The last couple of sessions were rather fraught for my favourite character. Elim Rann, the Mando mercenary had done his normal thing and protected the rest of the party by putting his body between them and danger- the danger in this case being a pair of huge, heavily muscled and hugely clawed monsters of some kind (they also had horrific dentition too). With a suberb display of swordsmanship he had engaged both the critters and badly wounded both allowing the relative non-combatants in the group to shoot them down from a safe distance. The threats of friendly fire were all in a days work. Mercenary Maxim no. 20. If you aren't willing to shell your own position you aren't willing to win after all. Elim got rather cut up in the fight. Normally rude strangers tend to fall over and bleed if they attract his attention but these things were tough and hit like a runaway bus, but they went down bleeding black ichor. In the seconds of the fight they had torn up a handful of civilians one of which was still alive, and vomiting black fluid and he writhed, spasmed and began to change. So Elim took the initiative and shot him through the back of the head. Shortly thereafter Elim proceeded to cough up a little black fluid himself and felt slightly nauseous...

Cutting a long and involved story slightly shorter, it seems someone had developed a weaponised mutagenic virus. Cutting is shorter again we managed to track them to a hidden facility burried about 50km from the town in the wilderness. There our attempts to gain entry would have been only slightly more bumbling with a minutely increased risk of alerting the guards if we brought the massed pipe bands of the Highland Divison ans the Scots Guards. We breached a security door. And Elim copped a burst of sustained fire from an E-Web when we were ambushed. Now I'd opted to take point and be the organic sandbag. The combination of the disease ravaging his formerly resiliant immune system and a critical hit I'd taken fighting the critters meant I had a couple of setbacks to every roll I was making. Best I could manage was absorbing fire and hoping the rest of the group could overcome (which they did). A couple of stimpacks got him back on his feet, although with a horrific limp from another critical hit.

Then we discovered the main lab as the garrison comander was ordering the scientist to evacuate. Dr. Mengele managed to leg it, but we breached the final blast door in time to prevent them destroying the research samples. And that's when Elim went down for the second time, in this case due to friendly fire. The player with the Bothan is enthusiastic about grenades. VERY. So far in three different games, using three different systems he has managed to frag more comrades than all the draftees in Vietnam in the 60s. Luckily this time he had the good sense to use a stun grenade. Slightly less luckily the blast shorted out the blast door behind us dividing the party durring the fire fight. Worse luck came from his own grenade not only stunned my own badly wounded character but himself, leaving the Chiss archaeologist to face off against a strom trooper fire team that admittedly had suffered serious attrition. With accurassy Wyatt Earp would have been proud of, he managed to gun both the remaining soldiers down. Elim's barely consious carcass was successfully evactuated back to town, where the best equiped medical centre and pathology lab happened to the local vet's. Such indignity heaped upon our noble hero was only increased with the regular vomiting of blood, bile and black crap for the several hours it took the scientist to analyse the samples recovered to figure out which was the cure. That everyone else was busy pointing blasters assorted at his sick bed will be glossed over for now...

So, share your most notable ends and near misses ladies and gents if you please!

The Grand Finale of my last campaign.

The former Jedi Younglings have returned back to the site of the Elendil Temple, where 10 years prior they had survived the Jedi Purge (there was varying levels of upset at this) and they discovered that an Imperial Inquisitor training facility had been built there. Breaking in, they head up to confront one of Palpatine's inner circle who is supervising the operation.

Facing off against the courtier, 2 Imperial Guards, 1 Inquisitor and 4 trainee Inquisitors, Prip the Shadow (who has exactly 2 weapons, brass knuckles and the war shield hat) attempts to persuade the trainees they are part of an elaborate organ harvesting scheme. This fails (just) and he promptly lobs his hat-shield at the courtier. This does damage but he then realises that he now has no defense as the guards swoop in and lop his left arm off (our GM was worried that no PCs would lose a limb at all).

Whilst the rest of Thranta Clan are duelling the Quissies, he promptly runs into the guy in charge, slams him against the window and breaks the glass, sending the courtier plummeting to his doom on the rocks below and Prip clinging on with one arm.

He then realises that the Imperial Guards are heading over to step on his fingers and everyone else is somewhat occupied. Oops. (This is a very Prip thing to realise after the fact)

Luckily our techy defeats her Inquisitor student and runs in to start pulling him up and fend off the guards. The rest of the battle was everyone defeating their Inquisitor and diving in to try and pull Prip up and defeat the Imperial Guards while he just hangs there contemplating his (poor) life choices.

Killed off 2 PC's (soon to be 3) in 1 year of GMing. Both times that I have were planned with that player. The first one was resolving an obligation, killing the character off and making a smooth exit for the player. It was a disaster because he didn't follow any of the story we both worked on together and opted to hide in the corner from his own nemesis, who was part of his obligation.

The second time was more recent. A murder-hobo droid PC was killed off, along with the droid's friend and openly known stalker Gamorrean NPC by some mentally unstable Clone Commandos that had just been revived from a 20 year stasis. They recognized the clanker as being a notorious war criminal that had committed atrocities across the galaxy. To give context on this, the Gamorrean was a recurring character due to a charm check that succeeded with a triumph and a despair. The despair was that it fell in love with the droid. Yes, our games are whacky and full of shenanigans.

Previously, the Gamorrean had come to the rescue of a PC that was captured and was going to be taken up to a BoSS-owned Star Destroyer as insurance against the war criminal battle droid, "Stella". Plorg, the Gamorrean, had almost single handedly taken out the entire group of soldiers that captured the PC and the group fell in love with this NPC.

For the deaths, the Clone Commandos were on a downed republic cruiser that was lost at the end of the war. "Stella" recalled there was things the group could pilfer there, so without a word, she crash landed their ship next to it, on Tatooine in the midddle of Tusken Raider territory. The Clone Commandos had just recently been released a week prior by the pilot that had been protecting them for the last 20 years, waiting for the Republic to arrive. When released, the Commandos locked up the pilot and treated him as an enemy spy, then went about trying to repair some of the fighters in the ship. The Commandos, when the group arrived, snuck around and found the droid and Gamorrean. Plorg was forced to swallow a thermal detonator, blowing apart everything but the poor thing's head and knocking out "Stella" in the process.

The group freaked out. It was a great moment.

When they finally found "Stella", the Clone Commandos dismantled her head from her body in front of the crew, in front of the captain, who was her best friend.

All the while, I was keeping up the ruse that the Clone pilot they found was an NPC. Once the droid was killed, I handed the information for the pilot over to the droid's player and he took up playing his new character.

On Sunday, I'm killing off another PC. This is not as much of a planned thing as it is a bit of a necessity. The PC attacked the XO and Captain of the ship during that session in which the droid and Gamorrean died and did so by way of the force. The PC did this just after some minor teasing. Half the crew already didn't like him, thought he didn't contribute at all to the crew and were bothered by his connection to the force. Now, none of the crew trusts him and his obligation is coming up. He's not likely to be let back onto the ship after causing even more trouble, so I either retire that PC by giving them a way out or I kill the PC off during the crazy arena battle that is part of their obligation. The player doesn't care if the character dies, so I'm fairly certain I will make that happen.