Brainstorming for tomorrow's Star Wars session

[Matchstick]

Lots of good stuff there, and a lot of places where the players' actions will have significant effects! I'm looking forward to hearing how it turns out.

I keep imagining the hangar doors opening S L O W L Y , with the possible reaction (stop the opening doors!) from Sareve and the gasps (that's our ship!) from the players as they realize what's happening. If there's some sort of space tug in the hangar, maybe Sareve would have to use it, push the partially fallen players' ship out of the way, and then putt putt out of there. I wonder what happens to tipped over spacecraft in Star Wars...

 

[RangerWickett]

What ended up happening was:

* PCs get to a computer console in the facility's security office. They check cameras and see that Sareve's droid minions are grabbing stuff in the facility's research labs, carrying it to the hangar, and loading it into her ship. They also can tell that she is using a terminal in the hangar to communicate with the Star Destroyer in orbit.

* Tech-focused PC stays to provide 'overwatch' via security cameras while the rest of the group clears out the droids in the facility. The PCs wonder why the droids aren't sounding an alarm, so I give them the B.S. answer that the whole facility is radiation shielded, which means only direct line-of-sight communication, or using physical lines from one computer to another.

* Tech-focused PC wants to keep Sareve from escaping, so he burns out the motors on the rooftop hangar bay doors.

* Tech-focused PC really wants to find out what's going on on the Star Destroyer, and . . . ugh, his character has 5 Intelligence and 5 ranks in computers, so there's basically nothing he can fail. So I just say it will take a while, but eventually he learns that Sareve has a droid on the Star Destroyer that is delivering a computer virus developed at this research facility. It's designed to take control of a ship remotely, but it's still in development, and the facility has been doing tests on the Star Destroyer (i.e., the PCs can't steal this and hijack every ship they find forever). He wants to take control, and I say that she'd immediately notice that. So instead he's content to install a shutdown command on the droid, so that when they attack her he can cut off her control then.

(They still don't know what she wants on the Star Destroyer. Remote controlling it is only marginally useful, because the crew can shut down the computer and pilot manually. Why does she have the pregnant senator hostage?)

* The PCs get their hands on a experimental (i.e., prone to overheating and exploding) Big F***ing Gun, which fires ion blasts. They take out some droids.

* Force-using PC Hank has a brief mental connection with the senator and tells her to stall Sareve, because they're almost ready to attack.

* PC in security room notices at the last second that people coming in from outside the facility are about to blast the door in and attack. He warns them over the intercom that he has a ship torpedo in the room with him and will detonate it if anyone tries to enter. A response comes through - and he pipes it to the other PCs - where Dune Gomero offers them a chance to surrender. He's not sure whom they're pursuing, but all he cares about is that this facility is under his control now. A PC bluffs that this was actually a ruse to lure him away from his post and leave Lord Karcero vulnerable, and then all the PCs run like hell for the hangar bay (where there are a couple transport shuttles with light weapons), hoping they can flee that way and avoid getting pincered. Yes, the hangar doors are burned out, but worst-case scenario they'll just shoot their way out from the inside.

They leave a booby-trapped torpedo, but find out later that they rolled insufficiently for it to actually go off, so Dune Gomero and his men take control of the facility, and are only a few rounds behind them.

* Wookiee PC with ion blaster blows up Sareve's droid bodyguards. Other PCs take out droid cannon fodder. Sareve flees into her shuttle and starts to close the cargo bay door, but the senator screams in pain, faking a problem with her baby. It's just enough of a distraction for three PCs to get on board and jam the cargo bay door open. Meanwhile, the other two PCs get onto a separate shuttle.

* The fight is crazy brief. The party had previously rigged together a handful of proton grenades (to take out an AT-ST) but they never needed them. So the tech PC throws them behind Sareve, with a timer counting down two rounds. The Mon Calamari doctor shoots Sareve but she deflects most of the damage. The thawed clone Corellia fights in melee using a Cortosis shield he bought to defend, but he still suffers a critical wound when he gets impaled on his thigh. The tech PC hacks open the brig cell and pulls out the senator. The doctor gets a solid hit on Sareve and inflicts a critical that prevents her from intentionally spending fatigue to use powers or take extra maneuvers. Basically, she's slowed down for a round.

Corellia runs away, taking a vicious slice for running but managing to stay up. The doctor runs. The tech and the senator run.

Sareve doesn't run fast enough. She dies in the explosion. (But her ship survives, only slightly damaged.)

* PCs celebrate for a half second before Dune's guys start shooting from the entrance to the hangar. They split up into Sareve's shuttle and one of the transports, fire a few shots to keep the enemies from advancing, then blast open the hangar bay doors on the ceiling. The PCs' previous ship crashes through the hole, and they fly away through the explosion.



