Star Wars (7ABY; M06, D33-D34): Root System
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Garth, Sekar, Roger, VI-P2, Ganen, and J’Brel / [XP: 10]
Bevin didn’t play.
Month 6; Day 33 (Continued)
Back in city, it wasn’t long before the PCs came across a big commotion going on outside of a tiny bar on one particular street. Peeking inside, the PCs didn’t see the man that they were looking for; but did see three men and a hulking alien who certainly looked like they might be convict gladiators.
Over the din on the street, it was impossible to hear anything which was being said; but the gladiators appeared to be having a heated argument about something. The cacophony abruptly ended, however, when the large (and exceedingly frustrated) alien raised up a mighty two-handed mace and reduced one of the tables in the bar to splinters.
“Shut up and listen!”, the alien roared after a moment of tense silence. “The Grand Master doesn’t care about the Empire, and the Empire doesn’t care about anyone on this planet! What the Empire does care about are people with this many squares on their chest.”
As he concluded the sentence, the big alien pulled an Imperial rank insignia out of his pocket and held it up. The girl had not been exaggerating; it did indeed have five each red and blue squares on it. After a beat, the alien continued.
“That means that this guy is a liability; not an opportunity. The Empire might just decide to level this entire neighborhood in retaliation just for knocking him out. So this is what’s going to happen…”
“You go and get me a speeder. You two go and find a couple of scrappers, and get rid of that escape pod. I’m going to go bash this guy’s skull in; and then we’re going to take his corpse out of the city, find Big Red, and feed him to him! “Now get moving!”
As the three men started towards the street, the big alien started for the door to what was presumably the bar’s back rooms; and the PCs knew that it was now or never. Garth managed to distract the big alien long enough for Sekar to shoulder her way in and attack, while J’Brel managed to use a little deception to tie up the other gladiators and the riled-up mobs by turning them against each other.
Sekar and the big alien exchanged some bone-crunching bashes; and while the alien had an advantage in size and strength, Sekar had the Dark Side. Despite taking the worst of the exchange, she still managed to intimidate the alien into backing down.
Back out in Red Zone One, Izik was already cutting into the ship’s hull by the time the PCs closed off its bow section. The PCs were a little surprised at how quickly the cutting torch heated up the water, but the scrapper was done before they got boiled. Izik dropped a hose in and fired up a pump; and within only a few short minutes, the water in the bow section was low enough to safely open the dry compartment on the port side.
The compartment appeared to be a small and very creepy-looking surgical suite of some kind. Standing in the doorway was an equally-creepy-looking Ithorian cyborg. He did not appear to be seriously injured, and the PCs speculated that his life signs had looked so weak because so little of him was still living.
Glassy-eyed and completely motionless, he just stared at the PCs for several seconds. When he finally made a sound, it was through a monosyllabic pair of stereographic text-to-speech devices, which did nothing to mitigate his unsettling appearance.
“Your assistance is appreciated”, he flatly declared. “I have no currency, but you are welcome to the remains of this vessel and its contents.” Asked who he was and what had happened, he droned out a response…
“My acquaintances address me as ‘Root System’. I was paying a visit to acquaintances east of the capital. There was an explosion in the engine room. I attempted to reach the sea in order to maximize my survival potential, but I failed. If you’ll excuse me; I have a very long walk ahead.” Asked of his destination, he added “The Felker industrial area; roughly 129.6 miles on an 088 bearing from this position.” Asked what he had dropped over the city, he replied that he had not dropped anything deliberately; but that the engine room explosion might have resulted in significant debris.
Izik had lowered a rope by this point, and said that he’d be more than happy to give the Ithorian a ride. The PCs, meanwhile, were torn. He didn’t appear to have done anything wrong and they felt that they had little justification to detain him, but something just wasn’t adding up; especially the absolute calm with which he was taking recent events. There was a moment of silent indecision as the cyborg approached the rope ladder, and then VI stunned him. Izik was taken aback, but decided to mind his own business.
Back in the city, Sekar opened the backroom door to find the handsome ISB agent sitting on the floor; eating beer nuts and drinking. Quickly rising to his feet, he flashed a smile at Sekar and asked “Are you here to free me or hit me some more?”
Smirking at the query, Sekar replied that she was at least leaning towards the former. “In that case…”, the man continued, “Andre Divo, Imperial Security Bureau; at you service and in your debt.”
