PCs:

Nima, the Twilek Sabotage Infiltrator who watched the Empire turn her home to rubble

Soryn, the Human Space Superiority Pilot who was so enamored with tales of Jedi he joined the rebellion.

LE-03 AKA LEO the Droid Support Mechanic who began life as a LOM series protocol droid and spends every waking moment trying to become more ‘human.’

Kharrus, the Gran Internal Security Commando who’s ruthlessly teased about his species’ similarity to cows. Kharrus the cowmando – for the herd!

Chalcatta, the Wookie Counter Intelligence Infiltrator who has spent his life striking back at the Empire in vengeance for the slavery of his people.

NPCs:

Lucky, a Nautolan hired gun who may have a wee bit of a violent past with some pirates due to a disagreement about policy, and a definite hatred of irony since his given name, Bengel Morr, was a traitor turned hero.

Gaav Fennro, a Mon Calamari signal intelligence analyst.

The story begins with the team disembarking from a speeder deep in the Onderon jungles, watching in mild regret as it flies back to Iziz. There’s no way back now – the only way is forward to Whisper Base! From there, three objections – take out communications to stop distress calls, disable the shuttle to prevent escape, and then disable Lieutenant Sarev. Following the map uploaded into LE’s internal datapad the team makes short work of the jungle trek, managing to avoid setting off any of the proximity alarms and easily skirting the holocams all the way up to the massive garage doors and the least imposing, and still ajar, service hatch.

Once inside, Nima sets about investigating the assorted crates and lockers, while Kharrus and LE-03 check out the collection of speeder bikes and two rusted AT-STs. LE-03 easily sabotages the majority of the bikes, while Kharrus and Nima strike out with the AT-STs and crates respectively. If only they had a code cylinder! After much debate, the team moves into ambush positions while LE-03 moves to cut the power line he’s identified leads to the base’s communications system; since a hatch to the outside was open, it should be easy enough to blame the sabotage on local fauna while they slip deeper into the base.

A small team of Imperial Army Troopers steps into the garage from the depths of Whisper Base and seals the door behind them. The lead figure, a sergeant by his uniform, has just enough time to point out nearly every member of the “hidden” team before Kharrus levels his heavy blaster rifle and takes him out. Soryn, who had just confessed he’s never actual fired a blaster before, manages to take out two more troopers with critical precision. Nima and Chalcatta close the distance to bring vibroknives and brass knuckles to the fray, distracting the remaining troops long enough for blasters to bring them down. A clean victory!

Using the defeated sergeant’s code cylinder, LE-03 opens the door to the base proper. He pushes past a surprised battle droid pushing a mop cart, only barely registering its presence as he races to the power generator room.

“This unit needs to complete the sanitation of this garage bay-”

“What is it, a battle droid?”

“See that, it’s a restraining bolt, if we pop it off I bet it would help us.”

“This unit would greatly appreciate-“

The battle droid, now a custodian, BX-2R, is silenced abruptly as molten remnants of its head fall away to reveal the barrel of LE-03’s forearm mounted heavy blaster pistol.

“It would have turned on us. It was a battle droid.”

The rest of the team stares in stunned disbelief as LE-03 turns and rushes back down the corridor. With a sigh, they follow.

LE-03 quickly discovers that the main generator is locked beyond what his captured code cylinder will allow. On the plus side, he also confirms the mess hall is empty and there’s nothing worthwhile in the trash compactor! Chalcatta, now leading the rest of the party, makes a quick detour from their trek to the landing pad to stop in the communications room to sabotage any chance of a distress call. As he leaves the door, he spots four more Imperial Army Troopers directly down the hall. As it turns out, their greatest weaknesses are Wookie-powered punches to the face and blaster bolts to the chest. From there, Soryn easily disables the shuttle Nihlos and discovers its transponder was switched off. Weird.

LE-03 scouts ahead, pushing 2R’s mop bucket. All droids look alike, right? He discovers a trio of stormtroopers guarding what his map identifies as the armory. For now though, he pushes into the firing range and comes to a stop behind two practicing officers. His second forearm blaster pistol extends from his exoskeleton, and he calmly lines up both shots. One officer down, one missing an ear – not quite what he had in mind! Yelling in pain and terror the Army Officer leaps into the range for cover and calls for help – luckily the rest of the team was laying in wait and open fire on the armory stormtroopers when they move to respond. Blaster fire fills the air for a lot longer than anybody would have expected, finally dying off when Nima slides across the deck and takes out both troopers with quick ankle slashes from her vibroknife. Somehow, nobody was watching and her action-heroine stunt is met with disbelief.

