Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic RPG

Recap the Ninth

12 October 2010

Recap of the previous adventure.

Traps, Shields, and Explosions

While the party made their way to the elevators, they discussed options. There were dissenting opinions on which was more important - escaping the obvious trap, or verifying whether or not the targets identified in the briefing were really on site. Eventually it was decided that Breaker would remain on the first floor and begin the long process of cutting through the blast doors that covered the main entrance, and then proceed to take out the three remaining surface-to-air defenses. The rest of the party would explore the second floor, disable the shield generator, find more information, and possibly call in the bombing run.

Chuurga, Shagarr, Kistra, and Kaname stepped into the elevator and pushed the button. They had ascended no more than a meter when dioxis, a poisonous gas, began to flood into the confined space.

Kaname and Kistra held their breath, using the Force to extend the amount of time they could withstand the effects of the gas. Chuurga tried to hold his breath, but it wasn't long before he began to choke. Shagarr was the only one who had thought to take a breath mask with him.

While the room filled, Kistra and Kaname ripped a panel away from the control mechanism, hoping to find a way to stop the gas. Instead, their fiddling stopped the lift from ascending, and closed the blast doors in front of the entrance and the access hatch at the top of the lift. Shagarr, who had been attempting to cut open the access hatch, had to stop what he was doing once it became obvious that it would not be good for the blast doors to melt into the small room.

Eventually, they were able to undo their mechanical mishap. The lift moved up to the second floor, and the blast doors were retracted, but the main doors would not open. Shagarr finished opening the access hatch and shoved Chuurga into the clean air above, and he was soon joined by the two Jedi.

Looking around, Kaname could only see one way through - a small power diffusion tunnel. A pulse of energy travelled through the tunnel every ten seconds, and she thought that would be enough time to get through to the other side.

She was almost right. Taking minor damage, she managed to get on the other side of the elevator doors. She unlocked the doors from her side, and Kistra and Shagarr joined her. Chuurga remained above the elevator, too weak from extended exposure to the dioxis to be of any help.

The next trap was an electrified floor that wrapped around a corner. Shagarr took the lead, sure that he could leap, bounce off the opposite wall, and jump to safety on the other side. Concentrating on the power of the Force, he took that jump ... and was nearly electrocuted to death. Kaname and Kistra moved him off the floor before following behind. They had no trouble making the jump.

At the end of the hallway was a small room, where some Sith soldiers were torturing a Republic officer. After defeating the Sith, the party rescued the soldier. He mentioned that he had been stationed at a Republic listening post, and had been captured about a week prior. He was occasionally tortured both to break his spirit and to see what information he had gathered for the Republic. Though physically weak and pushed to his limits, he had not yet broken. Interestingly, most of the questions the Sith had asked were about people named "Alora" and "Kreia."

After taking care of an autofire turret at the end of a long corridor, the trio discovered a Jedi wearing a neural inhibitor, kept unconcious so that she would not attempt to escape. Though Kistra felt that the prisoner had a touch of the dark side to her, they could not in good conscience leave her in the facility to die.

Awakened, the prisoner revealed that her name was Kreia. She had been in the general area, looking for her fallen padawans, when she was captured by the Sith. Though she no longer called herself a Jedi Knight, she would still gladly carry a lightsaber and help the party for a little while before she moved on. During their talks with her, she admitted that she had something of a gift for prophecy. Kaname would die in battle to a blue lightsaber; Shagarr would die in an explosion; Kistra would find her destiny in a star.

It was not long after that the team found three things of interest: the shield generator - blocked from entry by a shield not connected to any local console - the reactor room - packed to the brim with soldiers and lined at the bottom with sarlaac - and hibernation pods full of prisoners.

