Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic RPG

Recap the Twentieth

30 July 2012

Recap of the previous adventure.

Time and Again

The party's trip from the depths of Nar Shaada was not uneventful. As Shagaar secured the rope they were going to use to climb one of the sheer cliffs, he was jumped by a small squad of Imperial soldiers. He pushed the soldiers off the edge of the cliff, and proceeded to deal with the droids that accompanied them.

Unfortunately, the soldiers had been expecting resistance, and brought along a captive terentatek. Before the last soldier died, he released the beast, and it caused much consternation from the party before it was at last put down.

Taking the Imperial uniforms, the party marched through the streets of Nar Shaada unmolested. Anyone who saw them stayed far away, having learned to leave the Empire to do as it will. So they were able to get on board the Oonta Goonta and secure the crate to the best of their abilities.

But the ship wouldn't start up. A quick investigation revealed that a fail-safe had been triggered not too long ago. As they were attempting to work around it, a holo transmission came in from the rebellion, saying that the rebellion would live on, the Empire would gain nothing from the capture of one of their ships, and that a memory wipe of the main databank was already in progress.

When Shagaar answered, General Tahl was surprised. Video feed from the droids they had destroyed revealed Shagaar and his companions fighting with an Imperial Agent, and then a terentatek. With that combination, the rebel forces had assumed that they had been killed. So they had initiated all the fail-safes. They were glad that they were alive, of course, but what the devil were they doing on Nar Shadaa?

Shagaar begged off from discussing sensitive information over an open comm, and promised a detailed report to be transmitted seperately. The general said she understood, but once the comm was closed, she dispatched a squad to investigate.

The report Shagaar created was fantastic. It spoke of an ancient artifact called the Gem of Marka Ragnos, which could, if used correctly, turn anyone Force-sensitive - or, in the parlance of this timeline, gift them with the power of the gods. The Agent they fought was thus not a true Agent, but someone who had been manipulated in this way. Could it have been from the Empire, or someone else? Regardless, before he died, the fake Agent revealed that he had been trained on Korriban.

General Tahl suspected that the report was false, but didn't know exactly where. It all sounded true enough, and artifacts from old civilizations were still cropping up here and there, but surely no one would be foolish enough to think they could just create an Agent? Agents went through decades of training. And Korriban was a primitive world, with the native population protected by Imperial decree. How would an artifact be buried there?

While she was mulling this over, Shagaar, Kistra, Ish, and Zeka made their way to Coruscant to find the second piece of their would-be time machine. Instead of the planet-spanning city they expected, they found a near-lifeless ball of dust and sand, with barely ten thousand people living on it. But there was no time for questions! They landed as close as they could to where Kistra sensed the piece resided, and headed into town.

The city was walled, but they were waved through almost absently. The people spoke in hushed tones of the "trogs," fearsome beasts that came across the dunes and from the well, and attacked villagers. Periodically, Imperial Agents would visit and put down the trogs, but that would only work for a while. Soon enough, the trogs would attack again.

The group gathered this information from the local trader, and from the only tavern in town. As they were getting drinks and comparing notes, Shagaar noticed that the tavern was recieving broadcasts from several sporting events across the galaxy - one of which was his home planet of Cathar. It looked to be fully populated, with no sign of the terror or destruction he had witnessed when he was there not one year previously.

At any rate, the trogs had come from the well in town, and that meant that there was a network of caves of some sort beneath. Sure enough, looking down into the well revealed that though the first couple of meters were made of stone, the rest was smooth metal. Some sort of old runoff system? Coruscant ran deep, after all.

So at night, when no one could see them, the party jumped into the well and explored its depths. They followed its watery path, taking breaths when they could, squeezing past thin sections when necessary, until they emerged in a large room. Previously a coolant tank, the water poured in here from six faucets. Above the waterline was a pathway that lead to the old reactor, now long since inactive. Crawling around the reactor, however, were thousands of trogs.

Upon seeing our heroes, however, the trogs did not stand and fight. They ran into their tunnels, as fast as their legs could carry them. Zeka and Ish speculated that since the trogs would be periodically hunted down by Imperial Agents, they would learn to fear anyone that was Force-sensitive. So they followed the trogs deeper and deeper into the hewn tunnels, until they emerged into a large opening.

In the center of the cave was the box they sought. Next to it was the largest troglodyte of them all, and they all seemed intent on worshiping the box, as if they could sense its dark power. When Kistra and Shagaar tried to move the box with the Force, the large troglodyte, who they nicknamed the "Mother," grabbed hold.

The ensuing battle for the box wound its way through the trog tunnels, the reactor room, and still the mama trog would not be dissuaded. She was thrown, attacked from every side, and still she went after the box like it was her own child. Eventually, finally, the large trog was defeated in battle, and the box was claimed by the party.

But all was not quite done. The box was large, larger than the damp tunnels that had led the group to this location. Larger still was the forcefield around the box, forming a spheroid that would definitely resist entry into the narrow tunnels. They could not deactivate the forcefield, as they had not found a human or rakata to open the box for them. So how were they to get the box from here back to their ship?

The Adventure Continues ...