[ Wednesday, Jan 15th, 2025 ]
The Party:
The Ship:
The Eon Egret is a CI-80 Light Freighter upgraded with faster sublight engines and hyperdrive, used for smuggling and as a mobile drug lab. The ship had seen hard use under a previous Hutt owner, and was acquired by Compte de Muuney as a junker at a bargain rate.
The Session:
[ See also: Ubrikkia Campaign Overview ]
Lorenzo the Hutt has two leads on his missing consigliera, Nuna Simone:
When the party is ready to go to Kashyyyk, Lorenzo has a courier freight job to be delivered there which will cover fuel expenses on the way out and provide a cover story for why the Eon Egret is going to Kashyyyk. Compte de Muuney also has a stockpile of more than 100 kg of hopium that he hopes to sell during the trip, possibly on the sector capital of Randon.
[ Wednesday, Jan 29th, 2025 ]
Compte de Muuney, with help from Pari and Ratigan, managed to sell his stockpile of hopium on Ubrikkia for a considerable profit, without attracting any unwanted attention. After resupplying the Eon Egret's drug lab with more raw materials, the rest of the money was put towards better equipment for the party and a couple of new combat droids.
Ratigan also discovered hidden logs stored in the Eon Egret's computer, made four years ago when the ship belonged to its previous owner Strella the Hutt. The logs described Strella's search for an abandoned pirate hideout and, once decrypted, mentioned that a copy of the astrogation data leading to the hideout was left with a Toydarian on Junkfort Station. Zuggs' further investigations into the Egret's travel logs revealed that all prior navigation history and data was lost when the ship's navicomputer was destroyed four years ago, with the earliest location history dating back to when the ship showed up at Kwenn Station not long before its acquisition by the party.
* * * * *
While Muuney stayed behind with the ship to cook up more hopium, the rest of the party took the landspeeder and the new mine-laying chameleon droid out to investigate the warehouse identified in Nuna Simone's anonymous note. Though the building seemed at first to be abandoned, it became apparent that it had been used as some sort of meeting place or criminal safe house.
While exploring the warehouse, Ratigan and Zuggs triggered the building's security systems and became caught in reverse-repulsor-field gravity traps, while an automated turret dropped from the ceiling and shot at Suras. While Ratigan and Zuggs disabled the gravity traps and the chameleon droid set a mine to destroy the turret, a woman with a blaster and a Rodian with a vibroblade ran into the warehouse from the back loading dock.
Meanwhile, Pari, who had stayed with the speeder, was approached by a female Chagrian. When Pari lowered the window, the Chagrian pointed a gun at her and told her that she knew the party was with Lorenzo, and demanded information about Nuna Simone. Pari managed to drive off without getting shot, then attempted to pursue the Chagrian until she disappeared into a nearby alley.
Inside the warehouse, Ratigan found a computer room which ran the building's security systems. After hacking in, she found indications that the system was set up by Black Sun, a crime syndicate whose Ubrikkia branch was a rival of Lorenzo. In particular, the system's administrator was identified as Za'ira Luvelle, a name that a couple party members recognized as belonging to a Black Sun underboss. Ratigan proceeded to make a copy of all of the system's stored data, then destroyed the computer with her lightsaber.
Suras snuck out to the warehouse's loading dock and found that the speeder truck out back was being lived in, and that the woman and Rodian who had come in had apparently been staking out the building. As the two armed thugs cautiously made their way across the warehouse, they were caught in the blast as the chameleon droid's mine destroyed the building's autoturret. Suras slammed the back door behind them, and Zuggs and the chameleon droid shot down the woman, leading the Rodian (named Tark) to surrender to the party.
When questioned, Tark insisted that he knew nothing about the party or about Nuna Simone, but seeing as how he had a comlink with him, Zuggs told him at gunpoint to call his boss and announce that he had captured the party, in hopes of drawing out whoever had orchestrated the stakeout. Tark did so, and after a few minutes the female Chagrian that Pari had encountered earlier arrived at the warehouse. She made a run for it after discovering the trap, but was knocked out by blaster shots from Zuggs and the droid and by another mine placed near the door.
The party returned to Lorenzo HQ with their two captives, and agreed to leave the prisoners with Lorenzo after conducting their interrogations.
