Ok, last session (March 7)https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/136372-need-help-asap-with-plotplan-for-czerka-intrigue-side-story-adventure/ , my players went to Galtea in the Kathol sector (shaved time off the trip by jumping into the Marcol void, rather than taking the poorly mapped hyperlanes through the Kathol sector, but there isn't an equivalent exit trick). the closest planet on the way out is Pembric II, which is a gangster planet http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Pembric_II

The campaign is the standard few months after the battle of Yavin. So the new republic doesn't exist yet and the events of the weg darkstryder campaign are about 8 years in the future.

One of my PCs, Karsten Eshan is a shadow run style street samurai "thug" (career:hired gun spec:enforcer, with the strength enhancing cybernetic arm, favorite weapon is a massively tricked out vibrosword that looks like a katana) with criminal connections, he's from Tarris where he was muscle for the pardok family (and he parted on good terms), in the first session him and j-8 (rebuilt and mostly reprogrammed hk-50 assassin droid, career:bounty hunter, spec:gadgeteer and just entered the soldier:sharpshooter spec because he was impressed how awesome true aim was for Thad Bane) who were a two man bounty hunting team sold their ship so they could repay their debt to Jan Pardok (which was an explanation of how to get PCs with different back stories/outlooks jokingly "chaotic evil" for Karsten and J-8 and "lawful good" for everyone else except Vaesha who would be neutral good and Andra [fixer for Grondo the Hutt who hired the PCs for jobs] who is probably true neutral).

Anyway Karsten's player finally got back to me on what he wanted his side story to be, he somehow unknowingly inconvenienced (star wars) Keyser Soze (Emil Mola). If he had knowingly inconvenienced Keyser Soze (Emil Mola) he'd just be dead, but since he only unknowingly offended Emil Mola he's going to be given the opportunity to work off his debt.

So who is Emil Mola:

what the galaxy knows about him: he was a human crime lord that Jabba the Hutt fed to the Sarlacc 200 years ago, yet despite this his criminal empire has continued to grow and thrive while still apparently being guided by him remotely (holonet mail instructions to lieutenants). The "Emil Mola" communicating with his lieutenants for the last 200 years knows things that only the real Emil Mola could know, and since then he has gained access to vast knowledge about criminal activities for the roughly 1000 years before he was fed to the sarlaac and the 200 years since (however there is a bit of a lag in how soon he gets new information).

What the galaxy doesn't know... while in Jabba's dungeon he bribed the Bomar monks to extract his brain (put it in a jar in Jabba's palace which was originally and still is a monastery for the Bomar monks) and put some other smuck'so brain in his body before it was fed to the Sarlaac. Other criminal brains in jars have told him about Jabba's dealings (and the 1000 years is a bit of an exageration). Emil Mola feels that if he returned now, he would be safe from Jabba because Jabba knows he was fed to the Sarlaac and even if he wasn'the he would have died of old age (human bodies don't last that long). So Emil wants a in the prime of his life clone of his original body grown so his brain can be transplanted back into it.

So he needs a sample of his DNA that isn't in Jabba's palace, and a Sparti clone cylinder (the ones that Thrawn used, fast growth in the cylinder but a normal lifespan after that, not the Kaminoían process which accelerates aging [half the development time of a normal human followed by half the lifespan]).

So back to Pembric II, gangster planet, gangsters swear blood oaths 200+ years ago Emil Mola and another gangster swore a blood oath and they kept the daggers that the other one was cut with (blood never wiped clean). The dagger that Emil Mola was cut with was handed down to the other gangsters, son, grandson, great grandson, great great grandson, great great great grandson who like his father and his father before him etc. We're gangsters. Emil Mola wants that dagger back so that a new body can be cloned for him. And he has sent another street samurai (actually one with more of a ninja theme) to steal it. This will be the one that Karsten lost the duel to in the last session (in the humorous inflammatory summary I gave in the other thread that I linked to).

