Star Wars: Legacy RPG

Recap the First

7 October 2012

Recap of the previous adventure.

The Fire In Which We Burn

Returning home was a straightforward if slighly complex affair. Alexis had come to this time period following the instructions enscribed on a stone tablet, which she subsequently discovered next to a crashed jumpgate. During her three years trapped on Artesia, she had dedicated some of her funds to replicating the tablet based off her holorecordings of it, carving the words into the stone with a laser torch.

Following her example, the other three wrote their own messages on a separate tablet, attempting to be as convincing as possible so that their future selves would venture through the crashed jumpgate also and end up where they needed to be.

That accomplished, they purchased an intrastellar shuttle and headed towards the wreck of Alexis' ship, which had been partially destroyed by traveling through time. Alexis had to abandon it in haste before it exploded, but enough of the ship remained that the four were able to salvage the hyperdrive, the attached engines, the fusion core, and segments of the navigational computer. With these components, they upgraded their Artesian vessel as best they could - it was clumsy with all the extra mass, but moved a little faster and could, if pressed, make a single hyperspace jump before falling apart.

The instructions on Alexis' tablet were clear: she had to wait until the crashed jumpgate was pointed towards the sun, prime the gate for launch, and simultaneously initiate her own hyperdrive just as she entered the gate. The colliding faster-than-light technologies successfully pushed her a hundred thousand years in the past. By altering their trajectory and power levels, it was theoretically possible to travel to any other point in history.

However, they first wanted to place their stone tablets where they would be found by their future selves. In fifty thousand years or so, the jumpgate would be decomissioned and crash on a small moon, propelling it out of the solar system. Alexis had long since determined that the moon was currently orbiting a large gas giant in the system, so they headed there.

After placing Alexis' tablet, she saw a portal appear before her. Stepping through, she heard her own voice over her comm, and saw her ship fly straight into the crashed portal, vanishing in a giant plume of blinding light.

When the other tablet containing the messages from Shagaar, Ish, and Zeka was placed, they could see the portal as well. Eager to explore an era beyond their own time, they stepped through.

Unexpectedly, the three had their memories adjusted by the temporal field. The Jedi Knight Kistra had never existed - instead, they had all traveled with Alora, who they had previously known as Kistra's master. Alora had taken Shagaar as her padawan, and attempted to guide him in the ways of the Jedi. However, she thought that his companions were being a bad influence on him, and wanted to take him away from his ship and his friends in order to continue his training. Shagaar disagreed, and left Alora on the world of Lannik while he and his companions explored strange clues about a forgotten ancient artifact ... that led them to an adventure back in time.

All the same events occurred, only with different motivations. And the characters were completely unaware that anything unusual occurred. They had traveled back in time, and now were in the far future.

Transportation was the first immediate concern. For lack of a better option, Ish and Zeka pointed out that they might as well look for the Breaker's Loss, which they had parked on this planetoid some four thousand years ago. It wasn't too long before they discovered that someone had hidden the vessel underneath a clever camouflage sheet, covered with a thin layer of soil. Underneath was the Loss, surrounded by at least a dozen derelict droids.

Puzzled - they didn't remember leaving droids to guard the ship - the group moved inside, where they found the vessel in reasonably good repair, even after all the elapsed time. And in the engine room, right were it could not be missed, was a holocron from his old master with a last, hopeful message for reconciliation and wisdom.

The most important information Alora imparted was that she experienced a vision of their arrival, and, as a result of their traveling through time, an enormous amount of power had been siphoned from the local star. As a result, the star would experience a supernova within fifteen minutes. In an hour and a half, the explosion would be visible from here. Three hours from that, and the explosion would overtake them.

The ship was in terrible shape. The droids had done what they could to maintain the vessel, but four thousand years was a long time for the ship to remain stationary without organic intervention. With their combined skills, however, the group was able to get the ship flying once again, though nowhere near fast enough to outrun the explosion.

