[ Monday, Dec 5th, 2016 ]
The Party:
The Session:
While concluding business at a tavern on Socorro, the crew of the Weeklong Albatross were approached by a dying Ithorian claiming to know about Mad Captain Aster's legendary hidden pirate treasure and given an encrypted journal and a strange spyglass with coordinates to an unknown planet. Moments later, the party was chased out of the tavern by a group of mercenaries seeking to reclaim the spyglass. After dispatching two of the mercenaries' snub fighters, the Weeklong Albatross set off for Ryloth in order to repair damage from a lucky shot from an E-Web.
It's about a day and a half hyperspace travel time to Ryloth, so in the meantime, be sure to check out Ryloth's visitor HoloNet site: http://dunkhut.party/holonet/starbuccs/ryloth.html
-Craig
[ Monday, Dec 12th, 2016 ]
The Session:
After repairs at a shipyard on Ryloth, the party headed to a political protest outside a music concert, in hopes of getting some nice sidequest cash. They were approached by a man named Harlan Ellison, who hired the party to help transport a crate of rifles to Tatooine to aid a nascent Rebel Alliance. Another participant at the protests, a bothan named Ke'nara, hired the party to smuggle him off-planet as well.
With Harlan, Ke'nara, and the crate of rifles in the Albatross's smuggling compartments, the party was leaving the planet when the ship's sensors picked up an encrypted long-range comm signal being sent from somewhere in the ship. checking the smuggling compartment revealed that the bothan had overpowered Harlan, sent the transmission, and left Harlan trapped in the compartment. Finding Ke'nara in the cockpit attempting to return the ship to Ryloth, Harlan and the party killed the bothan spy, fought off some TIE fighters that had been dispatched as a result of his transmission, and reactivated the hyperdrive that he had disabled, before heading to Tatooine.
On the way to the Tatoo system, however, the party decided that aiding Harlan (who had foolishly paid upfront) in his noble political quest was not nearly as enticing as selling the crate of rifles themselves, and elected to shoot poor Harlan and dump his body out the airlock, then head to Socorro to fence the rifles.
From Socorro, the party headed to the coordinates given by the dead Ithorian's spyglass, an uninhabited planet in the Karthakk sector. On arrival, the Albatross was hailed by a Zabrak named Lox, who claimed to be trapped in the system after her transport suffered hyperdrive coolant leak. After docking in orbit, the party invited Lox to eat with N'Kata on the Albatross while Migsy fixed the hyperdrive (and also searched her ship, revealing encrypted travel logs and a suspicious connection to Socorro). Despite suspicions, the party allowed Lox to head back to her ship and jump to hyperspace.
Landing on the planet at the spyglass's coordinates, the party found themselves at the site of an ancient alien temple. Inside, N'Kata found the missing page to the dead Ithorian's journal, which gave the encryption key allowing the rest of the journal to be read. From this, the party learned that:
Progressing through the ancient temple's five basement levels, the party recovered various artifacts and fought various giant bugs (including one enormous scorpion) before eventually finding a note from Captain Aster giving the next set of inputs for the spyglass.
Exiting the temple, the party found themselves surrounded by Lox and her mercenaries. Mistaking the temple to be the location of Aster's treasure (rather than just another clue), Lox thanked the party for leading her to the site and taunted them for having come so close to claiming the treasure themselves. Preferring to leave the party with the pain of knowing their loss rather than simply killing them, Lox allowed the party to return to their ship on the condition that they would leave the planet and never return. The party happily obliged, and set out for Rodia to resupply and mitigate chances of being followed to the spyglass's next location.
-Craig
[ Monday, Jan 16th, 2017 ]
The Party:
and introducing:
The Session:
Arriving on Rodia, Migsy and N'Kata took on a bounty to retrieve a ship last sighted near one of the system's uninhabited moons. Leaving the planet, the smell of deathsticks and cheap perfume coming from a storage compartment alerted the Albatross' crew that Jacques had stowed away in order to escape local authorities. The Nediji demolitionist joined the party after offering his services in exchange for transportation.
The party found the ship described in the bounty, and though it was badly damaged and not responsive to hails, scans did reveal life signs on board. Migsy and N'Kata boarded and searched the ship but found no evidence of crew, when suddenly armed Rodians wearing stealth field generators appeared on the Albatross and began attacking Jacques and the ship's critical systems. As the party fought off the intruders, a gunship bearing the mark of the Black Sun showed up and began firing on the Albatross. Slightly out-gunned by the pirates, the party was able to repair their freighter's engines and escape the trap.
