Hot on the heels of the StarKiller Base thread - where we're heartily lambasting the Superweapon of the Week that is so popular in Star Wars - is this one, where I wanna hear about your own Superweapon of the week!

Because, obviously, the trend of massive superweapons is pretty lame, except for mine! Yes, I have one, and you have 'em too! Don't deny it! Let's get them out in the open.

I'll get the ball rolling.

So, I love parasitic weapons and villains. I have this plan for a particular type of Force-attuned crystal (let's call it Macguffium) that binds to Force energy that passes through it. It was studied a little in the later days of the Republic as the thesis paper of Shreya Ordassa (from Jewel of Yavin), now the head of the Geology department at the University of Sanbra. The nature of the Force makes it difficult to study, but it seemed that Macguffium could be used to redirect the flow of Force energies, or bind them to a local area. The effect was very mild, and didn't really work on direct manifestations of the Force, such as telekinesis or lightning. So while academically interesting, no practical use had yet been devised.

And then Alderaan was destroyed. Two billion sentient being suddenly and violently murdered sent a shockwave of suddenly released Force energy through the Galaxy. Kenobi felt it aboard the Millennium Falcon. Countless individuals with no previous sensitivity were suddenly struck with headaches, nightmares and visions of the destruction (which is how any Force-Sensitives in my game will become so). And in his throne room, the Emperor felt it. Repairing to his study, he soon realized that the Death Star, powerful as it was, might be only the trigger to greater power. If the energies released could be harnessed, redirected and stored within a single being, that being might become indestructible and powerful beyond belief. Soon his scholars were set to work, and before long, one discovered an old thesis paper, written by an as-yet unknown scholar. Meanwhile, the Emperor gazed from his palace over his perfect target. There would be tests, of course, to prove the concept, but ultimately, the trillion souls of Coruscant would provide all the power he could ever need...

Cool concept with your weapon. I like it, but it seems to perfect. there needs to be an inherent drawback to it. Like it can only be used once. or anyone right around it gets killed, or becomes one with the force if they touch it while it is channeling force energy.

My super weapon is a literal parasite. Except, it is electronic. It is being made by the Black Sun in an attempt to end the empire. Little droids that have been programed to take three shapes. Mynock, wamp rat, or it can shed all excess metals and parts to become a tine ant, all the parts it sheds become more of what it once was. So the mynock turns into two or three womp rats once it gets planet side, and then when it gets into a population center one of those becomes 33 ants. those ants go into the beds of a sentient and find an orifice on the sentient itself. then it hooks up to the brain or spinal cord, and senses the persons duty. if they are empire loyal, it kills them. if not, it leaves that person through the way it got in and finds a new host. 5000 mynocks will be released into the correlian run.

Having been recently re-introduced to Rakghouls, I quite like them.

Finding out about Leviathans, I am quite intrigued. Especially since there is apparently some sort of connection.

Now, I wonder what the nature of that connection is. I wonder what happens when a Force-sensitive becomes infected with Rakghoul disease. Is it truly permanent? Can it be reversed after the incubation period? What might the cost of that be?

I wonder what happens when they get cured. I wonder what happens if the cure has been surreptitiously altered by someone who was hoping to produce Leviathans.

How many experiments might have to be done? Where might you host those experiments? Can you build droid pseudo-Rakghouls that are capable of injecting a poison that causes Rakghoul disease? Can you make the pseudo-Rakghouls look convincing enough that people will believe that they are real? Can you make them self-repairing, and with highly redundant components, so that they can never be killed permanently?

Lots of interesting questions there.

those ants go into the beds of a sentient and find an orifice on the sentient itself. then it hooks up to the brain or spinal cord, and senses the persons duty. if they are empire loyal, it kills them. if not, it leaves that person through the way it got in and finds a new host. 5000 mynocks will be released into the correlian run.

As you said:

Cool concept with your weapon. I like it, but it seems too perfect.

There needs to be an inherent drawback to it.

Maybe there’s a slim chance that it flips the loyalties of the people it determines to unfriendly towards the Empire? So, it can accidentally take someone who is pro-Rebellion and turn them into Pro-Empire, but it doesn’t detect this before it leaves?

Cool concept with your weapon. I like it, but it seems to perfect. there needs to be an inherent drawback to it. Like it can only be used once. or anyone right around it gets killed, or becomes one with the force if they touch it while it is channeling force energy.

