Rebel Scum, session 2

When a professional wrestling returns from a long absence a common occurence is what is called 'ring rust', an initial period of less-than-optimal performance. Man, I had ring rust last night. Not running a game while I packed up and moved the family really took the oomph out of my GMing. Or maybe I just sucked last night. Even putting my notes through the adventure funnel didn't seem to help me as much as I had hoped. I just lacked oomph.

Either way, I wasn't very happy with the job I did. It was great getting together with the guys on a social basis, though. I hadn't seen Doug in far too long. And we all got to talk about games, what we wanted to do as this campaign develops, and movies. Doug was shocked that neither Stuart nor myself had seen Ocean's Eleven or The Italian Job. And we all expressed dismay at not getting into the 4e playtest.

Meanwhile Our Heroes navigated the treacherous skies of Vudrak's Nebula, narrowly avoiding both an old Clone Wars era minefield and a close range encounter with a Star Frigate on anti-piracy patrol. A Star Frigate is the short bus version of a Star Destroyer. At least in my head that's what it is. The party then almost fell for the Kobiyashi Maru trap despite the fact that I literally said "This is the Kobiyashi Maru, we've struck a gravitic mine." But they dawdled so long on planning a course of action that the Star Frigate responded to the distress call faster. Queue a running gun battle between the Impies and the pirate ship that sent the fake SOS. The party tailed the battle long enough to get navigation data on the minefield the pirate vessel flew through and to watch the Star Frigate hit a mine and 'sink'.

They finally made their rendezvous with the Tantive IV deep inside the nebula. My notes indicated that Captain Antilles was paranoid of any intel operations that don't go through the Bothans and also that he is generally a cranky-butt. So rather than permit Green 13 to dock, a ship's gig was sent to search the vessel first. That's how the party met Krato Vesbek, random Rebel Trooper guy. He was dressed just like the guys that got slaughtered in the hallway at the beginning of Episode IV, except he had a red shirt on.

Princess Leia also had a brief cameo, just before the klaxons went off due to three Star Destroyers incoming! The PCs and Krato hightailed it back to the gig and made it back to the Green 13 just as the shooting started. Krato opted to stay on the ship, as he would be a sitting duck trying to zoom through a warzone in a little shuttlecraft. And anyway his ride home just took off, with two of the Star Destroyers in pursuit. The last one decided to pick on the PCs. It was a short running battle with the Y-Wing getting away, but it was very tense at one as I rolled a successful ion cannon hit on the tiny craft. Only a last minute maneuver from Boyd (Doug's clone pilot) saved the ship from ion overload and subsequent capture.

Their mission completed, the good guys prepared to hyperjump to the coordinates where they could hook up with the Rebel carrier that serves as their base of operations. But I tell them that they are arbitrarily almost out of fuel and need to stop over at a filthy mining colony for more space juice, or whatever the hell makes Star Wars ship go zoom. So they are hanging out in a bar described as the Mos Eisley cantina, only with zero-g go-go dancers, when in stroll two space bear bounty hunters. Space bears look like polar bears, only they have opposable thumbs and big bug eyes. One of them has a pokédex that identifies Pat's character, Cee-Lo, as being worth 1700 Cr to the right party. So we have a big shoot out in the bar. Red-shirt Krato takes a gut full of blaster for his trouble, but barely survives thanks to Kip (Stuart's Jedi) administering a medpack. Kip uses the force to bang the two polar bear dudes into each other and then Cee-Lo hit 'em with a grenade. Boyd sets up another round. End of adventure.

Later, while we were discussing what to do next, Doug says that he really wants to wander the galaxy and get some more Han Solo action into the mix. No one objects to this idea, so I decide that the space bears were operating out of a ramshackle YT-1300 freighter with some custom modifications. The PCs jack the bear's ship and Krato flies the Green 13 back to base. Actually, I said it was a YT-1000 freighter, because I couldn't remember the exact designation for the Millenium Falcon. There's an almost assuredly non-canonical but cool-looking YT-1000 on this non-English Star Wars page. I'd totally use that vessel if the players were game.