Star Wars (7ABY; M06, D29): Replitron’s Evaluation
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Garth, Sekar, Ganen, and VI-P2 / [XP: 10]
Preston had visiting family, Deb had a project deadline looming, and Bevin had to work early on Saturday.
Month 6; Day 29 (Continued)
Wanting to make sure that they had a means to quickly exit the area if things when badly, J’Brel stayed behind to watch the loading dock and Garth’s speeder. Not wanting to leave her alone, Jacinta stayed with her.
The remaining PCs exited the loading dock, finding a short hall with three labeled doors. The one on the left said “Recycling”, the one on the right read “Raw Materials”, and the one at the end of the hall was labeled “Receiving Operations”.
Though most interested in Receiving Operations, the PCs decided to at least poke their heads into the other two areas before moving on; and their indecision as to which to check first was broken when the Recycling door opened and the same large scavenger droid which they had followed in emerged. Completely ignoring the PCs, the droid headed back down the hall to the loading dock; where it was disassembled by J’Brel and Jacinta after it tried to remove one of the doors from Garth’s speeder.
The left door opened onto a tiny mezzanine overlooking a pit; about 30’ square and 10’ deep. The bottom of the pit was strewn with all manner of scrap and junk, and the upper portions of the pit walls are lined with several open chutes.
Extending down from the ceiling were over a dozen rusty, jointed, mechanical arms; each one sifting through the pile, picking up specific pieces of junk, and then dropping it down one of the chutes. Among the junk were half a dozen droids, which were not only intact or mostly-intact but also active. Struggling in vain to get out of the pit, they began vocalizing in destress upon seeing the PCs; though it was unclear whether they were begging for help or trying to warn them about something.
Though Ganen kinda wanted to get moving, Sekar and VI clearly wanted to get the droids extricated; and any time for debate abruptly ended when a large, round hatch snapped open in the center of the ceiling. Descending from the hatch came a long, thick, flexible arm ending in a large gripper claw. After a few moments scanning the pit with a sensor unit located in its ‘palm’, the claws opened and the arm reached for an old power droid trying to hide in the corner.
Sekar managed to jump from the mezzanine out onto the arm; but as it grabbed the droid and began to retract, she realized that the hatch wasn’t wide enough for her to squeeze through on the side of it. She attempted to shift herself down to the droid’s feet so that she could go up through the hatch under it, but the droid was panicking and franticly kicking its legs as it screamed in a low-frequency burst of noise; and she wound up losing her grip and falling into the scrap pile.
VI made the same leap; but being a bit smaller, managed to make it up through the hatch before it slammed shut behind her. After failing to find a way to mechanically disable arm, she just started blasting it; hoping that the sound would be sufficiently dampened by the ceiling. The arm finally stopped moving, but VI was then unable to get the claw to release.
Ganen gave Garth a jet-pack boost up to the hatch; and though he accidentally banged Garth’s head into the ceiling, he was then able to hold him steady enough to work the hatch’s emergency access panel. Garth was not only able to get the hatch open, but also get the claw to release the power droid.
The Raw Materials door led to the same area which the ceiling track from the loading dock led to, which was basically just a big floor covered in a grid of chutes; each of which was labeled with a different type of raw material. The PCs then moved on to Receiving Operations.
The operations room was nearly as narrow as the hallway and ran perpendicular to it; forming a ‘T’. On either side of the door through which the PCs entered was a large window; one overlooking the recycling room and the other overlooking the raw materials room.
On the opposite side were two computer stations as well as another door which appeared to have been welded shut. One of the computer stations was displaying a surveillance feed from the loading dock, the other was currently displaying the words “PLEASE DO NOT INTERFERE!” in big bold all-caps.
Curious, Garth sat down at the latter station and typed in a query: “What’s your mission?” A few moments later, a text reply was displayed…
- Analysis complete.
- Greatest overall threat to aggregate sapient life in galaxy is second Revan incursion.
