Hey folks! So we’re getting close to getting started so wanted to create this OOC thread so everyone can introduce their character concepts and we can work out some additional background information.

Premise: The basic concept for this game is an origin story of sorts where the PCs stake off to join the Rebellion. Each PC needs (1) a reason to hate the Empire / want to join the Rebellion, and (2) a reason to be found in an internment camp where most of its inhabitants work hard labor to fuel the Imperial war machine.

Location: The PCs will begin on the planet of Torque, the sector capital of the Gordian Reach. Torque is a lackluster industrial world and center of the Imperial strength in the region. Over time, the PCs will likely make their way off planet and travel about the Reach, ultimately connecting the local Rebel cell.

Players: I’m open to four to six players for the game. We currently have four confirmed. I’m heavily leaning towards starting with our four now and can add others throughout the story if there is interest / space. If you’re interested, feel free to send me a PM with a character concept and will keep you in mind as I think about evolving the story.

@aclarkbr90 – Tycho Manin - Sullustan Ace / Pilot ( SW Sheet )

@Kymrel – Ella'asaren - Twi’lek Smuggler / Charmer ( SW Sheet )

@Tom Cruise – Div Quorin - Human Sentinel / Racer ( SW Sheet )

@Squirrelsan – Todak Nugi - Chadra Fan Engineer / Scientist ( SW Sheet )

Duty / Obligation: We’ll be operating with both duty and obligation under the AoR rules. To begin, each PC will start with five obligation to represent the character’s past life and duty of zero, dormant at start, which will come into play once the PCs formally join the Rebellion.

Specializations: all specs EotE and AoR specs are open for consideration. I’m also planning on awarding the PCs an AoR specialization to represent the formal training at the point in which the PCs join the rebellion (to be mutually agreed upon at that time).

Ship: I’m not sure exactly how much space combat that will take place, but I’m definitely intrigued to test out the concept of a starfighter squadron, one of the iconic parts of Star Wars. As such, at least some of the missions the PCs will man a bunch of fighters, maybe Y-Wings or Z-95 Headhunters. I don't think that every PC would need to be an expert pilot because with the FFG mechanics everyone can sort of get by. The PCs will also have a permanent base of operations at some point as well.

Please also provide links to your SWSheets character sheets and I’ll link them here in this thread. Anything else that I’m missing / need to clarify? Chime in! I'll try to get the first post up by end of week.

Hey guys. I'm playing the token Force User in the group, although she's not even aware of her force sensitivity herself, and it's something which might take a while to come out in roleplay.

Anyway, Div Quorin is an illegal swoop racer from the capital city of Torque. A real star in the underground circuits, she was on her way to becoming a genuine street celebrity before crime crackdowns resulted in her bike getting impounded and her being shipped off to the internment camp. Her underworld contacts and experience living on the fringes of society should come in handy. And her ability to make things go really **** fast. I noticed we already have a pilot, but that just opens up potential for some fighter based fun, which I'm all for.

There's a bit more elaboration in the character sheet , if you want to take a read.

Or, if you don't want to read that, here's a handy visual aid to explain my carefully considered character design process -

Hey guys!

Looking forward to starting this game. I'll be playing Ella'asaren (Ella to her friends), a charming Twi'lek Face-type. Feel free to read through the background etc. in the sheet. The gist of it is that she was convicted as an accessory in smuggling supplies to the Rebellion. Her parents, the main culprits, have already been executed, and the whereabouts of her two siblings is unknown at this time. She will be a very recent arrival in the penal colony. Her sentence is 20 years of hard labor, which she knows she'll never survive. She therefore knows her only chance of survival is to somehow make her escape.

Ella is space-born, born and raised on her parent's medium freighter. As such she is, of course, a decent enough pilot, but her talents are mostly focused on getting people to like her, getting them to do what she wants them to do, and to get them to believe whatever she wants them to belief. She is also quite decent at Skulduggery, but her main focus will be on utilizing her charm, leadership abilities and cunning to get what she wants.