-Craig
[ Monday, Jan 23rd, 2017 ]
The Session:
After Rodia, the party travelled to the next location given by Captain Aster's spyglass, an outer rim planet called Panjeron II. Following a fierce battle during the Clone Wars, the surface of the planet was rendered inhospitable and unusable by an experimental chemical weapon, and left abandoned by both armies. By 10 BBY, the planet's only remaining residents were scavengers and junk dealers trying to make a profit off of scrapping the planet's abandoned Clone Wars technology.
The party landed at a junk shop owned by a Toydarian named Guano. Rather than pay for maps and supplies, the party decided to embrace the murder-hobo lifestyle and kill poor Guano and loot his shop, recovering various equipment, a handful of pit droids, and a dilapidated shuttle.
After stopping by a second shop to buy some more weapons, the party made their way to the coordinates given by the spyglass, by flying through a dangerous canyon on the planet's surface while simultaneously fighting off large pterodactyl-type creatures that attacked the Albatross along the way. Crashing into a canyon wall just before reaching their destination, the party managed to land the ship in the hangar of what appeared to be a crashed Separatist frigate.
To be continued...
-Craig
[ Monday, Jan 30th, 2017 ]
The Session:
The party split up in the frigate's hangar, with Migsy and N'Kata exploring the ship to look for the next spyglass clue, while Jacques stayed behind to repair the Albatross' engines and recover in the medbay. Despite having crashed and having sat abandoned for the 9 years since the Clone Wars, the party was surprised to find many of the Separatist frigate's systems still intact. Having detected intruders, the ship's computer dispatched waves of battle droids to apprehend the party as they fought their way to the bridge.
In the frigate's brig, the party befriended a captured Sullustian salvager named Dreggan, who offered access to Guano's safe in exchange for rescuing him from the frigate. Together with Dreggan, the party made their way to the bridge, where they encountered an unusual protocol droid that claimed to know Captain Aster. The droid told the party that it would provide the next coordinates for the spyglass if the party would first disable the frigate's computer and droid control center, so that the dying ship might finally be at peace.
After disabling the computers and receiving the spyglass coordinates, the party proceeded to fill the Albatross' cargo hold with as much salvage as they could fit, including dozens of disabled battle droids and super battle droids and a captured droideka. Dreggan and the party returned to Guano's junk shop and divvied up the contents of the safe before parting ways, and the party headed to the next closest salvage shop to sell off all but the droideka and a handful of super battle droids, for a considerable profit.
-Craig
[ Monday, Feb 13th, 2017 ]
The Session:
With next set of spyglass coordinates pointing toward eastern Wild Space, making the required astrogation somewhat risky, the party opted to head to a small smuggler's hideout on the edge of the Tammuz sector, a moon known as Kovak's Rest, in hopes of getting some better astrogation data for the trip. After trying their luck with some unhelpful Devaronians and a manipulative Hutt named Silverpool, the party was able to make friends with a band of Sullustan smugglers by selling them three of their salvaged battle droids, and were then able to make use of the Sullustans' navicomputer to help plot the jump to the spyglass coordinates successfully.
The party arrived at the next spyglass location, a small moon covered almost entirely by ocean, and found it to be populated by relatively primitive amphibious near-humans. A native named Rone led the party to an underwater city, where the city elder explained that Captain Aster had visited their world many generations ago (read: several years) and foretold that visitors like the party might one day come to their world, and if so should be directed to a sacred underwater cave near the city.
At this point, the party noticed that Jacques was no longer with them. Retracing their steps back to the Albatross, they found evidence of a fight between Jacques and some white-skinned humanoids, which Rone identified as natives of the moon's northern polar ice cap. Suspecting that Jacques had been taken hostage for some sort of religious ritual, Rone and the remaining members of the party set out for the polar ice cap on one of the city's sailing ships.
After fighting through the polar temple's defenses, the party succeeded in rescuing Jacques, as well as several locals from Rone's city that had been captured and brought to the ice cap without the city's knowledge, prompting Rone to inform his city of the treachery and call for reinforcements. The party made it back to open waters just as a minor battle was developing between the natives from the ice cap and the arriving forces from the underwater city.
-Craig