- Probability of second Revan war within next 10 years: 98%
- Probability of Revan threat being compounded by backing of Hutt Cartels: 66%
- Insufficient resources and data to significantly weaken Revan or Cartels.
- Probability by ruling government of successfully defeating Hutt-backed Revan invasion based on known and extrapolated policies and procedures…
- Restored Republic: 26%
- First Order: 86%
- Restored New Order: 98%
The PCs took a few moments to take this in. It certainly explained why First Order loyalists were being targeted, but they still had no idea who they were dealing with. “Who are you?”, Garth finally typed.
“I am Replitron”, the computer responded.
Garth thought for a few moments and then typed another question. “What is the probability of a combined Restored Republic and First Order defeating Revan threat?”
“Processing…”, the computer replied; after which it accepted no further input.
Thinking that Garth’s question would undoubtedly require quite a bit of processing to answer, Ganen asked VI to access the other terminal and try to find an area drawing an excessive amount of power. He was absolutely correct, and VI was able to find such a place and plot out the quickest way to get there (once Sekar cut through the welded door with her lightsaber).
The door to the computer core chamber opened onto a maze of catwalks; about 20’ above the floor and 20’ below the ceiling. The floor was almost completely covered with an array of heat sink fins, which looked sharp as well as searing hot.
In the chamber were two wide metal cylinders stretching from the floor to the ceiling. Each had a door which could be accessed from the catwalks; and one of them, the PCs hoped, would contain Replitron’s main processors.
The catwalks also connected to two additional doors on the opposite side of the chamber from where the PCs entered. Both of them opened moments after the PCs entered.
Through one of the doors came a shambling horde of the most half-assed-looking droids the PCs had ever seen. So flimsy that they made B1 battle droids look buff by comparison, they had clearly been thrown together in a panic; though there were unfortunately rather a lot of them.
Through the second door came a single droid which looked more formidable than the others put together. Its broad cylindrical body floated about a foot above the catwalk and was topped with a simple domed head; not the most inspired design, but it looked pretty solid. Attached to the torso were two powerful-looking arms with buzz-saws mounted on the wrists.
The junky droids opened fire from across the chamber with blaster rifles; not very accurate, but fired in coordinated volleys. The big droid flipped back its domed head to reveal a pair of blasters of its own; and though its fire was also not very accurate, it ominously closed in on the PCs with its buzz-saws whirring.
With half their team absent and still wounded and exhausted from their earlier fights, it was not the PCs’ greatest battle. Garth did his best to keep everyone intact, but Sekar and Ganen both teetered on the brink of collapse; and VI eventually got damaged badly enough to get shut down. The big droid was heavily armored, but the PCs eventually wore it down; and luckily for them, the smaller droids stopped fighting once the big one was deactivated.
One of the cylinders, as the PCs had expected, housed Replitron’s enormous CPU. Ganen was hesitant to destroy such a vast intellect which was obviously concerned about the well-being of all sapient life, but finally decided that there was nobody whom he would trust with it and shot the CPU to bits.
The second cylinder contained Replitron’s memory core. Digging through it, the PCs were able to find records of every droid attack which the computer planned; including that evenings’ attempts on Director Lusankya and Zebedee Creakle. Almost every operation was listed as ‘Planning’, ‘Succeeded’, or ‘Failed’; indicating that there was not much else that the PCs could do. One, however, was still listed as ‘In Progress’ when the computer was shut down.
The droid for that operation was a knockoff of a common humanoid servant droid, but was modified with a refrigerated compartment in its back; just large enough to hold a smaller serving platter. The droid has been tasked with taking one particular plastic serving platter, infiltrating the kitchens of a particular banquet hall, substituting the platter for another one already being chilled, and then making sure that it made it onto one of the buffet tables; preferably as close to the middle of the hall as possible.
Additional files revealed that the serving tray was made from a very complex compound. Garth had no idea how Replitron had gotten ahold of it, but he instantly recognized what it was. It was the same compound which the PCs had discovered in Clu Barrant’s lab on Nubia. It looked like ordinary plastic; but when it hit a certain temperature, it would sublime into a cloud of odorless and colorless nerve gas!
