Appreciate the kudos! However, I did not work on the AoR Core Rulebook, just the GM's Kit. I don't believe the TIE Ints make an appearance, and they were not anything I worked on. However, in defense of whoever did the work on those, I will say that statting out ships for a license like Star Wars can be tricky, because on one hand you are looking for some sort of balance, while on the other you want to stay true to the lore. It can be a difficult tightrope to walk sometimes, and of course, there are always some fans who will disagree with any given interpretation. The TIE design isn't the most sturdy overall, but the larger solar panels should probably give the INT better armor, you'd think. However, you might say some of the systems within the newer interceptor are more fragile or glitchy, and maybe it is just more prone to break down in general after taking a hit. Of course, for your own table, there's always house rules! Make the interceptor as you see it!

Good luck on the hunt!

Oh I understand the game balance issue =] I was mainly talking about the lore entry for the Interceptor. I hate to say this but I dont know the rules too the game but I hope too win this book and figure them out. I can tell you from the lore the Interceptor is the least user friendly because it has two manual controls for its thrust vectoring. They vector in like a 180 x and y but you control it with your thumbs I think, unlike in real life were its completlyy computerized and in sync. This is why in the lore Interceptors are the best dog fighter in the Empire, better than Avenger and Defender, and one of the best overall out of every faction. With thoughs controls you can do alot of crazy manuvers and delayed / deceptive manuvers just like in the good old F-14 Tomcat

Sorry for the screwed up posts im using a Xbox 360 and I didnt notice my word sometimes dont make sense.

Still no winners, but some very cool and interesting theories being proposed so far!

Okay, here we go! Good luck everyone!

Question 1: Clues indicate that a vehicle in Dead in the Water once covertly served a secret society within the Star Wars galaxy. Which ship had this mysterious past? Which secret organization did it serve? And What are the TWO clues that lead you to this conclusion?

Question 2: Port Tooga is protected by an exotic, alien energy shield that allows it to orbit VERY closely to its star. Which alien race built the shield, and what key clue leads to this conclusion?

Question 3: The Shuttle Pod has no mention of this key feature of dubious canonical relevance.

Good luck everyone, happy scavenging, and have fun! If this is a hit, I'll see about doing something like this again with a future product.

Okay Keith, here we go:

1. The vehicle is the Shadow Raptor that served The Order of the Canted Circle. The two clues are that the Nebulon-B frigate is painted matte black, the color of the robes the initiates wear during their initiation ceremony. It's a pretty tenuous clue, but there's a much stronger one--Eccentric Lad is an anagram for Canted Circle!

2. The Gree built Port Tooga's shield. The clue comes in the form of the alien voice saying "bikkik barran." This is very similar to the name of the ancient Gree ship Rokak'k Baran, and leads me to believe that Port Tooga was once called something like "Bikik'k Baran."

3. The ISP-6 has no mention of a rearview mirror.

Okay, here we go! Good luck everyone!

Question 1: Clues indicate that a vehicle in Dead in the Water once covertly served a secret society within the Star Wars galaxy. Which ship had this mysterious past? Which secret organization did it serve? And What are the TWO clues that lead you to this conclusion?

Question 2: Port Tooga is protected by an exotic, alien energy shield that allows it to orbit VERY closely to its star. Which alien race built the shield, and what key clue leads to this conclusion?

Question 3: The Shuttle Pod has no mention of this key feature of dubious canonical relevance.

Good luck everyone, happy scavenging, and have fun! If this is a hit, I'll see about doing something like this again with a future product.

Okay Keith, here we go:

1. The vehicle is the Shadow Raptor that served The Order of the Canted Circle. The two clues are that the Nebulon-B frigate is painted matte black, the color of the robes the initiates wear during their initiation ceremony. It's a pretty tenuous clue, but there's a much stronger one--Eccentric Lad is an anagram for Canted Circle!

2. The Gree built Port Tooga's shield. The clue comes in the form of the alien voice saying "bikkik barran." This is very similar to the name of the ancient Gree ship Rokak'k Baran, and leads me to believe that Port Tooga was once called something like "Bikik'k Baran."

3. The ISP-6 has no mention of a rearview mirror.

After rethinking the adventure, I'm not sure that just because the Shadow Raptor is black is the best answer. So here's a second go:

1. The vehicle that covertly served the secret society was the Shadow Raptor that served The Order of the Canted Circle. The first clue is that "Eccentric Lad" is an anagram for "Canted Circle." There are also a couple of other hints. First, the Shadow Raptor is painted matte black, which is the color of the robes the initiates wore during their initiation ceremony. It was also pointed out to be an Imperial escort frigate before its liberation by Cracken and his team. Since noted Imperials Palpatine, Grand Admiral Thrawn and Grand Moff Rufaan Tigellinus were all members of the Order of the Canted Circle, there would be a lot of opportunity for them to use the Eccentric Lad/Shadow Raptor for covert purposes.

