Here is the crawl my my next game:

TALES OF THE SOLAY EXPRESS
EPISODE VI
Small Packages

Profit awaits the employees of the SOLAY EXPRESS. After receiving payment for their heist on Te’Aatorus, the crew hunt locally for their next big job.

After several weeks of nothing but short supply runs, the crew are approached by a young Chiss named DARIUS, desperate for assistance, claiming that his sister had recently been abducted by local thugs.

With the young man’s offer to help fill the company's vacant mechanic's position secured, the crew accepts the arrangement and soon learns that their former business partners, the SOLAY SLAYERS, are responsible for the kidnapping and that they intend to claim the Imperial bounty on the girl....

This child is "gifted" and is the main Obligation for the newest PC to join the crew. I'll be starting the adventure in Media Rez with a shootout in an alleyway between the Empire and the PCs and they escape, unfortunately empty handed. Seems that the Empire wanted to leave no witnesses, so when the PCs arrived to do business with the gang members for the release of the child, they interrupted the Empire "taking" the child from them, and arrived in the midst of a shootout between stormtroopers and the gang members.

Unfortunately beyond this, I have little idea of where to go next.

Any suggestions for a plot twist?

The aim is that by the end of the session, the child will be back with the PCs, and will be working in their business.

Thanks in advance.

Any story can play out in a naturalistic way if you have enough background.

What planet are you on?

Could you explain a bit more about who this SOLAR SLAYERS factions is?

How do the woman and child fit into this? Is the Darius the kid's uncle? Has the kid been born yet? What planet are you on currently?

And why would the Empire put out a kill order on a kid rather than capture him/her and add them to the Inquisitor program, or some other form or brainwashing? There would have to be a reason to kill him/her beyond just being gifted.

And who are the player characters - that's very important. Could something intrinsic to one of the players pull the group in a certain direction?

EDIT: Last question, (though these questions are for you as much as for me) who needs to survive the adventure? Do you run a 0-player deaths campaign? Can the sister die? Is there an established antagonist for your group of players? A mob boss, imperial investigator, a member of planetary nobility?

Well, that was more than one but you get my drift: the setting and circumstances determine the plot direction. A twist would happen when a present but previously undervalued or underestimated factor challenges the players.

Here's one possible twist from what you have: The Empire has decided to kill this kid rather than the usual "forced recruitment". Turns lout, they have a fairly legitimate reason to. The kid is:

• A hole in the force, and sucks dry the souls of those around him.
• A disease carrier, and has been infecting people as he travels (leave no witnesses).
• Has seen something he shouldn't have, something incredibly dangerous to the Empire's setup in this sector (requires further development to work).
• Has managed to actually commit a capitol offence: tried to kill a senator, smuggled drug/weapons, stole a macguffin, etc.

How bout that?

OK, so a couple of things to answer your question:

1) Darius is the new PC. He's a male Chiss Scientist

2) There is only one woman - his sister. She is "gifted" (aka River from Firefly, but Force Sensitive). He abilities were manifested through Imperial experimentation. She "escaped" thanks to her brother (PC), and they fled to Solay. Unfortunately they got cornered and he managed to escape but not with his sister. He's bnow asking for the PCs help to get her back.

3) The play is Solay, a desert like world similar to either Tatooine of Jakku. The best description - Johannesburg, South Africa - complete with corruption and street gangs.

4) The Solay Slayers are a swoop gang that employed the PCs to help them out a while back.

Other players are:

Trandoshan Merchant

Human Gambler

Corellian Former Swoop Racer turned cargo hauler

Gank Heavy

Edited previous post.

A swoop gang would have things that they care about that the PCs could steal/destroy/threaten/bargain with leverage to get the girl back.

-Income sources: Drugs, slaves, guns, illegal commodities.

-Anonymity. If the players have worked with them before, and now find them to be at odds with the empire, they could threaten to lead the Empire right back to them.

-Street Cred. Without a certain level of respect, a gang will be picked to pieces and scavenged for resources from within or without. By embarrassing the gang, or removing a high-level player, the characters could destabilise the power structure, and nab the girl in the ensuing chaos.

A twist, is when one/all of these plans (and you decide the story) is rigged to fail/break in one way or another.

Income Breaks: Goods are dirty/slaves are venomous/guns are bait for an Imperial sting op/one of the characters used to be addicted to the stolen brand of drugs.

Anonymity Breaks: The players accidently sic the Empire on themselves as well/ the plan goes well, but the girl is injured in the escape/ the gang is too solid to crack, and the girl is moved while the party tries to figure out another plan.