I really like the idea of us piloting a squadron of fighters, but think Y-wings might be a bit more survivable than Headhunters. They can also seat two, putting less pressure on every character to be able to pilot his or her's own vehicle. That said, I am clearly heading towards the Squadron Leader specialization when we join the Rebellion!

@Aurin , one question: Do we start the game with any gear, or just orange prison uniforms (and a freshly constructed shiv in the case of our Chadra-Fan fiddler, I presume)? I'm just wondering if I should spend the 500 starting credits on stuff that's reasonable to have in a penal colony, or if I shouldn't bother.

Hey Everybody,

I'll be playing as Tycho Manin , a Sullustan freighter pilot from the Mid-Rim. Tycho spent most of his career working for a major shipping conglomerate. He was recently set to make a delivery of re-breathers and medical supplies to New Hope Settlement on Ladarra, in the Gordian Reach. Unfortunately, the Empire had set its sights on New Hope as a target to add to the manpower of its industrial war machine, so they set an embargo and prepared to move in. Tycho tried to avoid the embargo, but got betrayed by his own company. His ship was taken, and he was relocated along with the settlers to the resettlement zone on Torque. Since then, Tycho has been working as a mechanic's assistant.

This is the longest that Tycho has been planetside in years, and he is keeping his eye out for a new ship and a way out of town. Plus, he wouldn't mind sticking it to the kriffing bucketheads that stuck him here.

@Tom Cruise I'd guess that there is some way for the thrill-seekers like Div and Tycho to get their fill in the internment camp. The authorities don't let us have anything space-worthy or particularly exciting, but there are probably plenty of after-hours races between souped-up work vehicles. Since Tycho has been here longer, he probably would given her a tip about the races. Since they both also had their own vehicles impounded, they also might have agreed to keep an eye out for anything worth stealing, should such an occasion arise.

@aclarkbr90 welcome! I can see Tyco (or Tycho'manin as Ella will refer to him) and Ella being drawn to each other since both are so used to living and working in space. That and the fact that unlike so many of the other prisoners they are not only thinking about escaping, they have probably both been working on it from the day they arrived!

Also, we are so far utterly without any combat skills what so ever. Which is interesting and terrifying at the same time. But it also fits the theme of taking up arms against the Empire very well.

Also @Kymrel Aurin had proposed a squad of a few different shiptypes. I agree that we should only use ships that seat two or three as it adds a lot to space combat to have people doing different things. It would be cool to have a modified Headhunter (or maybe a Z-95 Heavy) with a rear gunner seat (perhaps with lower handling), just like the Y-Wing alternate model does, which would give us more of a feel of a ragtag squad rather than an official funded rebel unit.

If we are just going off snubs that have two seats, here are the options:

BTL-S3 Y-Wing (2 crew plus astromech socket)

Preybird Class Starfighter (2 crew)

Delta-12 Skysprite (1 crew plus 1 passenger and astromech socket)

Lancet Interceptor (1 crew plus 1 passenger)

Blade-32 Superiority Fighter (2 crew plus 1 passenger)

These are all roughly equivalent to the Y-Wing, at least in terms of price - the Y-Wing, Preybird, and Skysprite are all 80-85K, and the Lancet & Blade-32 are 55-60K. Assuming we end up with 5-6 PCs (or one or two NPCs to lug around), we should be looking at three total ships - maybe fewer if we end up with a PC astromech.

I left a few off this list as they are much nicer and are less likely ships for a bunch of fringers breaking out of an internment camp.

Certainly, this is something we'd need to discuss. Fortunately we have plenty of time to do so since we'll be starting in a prison camp and have to get out and join the Rebellion before even getting close to a fighter

Ella's backstory sounds awesome! Very interesting motivations. Who was the pilot of the Stardancer? Her father or her mother? Or who was the astrogator?

Tycho is particularly proud of his skill in finding new, faster hyperlanes that help him make deliveries faster than ever. I like the notion that he would have heard stories of the fabled astrogator of the Stardancer, and so he would be particularly excited to meet Ella and hear her stories about whomever was responsible for the jumps. If that fits, I'll add it to his backstory.