Following the PCs out, he briefly paused to retrieve his blaster from behind the bar. Once safe inside Garth’s airspeeder, he frantically looked around for a moment and then smiled. “Well that’s two things off of my bucket list: I met a Chiss and rode in an actual Gale 11.”
Agent Divo remained quiet until they were out of the hostile neighborhood, then asked another question. “I feel like a cad asking anything of you after you just saved my life, but you wouldn’t happen to know where the freighter that I jettisoned from ended up; would you?”
The PCs stated that their comrades were looking into it as they spoke, then inquired as to the man’s interest and what he knew of it. “I’m actually looking for an agent of the Broken Shackle; an Ithorian cyborg who calls himself ‘Root System’.” After a pause, he added “I supposed I should back up a bit…”
“So we don’t know the particulars of how it was obtained; but a now-deceased Hutt operating on Nar Shaddaa apparently managed to compile a great deal of sensitive information regarding various Imperial goings-on throughout the Baxel Sector . About a month and a half ago, that information was sold to an individual calling herself Revelation; a member of the Broken Shackle’s inner circle.”
“Again I’m not sure how, but we just learned of all this a couple of weeks ago. At that point, attempting to eradicate the data would have been pointless; no doubt numerous copies had already been made. On the other hand, just locking down everything in the Baxel Sector could have potentially been more crippling than if this information was used against it; so I was tasked with obtaining a full copy of the information so that we could at least know exactly what had been compromised.”
“So I find one of their hideouts and storm it with an elite CompForce team. Revelation did not appear to be there at the time; but I noticed Mr. System, a known slicer and data courier, hurrying onto a transport; so I chased after him. Once I was up the ramp, I could see him still making his way up to the cockpit while the ramp closes behind me and I’m thinking ‘Does he not realize I’m on board?’”
“So then it occurs to me I could try to tap into his navicomputer and see where he’s planning on going, so I sneak back into engineering and do exactly that; quick comlink exchange with my 2nd in command, everything is under control. So Root lays in his entire course and I’m thinking ‘Taris? What the heck is on Taris?’”
“So, one long and uncomfortable day of hiding in the engine room later, we come out of hyperspace at Taris and he starts his approach. But by this point, I’ve had a few days to think about it; and I realize that if there is some secret Broken Shackle enclave on the planet, I might have a really tough time getting out once I get there.”
“So, I had already managed to tap into his nav system; I figured I could do the same to his comm system and send a quick message out to any Imperial forces that might be nearby. Ooops! That, he noticed.”
“So, we have a little firefight in the cargo hold; I manage to get him in the lower torso and he starts falling back to the cockpit. Now this guy has a reputation for being not all there, so at this point I’m worried he’s just going to crash and kill us both. So I activated one of the escape pods and then chucked a grenade back into the engine room.”
“Darn if the SOB doesn’t somehow lock out the escape pod from launching; while he’s also struggling to keep the nose up and not go into a free-fall. But I finally managed to override his override and launch, but I wound up coming down in a somewhat unfriendly neighborhood. And the rest I believe you know.”
When the city team finally got in contact with the crash site team, the latter were happy to learn that VI’s “shoot first” instinct had been correct. Root System was turned over to Agent Divo, and he promised them another green flag.
The Grand Master also came through with the 4000 credits which he’d promised the PCs, then extended another invitation. “In honor of Topaz’s return, I’ve scheduled a special championship bout for tonight”, he began. “I’d very much like for you all to join me in the royal skybox if you’d be willing; and since your ship can’t leave until I say so, you might as well; right?”
After a chuckle, he paused for a moment in recollection. “Yea, I guess we were kinda awkwardly between champions the last time you were here; weren’t we? Don’t worry, this new guy is amazing!”
Garth spend some time scavenging for airspeeder parts, VI upgraded her blasters, and everyone else just kinda killed time until they headed to the Contest of Champions. When the current champion, ‘The Amazing Antron’, entered the arena; the PCs’ jaws hit the floor, but not for the reason which the Grand Master had hoped.
The bluish-purple insectoid alien had four arms, each ending in a cybernetic socket; and plugged into each socket was a different sinister melee weapon. It was the exact same type of alien which they’d discovered on Tatooine some time ago.
Asked about Antron’s origins, the Grand Master knew only that ‘one of his recruiters had brought him in’. The PCs felt compelled to tell someone; but they had no way to get in touch with Governor Wolf, and they had no idea who else even knew that these aliens existed.