The PCs’ hearts sank when they discovered that the droid had signaled Replitron over 40 minutes earlier; indicating that the platter had successfully been deployed. But then they discovered that the target banquet hall was in the Galaxies Opera House, which was only a stone’s throw from the Imperial Palace. If they acted quickly and decisively, there might still be a chance!
As the PCs raced back to the loading dock, Ganen contacted Agent Garber and told him what was happening. Garber’s reply was “Do whatever you can do; I’ll deal with any legal fallout afterwards.”
Garth didn’t have his full sensor unit with him, but was able to upload all of the relevant data on the nerve gas directly to VI. Everyone piled into the speeder and then burst into the night at top speed.
The banquet hall attached to the Galaxies Opera House was lined with floor-to-ceiling windows; offering guests a magnificent view of the city. Garth was pretty sure that the front end of his speeder would hold up better than they would.
Some security craft hovering nearby took a few shots at the speeder as it sped towards the venue, but Garth just ignored it and started flashing his headlights. People inside started running and diving out of the way, and then the PCs came crashing through the window.
With VI under one arm, Ganen exited the airspeeder with his jet pack firing; speeding down the panic-filled hall as the droid scanned for the slightest hint of Clu’s nerve gas. She quicky locate it; sitting on a table with three-quarters of a green gelatin mold on it.
Ganen’s first thought was to get it to a freezer, but then it occurred to him that anything managing to live on the surface of Coruscant probably wasn’t going to be bothered by a little nerve gas. Racing back to the window, he quickly chucked the platter into the abyss.
Some of the PCs still hadn’t had a chance to see the newer style of First Order stormtrooper armor, but that was quickly remedied when several squads of them came pouring into the banquet hall with weapons at the ready. The PCs wisely dropped their own weapons and complied with every order they were given.
“It’s all right, fellas; I know these guys”, came a familiar-ish voice from the crowd. The PCs turned to see none other than Kaleb Hess; yet again snacking on a kabab. “They’re high-level Imperial contractors”, Hess continued. “Remember that attack on Scarif awhile back? These are the people, who not only stopped it, but also scoured the Outer Rim and brought every last person who was behind it to justice.” He finally turned to face the PCs; and after a long pause, gave an awkward “Hi”.
“I can back him up on that; I was there too”, came another familiar-ish voice; this one female. It was Baroness Domina Tagge; and after looking over the PCs, her expression soured as she began scanning the crowd. “Where’s Roger?”, she asked.
“Hey!”, an unfamiliar voice called from back towards Garth’s speeder. “Can we get a medic over here!?”
The PCs and others in the crowd headed that way, and discovered that someone had apparently not moved fast enough and gotten clipped by the airspeeder as it came through the window. The man was knocked out cold with a serious knot on his head; but thankfully, it didn’t appear as though he’d suffered any permanent injury.
As Garth helped out, he eventually recognized the man; who was among the last people in the galaxy whom he’d have wanted to accidentally run over. It was Tyber Zann, whom the PCs hadn’t seen since they watched him stab The Engineer to death.
The PCs held their breath as Zann’s men helped him to his feet and explained what had happened. He then looked right at Garth and said “It’s all right.”
On nothing but Hess’ word, the authorities let the PCs go as soon as they were ready; no questions asked. Before they left the banquet hall, Baroness Tagge asked the PCs to tell Roger that she’d been completely serious about the offer she’d made back on Scarif.
The PCs were paid 3000 credits: 1000 for saving Director Lusankya and locating the droid lab, another 1000 for shutting the droid lab down, and another 1000 for intervening directly with the attack on the party. They also received two more green flags: one from Lusankya for their actions at the Inglenook and another from Baroness Tagge for their actions at the Opera House.
When they got back to the ship, the PCs discovered a high-priority holonet message waiting from Tyber Zann. It simply read, “I’d like a word. Please come to my tower at your earliest convenience.”
