Only just saw the last two posts. Sorry.
My "Halloween Special" fell a little flat, I think. We had ended the previous session at the end of the climactic combat encounter of the previous adventure, with the main villain falling to blaster fire. So at the beginning of this session, I had a Derriphan exit his body and then "explode" all around the PCs so they wouldn't know which one it had possessed. I then passed out a note to everyone to the effect that it was quite likely someone had been possessed but they weren't sure who (I had pre-arranged the possession with the victim's player, but I gave him a note too for appearance's sake).
Then I went through a quick little scripted part to get them back to the nearby space station. Instead of having their usual chauffeur there, I explained that she had had to leave but had arranged transport for them - a junky old freighter prone to breakdowns. So of course one player (who happens to be playing the possessed PC, who is also the group's techie) immediately starts asking about alternatives. I explained that the only other ships at the spaceport were shuttles and other non-hyperspace-worthy vessels (which was fitting, considering that the planet they were on was left more or less in ruins after the Clone Wars). I allowed the player to make a knowledge (tech) check on the ship and revealed various weaknesses, which only made him want to find another ship even more [and illicited a cry of "Here comes the train!"].
Eventually they took the ship and then I explained that a day into their journey (they were going to rendezvous with their handlers for the main campaign), the ship's engines broke down. The player complained that his PC would have been watching the engines regularly, so I explained that they broke down despite this and later revealed that it was possible the ship had been pulled from hyperspace, which tends to damage even perfectly "healthy" engines.
Anyway, so they find they're near a nebula and there's a space station between them and it. Attempts at contacting the station get no response, although they do get the station's automated welcome message and then get pulled in by its automated tractor beam. However, the tractor beam doesn't shut off once they get into the hangar bay ... and the hangar bay is missing its containment field, so there's no air or gravity in it. There's another ship in the bay, also trapped by the stuck-on tractor beam. There doesn't appear to be anyone on board.
So the PCs don space suits and go into the station and turn the containment field and life support back on in the hangar bay via its control room. Then the same player as above decides he's going to try to steal the other ship in the bay because he really doesn't like the junky one (even though it can be fixed up and updated so it's not all that bad). I let him get on board and find that it too has a damaged engine. He then tries to hack into the ship's computer system, which I started at hostile. He rolled very badly and locked himself out, so he gave up and went back into the station.
They enter the main concourse area and go up to a computer terminal, accessing a schematic of the station. I explain that the repair bay is on the far side of the station, while the power coupling station they'll need to access in order to power down the tractor beam is down in the engineering area. There's also a medical bay in the center on the level above, and bioscans of the station reveal that there is a large concentration of lifeforms in that vicinity.
At this point my player decides that going through the station to the repair bay will be too dangerous, so he comes up with the idea of going outside for a spacewalk across the hull of the station. Not wanting to be accused of further railroading or of trying to thwart my players, I go along with the idea, explaining that there is a maintenance hatch on the hull that opens into a corridor not far from the repair bay. So they go that way, even though I explain that it will take several hours.
[I had intended to build up suspense and anticipation, with the PCs hearing things and perhaps even seeing things and encountering evidence of stuff on the way in, but the spacewalk prevented me from being able to do that.]
So they get to the repair bay and start looking around only to find a corpse with a bloated head (actually a headcrab, which detaches itself and attacks after they take out its host). It gets up and starts attacking them. Some little spider-like creatures (headcrabs) come out of the ceiling ducts, along with a fast zombie. Several of the PCs decide to make area attacks that include their fellow PCs, in some cases engaging in metagaming in the process [one of my players introduced a new PC this session, and he decided to autofire the Kel Dor Jedi PC because of his DR 10 talent, even though his PC wouldn't have known that].
After that fight, the PCs find the spare parts they need to fix their ship, then they attempt to leave and go back to the airlock that will take them back onto the hull of the station. They get ambushed by more headcrabs and zombies [and since I was mostly making it up as I went along, I did a poor job drawing up the corridors, so the zombies only had a few ways from which to come at the PCs, most of which were quite far away, and the zombies are slow ...], including my zombie soldiers with their grenades.
One of the PCs got poisoned by a venomous headcrab. And even though I reminded them that they didn't have a medical kit and explained that the station's medical bay would be the best bet for finding one, the player of the possessed techie PC was still determined to go back to their ship via the station's hull first [I'm not sure if this was him roleplaying the Derriphan possessing his character or if he was just being stubborn].
And that's where we ended. I wasn't expecting to be able to scare any of my players (they're all in their 30s and 40s and "have seen it all before"), but I was hoping to at least creep them out and surprise them a bit with some unusual zombies. I think I managed that last part. They weren't expecting suicide-bomber zombies! However, I still feel it fell a bit flat because I didn't get to build up enough suspense or anticipation. Luckily for me, they're still on the station, so I can try again next session.