[ Wednesday, Feb 12th, 2025 ]
The party interrogated their captives aboard the Eon Egret. The Chagrian woman identified herself as Za'ira Luvelle, the same Black Sun operative that Ratigan had determined to have set up the warehouse's security systems. After much questioning and persuasion from Pari, Za'ira eventually revealed to the party that she had indeed met with Nuna Simone at the warehouse to attempt to recruit her for Black Sun, but that she was now just as in the dark about Nuna's current whereabouts as the party was. At Pari's prompting, Za'ira floated several possible explanations, such as that Nuna had indeed defected to Black Sun but had somehow done so behind Za'ira's back or over her head; that Nuna was pulling some sort of double game and playing both sides; or even that Nuna might not be missing at all and that she and Lorenzo had lied to the party as part of some scheme of their own.
Further efforts to convince Za'ira that she ought to be more cooperative with Lorenzo's faction were met with disparaging remarks toward the party, which were in turn met with a punch to the face by Suras. Interrogating Tark the Rodian showed him to be a low-level thug hired on solely for the warehouse job, and yielded little useful information. Their interrogations finished, the party handed their two captives over to Lorenzo and departed for Kashyyyk.
* * * * *
After an uneventful spaceflight marked by a lengthy discussion on Trandoshan culture and Suras's traumatic upbringing, the party arrived on Kashyyyk and were greeted at the Rwookrrorro spaceport by Harggakk the Wookiee, Lorenzo's business contact on Kashyyyk and the last known person to have seen Nuna Simone. Harggakk pointedly and disrespectfully ignored Suras, but told the rest of the party that his meeting with Nuna a couple weeks earlier had been short and uneventful, and that he was surprised to hear that she had apparently gone missing afterward. In retrospect, he felt that Nuna had seemed stressed and distracted, but hadn't thought much of it at the time. Apart from her meeting with him, Harggakk informed the party that the only other thing Nuna had done while on Kashyyyk was meet up with an unfamiliar orange-skinned Twi'lek woman at a bar called The Exotic in Rwookrrorro's foreign quarter.
The party made their way to the bar, which was fairly empty at the time. Pari chatted up Zost the bartender, and drank some authentically-hairy Wookiee sake, while Suras and Zuggs ordered some fully-decarbonated and extra-carbonated liquor, respectively. Meanwhile, with the bartender distracted, Ratigan snuck into the back room and uncovered security footage of Nuna and the orange-skinned Twi'lek at the bar, with the Twi'lek also appearing on camera the day before Nuna's arrival and seemingly on friendly terms with Zost.
Upon further questioning from Pari, Zost revealed that he did indeed know the mystery orange-skinned Twi'lek, though he became increasingly suspicious of the party's interest in her and of what their business was on Kashyyyk. Taking stock of the party's military-grade equipment, Zost offered a trade: he would tell the party what he knew about the Twi'lek if they would help him to retrieve an important datapad that he had "dropped" over the side of Rwookrrorro's treetop walkways and into the Shadowlands far below. He explained that he would go get the bag with the datapad himself if it weren't for the Shadowland's dangerous reputation and for the fact that it was low-key off-limits to foreigners (with the party thus needing to find a Wookiee escort to accompany them down the elevator).
The party agreed to the deal, and returned to Harggakk to ask if he could set them up with an escort. Harggakk proposed that he would be willing to escort the party to the Shadowlands himself, on one condition: He wanted to fight an honor duel with Suras first. If Suras won the duel, he would gain honor and Harggakk would escort the party. If Suras lost, there would still be honor in having lost the duel honorably, and Harggakk would still escort the party, but would also keep Suras's electrostaff as a trophy. Suras immediately agreed to the duel despite some hesitant objections from the rest of the party, and the Trandoshan and Wookiee squared up to fight. After trading several punches, Suras succeeded in knocking out his opponent. Suras then refused a handshake once Harggakk had recovered, and (after quickly healing up thanks to their species's accelerated recovery rates) the party headed for the elevator, accompanied by a now cowed and deferential escort. Compte de Muuney stayed behind at the bar, meanwhile, in order to keep an eye on Zost.
In the Shadowlands, Harggakk warned the party to keep quiet as much as possible so as to avoid attacting the attention of any dangerous beasts. The group made their way to the location directly below where Zost had lost his bag, and eventually spotted the bag caught in a tree branch a few dozen feet above the ground. Ratigan was able to free the bag from the branch by making use of the Force, but the bag made quite a bit of noise on its way to the ground. The party turned back toward the elevator to find that they were now being hunted by two giant spider-like Kinrath.
The party began shooting at the Kinrath while making their way back to the elevator. The Kinrath, being eyeless, maneuvered toward their targets through a combination of sound and tremorsense, making them vulnerable to some opportunistic lightsaber and electrostaff strikes from Ratigan and Suras along the way. The two Kinrath were eventually killed, though not before having hit both Suras and Harggakk with poison stingers. The party treated the effects of the poison during the elevator ride back to the city, and confirmed that the bag they recovered did indeed contain Zost's datapad (as well as a pair of sunglasses, which Ratigan kept).