But I need a way to work together the sale of top shelf alcohol (that everyone on the "Red Talon" knows about and agreed to) and the sale of the "spice" that Karsten and J-8 hid on board (like I said the "chaotic evil" members of the party). And Karsten somehow spotting the adversary while he is alone and tailing him to the place where theft of the dagger is to take place. And I need something for the rest of the party to be doing and a reason to split the party (a reason that the party will split themselves, probably j-8 and Karsten going off to sell the spice, but then I need to get Karsten and J-8 to split [or something to keep J-8 from interfering] so Karsten can have his mano a mano rematch, with the other cyberpunk samurai/ninja, maybe J-8 can be getting his internal restraining bolt removed), and I need to work in more czerka development for Tal... last episode it was revealed to the rest of the party that Tal was adopted, and it was also revealed that czerka sent the massive muscle to Galtea on short notice because Tal was there and they placed a bring him in alive for questioning bounty on him. Maybe somehow Tal's DNA is a code to disable the restraining bolt or open a door or something. And I need to establish a pattern a Tal being popularly perceived as a man of the people/hero while a conspiracy theorist would perceive him as a criminal mastermind arms dealer who create demand by promoting large scale violence.

So what ideas do you have for me? Thanks in advance.

In case you guys missed the point I was trying to get across (it's my own fault for rambling), I'm requesting plot/story element ideas about how to accomplish the many little objectives I mentioned in the longer post. I really wish I had more time to devote to gaming but not having much time to game (or prep for gaming) is the cost of professional success in science and engineering.

Sorry, guy. It sounds to me like you’ve already gone way past anything I could help with.

Good luck!

Sorry, guy. It sounds to me like you’ve already gone way past anything I could help with.

Good luck!

having someone to bounce ideas off still helps

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Keiffler_Brothers

So i'd use these guys to remove j-8'so restraining bolt

Ok.. so in the time period you're talking Sarne should be big boss daddy of the sector with Crev running his ops full force right?

So (and I admit there's some TL;DR going on but I think I got the broad strokes) let see...

Selling off the "legal" alcohol should be fairly easy, as there's an obvious market for it in the tourism sector of things.... also the spice now that I think about it. so it's possible you can cross-promote here and have the buyer for both be the same guy. Might actually be kinda fun to have the concierge (almost thinking a Monsieur Gustave type) doing a scene with PC group A to make the legal sales then concluding the scene with him rushing off with "other business to attend to", only to show up at the next scene set across town a half-hour later to make the spice deal with PC group B. The guy might also make a good point of contact for tracking down the dagger.

So Sarne also used to use Pembric II as a training ground for his intel and enforcement types. So why not, while the players are sitting round typing to figure out their next move is, have someone show up who works for/with the buyer, all concerned because he's disappeared and there's a team of imperial intel types chasing down he's known associates and tossing his usual hideouts. As the last people to do shady deals with the Concierge this minion assumes the players know why he's been targeted. So withthis guy being the best contact for getting the dagger AND with imperial intel hot on his tail the players will need to find out what Imperial intel (actually a group of trained and dangerous, but inexperienced rookies getting time in the field) is after the concierge for, get them off the trail (perhaps by making it look like the training groups stumbled on to something unrelated but far more dangerous) and then track down the missing man and convince him all is clear (perhaps also shaking loose some bounty hunters the intel team hired).

those are great ideas, the concierge buying the alcohol and spice. But for the dagger... after Karsten acquires the dagger and doesn't know what it is, I'll try to get him to take it to the nearby concierge, who will identify it

"it's a blood oath dagger, they used to be quite popular among the criminal elite but we don't see many of them these days. This one is fairly modern, judging from the style i'd guess it's between two and three hundred years old. Depending on whose blood is on it could be worth as little as 50 credits or maybe up to 15,000 or more to the right collector. Of course the person stealing this could have had a more nefarious purpose than obtaining a relic for someone's collection. They could be trying to commit familicide by genetically engineering a retrovirus to end a particular bloodline, or maybe they are trying to prevent someone else from using it to create such a virus. Of course, without knowing whose blood was on it, any speculation as to the motive for the theft is just that, speculation."