2. Port Tooga's energy shield was built by the Gree. The clue comes from the alien voice saying "bikkik barran." This is very similar to the name of the ancient Gree ship Rokak'k Baran, and leads me to believe that Port Tooga was once a similar ship to Rokak'k Baran called "Bikik'k Baran."

3. The ISP-6 shuttle pod has no mention of a rearview mirror.

After conferring with the judges, I have determined that Hysteria is indeed to be named our winner! Congratulations. Technically, you could have been called on one of your clues for question 1. There is a slightly stronger connection between the ship and Tigellinus, but because you did list his name, and anyone else guessing after this would really have been building off of all of your work, I have decided it is only fair to award you the prize!

If anyone wants some bragging rights, they can figure out the details of that connection between Tigellinus and the Shadow Raptor.

So, Hysteria, if you'd like to amaze the crowd, feel free to take us through your process of finding the answers! Also, go ahead and direct message me, and we can figure out what you'd like as your prize, and how we are going to get it to you. I can possibly hand-deliver it if you are attending GenCon.

That said, I had an amazing time running this contest! If you guys had fun participating, I would definitely do something like this again (I can think of a few books coming up I worked on this might work for, though those are going to have much larger page counts, which might make things impossible unless I restrict my questions some more).

Wow. Color me impressed, Hysteria. I really didn't think anyone would catch the anagram. Great job. Congratulations!

Thank you! I can't take all the credit for finding the anagram, though. I knew Eccentric Lad had to refer to something, and Xandron suggested the name might be an anagram. So I worked from there.

Congrats, Hysteria! And thanks Keith, for providing this entertainment.

I just figured it out--the kriffing lizard's name is Bonebark and it's always underfoot. A lot like the pirate Reginald Barkbone was underfoot with Rufaan Tigellinus! Dang, nice allusion. Should have caught that before. Now, that brings up another question...did Hylo know about the ship's past when she named her pet Bonebark?

Well, I would say that Bonebark may be the Raptor's longest serving crew member. He may have been inherited from a previous owner (Tigenellus). At least, that's the explanation in my head. Sort of like he named the lizard after his enemy as a joke.

Well done Hysteria! You clearly have greater insight or perserverence than me! I even went down the anagram route with "Bikkik Barran", but turns out I should have checked the spaceship names as well....

And big thanks to KRKappel for organising! I was a lot of fun and would be keen to see another one.... even if this one did have me beating my head against my laptop and spending far too much time trawling wookiepedia!

Thank you gribble! This was a hard puzzle to crack--like you I spent time beating my head against the desk and going through Wookieepedia until much too late at night.

Also, I have to be honest, I looked at your answer with Spinster's Loom and the Mantooine Liberators and thought, "Oh my
God, I know nothing about the EU anymore!" I was in awe of you and a few other people's theories on these questions.

Well done Hysteria! You clearly have greater insight or perserverence than me! I even went down the anagram route with "Bikkik Barran", but turns out I should have checked the spaceship names as well....

And big thanks to KRKappel for organising! I was a lot of fun and would be keen to see another one.... even if this one did have me beating my head against my laptop and spending far too much time trawling wookiepedia!

I am not saying sour grapes. and i really enjoyed this rather hard obscure trivia, and congratulate Hysteria on the correct answers.

but...

I doubt I would have ever gotten the correct answers because of my too literal mindness when it comes to EU/Legends. I looked up "order of the Canted Circle" and dismissed it since it was more of a fraternity, and was centered on Coruscant. Why would the order even HAVE a Nebulon-B out on Contruum to be captured by Airen Cracken unless the order was having some sort of Galatic Kegger. And who would be insane enough to Captain an Imperial ship named "Eccentric Lad" I could see some Wealthy snob buying one and galavanting around the Galaxy in it. But

I was leaning towards a pre-republic race that built the station, maybe even Sith. for me Gands building it doesn't make any sense. They are an insular and xenophobic race, that are primitive, but are willing to use Galactic technology. But how would they come up with such an exotic shield to protect it from close proximity to the star.

and how did people come up with Rear view mirror for the ISP-6?

As i said, I am too literal when it comes to these types of riddles. But then again, finding the answers with a quick search on Wookiepedia wouldn't have made this a fun and interesting challange

I can tell you how I came to the conclusions, although I don't think there was anything too amazing about it. It was mostly obsessiveness and researching both Wookieepedia and "Dead in the Water" until I came up with the answer.

The answer to question three had been already answered by the time I even got started. I did double-check to make sure it was the right answer.