So I'm going to Schroedinger's plot this thing and dramatically change what I had planned. More details to follow in a later post, but the short version is, "The Star Destroyer is landing."

 

[RangerWickett]

The plan is:

1. The party emerges, and sees Karcero fighters circling. They also get signals from the local rebels trying to contact them (because the party was out of communication while in the facility). The rebels have ships inbound to help, but they're a few minutes out. The PCs basically have two shuttles versus a lot of fighters. I need to figure out the balance and difficulty.

2. The enemy ships are one round out, so the party has a short period of time to make plans. They're in the mountains, right at the snow line, and the cloud cover is fairly low, so perhaps they could lose their enemies in the clouds around the mountain peaks. Or they can head south, past the Jedi temple ruins, for flatlands where their enemies can shoot them better, but their allies will arrive more quickly.

3. Suddenly strange gravity fluctuations start ripping rocks out of the ground, and if they're above the cloudcover (or bother to scan upward) they see that the Star Destroyer with its gravity interdiction field is descending into the atmosphere. There's too much interference (due to atmospheric friction) to hack into the ship, but basically when the droid was shut down, it triggered a failsafe, ordering the vessel to descend near Sareve's ship, so that she can get aboard. The Star Destroyer will below the cloud cover in three minutes (three rounds). And its descent will take it directly into the path of the party's rebel allies.

4. Let the dogfight begin, with Dune's fighters trying to take out the PCs. Or possibly a chase.

5. After a round or two of dogfighting, Dune himself arrives - traveling on his own personal shuttle with fighter escort. At this point his goal is simply to kill the PCs, then escape. Because the cargo bay door of Sareve's shuttle is jammed open, I kinda want him to jump on board with some bodyguards and have a melee battle in the midst of the dogfight.

6. When the Star Destroyer clears the atmospheric interference, the tech PC will be able to reestablish his link, wherein he discovers that the crew is not responding, like they're all dead. Sensors detect some weird readings emanating from the gravity field generator, nothing he's ever seen before.

7. More fighting. Reinforcements are almost here, but then their comms go silent, and the rebel fighters just glide onward, like on autopilot. The party might realize that whatever weird energy the Star Destroyer is putting out, the rebels just flew into its radius, and now they're non-responsive, just like the imperials.

8. One more round of fighting, or talking, or planning. But then the Star Destroyer, which is far faster than the PCs' vessels, comes within range of Sareve's shuttle, and everyone on board (and anyone else nearby) finds themselves in a dream.

The Imperial research facility's most critical project was 'The Phantom Drive,' intended to subtly warp the fabric of reality in order to make a ship invisible. Instead, it creates a pocket in the fabric of the Force, causing any living creature to fall unconscious and have its soul float through a psychic landscape -- in this case, a seemingly empty Star Destroyer. Everyone who was aboard is now roaming their own labyrinthine mindscape that resembles the Star Destroyer, believing themselves alone except for occasional shouts of others who are trapped there, which seem to come through the walls. However, creatures that are Force sensitive have some control over this place, and so Hank, the Force-sensitive PC, will see a vision of a glowing floating baby, who guides him to locate the rest of the party. He'll be pursued by Dune Gomero, who instead of fighting will offer to train Hank, to guide him so the Force can set them both free. Occasionally they'll come across Imperials who believe they've been here for years. When they find the Senator, the force baby glides into her belly, and she's suddenly granted understanding to explain what's going on.

They'll need to find the physical 'Phantom Drive' in the engine room and deactivate it, and at the side of the device they find a specter of sorts - Sareve, whose spirit persists enough for her to snarl at the pregnant Senator and try to kill her. If Hank has refused Dune's offer, he fights too, trying to slay the Senator while doing the villainous 'taunt+exposition' thing to explain that her child is strong in the Light side, and if it dies here, it will permanently strengthen the Dark side.

If they turn off the machine, they snap awake back in their bodies, with only moments having passed. Saving the child will heal them all and blind Dune. Killing the child will kill the entire crew of the Star Destroyer and cause the surviving PCs to be haunted.

Yes, it's surreal. I need to work on it so I can pull it off properly.

 

[Eltab]

The Star Destroyer swoops down for a quick pick-up then climbs back out of the atmosphere, all on autopilot. (Sorry I just never thought of SDs as something that can take off / land / fly in atmosphere.)
When the PCs get out, the SD is in low orbit and the Rebel are following at a respectful distance - they got zapped once when they were close in and don't want it to happen again; from the chatter the PCs learn a few Rebel ships crashed while out-of-control.

Your 'Phantom Drive' sounds interesting but also sounds like an overall campaign goal - something that can tip the balance between Light and Dark Sides.