Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic RPG

Recap the Twenty-Third

6 October 2012

Recap of the previous adventure.

One for the History Books

Originally, the Rakata had prepared a suprise attack against the Celestial Empire. In one quick, decisive operation, they managed to pin the Celestial nobility when they were most vulnerable. With their technological expertise and knowledge of the dark side of the Force, they froze the Celestials in time.

Shagaar, Ish, Zeka, and Kistra freed the Celestials tens of thousands of years later. The Empress mourned what was lost, and sent her agents far and wide looking for artifacts to reestablish the empire. By accident, they came across a Celestial Gate, and a Rakata tablet providing instructions on how to bend not only space, but time. So a small force of Celestial operatives stopped the Rakata offensive bare seconds after it had begun. The Celestial Empire never stopped existing.

It was to that point - where the Rakata launched their offensive, where the Celestial time-traveling operatives fought back - that Shagaar, Ish, and Zeka wished to go.

That is not where Kistra sent them.

Kistra had become one with the Force. Through that powerful link to all that was and will be, she saw where the Celestials had gone wrong. They lusted for power, and had been brought to that power too soon and too quickly for temperance. No matter if her companions would be able to stop the counterattack, the Celestials would be lost. But there was a better way.

The three remaining members of the party appeared in a dark alleyway, almost a full hundred thousand years before their own time, and a full fifty thousand years before they intended. Kistra, feeling the pull of time and space, expended the last of her energy to bestow a gift upon her companions, as well as two words: "Save them."

The portal closed. Kistra Horain, Jedi Knight, was gone forever.

It wasn't long before the party realized that they were not where they had wanted to be. There was no sign of any Rakata, and the Celestials varied in form and appearance by so wide a margin that they could easily be mistaken for a slew of alien races. On the plus side, a few strange humanoids would fit right in. On the other hand, they were totally lost.

Fortunately, Kistra's parting gift had been a complete understanding of the local dialect, so communication was quick and easy. Ducking into the nearest bar, they were easily able to find that aliens were a common sight on this world - known as "Artesia" - and newcomers simply had to register at the Alienage Immigration office at the spacedock for a starting stipend and a leg up for a new beginning.

Before the helpful bartender could continue, however, Shagaar was having none of it. He just wanted a drink, and didn't want to have to pay for it. So he waved his hand, attempting to convince the bartender with a mind trick. In this time, however, the Force was a wild and untame thing. So the bartender suffered a stroke and fell over dead.

After watching his latest victim get wheeled into a medical services vehicle, Shagaar and the rest of the party went to the alienage and got registered as immigrants. With their newfound stipend (a paltry one hundred un), the group went to a completely different bar and tossed back a few in memory of their fallen companion.

In the same bar, a Human named Alexis Rainfall watched the group carefully. It was the Wookie that had caught her eye - some would mistake his fur and speech as mere genetic modification, as was popular for Artesians. But Alexis knew the language of Shyriiwook, and recognized it even across the room. So she wandered over and introduced herself.

It turned out that Alexis was a time-traveler as well, though she was from the days of the third galactic empire. As an archaeologist and adventurer, she had seen a message from herself carved into a stone tablet on a rogue planetoid hurtling between star systems, and felt she couldn't pass up the opportunity. So she followed her own instructions and flew through the portal.

She had gotten more than she bargained for. Her ship wrecked, funds non-existant, and facing a society that claimed equal opportunities while berating her for not being born Artesian, she had been stuck here for three years. But she might have a plan, if her fellow galactic travelers were interested?

It took a bit of convincing, but it soon became apparant that the party had little choice. They could attempt to influence Celestial culture in some way that could shift the tide, but the sheer weight of time that was stacked before them was daunting. One thing was absolutely clear, though: they needed funds. And Alexis' job was paying.

One of the local government-sponsored scientific agencies had run into a small problem while exploring alternate means of traveling between the stars. The idea was to take a shortcut through another dimension to allow for near-instantaneous movement. The reality was that the ship would get "stuck" between locations for an interminable period of time, the crew would be attacked or otherwise killed, and all information about what exactly happened would die with them.

The latest run - and there were always more volunteers for this type of thing - had been marginally more successful. Heartbeat monitors were installed in the subjects, and were even managing to transmit a reading back to Artesia. The subjects were alive, but in some kind of resting state. Since the place was still obviously dangerous, they needed an extraction team to go in, retrieve the subjects, and get out.

It was almost certainly suicide. But once a mission had been described to this group, they rarely said no. They signed right up.

The alertnate dimension did not adhere to any particular law of physics for longer than a few hours at a time. Weapons and skills still worked, but movement and gravity varied widely. Still, the group tracked down their subjects easily enough, and discovered a dark temple floating in the midst of madness.

Inside, the Artesians were being presented a gift of power from a strange, multi-tentacled entity ebbing with the dark side of the Force. These Artesians would then gift others with power, thereby corrupting their entire race and setting the foundations for a dark Celestial Empire to shape the stars themselves.

And Kistra had said "Save them."

So they did.

Two of the subjects did not survive the extraction, but the entity was banished. The realm that trapped the ship began to crumble, but everyone got into the ship in time, and the transfer back to their own reality went smoothly. The two survivors of the original party lost all of their new-found abilities, but they would have a story to tell.

Back on Artesia, the party warned the scientist not to continue in their experiments in trans-dimensional travel. While the entity had been successfully defeated and the realm disrupted, there was no telling what would happen if the drive were to be activated again. After a comprehensive debriefing, the governing scientific body had to agree - it was not a useful method of travel, and it was possible that they could awaken horrible dangers. That line of scientific inquiry was shut down.

Afterwards, in silent meditation, Shagaar realized that they had accomplished what Kistra had asked. The Celestials had gained access to the Force from this monster, and it had eventually corrupted them. With this powerful influence taken care of before it could fully manifest, the Celestials were able to develop at their own pace.

Alexis confirmed this. From her perspective, this was how history had always played out: the Celestials would quietly disappear from the galaxy in another thirty to fifty thousand years, supposedly becoming one with the Force. This left room for the Rakata and, later, the Republic.

The new party of four had saved the galaxy, while ensuring that their mistake of awakening the trapped Empress could never have happened in the first place. If they ever returned home, it was going to be subtly different from what they remembered.

The Adventure Continues ...