Hey all.

The ship has blasted free of a planet with a ship that is loaded, packed shoulder to shoulder, with rescued prisoners/slaves of the Empire. The PCs effectively took the compound from the inside out, starting with the warden in his office, and gunned their way to the loading platform just in time to take off amidst a flurry of TIE fighters. Blasting their way out, an Imperial frigate closing in on them, the small freighter entered hyperspace to a close by system, hoping that the extra oxygen tanks they brought could bolster the life support systems to provide enough air to get them there.

End of Session.

My question is... it seems almost too easy for me to start the next session with, "... so you escaped and unloaded those prisoners on a nearby planet...." Instead, I would like to continue the Chase. However, I feel as though I'd be backing my players into a corner.

In my head... the Imperials would know that the PCs can't have a lot of air on board after stuffing their entire ship full of breathing creatures, so they broadcast to all nearby systems to be on the lookout for the escaping craft. The PCs didn't spend a lot of time and got no advantage on the Astrogation check, so I thought it would be pretty easy for the Imperials to jump along to the nearest system along the same path, which is exactly what the PCs were shooting for, the closest system with breathable air. Keeping in mind that our heroic craft has a x2 hyperdrive and the frigate a x1, it's actually not a stretch for the frigate to already be there waiting for them. (It's a frigate of my own design that is heavy on engines but light on weaponry, built to pursue).

That given, I feel that's overmatching my PCs who would be forced to seek atmosphere before they ran out of air. I do believe they could make it to the planet's air without trouble, the problem becomes ... what then? They can't land, they'd make easy targets for strafing TIEs or orbital bombardment from the frigate. Contact the local government? This is two years before Alderaan and not many full governments are going to want to openly refuse Imperial calls to capture or destroy renegade craft. I'm kind of stuck on this as I appear to have left them without a port in a storm.

Alternately, an idea brought up as a joke at the table was for the PCs to look for another ship, preferably getting attacked by a pirate ship, and then springing out with a huge number of troops (though unarmed) and capture the pirate ship for themselves. I've thought about this and I could make that work, the pirate ship could tractor the PCs ship into their hold moments before the Imperial Frigate arrives out of hyperspace, and could make their own escape... and I could have the fight be while the pirate ship is in hyperspace. However I wonder if that's not relying too much on ... coincidence... something that is not a heavy factor in my games as we enjoy allowing good plans come to fruition instead of falling back on chance guards dropping keycards or whatever.

Anyway.... PCs have a ship full of rescued prisoners breathing away their oxygen supply, they must get to atmosphere and then have to debark their full ship before they can venture into space again (have to fix their life support as well). Pursued by the Imperials.

Does anyone have a good idea or should I merely hand wave the accomplishment and move on?

Going by the Rebels show, diving for the atmosphere and getting lost in the clouds is a perfectly viable way to lose the pursuit. You can easily make that part of another chase. Going by TFA, staying low confuses the sensors, so any other terrain can also be useful: mountains, ravines, canyons, massive cave complexes, etc. The larger frigates simply can't keep up in atmosphere, which means they just need to lose any following TIEs, and once they do they can land wherever they want.

Well, the ship does have a life support system, and is probably recycling the carbon dioxide back into oxygen, so they're not necessarily doomed to suffocate to death in the next hour. Of course, that many people will be taxing the life support, so feel free to start handing out Setback Dice and Strain. I think a couple encounters trying to offload these folks in quickly deteriorating conditions sounds like a neat adventure.

How about there's an unexpected fault that drops them out of hyperspace early finding themselves within range of an inhabitable moon orbiting a gas giant.

Turns out a couple of your freed prisoners are actually Imperial Loyalists who were trying to activate a beacon to lead that frigate straight to them, but in so doing they caused fault resulting in the discovery of a long forgotten star system that lies on the same course as the system they were heading for.

The fault forces them to land discovering the moon was once inhabited until some unknown cataclysm wiped out the inhabitants.

Picture Yavin IV but with massive forests and a massive Temple at the heart of the valley they end up crash landing within.