Back in Rwookrrorro, Harggakk left to go get medical treatment, and an unfamiliar human male apprached the party and asked them about the bag they were carrying. The man identified himself as Carson Rioni and said that he didn't know what Zost was paying but that he would give the party 1000 credits for the bag, or for them to at least let him tamper with the datapad before returning it to Zost. The party refused to hand over the bag, and Carson left in agitation. Ratigan then scanned the files on the datapad, which turned out to be a collection of financial records implicating Carson Rioni in tax fraud, embezzlement, and other related crimes. Returning to The Exotic, the party handed the bag and datapad over to Zost, who explained that Carson was an ex-lover of his, and that it was in fact Carson who had thrown the bag into the Shadowlands in order to keep Zost from handing the files over to law enforcement in order to get him arrested.
Zost then kept to his end of the agreement and informed the party that the orange-skinned Twi'lek woman who had been seen with Nuna was Dalenn Qwert, a freelance fixer/forger based out of Nar Shaddaa. He gave the party an address on Nar Shaddaa where they could find her, and explained that Dalenn had a certain criminal 'type' she generally tended to work with, which is what had made him apprehensive of the party's interest in her. Having found a new lead in their search for Nuna and concluded their business on Kashyyyk, the party then left the planet.
[ Wednesday, Mar 12th, 2025 ]
Leaving Kashyyyk, the party headed rimward to Junkfort Station, a ramshackle patchwork shadowport near Hutt Space known as a hub for smuggling and illegal starship modifications. The hidden logs in the Eon Egret's computer had said that Strella the Hutt had left astrogation data leading to the abandoned pirate base with a Toydarian friend at Junkfort. Arriving at the station, the party was greeted by a Toydarian named Quaalude (played by Seth as a cameo) who had recognized their ship as belonging to Strella and was curious to know where his old friend was. Quaalude and the party agreed to head to the Junkfort cantina to talk.
At the cantina, Pari tried with moderate success to convince Quaalude that the party were friends of Strella's and were running an errand on her behalf to retrieve the astrogation data from four years ago. Quaalude, through a combination of suspicion and avarice, demanded 20,000 credits in exchange for the data. The conversation quickly devolved into shouting and trading threats, with Pari attempting to smooth things over and continue negotiating (and buying a round of drinks for the rest of the patrons in the cantina in order to try to deflect some of the attention they were getting). Concluding that they probably couldn't just kill Quaalude in the middle of a public bar, especially without knowing where the data was hidden, the party agreed to meet Quaalude back at the cantina later that day and pay him 5,000 credits for the data.
Compte de Muuney sent his cloaked chameleon droid to tail Quaalude, and bribed the bartender at the cantina to tell him the location of Quaalude's apartment. Suras and Ratigan then broke into the apartment and waited for Quaalude to return. Coming back to his apartment later, Quaalude was ambushed in the hallway by Suras, Ratigan, and the chameleon droid, and was beaten and dragged into the apartment (while his screams for help were ignored by his indifferent neighbors). After holding out for a while and continuing to try to negotiate for some kind of cash payment, Quaalude was eventually intimidated into handing over the astrogation data for free. The party then debated whether or not to just kill him anyway, with Quaalude's fate ultimately being decided by a poker game between Suras and Pari. Pari won (via cheating), thus sparing Quaalude's life.
Quaalude's astrogation data pointed to an uninhabited star system catalogued as Onith 494, in wild space on the outskirts of the Calamari sector. Data in hand, the party left Junkfort Station and headed spinward toward Mon Calamari space.
* * * * *
While traveling up the north end of the Triellus trade route, the Egret was suddenly lurched out of hyperspace as proximity alarms blared throughout the ship. A large asteroid had been towed into the space lane and was obstructing hyperspace travel. A freighter towing the asteroid hailed the Egret and demanded that they power down and prepare to be boarded, while three starfighters moved to intercept. Scanning the enemy ships, the party saw that they were painted with the words "RAIDER JOE'S".
With help from Compte de Muuney in the engine room, Zuggs rocketed the Egret forward at maximum acceleration and attempted to veer around to fire on the nearest fighter, accidentally crashing into the side of the asteroid in the process. Though only causing minor hull damage, the crash destroyed a quarter of the hopium in the Egret's cargo hold, which distressed Muuney to the point of causing him to snort a dose of the drugs. With Pari and Suras at the gunnery stations, the party quickly dispatched the three pirate fighters, then chased down and disabled the engines of the freighter as it attempted to flee the scene.