The barracks are quickly dealt with, with blaster pistols and grenades collected from their dozen hostages. Chalcatta and LE-03 agree that the best place for them would be the trash compactor – everyone else strongly disagrees and instead opts to tie them up and throw them in the mess hall’s walk-in refrigeration unit. A duty roster shows the only thing separating them from Lieutenant Sarev are six stromtroopers and a locked door. Not a problem for the brain trust of Kharrus and LE-03 who cobble together a bomb with the “liberated” blaster pistols and grenades. From there it’s just a quick throw and… dead stormtroopers.

“Theta squad! This is the control room! What’s going on out there?! Report!”

“Uh… everything’s fine out here. No problem. How’s your day?”

“Raaaaaawwwr!”

Falling for Chalcatta’s clever ruse, the command staff open the door to find themselves face to face with Kharrus’ heavy rifle. The command staff are easily taken hostage and bound, only for a wayward glance to lead Nima to investigate a desk and discover… a hidden door!

“The lieutenant’s made a break for it! It looks like this leads to… the garage!”

Soryn and Chalcatta sprint for the shuttle, assuming a lambda will be easily able to catch a fleeing officer while the rest of the team race to the garage. Discovering a missing AT-ST, they hop on the speeder bikes (the ones they didn’t sabotage,) and give chase. A few kilometers in they notice – they’re being chased too! Somewhere along the line four Scout Troopers have picked up their trail and are keen to open fire. The Nihlos arrives in the nick of time, Chalcatta using the laser cannons to easily take out the AT-ST… and a few scout bikes for good measure. Unfortunately, one manages to get away – long term, that’ll probably be an issue. But, for now, Whisper Base has been taken!

In the aftermath of taking Whisper Base, the team sat in their brand new briefing room to discuss options. As it was, they had a few goals: They needed to resupply, and establish a steady supply chain to the base; acquire staff; ditch their hostages; and fortify the base. Since Moff Dardano has likely been alerted by the scout trooper who got away, a counter attack could be coming any day now.

Chalcatta, (whose player was absent) solves one of the problems in minutes – he calls up the Republic cruiser Lathir that dropped them off. The rest of the team listen to his well stated arguments for taking the prisoners.

“Raaaaaarrrgggh. Roar! Growl.”

With that, he heads off to the walk in refrigerator to retrieve their prisoners, load them onto the Nihlos, and ferries them off into space to be gone for a narrative amount of time.

The rest of the team excitedly crosses that off their list. Nima opts to monitor the SigInt array, since she can, and try to figure out anything worthwhile from the backlogged messages. LE-03, meanwhile, sifts through the base’s information on Onderon and the surrounding area. Of particular note is information on the capital city, Iziz, the Imperial Logistics Base Jyrenne Base, reports of beast riding barbarians, and a local exploited village. It’s too late in the day to check any of them out, but the team resolves to investigate Darrastead village in the morning. Nima, meanwhile, decides there’s far too much information for just her to sift through and, after checking the encryption, sets up the SigInt array to automatically transmit everything to the Republic.

The team wakes up to an automated message from the base – a high priority message! Everyone gathers in the briefing room, and discovers Republic High Command has something to say.

“You guys are sending way too much information, you’re going to compromise the frequency! We’re sending you a signal intelligence expert to help manage stuff, he’ll be there in 24 hours. He’ll work the word dalgo into conversation somehow. This message will self destruct in 5…4…3…2..1.”

Good news! Now, to get the base cleaned up since BX-2R is out of the picture. The team hops on their captured speeder bikes and goes racing off into the forest.. after Kharrus reminds everyone they need to close and lock the main door to ward off would be burglars.

The village of Darrastead is found fairly easily, but there’s only one problem – who’s actually going to talk to the locals? LE-03 opts out due to self professed anger management issues, and Nima, Kharrus, and Soryn diplomatically settle the issue with “nose-goes.” Kharrus is readily elected to be spokesman, as the charismatic Soryn comes down with a bad case of GM-PC-doesn’t-want-to-talk-to-himself-for-an-hour.