Shagarr spent a great deal of time in the shield room, attempting to bypass the shields protecting the generator. Meanwhile, Kistra and Kaname began waking up all the prisoners. It was a slow process, as the system was not designed for a massive all-inclusive release. Each prisoner had to be woken separately, with the added complication that all the controls were labeled in Sith. Fortunately, Kaname had some experience with the language, and it wasn't long before one of those newly awakened took over the task of waking the others. Kreia began escorting the newly freed Republic soldiers in groups to the elevator to join Breaker on the first floor.

Shagarr refused to accept that the controls for the shield room would be in the heavily-fortified reactor room. Instead, he decided to tackle the problem from another angle. First, he used his lightsaber to cut through the hibernation pods, under the idea that the wall on that side would allow him access. Even after an explosion sent him careening through the air, almost lending truth to Kreia's prophecy, he still returned to cutting through the wall. After he had made a small hole, he threw his frag grenade into the room ... but the shield generator was additionally protected by a form-fitting shield, which blunted the blast.

Kistra and Kaname shrugged, and opened the doors to the reactor room. They were greeted immediately by blaster fire, which they largely ignored. Using the Force and the occasional shot from Kaname's blaster, they began the slow process of eliminating the opposition.

Shagarr had decided on yet another plan. After he had made the hole in the wall big enough to crawl through, he cut a second hole in the floor of the shield room. Looking through it, he saw a large section of the shield generator that was apparently unshielded as it descended into darkness. He put his blaster through the hole and began firing at the generator.

The results were mixed. True, his blaster fire did eventually hit a critical point, which destroyed the generator. There was a secondary explosion in the reactor room, which made Kistra and Kaname's attack a little easier. But the primary explosion resulted in a lance of fire that shot through the hole Shagarr had carved into the floor, destroying his blaster and charring his hand. His cries could have been of pain, victory, or both.

Tertiary explosions began to rock the facility. Kistra and Kaname, perceiving a danger through the Force, took cover as a heavy blast took out the shield room in its entirety. Warned by the Jedi over the comlink, Shagarr managed to take refuge in a pod before he was crushed by debris. That same debris trapped him in the pod, and he could not force his way out. He called for assistance, and Kaname said she would be right there.

Kistra was attempting to stabilize the reactor core. It was weakened both by Shagarr's attack on the shield generator, and the introduction of biomass into the core - namely, a few Sith soldiers. The Force was with her - she was able to prevent the core from going critical and blasting them all into oblivion. Unfortunately, it was too late for some of the prisoners in the pods - out of the original three hundred, only one hundred seventeen made it out of the facility alive. The rest were killed either in tertiary explosions or as a result of the sudden loss of power.

Shagarr was still trapped in a non-functional pod - there was no sign of Kaname. Kistra had to rescue her Cathar friend, and they lead the last group of freed Republic soldiers down to the first floor. Breaker had managed to cut through the blast doors, and the shield was down, giving them a clear path to the outside world and the galaxy beyond. Out those doors had also gone Kaname, to points unknown. They had been left at a dire hour.

They took the elevator down to the hangar deck, and discovered a few one-man ships and a cargo hauler. Kreia took a snub fighter to continue her mission, and the party took the cargo hauler. In combination with the wreck of a ship they had left at the spaceport, they could just barely get themselves and all the freed Republic soldiers off the planet. Both ships executed a short hyperspace jump to the edge of the solar system, where the Star Dance was waiting.

They were met with a slowly expanding field of rubble. The Star Dance was no more. The barely spaceworthy wreck the party had taken sputtered and shook, its hyperspace generator giving out its last gasp. The other cargo hauler had no room to take on any more passengers, so Shagarr, Kistra, Breaker, and Chuurga urged them to depart for Republic space. The other ship complied, promising to send back help as soon as they could.

It wasn't long before a Sith battlecruiser exited hyperspace nearby, returning to the scene of the battle. Tell-tale carbon scoring riddled its hull, a clear sign that it had been in a recent skirmish and emerged the victor. The party powered down all non-essential systems, and blended in with the debris field as best they could.

The Adventure Continues ...