Now its only after they're forced to disembark the ship to give their mechanics the chance to repair the ship that they get the chance to discover the beacon which is working and the fact among the freed prisoners are some imperial spies who take the opportunity to seize weapons and take a number of the others hostage but the majority flee into the forest needing to be found and brought back when they manage to take back the ship and repair it.

Could always reveal the locals were subverted by a dark side force user, their descendants are hiding within the Temple until they realise there are newcomers and come looking....

Then have the Frigate turn up and land troops unaware of the local problem...

Does that help?

Going by the Rebels show, diving for the atmosphere and getting lost in the clouds is a perfectly viable way to lose the pursuit. You can easily make that part of another chase. Going by TFA, staying low confuses the sensors, so any other terrain can also be useful: mountains, ravines, canyons, massive cave complexes, etc. The larger frigates simply can't keep up in atmosphere, which means they just need to lose any following TIEs, and once they do they can land wherever they want.

Unfortunately, the PCs are not flying around in the Ghost, and clouds do extremely little to hide aircraft with today's technology. "No ship that size has a cloaking device." (All evidence to the contrary).

While flying low can mask them from sensors, I don't know if it will help against what seems to be the best scanning equipment still being used in the Star Wars universe, a pilot's peepers. I have thought that this was going to eventually be the case. One of my PCs has the very common background of being ex-stormtrooper (made three years ago so at least he wasn't copying the Force Awakens, but it's not like he's the first to think of that), so I suppose he Might know that flying low confuses their sensors. Blow up all the TIEs and then land with the frigate still in pursuit sounds dangerous though... while storywise that could be done.

Well, the ship does have a life support system, and is probably recycling the carbon dioxide back into oxygen, so they're not necessarily doomed to suffocate to death in the next hour. Of course, that many people will be taxing the life support, so feel free to start handing out Setback Dice and Strain. I think a couple encounters trying to offload these folks in quickly deteriorating conditions sounds like a neat adventure.

Yeah, that's the whole point, that the oxygen scrubbers are being taxed well beyond their normal capacity. They have cram packed their ship with ex-slaves and they are running out of air fast. I'm hoping they get to an atmosphere before I have to start handing out Strain, that could get brutal.

How about there's an unexpected fault that drops them out of hyperspace early finding themselves within range of an inhabitable moon orbiting a gas giant.

Could always reveal the locals were subverted by a dark side force user, their descendants are hiding within the Temple until they realise there are newcomers and come looking....

While I know that has happened in Star Wars, randomly dropping out of hyperspace in the Mid Rim to discover a lost planet seems ... incredibly lucky and I'd like to avoid that. Also, the PCs are in the Mid Rim, info you didn't have before.

However, I am storing the idea of a native populace that holds to the tenets of the Dark Side but without Force powers, and perhaps worships a Sith Holocron, away for later use.

Flying with lack of life support reminds me of a Firefly episodes. However, they can appreciate only if they saw the serial

btw, you are not forced to let them be "chased or escaped":

first, life support is not just air supply. Ok air is a big concern, but not the only one. They could be short of water, food or other needs. Also: overuse of air filter and dioxide recycling could bring some damage to life support; that's the reason why "1-month support for 4 people" is not a "4-month support for 1 people" nor a "1-day support for 120 people". In this way, they are forced to stop on the planet to repair/refill air support, and even if escaped they still need to find a way past an Imperial blockade

Or maybe the planet is a water planet and only few imperial controlled platform cities (like the ones on Kamino) so they are forced to land on this cities and start a brand new adventure

You could also do a little of column A and a little of column B. Start the next session with them landing on the nearest planet, but make that planet for the most part a "biological preserve" stretching back to the days of the Republic. Basically, its a Zoo world - off limits due to some long ago agreement with the sector's ruling body.