Sufficiently cowed, the freighter agreed to power down its weapons and transfer its loot to the Egret, but warned that they were prepared to fight if the party tried anything beyond boarding and emptying their cargo hold. After boarding the freighter, the party met Raider Joe and his pirate crew, and helped themselves to some cash and to a small stockpile of the rare metal meleenium, as well as some miscellaneous weapons and other goods. Compte de Muuney then engaged in a tense conversation with Raider Joe, questioning him about the specifics of the profitability of piracy, much to Joe's annoyance.
As they left Raider Joe's freighter behind, Muuney detonated a mine that his chameleon droid had secretly planted on the freighter's hyperdrive, leaving Joe and his crew stranded in space and at the mercy of whoever happened to show up next along the hyperlane. The party then continued on their way toward the coordinates of the abandoned pirate base, planning to stop along the way at the icy Whiphid homeworld of Toola to sell the latest batch of hopium and to completely overhaul and rebuild the Eon Egret.
[ Wednesday, Mar 26th, 2025 ]
On the snow-covered Outer Rim planet of Toola, the party spent ten days at the Ithaqua Station spaceport upgrading the Eon Egret. Using the money stockpiled from selling hopium, the party spent 740,000 credits on better ship weapons and defenses and on rebuilding the freighter from a CI-80 to a much larger J-220 model, as well as on buying new droids, a droid starfighter, and a Belbullab-22 starfighter for Pari.
While working on the ship, the party was approached at the spaceport by Dr. Reza Pantari, a tall pale-skinned Arkanian woman, accompanied by a Whiphid guide and translator named K'Furd. Speaking with a thick Core accent, Dr. Pantari introduced herself to the party (specifically to Suras, who she assumed to be the mercenary captain) as a researcher from the Coruscant University of Astrozoology. A local animal species called the Toola Ice Salamander, Pantari told the party, had been hunted to the brink of extinction by the local Whiphid tribes, and her team was looking to capture a breeding pair to take back to Coruscant. Having been told that a group of mercenaries was docked at the spaceport, and expecting a possible clash with the Whiphid tribes (who consider the Ice Salamander sacred), Dr. Pantari hoped to hire the party as extra muscle for the job. She offered to pay 1,000 credits per person plus medical expenses, as well as acknowledgements in research papers and the gratitude of the Couscanti academic community.
Dr. Pantari, K'Furd, and the party arrived at the ravine where they hoped to capture the Ice Salamanders, and found the ravine entrance guarded by a dozen or so members of a local Whiphid tribe. The leader of the tribal group, an elderly female Whiphid who introduced herself as the Spearmaster, explained that the Ice Salamanders were spiritually tied to Toola and to the Whiphids and that they could not allow any of the salamanders to be taken off-planet. Though Dr. Pantari had told Suras beforehand that she mostly only wanted the party to be present for intimidation and did not expect things to devolve into actual violence, she immediately escalated the situation and angrily threatened to shoot the Spearmaster if the Whiphids did not get out of her way. K'Furd, after reluctantly translating the heated exchange, attempted to distance himself from the coming fight but was noticed by Compte de Muuney. Muuney and Pari, themselves both able to speak the Whiphid language (in Pari's case through the use of a personal translating computer), managed to stop Dr. Pantari from shooting anyone and convinced the Spearmaster and the other Whiphids of the ecological importance of Pantari's mission (and also implied, incorrectly, that one of Dr. Pantari's team's immediate priorities was to breed the Ice Salamanders in captivity in order to return them to Toola and repopulate the planet). The Whiphids reluctantly allowed Dr. Pantari and the party into the ravine, but demanded that they be allowed to accompany the party during the hunt. While the standoff was in progress, Ratigan had secretly snuck past the Whiphids into the ravine and began looking for the Ice Salamanders.
In the ravine, while the group searched for the Ice Salamanders, three of the younger Whiphids suddenly turned their guns on Compte de Muuney. Though Muuney managed to talk down two of his assailants, the third became enraged and attacked him before being tackled to the ground by Suras. The Spearmaster ordered the remaining Whiphids to stand down and not attack the party, and begged the party to merely restrain rather than kill the enraged Whiphid who had attacked Muuney. While the situation remained tense, no other incidents of violence broke out, and Ratigan was able to find the Ice Salamanders in the ravine for Dr. Pantari to capture.