Ish recommended a desperate action. With the little amount of time left, extended somewhat by the ship's acceleration to 0.01c, he theorized that he could create a ramscoop that would allow them siphon enough stellar matter to jump-start the hyperdrive, effectively letting them surf the edge of the supernova before rocketing into space. The trick was, it would require precision timing - stay too long, and they would die. Too short, and the trip in hyperspace would be too short to do any good.

Shagaar briefly considered using his connection with the Force to ensure the timing was perfect, but that idea was shot down by Zeka and Ish. They did not want to trust their lives to an imperfect would-be Jedi and his supposed sympathic link to all living things. They would trust the navigational computer to accurately judge when the hyperdrive would be engaged.

Zeka was the first to wake. She found herself in a bacta tank, a little groggy but glad to be alive. Before her was a Trandoshan and a Human, both preoccupied with the readings on their console to notice her change of state. Through the glass she heard their muffled concerns that Shagaar was fighting the sedatives they were flooding into his system. From that, she assumed they meant harm, and she used her echolocation to break the glass of the tank and free herself.

Soon, Zeka had freed Shagaar, who easily managed to break Alexis and Ish out as well. The four of them overpowered the Trandoshan medic, named Rev, and the Human, named Rolan. A brief interrogation revealed that the pair had intended on capitalizing on Shagaar's state by turning him in to the Empire, as there was a significant bounty on Force-users. They would sell the other three to slavers, and the combined income would be enough to set them up for life. The captain of their little pirate vessel had shot down this plan, but they had hoped to sedate the group, get off the ship, and sell their cargo all before the captain showed up. But Zeka waking early had foiled their plan.

Rev was very cooperative and forthcoming with our heroes, though Shagaar using the Force to suggest complacency might have been a large part of that. He welcomed the party on board the pirate ship, provided clothes and food, led them on a tour of the ship, and offered to arrange a holographic meeting with the pirate captain Roberts.

Shagaar was instantly suspicious when he learned that Captain Roberts only communicated to his crew holographically, and more so when Rev confirmed that no one had seen the captain enter or exit his quarters. He convinced Rev to show him the captain's quarters, and, as he did not sense life behind the doors, announced that the captain either was not on board or did not exist at all.

Perhaps it was the trauma of being in a new time period, or of losing yet another ship. Maybe it was the news that the pirate crew had fenced almost all of their belongings to pay for their rehabilitation. Or maybe Shagaar really wanted a pirate crew of his very own. In any event, Shagaar threatened to bully his way past the guards and expose the captain's ruse, especially when Rev confirmed that they would be expected to pay back the captain for any expenses accrued for their rescue.

Alexis defused the situation by offering to purchase any artifacts the pirates may have acquired, as well as any of the party's equipment that had not been fenced. After a few minutes of negotiation, Alexis settled the debt, and purchased a number of holocrons that the pirates had recently "discovered" on a recent vessel. So agreed, the party just had to wait until the pirates completed a little pillage, and then he would drop them off at his next convenience.

Due to the pirates' needs of being far away by the time their target could call for help, the nearest place Roberts could drop them off was Rishi, inside the minor galactic cluster known as the Rishi Maze. Roberts wished the party farewell, and it wasn't long before the pirate ship left the planet for points unknown.

Alexis' bank account was tapped out, but Shagaar suspected that his funds might still be available. Looking under his own name, or Zeka's, or Ish's, revealed nothing - there had been several changes in governments and banking clans since his time, and little survived. On a hunch, Shagaar dropped the name of his former master, Alora Jast - and sure enough, she had provided for even this eventuality, with a windfall of four million credits.

With that, they were able to purchase a decent ship (a YT-2950 they dubbed the Alora Bell) and fully equip themselves for their future adventures. Their shopping spree did not go unnoticed; a shady Weequay calling himself "Fen" offered a job to inaugerate their ship: transport a box containing a datacore, two droids, and a few droid components to Naboo. They would receive ten thousand in advance, plus another forty upon successful delivery.

Shagaar lamented that he would have to build up his reputation all over again, but agreed to the comission. Fen would meet them at the Bell in a couple hours with the cargo and the name of the contact on Naboo.

The Adventure Continues ...