Well, one of the drawbacks is that you have to get a ton (many tons, actually) of this mineral, then you have to construct a massive satellite network with it around the target planet, basically making a satellite dish to redirect the energy from going into space, and instead direct it to the focus point, which will probably be our Emperor, who has been surgically infused with what's basically a crystalline mesh of this mineral. And THEN you get to blow the planet up with the Death Star and see what happens. Of course there's nothing to say that said target will even survive. I mean, he'll probably survive for a bit, because there has to be a big showdown, but I haven't figured out the endgame. This is just what Palpy is working towards.

those ants go into the beds of a sentient and find an orifice on the sentient itself. then it hooks up to the brain or spinal cord, and senses the persons duty. if they are empire loyal, it kills them. if not, it leaves that person through the way it got in and finds a new host. 5000 mynocks will be released into the correlian run.

As you said:

Cool concept with your weapon. I like it, but it seems too perfect.

There needs to be an inherent drawback to it.

Maybe there’s a slim chance that it flips the loyalties of the people it determines to unfriendly towards the Empire? So, it can accidentally take someone who is pro-Rebellion and turn them into Pro-Empire, but it doesn’t detect this before it leaves?

ah thank you forgot to put that myself. I like your idea of the drawback. Or maybe when they are inside some people they can't find their way out, and since most orifices lead to the gut, they slowly corode until it gets to the power source (which is REALLY powerful, since they have to be able to kill dozens of people over a long period of time) and then the stomach acids make it go KA-BOOM.

What was the one the Republic had in TOR that strongly ionized the entire upper atmosphere of a planet to effectively fry the electronics of anything that tried to get on or off the world? I liked that one.

What greater weapon is there than knowledge? The knowledge of how to strip the Force from any being or object it connects with?

P.O.K.E.

To date the only superweapon I've used has been a Leviathan and thats kind of a recurring theme, the players have fought a few of them now while they try to track down who ever is in control of them.

Sometimes whats more fun than having a big bad dooms day machine is exposing the players own fears and using that against them.

I use the Rakghoul plague as an ongoing sub-baddie, the plague is out there and every once in a while I have to remind the players of that. I first introduced it when one of my players a Jedi who mother was a scientist working for the Republic on Taris was kidnapped. The team went to rescue her and aside from the threat the the rakghouls pose to the players themselves, the horror of watching someone actually turn into one was a crucial moment. Seeing as the people who changed were in cages I gave the players the moral dilemma of whether or not to end their lives.

Interesting idea TGF. It sounds a lot like the ritual that the emperor from TOR used to become immortal. IIRC, he used a force ritual to suck all of the life and energy from a planet, including numerous sith lords, into himself.

I haven't had a chance to run a game yet, but if I was doing a F&D game, I think a super plot like yours would be appropriate. If I was doing a AoR game, a death star like super weapon would be more appropriate. For EotE, I think just Hutt or black sun machinations fit the bill better.

What was the one the Republic had in TOR that strongly ionized the entire upper atmosphere of a planet to effectively fry the electronics of anything that tried to get on or off the world? I liked that one.

I believe it was the Mass Shadow Generator and it also killed people that were on the planet.

What was the one the Republic had in TOR that strongly ionized the entire upper atmosphere of a planet to effectively fry the electronics of anything that tried to get on or off the world? I liked that one.

I believe it was the Mass Shadow Generator and it also killed people that were on the planet.

What was the one the Republic had in TOR that strongly ionized the entire upper atmosphere of a planet to effectively fry the electronics of anything that tried to get on or off the world? I liked that one.

I believe it was the Mass Shadow Generator and it also killed people that were on the planet.

It was the Mass Shadow Generator and the destruction of Malachor V

Mass Shadow Generator was from KotOR II. It used the gravitational forces of the planet to destroy stuff. Planet Prison was from TOR, and was Darth Angral's big thing.

Interesting idea TGF. It sounds a lot like the ritual that the emperor from TOR used to become immortal. IIRC, he used a force ritual to suck all of the life and energy from a planet, including numerous sith lords, into himself.

Well crap. I just started playing The Old Republic recently, and hadn't heard about that. That is awfully similar.

And yes, the Planet Prison was also from TOR, and they used it once to lock down a planet, then they somehow ignited the atmosphere, killing everyone trapped below. Except for like, one small group of survivors, because obviously there needs to be a Light/Dark choice about whether you send some other schmucks down to the surface to help.

Yeah, I've found the ultimate super weapon. Nothing you can come up with will ever compete, so don't even bother.

Subtitle: An image of the Darth Vader Transformer toy. He turns into the Death Star.

Aaaand jackpot. I'm just gonna pack my stuff and go then.

In retrospect, I had two. One was just used for background for my own character (we had rotating GM duties) and I presumed was destroyed prior to the campaign starting. Since I had no real need to flesh it out further, just think of the Genesis method of terraforming from Trek II.