As they land and get their bearings, have the Empire drop out of orbit (the delay despite their faster hyperdrives caused by the time it took to plot potential destinations before deciding where to jump - they may even be on their second or third most likely destination due to the quarantine on the world). Now the PCs have to avoid the Imperial search patterns while upgrading, cleaning and refreshing their life-support (taking on water, cleaning their air-filtration system, and filling the oxygen tanks) all while dealing with the King-Kong/Jurassic World beasties that inhabit the planet.

If you want to be really mean, you can have the back story state that the reason the Empire upheld the agreement and kept the world off-limits is because they have an ultra-secret weapons research facility there performing biological experimentation.

You could also do a little of column A and a little of column B. Start the next session with them landing on the nearest planet, but make that planet for the most part a "biological preserve" stretching back to the days of the Republic. Basically, its a Zoo world - off limits due to some long ago agreement with the sector's ruling body.

As they land and get their bearings, have the Empire drop out of orbit (the delay despite their faster hyperdrives caused by the time it took to plot potential destinations before deciding where to jump - they may even be on their second or third most likely destination due to the quarantine on the world). Now the PCs have to avoid the Imperial search patterns while upgrading, cleaning and refreshing their life-support (taking on water, cleaning their air-filtration system, and filling the oxygen tanks) all while dealing with the King-Kong/Jurassic World beasties that inhabit the planet.

If you want to be really mean, you can have the back story state that the reason the Empire upheld the agreement and kept the world off-limits is because they have an ultra-secret weapons research facility there performing biological experimentation.

Interesting. I would be tempted to turn that into The Most Dangerous Game scenario. Have the world inhabited by people producing 'security' monsters, have them delight in finding a deluge of test subjects. I'm actually going to do that in a later mission. Hire them to go pick up some cargo, have the cargo be some kind of EMP bomb, blow it up as they take off, the ship crashes into their jungle, and then the bad guys start releasing beasts one at a time to see how their training stacks up against your 'average spacer'. I like, I'll use that next time.

What I've decided to go with, I think, is something a little more political. Let me run this past you.

There are no governments of star systems willing to really strike it out and be the first to rebel against the Galactic Empire. This campaign is being run 2-4 years before Yavin, and actually (though it's been on hiatus due to not one but THREE different pregnancies within the group) we started this campaign a year before Rebels was aired, but it's the same thing. The story about how a plucky freighter crew effectively helps form the fledgling Rebel Alliance.

In the last session, the Captain of the vessel made a Knowledge Check and I told them that the planet was not exactly a Smuggler's Paradise, but it was easy to get lost in the crowd there if you knew what you were doing. I'm planning to the make the planet lack a planetary governor, and instead the nations on that planet are still struggling with who should rule them, and are locked in debate at their version of the UN for decades, since nobody wants someone else to preside over them. Makes it kind of like Europe where if you have the right credentials you can hop nations and hide behind borders and jurisdictions when other countries don't want to cooperate. When the PCs show up, they are going to first be ordered to land immediately and turn themselves over to the Empire for more lenient treatment (unlikely). However, then one of the nations who has little else to lose (so they think) will offer the PCs safe harbor. Now the PCs don't know this, but this 'accepting' nation is more like the nation on this planet that does stupid crazy things because they are stupid crazy. They are like North Korea offering amnesty to criminals. So the Empire's frigate shows up, this nation attacks them with a handful of starfighters, and then actually gets their brand new attack corvette to damage the frigate's engines so that it has to leave. The PCs are set down, thank their saviors, and then begin learning about how completely off they are. (employing slave labor should open their eyes).

PCs get their ship fixed, can disembark their own rescued prisoners, and be on their merry way before the Empire arrives in force to wipe the nation from the globe and see the rest of the planet come under direct rule of a Moff in order to be subjugated with oppression. PCs see how their actions do hold sway.

Too much? Too lucky?

Do the PCs have a medic? If so, they could use something to put the NPCs to sleep so that they use less oxygen. They may also not be as bad off on air as you think. If they are using a Lambda it is a general purpose craft and used form anything from a cargo hauler to a drop-ship and anything in between. As a drop-ship/ personnel carrier it can carry a fairly large number of people (3 to 4 crew and about 30 to 50 people as I recall).