Street Cred Breaks: The gang is a pillar of the community for better or worse, and when it comes down, so does the neighborhood (nice job breaking it hero!)/ a ganger gets wind of the players plan, and manipulates them to his own ends/ the gang was falling down anyway, and the players actions come to fruition before the players thought they would (I didn't expect to break it that hard !)

You could have the girl escape during the firefight. Then the pcs would have to find her before the other groups do.

The gang could more or less decimate the empire team sent to retrieve the girl. The gang gets away and the pcs have to team up with the surviving inquisitor to find the girl. The Empire could really want to recruit her, but the gang is spreading rumors about the empire killing or wanting dead force sensitive kids because the gang has been hired to bring the kids to some kind of force user cult. The strange bedfellows work to track the cult and its leader to some off world location. Then after taking down the cult, the pcs are allowed to leave with the girl in exchange for leaving the other kids for the empire.

Maybe the girl had already been handed off to someone doing experiments on force users to supress their powers, but it messes them up. Can the pcs find her in time or will the large doses of penicillin kill the midiclorians in her system..or only kill off the weak ones and she will end up even stronger in time...

Depending if the girl is old enough she could be found to be pregnant and was running away with or kidnapped by the guy who knocked her up.

Maybe she got infected by an alien (kinda like in Alien/Aliens) and they have to find a cure and stop the creature that infected her from getting off world.

Maybe the gang wants her because she witnessed a crime or has some piece of info they need and they want to know what she knows before the empire takes her.

Perhaps the agents fighting the gang are not really with the empire, but are pretending to be. They want the girl cause she saw something, or they want to use her powers to commit a crime. And the real empire forces will arrive at an inconvenient time.

That's just what I got off the top of my head.

I'd stick with the firefly plot, she learned a secret the empire doesn't want to get out and she (and anyone she may have talked to) needs to be silenced.

The empire stopped producing clones after the clone wars, but that doesn't mean they stopped producing loyalty chips. She may have learned that her planet, and others, were being used to test loyalty chips in natural born babies.

She stumbled on the secret and now she's marked for death, she may even have a chip herself and her force abilities don't interact well and it causes her river like behaviour.

An Jedi may arrive during the firefight to help rescue the girl, his real motive would be to steal her. He wants the secret so he can prevent a repeat of order 66.

Okay here's a few ideas that crossed my mind!

1) The Imperial kill order was misunderstood its your new PC they want dead as his sister may know some secret but he broke her out and would naturally be assumed to know whatever they want kept a secret!

2) His sister has a number of programmed in instructions set off by specific triggers most of which wasn't completed when she was rescued so no Order 66 on the PCs but anyone else is fair game!

3) Their former employers aware the Empire want to keep this secret are trying to shift the attention to the PCs the only reason are attacking them is because the PCs are attempting to rescue the girl!

Result of this battle introduces an ISB Agent whose now on their trail and has an incomplete list of the girl's programmed trigger commands so every so often he/she sets off a hidden transmission to set her off so he can locate them...

4) What is the secret?

Is she actually a clone or a progenitor for a stabler series of clone operatives?

A prototype Inquisitor or something else?

5) Who helped them escape?

What if their helper was killed and they think he/she passed on some critical information they need to continue their experiment?

OK, so the campaign is set 5 years after Order 66. I've decided a central part of the campaign will answer "What happened to the Clones after Order 66. Basically the answer is that some of them were experimented on, specifically - the Dark Trooper Project.

There will be adventures pertaining to specialised drugs being shipped around the place, experimental cybernetics, the actual Dark Trooper Project itself, and the potential experiment of manifesting Force abilities via synthetic means.

The young woman (approximately 15 years) is the first foray into that. And now, thanks to her brother (PC), she's on the loose.

Dark troopers eh?

Who is the girl with right now? I couldn't tell if it was the Gang or the Empire.

She was captured by the gang who intend to cash in on the local bounty that the Empire has offered. The intent is that when the PC arrive, the Solay Slayers are overwhelmed and the Empire have moved over some of their forces to deal with the Slayers "backup" (who they think are represented by the PCs.

So by the time the smoke has cleared, the Imperial ISB Agent, sent to get the girl, now has her in custody.

There is a second problem which I have not mentioned, but is worthy of explanation, and that's the problem with the PC's Boss who is one of the other players. He's the Trandoshan Merchant and is, in his own words - a model Imperial Loyalist (he's bought into the propaganda a bit) - when he wants to be.