The villagers are skeptical of the claims that Whisper Base has fallen, but so delighted by the news joy outweighs any desire for proof. Showing a remarkable insight into herd-mentality, Kharrus easily negotiates for a team of villages to come help out at the base in exchange for excess medical supplies and parts, with the bonus offer that the base’s barracks are open to any villager who would rather not risk being eaten by Bomas in the middle of the night. LE-03 manages to find someone with technical knowledge to help him out, while Nima finds both success and despair in recruiting a lone, pervy, farmer to come back to the base with her and train at the rifle range. Skeeved out, she opts to let Kharrus handle the actual training.

The next day, the team decides they’re going to track down the beast riders – maybe they could be convinced to join the fight against the Empire, since they’ve been attacking patrols already. Soryn is left at the base to await both their SigInt specialist and the workers from Darrastead. Everyone else piles on to two speeder bikes and they take off. In no time at all they’re in hostile beast rider territory, and come face to face with the draconic ruping the Clazca Tribe beast riders call a steed. After a brief meeting, it’s settled – in one week’s time they’ll meet back up and discuss an alliance with the tribe. Until then, they won’t be permitted in Clazca territory.

On their way back, they get a message from Soryn.

“Hey guys? Uh, someone dropped a boulder in our lawn.”

Upon returning to Whisper Base, the massive boulder is easily spotted. A test, to verify the Imperials no longer hold the base? Or, perhaps it was an attack that just missed its mark. Either way, the team hurries inside.

A few hours later the detail from Darrastead arrives, and the team set out figuring work assignments, bunk allocation, and training regimens – both to teach their new workers to maintain equipment and to defend themselves, and for the natives to teach the rebels how to hunt and survive in this dangerous jungle. Kharrus is concerned about food supplies – even if they have quite a bit in ration packs, eventually those will run out!

Day three starts quietly. Too quietly – as the 24 hours they were promised by High Command comes and goes, the team grows increasing restless. Nima eventually checks the SigInt array, searching for anything that might clue them in to what’s taking so long. She finds a lone report that catches her attention – earlier that morning, a Mon Calamari smuggler was picked up by Iziz Customs having illegal weapons and enough supplies for a small team. Despite being unconvinced the smuggler is their man, the team still decides to rescue him; after all, having a smuggler in your pocket is always a good thing!

Leaving the Darrastead Villagers in charge of the base, the team hops on two speeder bikes and heads off into Iziz. Soryn and Nima slip through the checkpoint with ease:

“I’m just taking my lady friend somewhere nice,”

While LE-03 and Kharrus end up having to pay an “Undesirables” tax directly to the guard’s wallet. Once in the mercantile district, the team splits up.

LE-03 purchases a few minor parts to repair the speeders he banged up, and a new hydrospanner for his technically minded villager friend.

Soryn uses all his cunning to flag down a passing local and ask:

“Hey, where’s customs at? The old treasury building? Thanks.”

Nima, now informed, heads out to scout the treasury building out. She discovers it’s pretty heavily guarded, but there’s roof access and, in a twist of destiny, a crowded tavern just across the street. Once the team reconvenes, Nima heads into the bar to find the biggest drunk.

“Hey uh… that guy over there? He was talking **** about you.”

She manages to flee the ensuing brawl just in time to see the Stormtroopers guarding the treasury door moving to break up the disturbance. With ease, she scales the building while everyone is distracted. Kharrus follows her, and discovers that a Gran climbing a three story building draws a crowd of its own. Soryn and LE-03 meanwhile slip in through the unguarded front door.

Once on the roof, destiny rears its ugly head and Kharrus and Nima discover the roof access was actually a hood covering for a fan. No problem – Kharrus sneakily rips the vent cover off and drops it, sending the metal lid banging down the vent shaft and gumming up the fan with several loud crashes. Nima glares daggers at him. Still, they hop down the vent and climb through, emerging finally in the ladies lavatory. As they step out, they’re only a little surprised to see a squad of stormtroopers crouched with blasters raised – evidently they’d heard the stealthy intrusion!

Soryn and LE-03 have similar luck. Despite skirting the outside guards, they bust through the front door to find four more stormtroopers on patrol inside the lobby. Well ****.

For a few minutes the entire building is filled with blaster fire. Adrenaline turns to despair as one of the troopers calls for help on his commlink with his dying breath. Kicking it into overdrive, the team manages to find the smuggler. Just as Nima has his shackles off, Kharrus demands to know the password.

“The password? Oh, it’s-“ The Mon Calamari is cut off abruptly as another team of stormtroopers fight their way to the third floor and set off a grenade.