Garth, Sekar, Ganen, and VI-P2 / [XP: 10]
Preston had visiting family, Deb had a project deadline looming, and Bevin had to work early on Saturday.
Month 6; Day 29 (Continued)
Wanting to make sure that they had a means to quickly exit the area if things when badly, J’Brel stayed behind to watch the loading dock and Garth’s speeder. Not wanting to leave her alone, Jacinta stayed with her.
The remaining PCs exited the loading dock, finding a short hall with three labeled doors. The one on the left said “Recycling”, the one on the right read “Raw Materials”, and the one at the end of the hall was labeled “Receiving Operations”.
Though most interested in Receiving Operations, the PCs decided to at least poke their heads into the other two areas before moving on; and their indecision as to which to check first was broken when the Recycling door opened and the same large scavenger droid which they had followed in emerged. Completely ignoring the PCs, the droid headed back down the hall to the loading dock; where it was disassembled by J’Brel and Jacinta after it tried to remove one of the doors from Garth’s speeder.
The left door opened onto a tiny mezzanine overlooking a pit; about 30’ square and 10’ deep. The bottom of the pit was strewn with all manner of scrap and junk, and the upper portions of the pit walls are lined with several open chutes.
Extending down from the ceiling were over a dozen rusty, jointed, mechanical arms; each one sifting through the pile, picking up specific pieces of junk, and then dropping it down one of the chutes. Among the junk were half a dozen droids, which were not only intact or mostly-intact but also active. Struggling in vain to get out of the pit, they began vocalizing in destress upon seeing the PCs; though it was unclear whether they were begging for help or trying to warn them about something.
Though Ganen kinda wanted to get moving, Sekar and VI clearly wanted to get the droids extricated; and any time for debate abruptly ended when a large, round hatch snapped open in the center of the ceiling. Descending from the hatch came a long, thick, flexible arm ending in a large gripper claw. After a few moments scanning the pit with a sensor unit located in its ‘palm’, the claws opened and the arm reached for an old power droid trying to hide in the corner.
Sekar managed to jump from the mezzanine out onto the arm; but as it grabbed the droid and began to retract, she realized that the hatch wasn’t wide enough for her to squeeze through on the side of it. She attempted to shift herself down to the droid’s feet so that she could go up through the hatch under it, but the droid was panicking and franticly kicking its legs as it screamed in a low-frequency burst of noise; and she wound up losing her grip and falling into the scrap pile.
VI made the same leap; but being a bit smaller, managed to make it up through the hatch before it slammed shut behind her. After failing to find a way to mechanically disable arm, she just started blasting it; hoping that the sound would be sufficiently dampened by the ceiling. The arm finally stopped moving, but VI was then unable to get the claw to release.
Ganen gave Garth a jet-pack boost up to the hatch; and though he accidentally banged Garth’s head into the ceiling, he was then able to hold him steady enough to work the hatch’s emergency access panel. Garth was not only able to get the hatch open, but also get the claw to release the power droid.
The Raw Materials door led to the same area which the ceiling track from the loading dock led to, which was basically just a big floor covered in a grid of chutes; each of which was labeled with a different type of raw material. The PCs then moved on to Receiving Operations.
The operations room was nearly as narrow as the hallway and ran perpendicular to it; forming a ‘T’. On either side of the door through which the PCs entered was a large window; one overlooking the recycling room and the other overlooking the raw materials room.
On the opposite side were two computer stations as well as another door which appeared to have been welded shut. One of the computer stations was displaying a surveillance feed from the loading dock, the other was currently displaying the words “PLEASE DO NOT INTERFERE!” in big bold all-caps.
Curious, Garth sat down at the latter station and typed in a query: “What’s your mission?” A few moments later, a text reply was displayed…
- Analysis complete.
- Greatest overall threat to aggregate sapient life in galaxy is second Revan incursion.