My concern stems from the following story:

This crew, in their second adventure, were employed by the Solay Slayers, a swoop gang to steal back some "medical supplies" that were stolen from them by a rival gang - the Nebula Rats.

The problem was that the Nebula Rats had ties to some pirates who had been the ones whom had stolen the shipment in the beginning, and were using the Nebula Rats to store the cargo for them until the heat of the cargo calmed down.

The medical supply shipment was from the Imperial Allocation for that system, skimmed off the top by a Councilman who was supporting the Rebellion on that world, and had initially intended the supplies for the relief effort. He had contacted the Nebula Rats and arranged to meet with them to buy the goods back. The Councilman was in the midst of negotiations with the Nebula Rats when the PCs arrived.

The aim of the adventure that I had was that the councilman (once the smoke settled), would ask the PCs for their help and was going to offer them the money he would otherwise be paying the Rats to pay their associates (Solay Slayers).

So the dust settled, and the PCs, specifically the Trandoshan, spoke (I say spoke but I mean interrogated) with the bureaucrat in his limo. During the discussion, the Trandoshan managed to get out of him that he was working with the Rebellion against the Empire on Solay. The Trandoshan, true to his word and very loyal to his clients, coupled with his Imperial Loyalist views, took exception. What happened next? Well the Trandoshan claimed the councilman an enemy of the Empire and murdered him with his bare claws, much to the tune of "What the hell Boss!" of the other characters.

This was great role playing and everyone loved it, so there are no problems with the player going off the deep end here - we had all set the expectations of what these characters are going to be like from the get go. The problem I may have is that character's buy in. The simple solution here is that the young child does have affinity to the force, but it has manifested itself as a complete understanding of numbers - Rain Man level understanding. That makes her useful to the Trandoshan, and the PC (who's Obligation is the child) is a mechanic - and the players need that.

I just hope that's strong enough.

My concern, and the initial reason for my post, is that I have a crawl, an introduction scene (combat), but that's it.

The simple solution here is that the young child does have affinity to the force, but it has manifested itself as a complete understanding of numbers - Rain Man level understanding. That makes her useful to the Trandoshan, and the PC (who's Obligation is the child) is a mechanic - and the players need that.

I just hope that's strong enough.

My concern, and the initial reason for my post, is that I have a crawl, an introduction scene (combat), but that's it.

Maybe she also has knowledge of some Imperial plans regarding plans they have for testing a new superweapon, and in this case they want to test it on a whole planet full of Trandoshans, precisely because of their natural ability to heal and regenerate. And this would be a targeted superweapon, so it wouldn’t kill any other species. The goal is for them to be able to selectively “de-populate” an entire planet, and then be able to come in and claim all the resources and infrastructure and property for the new owners.

So, now the Empire is out to commit genocide against his own race?

Of course, she is the key to this new superweapon, because to tune the superweapon design properly involves a type of math that can’t be digitized. To make the design work right, it requires an intuitive understanding of numbers that she uniquely has.

Why does the name Project: Blue Harvest come to mind

Why does the name Project: Blue Harvest come to mind

Are Trandos colored blue? I thought they tended to be greenish-brownish shades.

What part of the Empire is the Trandoshan loyal too? The people, the senate, the regional governors, the Emperor himself?

There are plots within plots in the Empire, and not every part knows what the other is doing; some parts may be honest with good intentions, others decidedly not.

What you need to do, is show the Trandoshan that the part of the Empire you are in conflict with is in opposition to the Empire he thinks of. If he thinks of a kind Empire, make the ISB agent cruel, if he thinks of an incorruptible Empire, give evidence of the agent's crew cutting deals with pirates of Hutts.

Still trying to figure out why the Empire would want a calculator dead rather than recaptured. Maybe....seeing as she's one of the prototypes, they need to dissect/drain part of her to continue with the Rain-Man line of testing. Disassemble the prototype, study it, begin mass production - that sort of thing.

That's why she's in custody now: they don't want to kill her persay, it's just that what they want to do would end up killing her.

What was the name of that Bruce Willis movie?

Mercury Rising?

An autistic kid solves a supposedly unsolvable code put in a puzzle magazine to test its effectiveness since they're about to bring the code into use the revelation it had been broken resulted in the bad guys trying to either kidnap or eliminate the kid and in their first attempt they killed his parents...

So we have a child specifically geared to solve otherwise indecipherable languages and codes now on the loose and various factions vying to be the ones to resolve the situation.