So maybe this was stolen from someone's collection, maybe crev bombassa's collection (which he acquired from others over the years) of blood oath daggers, say he had a "library" of these things mounted on a wall, bombassa probably doesn't even know whose blood was on it

maybe the concierge agrees to make some anonymous inquiries on the PC's behalf.... and then the concierge goes missing, why he goes missing is completely unrelated but the PCs will assume it's because of the dagger, then a handful of "ninja's" in the stealth suits (from fly casual I think) try to take it from the party, they're in dire straights until bombassa's goons show up looking for the concierge, energy bolts fly short out some suits kill some lesser ninja's the main ninja escapes. Bombassa's goons reclaim the dagger, and bring the PC's to talk with bombassa who believes their story that they didn't steal it because the ninjas were trying to take it from them, and he doesn't know whose blood was on it but now he is going to make a point of finding out. And he gives them the task of finding the concierge (who was being held by rookie intel operatives for something completely unrelated) they rescue him and he has some information related to the dagger... apparently blood on the dagger belonged to a minor human crime lord that Jabba the Hutt fed to the Sarlaac on tatooine. By some accounts he was the mythical Emil Mola, but that's unlikely. Even if you take stock in such legends, the mola cartel is supposed alive and well and still taking orders from Emil would even if he wasn't fed to the sarlacc be impossible because a human crimelord alive 200 years ago would have long since died of natural causes.

so what ideas do you have on the real unrelated reason that sarne's rookie intel operatives took the concierge captive?

You may want to go with something a little less lootable then the memetic suit, but it's your game, maybe you're at the memetic suit point.

The intel team holding the concierge can be for one of any of a dozen reasons. My interpretation of the whole "Pembric II as field training" was that Sarne and his intel staff would pick a target of some kind. Maybe someone of a specific level, maybe someone who was causing Sarne trouble, maybe a business Sarne pulled out of a hat (you know how Sarne is with is odd near-hutt-level-complexity-if-they-didn't-make-so-little-goddamn-sense grand strategic plans) and then they send the intel team to set up shop, collect intel, and then execute an operation. So maybe the concierge is the target and the intel team is supposed to bag him. Maybe the target is an illegal monkeylizard fighting ring and the concierge knows something about it. Maybe it's a bootleg Sarne bobblehead smuggling ring that got busted last month and Sarne wants to know what the final market was and the concierge is the fixer trying connect a middle man warehouse owner who still has inventory with a smuggler willing to make one final run of the blasted ugly things.

You may want to go with something a little less lootable then the memetic suit, but it's your game, maybe you're at the memetic suit point.

The intel team holding the concierge can be for one of any of a dozen reasons. My interpretation of the whole "Pembric II as field training" was that Sarne and his intel staff would pick a target of some kind. Maybe someone of a specific level, maybe someone who was causing Sarne trouble, maybe a business Sarne pulled out of a hat (you know how Sarne is with is odd near-hutt-level-complexity-if-they-didn't-make-so-little-goddamn-sense grand strategic plans) and then they send the intel team to set up shop, collect intel, and then execute an operation. So maybe the concierge is the target and the intel team is supposed to bag him. Maybe the target is an illegal monkeylizard fighting ring and the concierge knows something about it. Maybe it's a bootleg Sarne bobblehead smuggling ring that got busted last month and Sarne wants to know what the final market was and the concierge is the fixer trying connect a middle man warehouse owner who still has inventory with a smuggler willing to make one final run of the blasted ugly things.

With the memmetic suits, I figured the PCs would be losing the fight when bombassa's goons show up with a few ion grenades which cause the ion grenades and if needed the PCs weapons to stop working (bombassa's goon's weapons are hardened against ion weapons but otherwise unimpressive) and the ion grenades short out the memmetic suits which let's bombassa's goon's kill one and drive off the others, and bombassa's goon's claim the suit which is also damaged because it's full of holes. And the PCs don't really have an option to object.

You know the Sarne bobblehead doll idea would be good for a laugh from my players, I think that I'll run with it, and it would be a great way to introduce Sarne as a possibly recurring (off screen) character (no current plans to use him again but what the hey, it's nice to lay out plot hooks just in case you will ever need them)

... now that you mention it he was supposed to have a personality cult... there might actually be a market for the things.

... now that you mention it he was supposed to have a personality cult... there might actually be a market for the things.

EDIT: wait a minute, was your previous bobble head comment made in jest? Was it a hyperbole example? I honestly thought you were being serious, now I'm not sure... I have a tendency to take things overly seriously and miss sarcasm (asperger syndrome, albeit I function at a fairly high level, well enough that people often mistake my not following all the subleties of communication as intentional indifference or rudeness; medication I take also help to increase emotional connectedness)

Yeah, total joke. Whenever I want to mention a cargo that needs to be smuggled but isn't spice, weapons, or something else likely to get you killed I go with bootleg bobble heads. Usually it's Palpatine bobbleheads, but considering the sector in question I went with Sarne...

