Rakata star drive, which was said to run on the energy of the Rakatan hatred of all other lifeforms.

The colonists only allowed themselves small slivers of hope between the rough work shifts. They planned on escaping this world as soon as they could repair a single derelict colony ship. Once they took off, they allowed themselves to believe that they would be able to warn at least one world to stay out of the stars for as long as the Infinite Empire reigned.

Alora and Kistra wanted to help, but they were frequently waylaid by Rakata interrogators who wanted to know where they came from and their purpose. By keeping quiet and working hard in the quarry, they hoped to dispell any misgivings the Rakata might have. But in the process, they had to give up their possessions and watch their fellow prisoners be sorely mistreated.

The only benefit to waiting was that the Rakata were able to play their hand. Believing that only they were strong-willed enough to use Force, they did not consider the possibility that the newcomers were also Force users. The Rakata forcefully completed a painful process on both Jedi to "teach" them the Rakata language, simplifying communication and making the droid's translation services unnecessary. But that was a double-bladed weapon - though Alora and Kistra could now understand orders more easily, they could also listen in on conversations, and with a common language, the eclectic collection of prisoners in the barracks could unite and conspire.

It wasn't long before the conspiracy enlisted the Jedi to their aid. They showed the progress of the sleeper ship, and a series of tunnels dug between the barracks and the derelict shipyard. However, the tour took too long, and soon the soldiers were spread out looking for the missing prisoners.

Thanks to a diversionary tactic by the service droid that cost it's life, everyone was able to make it back to the barracks in time to allay some suspicion. But it had been too close, and the Jedi had enough.

Temple Temporum

They approached the leader of the resistance with a simple proposal: how would you like to get off this world? Armed with little more than the Force and a list of necessary components to fully repair the ship, the two waited for an opportune time to strike. During a ceremonial gathering in front of the temple, they were escorted to a position where they could easily get to the rear complex, where their posessions were likely to be stored.

No weapons, no armor, but a Jedi does not need such things. They used the Force to tear walls away where the needed a door, and discovered a small cache of swords and guns. The guns required tapping into the dark side of the Force to use, so the Jedi left those where they lay. But the swords they picked up and ventured into the Temple.

Despite the alarms raised by their entry, it was relatively simple work to explore the inner passageways. They fought off the skeleton crew, recovered their possessions, and discovered an elevator that lead deeper into the temple. Strongly suspecting that the temporal hole was not coincidental, they searched ever deeper, attempting to find the console that would link to the superweapon.

First, however, they found a pet Terentatek guarding a room so dark that even Alora could not see into its depths. Kistra, not wishing to harm the beast though it was reknown for killing Jedi, attempted to use the Force to tame the beast. At first she was unsuccessful, but another try calmed it down enough that they could pass.

The room appeared to have nothing in it, and they were nearly as deep as they could go. They searched around the room - and were stopped by the terentatek, who would not let them go into a corner. The Jedi took that as a sign that their objective lay there, and the terentatek soon broke the hold Kistra had on its mind and tried to fight them off.

They defeated it soundly, only to hear a crunching sound as it crumpled to the floor. Peering into the darkness, the pair discovered that there was another dead terentatek lying there, along with a few dozen eggs - some of them crushed by the falling parent.

Cursing themselves for causing death, even to such an unsavory creature, the Jedi turned to investigate the room further. They found a two-way mirror hidden behind a wall panel, and behind that mirror was a security console that controlled a door across the way. After a little fiddling, they found the console that they sought. Using the Rakata language dumped into their minds, it was trivial to confirm that it was one of the pieces of the superweapon. Unsure if they could disable the console when the creators of it were so close at hand, they elected instead to destroy it.

Things were starting to move quickly; Alora could sense that a large contingient of soldiers was making their way down, and would be upon the Jedi all too soon. Trapped between too many soldiers to fight and the unknown below, the pair elected to go to the bottom-most level.

As the security panel they previously accessed had told them, this level was dedicated to storage. Racks upon racks of equipment were placed here, in a labrythine series of stacks and rows. Fortunately, there was an inventory system, and with it they were able to locate the critical pieces they needed to repair the sleeper ship. There was another piece - a Rakatan star drive - that would greatly reduce the time the trip would take to return the prisoners to Coruscant, but they elected to leave it behind. There was already untold damage to the timeline; these prisoners, innocents though they were, didn't have a chance of escaping without the help of the Jedi.

With that in mind, the Jedi returned to the derelict ship yards, and helped patch together a wreck that was mostly spaceworthy. They consulted the defacto captain about the course, and used a Mind Trick to convince him that a more roundabout route home would be more prudent. The new route, by the Jedi's calculations, would take approximately 10,000 years to reach Coruscant.

First they had to buy enough time for the prisoners to all get on board. Initially that wouldn't be too difficult, but as more prisoners started to leave the barracks, the more likely it was that the Rakata would grow suspicious. And the Jedi had uncovered some indications that the Rakata already knew and were actively thwarting the rebuilding efforts.

Soon enough, the first trouble hit: as the finishing touches were put on repairs, a spy attempted to run to the temple to alert his masters. The Jedi managed to capture him before he got too far, but the implications were disturbing - the Rakata had managed to infiltrate the prisoner's conspiracy. Could a full show of force be too far behind?

More and more prisoners filed into the ship, along with the supplies needed to keep so many in stasis for the long journey. All too soon, Rakata soldiers began attacking from multiple sides. The Jedi enlisted some help from the prisoners, and managed to hold off the attack long enough for everyone to board, but the captain of the ship was caught in the cross-fire.

Most of the Rakata on the planet were dead, however, which made taking off a relatively simple matter. But the ship was damaged somewhat in the firefight: a few pods could be shut off entirely, allowing the others to operate at peak efficiency, or all pods could operate at below efficiency, allowing the passengers to age somewhat during the journey.

The passengers elected that the aging was acceptable, as the Jedi were the first to volunteer to be left pod-less, and they were regarded as heroes. Though the passengers did not know that they would be taking a significantly longer journey than planned ...