The recurring one, though, was the Starbreaker class battle platform. It came about from my deciding our group needed the potential for "big" victories against the Empire. Looking for inspiration, my eyes fell on my old model of an original series BSG Cylon Base Star, with a MicroMachines Star Destroyer next to it. Keeping that scale, the Starbreaker was born. It served as both a powerful battle platform in its own right, as well as a secondary mission profile of being a mobile command base, capable of docking with 10 Star Destoyers at any given time. The players managed to take out one or two of them (one instance because I let them get away with A LOT that session because I loved that they were diving in head first, guns blazing in the face of overwhelming odds).

As an aside, I also tossed in another large-ish organization to oppose them occasionally: a militarized religious group that controlled a slice of the Galaxy about the size of Hutt space, run by a dark Force user, who would make occasional small strikes against both the Empire and the Alliance, but mainly sat back waiting to see who would ultimately win, ready to take advantage of the destabilization that would follow to make a move for galactic domination himself.

the biggest one I got in my game is a Victory Class Star Destroyer in an orbiting space dock, and rumored to be disabled (spoilers: it isn't)

The NExt campaign is a Hyperspace cannon, that if used would blow up and take out most of a sector and some of the adjacent sectors.

Then I will bring out Universe man, and he even has his own song!

He's got a watch with a minute hand,
Millennium hand and an eon hand
When they meet it's a happy land
Powerful man, universe man

As someone who loathes the whole Superweapon-of-the-Week concept that plagued the EU (and even the movies) for years, I only have one superweapon - the original and best, the one and only aptly named 'Death Star. Not Death Star 2.0, not the Son-of-the-Son-of-the Death-Star. Because you know a faction is serious about its cartoonish super-villainy when it calls it's superweapon the frickin' Death Star . No amount of propaganda is gonna make that palatable. It's making a statement.

It hasn't functioned for 20 years since Alderaan, when its creators tried to destroy it - they were killed, but they did manage to sabotage it, and the Empire is working night and day to try and bring it back on-line.

And if the PCs want to destroy it (and no handy NPC is going to oblige them in that; that's PC work) - they can't simply shoot it in the Maguffin Port and get away scot-free. No, they'll have to infiltrate it, fight off limitless numbers of stormtroopers as they set the self-destruct, and go down heroically with it when it blows.

(I might use Centerpoint, but not as a dull, stale superweapon - I'm thinking of making it like the Citadel in Mass Effect, a kind of gateway for some huge Dark Space invasion force like the Vong).

In my AoR game, the players will encounter (and presumably foil) increasing "grades" of super-weapon as they survive the years of the Galactic Civil War.

First off, they'll learn about an Imperial project to develop various droid and remote fighters. If such a weapon could be perfected, it would allow the Emperor to suppress any Core Worlds that dared to join the Rebellion (I'm looking at you , Chandrila), without worrying that personnel from that world would refuse orders or defect to the Rebels.

Post-Endor, they will stumble across evidence of an Imperial cloning installation. This facility has been active for quite some time, bringing a small army of Spaarti cylinder-bred clones to maturity. Different models of clone are present, intended for different roles. Only the team's Droid member, a CIS warrior, will recognize some of the clones. The main shock trooper model is Mace Windu, grown from the hand he lost in Palpatine's quarters. An assassin/amphibious unit modeled off Kit Fisto. And some unnamed blonde Human starfighter model whose piloting skill can only be described as "Wizard!"

It hasn't functioned for 20 years since Alderaan, when its creators tried to destroy it - they were killed, but they did manage to sabotage it, and the Empire is working night and day to try and bring it back on-line.

Dang. That's also part of my whole plan, that Luke didn't exactly blow it up, but blew the reactor pretty badly, so it's still floating above Yavin. Non-functional, but you know, it's out there.

Also I just got the that part in The Old Republic where the Emperor is trying to do the ritual thing. I got nothin' original, man.

If you wanted to be original from whole cloth you wouldn't he running in Star Wars. The whole thing is about parallels anyway.

Besides, you and I and everyone else are all about 10,000 years too late to be original. Nowadays, original is all in the execution. The iPhone was far from the first smart phone... but I dare you to explain that to someone using one.

It hasn't functioned for 20 years since Alderaan, when its creators tried to destroy it - they were killed, but they did manage to sabotage it, and the Empire is working night and day to try and bring it back on-line.

Dang. That's also part of my whole plan, that Luke didn't exactly blow it up, but blew the reactor pretty badly, so it's still floating above Yavin. Non-functional, but you know, it's out there.

Also I just got the that part in The Old Republic where the Emperor is trying to do the ritual thing. I got nothin' original, man.

Don't think of it as nothing original, think of it as ideas so great that more than one person wants to use it.