Month 6; Day 34
For the first time in a while, the PCs had no job lined up; and upon realizing how close they were to Mandalore, they decided to pay another visit to Ganen’s mom. After landing the Revenant at the spaceport, they took Specter out to Viira’s home; hoping to get there before dinner time.
As they landed, they could see Viira out by her old ship; which she was clearly doing some extensive work on. Access panels were open from bow to stern, and parts and subsystems were strewn all over the adjacent lawn.
“Hey, guys!”, she called out as the PCs disembarked. “Where’s my granddaughter?” She seemed in good spirits as she gave Jacinta an enthusiastic hug and asked if the PCs were feeding her; but the PCs could tell that she was utterly stressed and exhausted, and Garth suspected that she might be ill. Inquiries were made, and she finally explained…
“Goodness… Your first visit was all about meeting you for the first time and Ganen getting his mythosaur skull; I can’t even remember if I even mentioned it. I actually look on another apprentice about a year ago; very tough young lady looking for a new start in life. She became a journeyman coming up on 2 months ago, and I helped her get set up with a job.”
“I don’t know if she’s bored or just misses me but she’s submailed me every single night since she left. But last night I didn’t hear from her; and call me a crazy overprotective mom, but I started getting really worried. When I still hadn’t heard from her by this morning, I came out to warm up my ship… but I guess I left it sitting too long because it’s got all kinds of problems.”
“So I’ve been stressing and scrambling all day, which is exactly what my doctor told me I can’t be doing. And I still haven’t heard from her.”
By that point, it was clear to everyone that she wasn’t well; and as Ganen sat her down, Jacinta was the first to voice what everyone was thinking: they would go look for her apprentice. Garth tried to subtly bio-scan her, but she was too sharp. “Put that away, young man”, she admonished with a smile. She then looked at Ganen and added, more seriously, “It’s nothing bad; I promise.”
“She’s working for a capo in the Zann Consortium; a guy I met a few times when I was smuggling. He operates on Columex in an abandoned mining area called the Ilmari Trench.”
“She goes by the name ‘Val’. Her armor is silvery and she wears a blue cape. If you happen to see her without her helmet; she’s got darker skin, black hair, and she’s really pretty.”
Garth, Sekar, Roger, VI-P2, Ganen, and J’Brel / [XP: 10]
Bevin didn’t play.
Month 6; Day 33 (Continued)
Back in city, it wasn’t long before the PCs came across a big commotion going on outside of a tiny bar on one particular street. Peeking inside, the PCs didn’t see the man that they were looking for; but did see three men and a hulking alien who certainly looked like they might be convict gladiators.
Over the din on the street, it was impossible to hear anything which was being said; but the gladiators appeared to be having a heated argument about something. The cacophony abruptly ended, however, when the large (and exceedingly frustrated) alien raised up a mighty two-handed mace and reduced one of the tables in the bar to splinters.
“Shut up and listen!”, the alien roared after a moment of tense silence. “The Grand Master doesn’t care about the Empire, and the Empire doesn’t care about anyone on this planet! What the Empire does care about are people with this many squares on their chest.”
As he concluded the sentence, the big alien pulled an Imperial rank insignia out of his pocket and held it up. The girl had not been exaggerating; it did indeed have five each red and blue squares on it. After a beat, the alien continued.
“That means that this guy is a liability; not an opportunity. The Empire might just decide to level this entire neighborhood in retaliation just for knocking him out. So this is what’s going to happen…”
“You go and get me a speeder. You two go and find a couple of scrappers, and get rid of that escape pod. I’m going to go bash this guy’s skull in; and then we’re going to take his corpse out of the city, find Big Red, and feed him to him! “Now get moving!”
As the three men started towards the street, the big alien started for the door to what was presumably the bar’s back rooms; and the PCs knew that it was now or never. Garth managed to distract the big alien long enough for Sekar to shoulder her way in and attack, while J’Brel managed to use a little deception to tie up the other gladiators and the riled-up mobs by turning them against each other.
Sekar and the big alien exchanged some bone-crunching bashes; and while the alien had an advantage in size and strength, Sekar had the Dark Side. Despite taking the worst of the exchange, she still managed to intimidate the alien into backing down.
