Imperial spy handoffs?

By Ebak, in Star Wars: Age of Rebellion RPG

I'm going to be running a campaign soon in which a player will be playing an Inperial spy amongst the group of Rebels. I am looking for advice from others in regards to how to run this. For example, how would he report I secret to the Empire, any other interesting ideas people have for a PC traitor in the group.

The player has stated that eventually the spy will have reservations and throw in with the Rebellion. So it would not be a permanent thing.

Dead drops. The player delivers information to a location for another operative to retrieve later. Desperate Allies has stats for them, but you can look up information on Wikipedia or elsewhere otherwise.

Even if the campaign travels around, starports, space stations, major cities and so on all might have dead drop areas operatives can deposit information so Imperial Intelligence or the ISA can pick up later.

In addition to dead drops he could also have a handler who he may make contact with. His handler could have his own cover that allows himself to be inserted into the PC's life without raising suspicion, such as being a family member, an old friend, or a valued contact.

Will have to find a way to write it in, it's a squadron campaign set at Arda base, so going to a drop location on the planet may be possible but easily noticed.

If the agent is stuck on Arda where dead drops are not feasible, I can think of a few options but all are risky:

  • Sneaking off to broadcast information via a communications device. Easily detectable I think by the Rebels. If skilled in Computer or Mechanics, possibly hijacking Rebel comms to piggy-back messages when they transmit. Again, possibly discovered but could be an exciting story arc when discovered.
  • The agent's handler is also a Rebel double agent like the PC/agent. But, the handler is a shuttle pilot that commonly gets to leave the Arda base on supply runs. The agent drops information to the handler which drops it when away.
  • The agent can't regularly deliver information. The agent hoards the information he is collecting waiting for his first trip away from Arda to deliver. Risky, but exciting, as he tries to develop a reason to stop off somewhere during a Rebel mission to make a dead drop. Faked mechanical difficulties for his X-wing means he must stop off for emergency repairs?

Arda base already has a spy. He could be working with that guy.

Arda base already has a spy. He could be working with that guy.

Actually I want to keep that a secret, sort of have it so while he is working for Imperial Intelligence, the other spy is working for ISB and the two secret services sort of compete against each other, so he also has a reason to find the spy, but because the spy could expose him and may have other info that would make him look good.

It is a great idea though. :)

Encrypted tight-beam burst comlink hidden in his (insert common item here).

Remember the intel game is a weird one. Just because I know there's a rebel base HERE, doesn't mean I want he rebels to know I know there's a Rebel base because then they'll start trying to figure out how I know, and if they know how I know, then how I know won't be any good anymore and I won't have a chance to find out something really valuable that I can cross confirm with another source and turn into actionable intelligence that can't be tracked to my inside source...

....may have to read that one a couple times...

So he can have regular intervals he sends a burst to a ship passing through.

Edited by Ghostofman

If the party has any NPC droids, what if he hacked one to transmit the info on a secure Imperial channel whenever a code phrase was given to it? That way he can give the command when they go to a planet (or even if they go out on Arda) and the droid goes off and handles it under the pretext of something else. For an extra layer of security, maybe the droid is programmed to erase its own memory with another code phrase.