The answer to the second question involved going through Wookieepedia's ancient races, starting with the Celestials. They and the Rakata seemed to be behind every other unexplained miracle that would impress a society which has antigrav and FTL speed, so I started there. That led me to the Columni and Gree, two West End Games creations. The Columni was a dead end, but the Gree mentioned their city-ship, the Rokak'k Baran! It sounded a lot like the phrase "bikkik barran" on Port Tooga, and with the tustudinarian description of Port Tooga (including the punny name!) the image of the Rokak'k Baran seemed to fit entirely too well to be coincidence.

The first question, though--that was hard! I suspected the Shadow Raptor was the ship that had covertly served a secret organization, mostly because it was the only one that had any history. Spinster's Loom and Constispex Crusader both had really good theories behind them. The only problem was that Pius Dea had been wiped out 10,000 years before the adventure took place. The Iceheart and Remember Alderaan both had one-word descriptions, and the Kappa shuttles and shuttle pods didn't have anything else to recommend to them. I thought about the Nubian shuttle Kog used, but that didn't seem to have any history in it, either. So it pretty much had to be Shadow Raptor.

I spent way more time than anyone should looking for clues. I passed right over Bonebark the lizard because he was Hylo's pet. Instead I focused on the layout of the ship, searched for maps online and even translated the aurebesh around the map of the bridge for a hint (it reads "map viewer" if anyone's interested). I pulled up the list of Secret Societies from Wookieepedia, pulled up the entry on Nebulon-B frigates to see if any notable ones had served a secret society, and found absolutely nothing. Then I got the brilliant idea of trying to find a clue in the writeup of the Shadow Raptor where it lays out the history of the ship. After that, I looked through all the Wookieepedia entries on Contruum to see what they had, and after coming up empty there, I finally started thinking about the ship's former name. I thought about all the things "Eccentric Lad" could refer to and discovered there are a lot of "Eccentric Lads" who founded or were a part of a secret society. That left one more thing--Xandron and I had been discussing the puzzle, I'd told him I'd gone through everything I could think of, and he suggested that one of the ship's names might be an anagram. I rejected the idea because if you were to make a word scramble where some of the words are alien, well, it would be all but impossible to figure out. On the other hand, I was out of ideas, and it really couldn't hurt...Bam. "Canted Circle" sprung out at me after about ten tries or so. That was obviously the first clue. I was stuck on the second, so at first I thought the second clue was the fact that Shadow Raptor was painted matte black. Nothing in the description said Shadow Raptor hadn't been painted black before Cracken's crew took it, and the initiates of the Order of the Canted Circle all wore black robes to their initiation ceremony! It was a tenuous clue, but I didn't know if it was good enough. I thought explicitly stating it was an Imperial escort frigate was a stronger clue, given that Rufaan, Thrawn and Palpatine were all members.

So there you go. One more thing--while I was looking through the adventure, I found a lot of references. As in a lot. (The spacer with sideburns and a receding hairline at Port Tooga is most likely Bo'Shek, for instance, and Captain Hylo Sortuli was named after Hylo Vinz from a promotional video leading up to the MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic. Not to mention First Mate Kog, and his thoughts on the saboteur droid plan!)

After conferring with the judges, I have determined that Hysteria is indeed to be named our winner! Congratulations. Technically, you could have been called on one of your clues for question 1. There is a slightly stronger connection between the ship and Tigellinus, but because you did list his name, and anyone else guessing after this would really have been building off of all of your work, I have decided it is only fair to award you the prize!

If anyone wants some bragging rights, they can figure out the details of that connection between Tigellinus and the Shadow Raptor.

So, Hysteria, if you'd like to amaze the crowd, feel free to take us through your process of finding the answers! Also, go ahead and direct message me, and we can figure out what you'd like as your prize, and how we are going to get it to you. I can possibly hand-deliver it if you are attending GenCon.

That said, I had an amazing time running this contest! If you guys had fun participating, I would definitely do something like this again (I can think of a few books coming up I worked on this might work for, though those are going to have much larger page counts, which might make things impossible unless I restrict my questions some more).

Awesome job, man. I am considering doing an end-notes style article for this product for the official site, just to list all the various EU inclusions. Dan Wallace and Jason Fry do this sort of thing a lot for their essential guides.

Awesome job, man. I am considering doing an end-notes style article for this product for the official site, just to list all the various EU inclusions. Dan Wallace and Jason Fry do this sort of thing a lot for their essential guides.

That would be super cool.

Keith, I would honestly pay money for this. I had a blast figuring out the answers, but it would be great to get the definitive guide.

Awesome job, man. I am considering doing an end-notes style article for this product for the official site, just to list all the various EU inclusions. Dan Wallace and Jason Fry do this sort of thing a lot for their essential guides.