Still, there's a possible market for the silly little things on Kal'Shebbol, so if you want to go with it, go with it. I do recall a thematically related TV series having a mentioned but never shown "Great Bobblehead Caper"....

I do recall a thematically related TV series having a mentioned but never shown "Great Bobblehead Caper"....

what was that thematically related TV series?

Hi All,

I ran this adventure in early to mid April... a lot's happened since then, I got engaged and married. My then girlfriend moved to the city where I live so we could get married (the plan was to be married before the end of April but things didn't go according to plan), we had arranged a (small) wedding (pastor, his wife, 2 witnesses) for May 9, before we got the rings back from being resized, I "officially" proposed (in the down on one knee sense) on May 2 (i.e. the day we got the rings back). My life is going great right now except I'm either slightly sick or suffering from allergies.... the sick part might be due to not getting enough sleep for the last week and therefore getting run down. But enough about my personal life I'm here to talk about my game.... here's a summary of the last session (mildly edited version of the notes I ran the game from as a place holder until a player writes the log in story form)

https://red-talon-wanted-dead-or-alive.obsidianportal.com/adventure-log/session-7

so I need to be planning my next session... which will probably occur on June 6 or 7.

So far the attendees for the next session looks like

Karsten Eshan's player

Tal Lee's player

Andra's player

Thad Bane's player

M4-RK's player

Vaesha's player has essentially dropped out of the game due to a work conflict so Vaesha will be run by M4-RK's player

J-8's player can't make either of the first 2 weekends in June

I want the next session to focus on/spotlight

Karsten Eshan, https://red-talon-wanted-dead-or-alive.obsidianportal.com/characters/karsten-eshan

Tal Lee (https://red-talon-wanted-dead-or-alive.obsidianportal.com/characters/pleaseemailmeyourcharactersname this character has the nickname mr. no-nam-ay (no name pronounced as previous indicated so it sounds Japanese) because his player took a full 3 sessions before choosing a name for this character), and

Andra (fixer for Grondo the Hutt)

The session will start on pembric II with Crev Bombassa taking Tal Lee to a bank where his biological father (Heir to the Czerka Arms corporation) left a safety deposit box for him nearly 20 years ago. he gets some nifty stuff like a high end machine pistol a czerka arms code cylinder a credit stick with a virtually unlimited funds but anywhere that he can use it will also alert Czerka arms, the people who want to put him in power and the people who want to kill him and within at most an hour one or both factions will be at the location where he used the credit stick, which one(s) depends on whether triumphs or despairs are rolled)

then the party goes back to nal hutta to pay back the loan to grondo that he fronted them for the weapons they sold in session 6 (I only tracked their profit, so no deductions from the characters' on char sheet balances... it's just a narrative device that they have to pay back the money)

when they deliver the credits to Andra, she tells them about the bounty hunters (Kynxa Ezex etc) from session 6 who went to apprehend Tal because he is believed to be the heir to Czerka Arms, oh and Andra congratulates Thad for "burning" Kynxa in the quickdraw show down. Andra gives them their next job for Grondo the Hutt... something that is going to get interrupted by an emissary of Emil Mola, who has come to inform Karsten of the debt he has acquired... Andra pales vissibly and says in an obviously concerned voice... I don't believe it... que the greatest trick the devil ever played was getting the world to believe he didn't exist usual suspects quotes... I gotta go get pizza and a movie...maybe the usual suspects

Okay I did get the usual suspects from hastings... they had one copy available for purchase none for rent so I bought it. My wife had never seen it before and got the full "Keyser Soze effect" surprise ending.

Anyway, i'm shooting for the next session to be taken out of that movie... the part where Kobayashi sends them a job through redfoot and it's bogus (not what they signed on for) and they they're pissed and want to meet with Kobayashi and he reveals that they owe him... and they decide to whack him but don't because of the equivalent of Eddie as collateral damage... so can you give me some ideas on how to set that up... what is the job that goes bad?