One wants her dead and anyone that knows what she can do, another wants her secured as it appears a rebel cell was responsible so they need to make sure they've covered all possibilities first.

Then there's the Imperial who wants her secured so they can take advantage of what she knows.

The reason the Empire wants her dead is because during her training she was exposed to ancient secrets of the Sith and someone thinks she knows the truth about the Emperor and his duplicity throughout the clone wars... now imagine if THAT was revealed that Palpatine basically duped his new Empire and that HE not the Jedi was responsible for all that bloodshed?

It's unlikely she actually knows but THEY don't know that and the ISB Agent may be using that as a ruse to draw out Rebel Agents!

Maybe they need her dead to complete their superweapon.

There was no computer powerful enough to control the weapon so the empire decided to grow one, they genetically modified an embryo and were waiting until she matured so they could harvest her brain.

Maybe they need her dead to complete their superweapon.

There was no computer powerful enough to control the weapon so the empire decided to grow one, they genetically modified an embryo and were waiting until she matured so they could harvest her brain.

Like the plot to Deus Ex: The Missing Link?

Maybe they need her dead to complete their superweapon.

There was no computer powerful enough to control the weapon so the empire decided to grow one, they genetically modified an embryo and were waiting until she matured so they could harvest her brain.

In that event, I would think they would want to capture her alive — So that they could vivisect her in an appropriately secure and sterile facility and remove the brain that they had specially grown for this purpose.

So, she would end up dead as a result, or at least a brain without a body. But the Imperials definitely wouldn’t want her dead before then.

Someone needs to either stop watching Heroes Reborn or maybe needs to avoid watching that series in regards to using a human host for a vast machine...

Anyway is she actually trained as an agent like River was?

OK, so first things first, I adjusted the crawl:

TALES OF THE SOLAY EXPRESS
EPISODE VI
Small Packages

Profit awaits the employees of the SOLAY EXPRESS. After receiving payment for their heist on Te'Aatorus, the crew hunt locally for their next big job.

After several weeks of nothing but short supply runs, the crew are approached by a young Chiss named DARIUS, desperate for assistance, claiming that his sister had recently been abducted by local thugs.

With the security of the young man's offer to fill the company's vacant mechanic's position, the crew accepts his plea, but soon learn that their former business partners, the SOLAY SLAYERS, are the ones responsible for the kidnapping and that they intend to claim the Imperial bounty on the girl....

So to put it another way, I got rid of the "marked for death" thing.

Basically the the backstory of the PC is that he's a Chiss Scientist who was assisting the Empire with a special project - to construct the equivalent of Spaarti Cylinders along with a a machine that could effectively imbue a person with force powers. His sister was one of the first experiments. She was not "trained" as such, but was a bit of a prodigy.

After the first experiment was conducted, and the PC learned what his sister could do, he escaped with her into the Outer Rim which lead him to the planet the rest of the PCs are on, running their "shipping business".

She is fairly normal, but does occasionally when stressed go into a fit of number crunching. I was leaving any specific powers other than the number crunching purposely vague to abuse later story wise.

So is there any chance instead of being just granted force powers she actually had the soul of another person as in whoever those force powers were derived from transferred into her?

Was she intended to be a donor for someone else?

Could there have been a mishap and instead of her force abilities being transferred the souls of the people involved were swapped so he unknowingly is helping an amnesiac whose actually a highly skilled ISB Agent in the body of his "sister" whilst his sister is slumbering in the former Imperial ISB Agent's body?

Oh could either have the partner of the ISB Agent coming after them because they blame them for their comatose partner's current condition or worst still its the sister whose chasing them wanting her original and much younger body back!

Yeah not a fan of the Soul transference. The aim is that everything that is being conducted is to make better soldiers such as the likes of the Dark Troopers. The aim eventually is for the Empire to create their own troops instead of having to rely on the Imperial Loyalists - including "activating" Inquisitors.

Its a nice suggestion Copperbell, but its not the direction I wanted that to go.

There were those terribly written padawan adventure novel books, If I remember correctly someone drained Qui-Gon's blood and infused them with the blood to gain acces to the force.

Doing that to a (traumatized) child would surely mess her up similiar to river?

...in Media Rez ...

in medias res - latin for "into the middle (of) things"

Not to be the "well, actually" guy that corrects spelling on the internet (especially since english isn't my first language), but I'm (almost) fluent in latin and reading that physically hurt me. Seriously, I flinched while drinking coffee

Seriously, I flinched while drinking coffee

In everything I do or say, on top of everything else, I’m always looking for the “ C|N>K ” response.