* * * * *
With their business on Toola concluded, the party left the planet and headed for the coordinates given in the astrogation data they had taken from Quaalude on Junkfort Station. The astrogation data led to the rings of a planet in an uninhabited star system in Wild Space, catalogued as Onith 494. Finding no signs of any ships or other activity, the party brought the Eon Egret in toward the abandoned pirate base, built into one of the large rocks in the planetary ring, and landed in the base's large carved out hangar. Though the base's artificial gravity was still working, the lights, atmosphere, door controls, and all other systems seemed to be inoperable. Text painted onto the wall of the hangar in a looping flowery script reads: "Welcome to Mad Captain Aster's sunny home away from home!"
While Zuggs stayed behind on the Egret and the two assault droids stayed in the hangar to guard the ship, Pari, Suras, Ratigan, and Muuney donned space suits and ventured into the abandoned base through the only open door out of the hangar (the two other doors being sealed and inoperable), with the chameleon droid leading the way. Close inspection of the floor of the hallway revealed a faint trail of blood, though it was unclear whether the trail led toward the hangar or away from it. Reaching a hallway intersection and encountering a collapsed corridor and another locked door, Ratigan opted to stay and use her lightsaber to slowly cut through the thick emergency blast door, while the other party members ventured further up the hallway and found the base's living quarters, bathrooms, and kitchen, all in complete disarray. A dead and dessicated body lay on the floor near the dining area, while in the bathroom dried streaks of brown ooze trailed out of the rooms' plumbing fixtures. As Pari backtracked through the hall to check on Ratigan, she happened to notice that a large rock that had been lying in the hallway when she walked through it before was now missing. Muuney analyzed to brown ooze residue and found that it originated from some sort of alien life form. Ratigan finished cutting through the locked doorway and found that it led to a storage closet containing a set of armor. Down another hall, the party found themselves in the base's control room. All lights and displays in the room were powered down, except for a message flashing on one of the screens reading: "power offline - reactor must be manually reactivated - proceed to reactor core". Beyond the control room is the base's brig, where Muuney finds an astromech droid powered down in the back of a supply closet. When reactivated, the droid is panicky and keeps repeatedly asking whether "the threat has been neutralized". Muuney switches the droid to admin debugging mode to attempt to get more information from it, but the circumstances surrounding the base's abandonment remain mysterious. Seemingly, no new ships had docked prior to the emergency and there was nothing else unusual that had happened, and then suddenly people on the base had started dying and the survivors had evacuated in a panic.
At this point, worried about something sinister sneaking aboard the Egret while it sits in the hangar, Muuney tells Zuggs to fly the ship out of the base and circle nearby while they finish exploring. As the chameleon droid proceeds toward the reactor core, a tentacle extends out of a vent in the hallway and attempts to grab it. After the tentacle disappears, the party tosses a grenade into the vent for good measure, causing further structural damage to the base. The party finally makes it to the base's reactor core (which appears to have simply shut down after having been left abandoned so long, rather than having been disabled or sabotaged or anything) and restores power to the base. In the base's dormitory wing, the party finds a bedroom with a pirate who had apparently locked himself in and then committed suicide, and another bedroom containing a book of poetry written by Mad Captain Aster. Zuggs calls the party to report that some of the rocks within the planetary ring are moving oddly and keep colliding with the ship. Muuney tells him to fly the ship out of the planet's rings until they call for him to come pick them up, and to scramble the droid starfighter. The Egret's check engine light comes on, and Zuggs sends some astromech droids to the engine room to investigate, one of which mysteriously goes missing. Around this time, the party finally encounters the threat that caused Mad Captain Aster's crew to abandon the base: Alien creatures related to dianogas, with octopus-like tentacles and a single large eye, which use hollowed out rocks as shells. The party is able to fight their way through the shell dianogas without too much difficulty, and makes their way to the base's newly-unlocked cargo bay. In the cargo bay, the party finds a large collection of spare parts, as well as a hibiridum cloaking device. The cargo bay also has a window looking out into space, which, as the party watches, is suddenly occluded by a single enormous eye.
The party brings their loot into the hangar and fortifies their position while they wait for Zuggs to return with the Egret. By locking doors and placing explosives, they are able to restrict openings into the hangar to a single hallway and are able to prevent the shell dianogas from entering the hangar. During the fight, an enormous tentacle (belonging to the same giant shell dianoga as the eyeball seen from the cargo bay) grabs at Pari's leg and is fended off by the assault droids' flamethrowers. Zuggs arrives back at the hangar with the Egret, and the party quickly loads up their loot and flies away. Leaving the base, the party finds that several other enormous 'kraken' shell dianogas are approaching the ship, and Pari takes off from the Egret's hangar in her starfighter. Ratigan, Suras, and Muuney, meanwhile, encounter and fight off smaller shell dianogas that had snuck aboard the Egret while Zuggs was flying through the planet's rings.