Soryn and Nima take the smuggler with them, climbing back out the ladies lavatory vent to the ceiling. Kharrus, already critically wounded from his sustained firefight, leaps from the second story window in a desperate attempt to escape. Against all odds he survives, battered but not yet broken.

LE-03, in similar panic, runs down the stairs and out the back door. Thanking the meatbag gods of destiny, LEO helps the gravely injured Kharrus into the back of a speeder parked nearby and hops into the pilot seat. By the time he has it turned on and ready to go, Nima and the smuggler have rappelled down. Soryn is a bit slower, hopping first from the roof to a lower roof before scrabbling down and into the back – he clearly subscribes to the ‘face first’ method of parkour, and ends up looking little better than Kharrus.

LE-03 punches it just in time to see Onderon Security in a landspeeder of their own rounding the corner. The chase is on!

LEO spots the approaching Panther Interceptor Speeder and stomps on his captured speeder’s acceleration pedal, managing to both strain the vehicle’s systems almost to their limits and flood the engine, which is pretty impressive for something with a gaseous fuel source. Still, he plods along, gaining at least a little speed. He has his vengeance fairly quickly as the Onderon Security Forces do the exact same thing with their speeder. This will clearly not be a high speed chase through the city, but a battle of ‘who-fails-least.’ Kharrus decides he’s had enough of these hijinks, levels his heavy blaster rifle, and obliterates the pilot with automatic fire. LEO continues off through the city at a much more leisurely pace now that the immediate threat is gone.

The team has almost reached their hidden speeders when LEO spots a commotion down a side street – a male Nautolan in storm trooper armor dives from a warehouse, turns, and opens fire on a squad of stormtroopers pursuing him. An enemy of my enemy, right? Kharrus, Nima, and Soryn hop out of the speeder to provide covering fire, while Leo zooms ahead to try and scatter the squad. He succeeds – they break formation, and the combined blaster fire of four is enough to wipe out the Empire’s minions.

“What’s going on here?”

“Well uh… name’s Lucky by the way, I was guarding this warehouse of… wheat… when a trooper came in and started rifling through crates. Being the upstanding mercenary I am, I killed him, and decided – hey! I need new armor, he has new armor… his buddies walked in as I was fastening the last piece. Have any spray paint?”

“Lucky for you we showed up, right? Ha!”

With now six people crammed on a speeder that can support four, the group heads directly to their stashed bikes. During the trip, the rescued smuggler introduces himself.

“I’m Gaav Fennro. Thanks for helping me back there, you guys handled yourselves pretty g… alright. I was supposed to let you know the code word – dalgo – but things were so hectic… I’m here to help with the sensor array, regardless.”

Lucky, hearing this, chimes in. “Hey since you guys are clearly hiring, and my last employer probably won’t be too thrilled… need a hired gun?”

The group is noncommittal, but doesn’t turn him away as everyone loads onto speeders and departs the city – Soryn and Nima on bikes, while Kharrus and LEO escort Gaav and Lucky in the landspeeder.

Meanwhile, Chalcatta makes his way back to the landing pad in his lambda shuttle, Nihlos. It’s a curious picture that awaits him – his buddies are gone, but there’s a dozen peasants in brown and green swarming the base… and a giant boulder parked outside the front door. Weird. He lands uneasily, his concern growing as nobody pays him any mind. After checking the base, and discovering the officer’s quarters have been converted to bunk beds with all bunks except one claimed by his friends’ gear, he calls them up on the commlink.

“Rawr?”

“Oh yeah, we recruited some villagers.. and don’t mind the boulder. We think it was dragons.”

Once everyone’s back at base, introductions are made. Gaav then goes off to work on the SigInt Array while the team assembles in the briefing room to figure out what to do… and to nurse their wounds with the extremely minimal first aid knowledge Kharrus picked up in training.

Nima and LEO favor setting up traps in the woods and mining the clearing outside the main door. Nobody has any idea how to set up a supply route, or where to get more robust defenses… or how to pay for them. Lucky suggests he knows a merchant in town – Kavia Slen who’s well known for finding the more legally questionable and obscure items. Chalcatta suggests a trade – some of the SigInt info, stuff that can’t be used to harm the Republic, might be used to get some supplies… and later on, they could trade a monthly digest for monthly supplies. The group enthusiastically agrees – first thing in the morning they’ll seek Kavia out.