- Probability of second Revan war within next 10 years: 98%
- Probability of Revan threat being compounded by backing of Hutt Cartels: 66%
- Insufficient resources and data to significantly weaken Revan or Cartels.
- Probability by ruling government of successfully defeating Hutt-backed Revan invasion based on known and extrapolated policies and procedures…
- Restored Republic: 26%
- First Order: 86%
- Restored New Order: 98%
The PCs took a few moments to take this in. It certainly explained why First Order loyalists were being targeted, but they still had no idea who they were dealing with. “Who are you?”, Garth finally typed.
“I am Replitron”, the computer responded.
Garth thought for a few moments and then typed another question. “What is the probability of a combined Restored Republic and First Order defeating Revan threat?”
“Processing…”, the computer replied; after which it accepted no further input.
Thinking that Garth’s question would undoubtedly require quite a bit of processing to answer, Ganen asked VI to access the other terminal and try to find an area drawing an excessive amount of power. He was absolutely correct, and VI was able to find such a place and plot out the quickest way to get there (once Sekar cut through the welded door with her lightsaber).
The door to the computer core chamber opened onto a maze of catwalks; about 20’ above the floor and 20’ below the ceiling. The floor was almost completely covered with an array of heat sink fins, which looked sharp as well as searing hot.
In the chamber were two wide metal cylinders stretching from the floor to the ceiling. Each had a door which could be accessed from the catwalks; and one of them, the PCs hoped, would contain Replitron’s main processors.
The catwalks also connected to two additional doors on the opposite side of the chamber from where the PCs entered. Both of them opened moments after the PCs entered.
Through one of the doors came a shambling horde of the most half-assed-looking droids the PCs had ever seen. So flimsy that they made B1 battle droids look buff by comparison, they had clearly been thrown together in a panic; though there were unfortunately rather a lot of them.
Through the second door came a single droid which looked more formidable than the others put together. Its broad cylindrical body floated about a foot above the catwalk and was topped with a simple domed head; not the most inspired design, but it looked pretty solid. Attached to the torso were two powerful-looking arms with buzz-saws mounted on the wrists.
The junky droids opened fire from across the chamber with blaster rifles; not very accurate, but fired in coordinated volleys. The big droid flipped back its domed head to reveal a pair of blasters of its own; and though its fire was also not very accurate, it ominously closed in on the PCs with its buzz-saws whirring.
With half their team absent and still wounded and exhausted from their earlier fights, it was not the PCs’ greatest battle. Garth did his best to keep everyone intact, but Sekar and Ganen both teetered on the brink of collapse; and VI eventually got damaged badly enough to get shut down. The big droid was heavily armored, but the PCs eventually wore it down; and luckily for them, the smaller droids stopped fighting once the big one was deactivated.
One of the cylinders, as the PCs had expected, housed Replitron’s enormous CPU. Ganen was hesitant to destroy such a vast intellect which was obviously concerned about the well-being of all sapient life, but finally decided that there was nobody whom he would trust with it and shot the CPU to bits.
The second cylinder contained Replitron’s memory core. Digging through it, the PCs were able to find records of every droid attack which the computer planned; including that evenings’ attempts on Director Lusankya and Zebedee Creakle. Almost every operation was listed as ‘Planning’, ‘Succeeded’, or ‘Failed’; indicating that there was not much else that the PCs could do. One, however, was still listed as ‘In Progress’ when the computer was shut down.
The droid for that operation was a knockoff of a common humanoid servant droid, but was modified with a refrigerated compartment in its back; just large enough to hold a smaller serving platter. The droid has been tasked with taking one particular plastic serving platter, infiltrating the kitchens of a particular banquet hall, substituting the platter for another one already being chilled, and then making sure that it made it onto one of the buffet tables; preferably as close to the middle of the hall as possible.
Additional files revealed that the serving tray was made from a very complex compound. Garth had no idea how Replitron had gotten ahold of it, but he instantly recognized what it was. It was the same compound which the PCs had discovered in Clu Barrant’s lab on Nubia. It looked like ordinary plastic; but when it hit a certain temperature, it would sublime into a cloud of odorless and colorless nerve gas!
