[ 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 promting, 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.