Back out in Red Zone One, Izik was already cutting into the ship’s hull by the time the PCs closed off its bow section. The PCs were a little surprised at how quickly the cutting torch heated up the water, but the scrapper was done before they got boiled. Izik dropped a hose in and fired up a pump; and within only a few short minutes, the water in the bow section was low enough to safely open the dry compartment on the port side.
The compartment appeared to be a small and very creepy-looking surgical suite of some kind. Standing in the doorway was an equally-creepy-looking Ithorian cyborg. He did not appear to be seriously injured, and the PCs speculated that his life signs had looked so weak because so little of him was still living.
Glassy-eyed and completely motionless, he just stared at the PCs for several seconds. When he finally made a sound, it was through a monosyllabic pair of stereographic text-to-speech devices, which did nothing to mitigate his unsettling appearance.
“Your assistance is appreciated”, he flatly declared. “I have no currency, but you are welcome to the remains of this vessel and its contents.” Asked who he was and what had happened, he droned out a response…
“My acquaintances address me as ‘Root System’. I was paying a visit to acquaintances east of the capital. There was an explosion in the engine room. I attempted to reach the sea in order to maximize my survival potential, but I failed. If you’ll excuse me; I have a very long walk ahead.” Asked of his destination, he added “The Felker industrial area; roughly 129.6 miles on an 088 bearing from this position.” Asked what he had dropped over the city, he replied that he had not dropped anything deliberately; but that the engine room explosion might have resulted in significant debris.
Izik had lowered a rope by this point, and said that he’d be more than happy to give the Ithorian a ride. The PCs, meanwhile, were torn. He didn’t appear to have done anything wrong and they felt that they had little justification to detain him, but something just wasn’t adding up; especially the absolute calm with which he was taking recent events. There was a moment of silent indecision as the cyborg approached the rope ladder, and then VI stunned him. Izik was taken aback, but decided to mind his own business.
Back in the city, Sekar opened the backroom door to find the handsome ISB agent sitting on the floor; eating beer nuts and drinking. Quickly rising to his feet, he flashed a smile at Sekar and asked “Are you here to free me or hit me some more?”
Smirking at the query, Sekar replied that she was at least leaning towards the former. “In that case…”, the man continued, “Andre Divo, Imperial Security Bureau; at you service and in your debt.”
Following the PCs out, he briefly paused to retrieve his blaster from behind the bar. Once safe inside Garth’s airspeeder, he frantically looked around for a moment and then smiled. “Well that’s two things off of my bucket list: I met a Chiss and rode in an actual Gale 11.”
Agent Divo remained quiet until they were out of the hostile neighborhood, then asked another question. “I feel like a cad asking anything of you after you just saved my life, but you wouldn’t happen to know where the freighter that I jettisoned from ended up; would you?”
The PCs stated that their comrades were looking into it as they spoke, then inquired as to the man’s interest and what he knew of it. “I’m actually looking for an agent of the Broken Shackle; an Ithorian cyborg who calls himself ‘Root System’.” After a pause, he added “I supposed I should back up a bit…”
“So we don’t know the particulars of how it was obtained; but a now-deceased Hutt operating on Nar Shaddaa apparently managed to compile a great deal of sensitive information regarding various Imperial goings-on throughout the Baxel Sector . About a month and a half ago, that information was sold to an individual calling herself Revelation; a member of the Broken Shackle’s inner circle.”
“Again I’m not sure how, but we just learned of all this a couple of weeks ago. At that point, attempting to eradicate the data would have been pointless; no doubt numerous copies had already been made. On the other hand, just locking down everything in the Baxel Sector could have potentially been more crippling than if this information was used against it; so I was tasked with obtaining a full copy of the information so that we could at least know exactly what had been compromised.”
“So I find one of their hideouts and storm it with an elite CompForce team. Revelation did not appear to be there at the time; but I noticed Mr. System, a known slicer and data courier, hurrying onto a transport; so I chased after him. Once I was up the ramp, I could see him still making his way up to the cockpit while the ramp closes behind me and I’m thinking ‘Does he not realize I’m on board?’”
“So then it occurs to me I could try to tap into his navicomputer and see where he’s planning on going, so I sneak back into engineering and do exactly that; quick comlink exchange with my 2nd in command, everything is under control. So Root lays in his entire course and I’m thinking ‘Taris? What the heck is on Taris?’”
“So, one long and uncomfortable day of hiding in the engine room later, we come out of hyperspace at Taris and he starts his approach. But by this point, I’ve had a few days to think about it; and I realize that if there is some secret Broken Shackle enclave on the planet, I might have a really tough time getting out once I get there.”