The PCs’ hearts sank when they discovered that the droid had signaled Replitron over 40 minutes earlier; indicating that the platter had successfully been deployed. But then they discovered that the target banquet hall was in the Galaxies Opera House, which was only a stone’s throw from the Imperial Palace. If they acted quickly and decisively, there might still be a chance!
As the PCs raced back to the loading dock, Ganen contacted Agent Garber and told him what was happening. Garber’s reply was “Do whatever you can do; I’ll deal with any legal fallout afterwards.”
Garth didn’t have his full sensor unit with him, but was able to upload all of the relevant data on the nerve gas directly to VI. Everyone piled into the speeder and then burst into the night at top speed.
The banquet hall attached to the Galaxies Opera House was lined with floor-to-ceiling windows; offering guests a magnificent view of the city. Garth was pretty sure that the front end of his speeder would hold up better than they would.
Some security craft hovering nearby took a few shots at the speeder as it sped towards the venue, but Garth just ignored it and started flashing his headlights. People inside started running and diving out of the way, and then the PCs came crashing through the window.
With VI under one arm, Ganen exited the airspeeder with his jet pack firing; speeding down the panic-filled hall as the droid scanned for the slightest hint of Clu’s nerve gas. She quicky locate it; sitting on a table with three-quarters of a green gelatin mold on it.
Ganen’s first thought was to get it to a freezer, but then it occurred to him that anything managing to live on the surface of Coruscant probably wasn’t going to be bothered by a little nerve gas. Racing back to the window, he quickly chucked the platter into the abyss.
Some of the PCs still hadn’t had a chance to see the newer style of First Order stormtrooper armor, but that was quickly remedied when several squads of them came pouring into the banquet hall with weapons at the ready. The PCs wisely dropped their own weapons and complied with every order they were given.
“It’s all right, fellas; I know these guys”, came a familiar-ish voice from the crowd. The PCs turned to see none other than Kaleb Hess; yet again snacking on a kabab. “They’re high-level Imperial contractors”, Hess continued. “Remember that attack on Scarif awhile back? These are the people, who not only stopped it, but also scoured the Outer Rim and brought every last person who was behind it to justice.” He finally turned to face the PCs; and after a long pause, gave an awkward “Hi”.
“I can back him up on that; I was there too”, came another familiar-ish voice; this one female. It was Baroness Domina Tagge; and after looking over the PCs, her expression soured as she began scanning the crowd. “Where’s Roger?”, she asked.
“Hey!”, an unfamiliar voice called from back towards Garth’s speeder. “Can we get a medic over here!?”
The PCs and others in the crowd headed that way, and discovered that someone had apparently not moved fast enough and gotten clipped by the airspeeder as it came through the window. The man was knocked out cold with a serious knot on his head; but thankfully, it didn’t appear as though he’d suffered any permanent injury.
As Garth helped out, he eventually recognized the man; who was among the last people in the galaxy whom he’d have wanted to accidentally run over. It was Tyber Zann, whom the PCs hadn’t seen since they watched him stab The Engineer to death.
The PCs held their breath as Zann’s men helped him to his feet and explained what had happened. He then looked right at Garth and said “It’s all right.”
On nothing but Hess’ word, the authorities let the PCs go as soon as they were ready; no questions asked. Before they left the banquet hall, Baroness Tagge asked the PCs to tell Roger that she’d been completely serious about the offer she’d made back on Scarif.
The PCs were paid 3000 credits: 1000 for saving Director Lusankya and locating the droid lab, another 1000 for shutting the droid lab down, and another 1000 for intervening directly with the attack on the party. They also received two more green flags: one from Lusankya for their actions at the Inglenook and another from Baroness Tagge for their actions at the Opera House.
When they got back to the ship, the PCs discovered a high-priority holonet message waiting from Tyber Zann. It simply read, “I’d like a word. Please come to my tower at your earliest convenience.”