LEO, Chalcatta, Nima, Lucky, and Kharrus head into Iziz, while Soryn opts to stay back and look over ‘his shuttle.’ Kavia is easily found, and an accord is struck – in exchange for the datapad, she’ll provide the location of three crashed airspeeders and, depending on how valuable the info is, some maintenance droids to help out. The team heads out to check on the downed speeders, save for LEO who heads over to the local Space FedEx to get himself and his three droids overnighted to Darrastead.

“Yes sir we can do that just have all of you step on the scale. So, that weight for that distance, overnight, is… 400 credits. Or, for 40 credits, we can deactivate the lot of you, stick you in our mail room, and load you in the next convoy? I think there’s one departing in two to eight weeks!”

LEO, apparently the only team member without the money and with no bank account to accept wire transfers, heads back to Kavia to arrange transportation.

“Some day, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me. But until that day, consider this ride a gift.”

Only slightly obligated, LEO heads back to Darrastead and then to the base to meet up with Soryn, the lambda, and hopefully some airspeeders.

At the airspeeders, the team suspiciously check them out. Good working order, after market weaponry, no corpses in the pilot seat… this just screams of an ambush. If only Gaav, their Mon Cal analyst, were there to weigh in on the probability of trap-itude. Since he isn’t though, they proceed. Kharrus calls Soryn on the comlink to bring the shuttle… and tow cables. Chalcatta fixes the cable to the bottom of the Nihlos, scales the trees, and hooks up the first speeder. Then, he carefully hacks away the branches the T-16 Skyhopper is entangled in. Success! It’s easily salvaged despite the wookiee completely guessing both where to attach the cables and what branches to cut. The second airspeeder is freed much as the first, though it does sustain minor damage as the last branch is hacked away and it swings a wing tip through a tree trunk. By the third speeder, Chalcatta is back to perfect form – not a scratch! In his victory he turns to the group to pose dramatically, and puts his foot through a maintenance panel. Whoops. Still, Whisper Base now has air support.

The next couple days are spent recuperating, slowly healing from the rescue in Iziz.

Kharrus, meanwhile, instructs a group of Darrastead Villagers in blaster rifle use in the firing range.

LEO, recognizing that airspeeders are absolutely nothing like spacecraft and thus not in Soryn the Pilot’s skillset, shows the villagers whose jobs were lost to maintenance droids how to fly.

Chalcatta works with Gaav, monitoring the SigInt Array and filtering data.

Nima continues to try and hunt – she finds several nests and trails, but nothing that she could eat before it ate her.

Lucky occupies his time like any bored mercenary without booze – he gets into mischief, finding a stash of spray paint in the garage. Once his pristine stormtrooper armor is turned green to throw off the scent of justice, he takes to adding nose art to their skyhoppers – a Nautolan pinup girl, shark teeth, and a piranha with laser eyes. Everybody but Nima and LEO are amused.

The night of day seven has a very excited Chalcatta and Gaav assembling everyone in the briefing room. In a couple hours, a high level operative of Moff Dardano is being moved and has a pit stop at the edge of the sector in empty space. If they leave right now, they can intercept and capture him! Wasting little time, they load into the shuttle. LEO manages precise astrogation, recalling that in between assimilating a LE mechanic droid and an IG assassin droid, a R3 may have been involved.

Half an hour later, the team watches another lamda exit hyperspace, facing away, in close range. Easy enough – the resident gunner, Kharrus, targets the engines and lets loose a barrage of warning shots. Chalcatta follows up with the lighter blaster cannons, and triumphs! Kharrus sulks while Soryn docks the two shuttles.

The boarding action is quick and brutal – Kharrus kills one of the agent’s bodyguards with his heavy rifle, Nima stuns one, and Chalcatta sends one flying backwards with a caved in chest. Everyone stops for a moment to reflect on the power of a wookiee with brass knuckles. They’re brought back into focus though, as the flying corpse smashes into the command console and engages “emergency maneuvering thrusters.” With a creak of straining metal, the captured and crippled shuttle begins to try and twist away from the docking seal. Chalcatta subdues the agent as quickly as he can, taking a few blaster rounds to the chest in the process. Even so, there’s just enough time to bring their two captives on board and seal the door before the enemy lambda tears itself away and vents its already dead passengers into space. Kharrus opts to remove the evidence of their involvement, and blows the shuttle away with his anti-pursuit lasers.

On the flight back, they find out the hard way (with at first stony silence and then increasingly belittling comments about Kharrus’s Mother) that Imperial Intelligence Agents are very hard to interrogate! The team opts to lock their prisoners in the armory for now and get some rest, since tomorrow they have an important meeting with The Beast Riders.