“So, I had already managed to tap into his nav system; I figured I could do the same to his comm system and send a quick message out to any Imperial forces that might be nearby. Ooops! That, he noticed.”
“So, we have a little firefight in the cargo hold; I manage to get him in the lower torso and he starts falling back to the cockpit. Now this guy has a reputation for being not all there, so at this point I’m worried he’s just going to crash and kill us both. So I activated one of the escape pods and then chucked a grenade back into the engine room.”
“Darn if the SOB doesn’t somehow lock out the escape pod from launching; while he’s also struggling to keep the nose up and not go into a free-fall. But I finally managed to override his override and launch, but I wound up coming down in a somewhat unfriendly neighborhood. And the rest I believe you know.”
When the city team finally got in contact with the crash site team, the latter were happy to learn that VI’s “shoot first” instinct had been correct. Root System was turned over to Agent Divo, and he promised them another green flag.
The Grand Master also came through with the 4000 credits which he’d promised the PCs, then extended another invitation. “In honor of Topaz’s return, I’ve scheduled a special championship bout for tonight”, he began. “I’d very much like for you all to join me in the royal skybox if you’d be willing; and since your ship can’t leave until I say so, you might as well; right?”
After a chuckle, he paused for a moment in recollection. “Yea, I guess we were kinda awkwardly between champions the last time you were here; weren’t we? Don’t worry, this new guy is amazing!”
Garth spend some time scavenging for airspeeder parts, VI upgraded her blasters, and everyone else just kinda killed time until they headed to the Contest of Champions. When the current champion, ‘The Amazing Antron’, entered the arena; the PCs’ jaws hit the floor, but not for the reason which the Grand Master had hoped.
The bluish-purple insectoid alien had four arms, each ending in a cybernetic socket; and plugged into each socket was a different sinister melee weapon. It was the exact same type of alien which they’d discovered on Tatooine some time ago.
Asked about Antron’s origins, the Grand Master knew only that ‘one of his recruiters had brought him in’. The PCs felt compelled to tell someone; but they had no way to get in touch with Governor Wolf, and they had no idea who else even knew that these aliens existed.
Month 6; Day 34
For the first time in a while, the PCs had no job lined up; and upon realizing how close they were to Mandalore, they decided to pay another visit to Ganen’s mom. After landing the Revenant at the spaceport, they took Specter out to Viira’s home; hoping to get there before dinner time.
As they landed, they could see Viira out by her old ship; which she was clearly doing some extensive work on. Access panels were open from bow to stern, and parts and subsystems were strewn all over the adjacent lawn.
“Hey, guys!”, she called out as the PCs disembarked. “Where’s my granddaughter?” She seemed in good spirits as she gave Jacinta an enthusiastic hug and asked if the PCs were feeding her; but the PCs could tell that she was utterly stressed and exhausted, and Garth suspected that she might be ill. Inquiries were made, and she finally explained…
“Goodness… Your first visit was all about meeting you for the first time and Ganen getting his mythosaur skull; I can’t even remember if I even mentioned it. I actually look on another apprentice about a year ago; very tough young lady looking for a new start in life. She became a journeyman coming up on 2 months ago, and I helped her get set up with a job.”
“I don’t know if she’s bored or just misses me but she’s submailed me every single night since she left. But last night I didn’t hear from her; and call me a crazy overprotective mom, but I started getting really worried. When I still hadn’t heard from her by this morning, I came out to warm up my ship… but I guess I left it sitting too long because it’s got all kinds of problems.”
“So I’ve been stressing and scrambling all day, which is exactly what my doctor told me I can’t be doing. And I still haven’t heard from her.”
By that point, it was clear to everyone that she wasn’t well; and as Ganen sat her down, Jacinta was the first to voice what everyone was thinking: they would go look for her apprentice. Garth tried to subtly bio-scan her, but she was too sharp. “Put that away, young man”, she admonished with a smile. She then looked at Ganen and added, more seriously, “It’s nothing bad; I promise.”
“She’s working for a capo in the Zann Consortium; a guy I met a few times when I was smuggling. He operates on Columex in an abandoned mining area called the Ilmari Trench.”
“She goes by the name ‘Val’. Her armor is silvery and she wears a blue cape. If you happen to see her without her helmet; she’s got darker skin, black hair, and she’s really pretty.”