If we wanted to intertwine things a lot more, I'd be down with re-write Tycho's story to add in the Stardancer. Maybe after Tycho's ship gets impounded, he goes looking for a job. The Stardancer might have been looking for a pilot because Ella's aging father had an injury and had lost his touch a bit. Her mother might have finally convinced him to hire a co-pilot, so he tracked down the shipless Tycho. Although her father claimed to be the head pilot, Tycho usually took over the primary controls in the more heated moments. Is something to that effect workable?

This would also be cool with your betrayal obligation, because Ella may have initially suspected Tycho. Obviously, she would be less suspicious now that Tycho was stuck in the prison camp as well.

That would actually work really well. Perhaps Ella's parents would have hired Tycho for his navigational talents and his reputation for knowing useful shortcuts for that fateful last mission? And perhaps Ella's parents had decided that they needed to do more for the Rebellion, and anticipated that having a capable pilot on board might be useful if they ever felt the need to do jobs on other, smaller ships for their new friends?

If we go with this, that would for sure have caused Ella to suspect him above any other crew, since he was a very recent addition. That suspicion would, of course, be dispelled when she arrives at the prison colony only to find Tycho already there with a similarly heavy sentence on his back.

Hey guys, just a brief post, more later when I've had time to fill in my character sheet . Todak Nugi is very much a tinkerer, so expect him to occasionally "borrow" your gear and return it to you later with "improvements" (which may or may not be highly experimental). Unless someone asked him for one, it would not occur to him to make a shiv; but he's probably working on an electronic lock-breaker whenever he can. Whilst he'll have an ok Agility as a Chadra-Fan, piloting is not really his thing, so he'll definitely prefer a back seat. But he'll keep your ship flying and maybe work in a few improvements too. He's pretty friendly but better with machines than people so think of him as a tiny furry Kaylee with massive ears and a cybernetic arm.

@Squirrelsan Welcome! It sounds like we are a very similarly motivated bunch. A quite vehicle-oriented crew (mechanics, smugglers, and pilots of one kind or another). Todak is a very cool addition. A lock-breaker would be a pretty nifty tool given our current predicament. Great picture. How'd he manage to lose an arm?

Tycho is working as an assistant mechanic in the resettlement camp. I couldn't definitely see Todak as one of the head engineers that Tycho would have worked with.

I updated the initial topic with the SW Sheets from everyone so it's all in one place!

18 hours ago, aclarkbr90 said:

@Tom Cruise I'd guess that there is some way for the thrill-seekers like Div and Tycho to get their fill in the internment camp. The authorities don't let us have anything space-worthy or particularly exciting, but there are probably plenty of after-hours races between souped-up work vehicles. Since Tycho has been here longer, he probably would given her a tip about the races. Since they both also had their own vehicles impounded, they also might have agreed to keep an eye out for anything worth stealing, should such an occasion arise.

I like the sound of this. It'd probably only make Div's obsession with freedom that much more intense, but that works perfectly for our purposes

16 hours ago, aclarkbr90 said:

How'd he manage to lose an arm?

Tycho will have to ask him...

My character sheet is up to date with all my stats but no gear as yet pending an answer to Kymrel's question. I don't mind starting with nothing. I haven't written up his backstory onto the character sheet, although Aurin and I have discussed it. He is a well educated engineer though (as you can probably see from his stats).

Okay folks - we're inching closer here now that everyone is weaving their backstories together. In addition, it would be great to get some tie-ins to some NPCs that could be helpful over the beginning arc. I'll leave it to you guys to figure out which of you wants to line up to the four NPC templates below.

1) A local farmer in the area outside of the resettlement camp and potential rebel sympathizer. Maybe he trades with the settlement? Could be a relative?

2) An underworld connection ( @Tom Cruise already called this one - Div's contact from her old street racing days)

3) A contact within the Imperial bureaucracy on Torque. This could be a childhood friend? Perhaps someone that the PC has interacted with before they were detained?

4) A shop owner in Torque Capital City. This one has the most flexibility for the PC to detail further.

Regarding the gear question, feel free to spend your credits. The resettlement camp (up until very recently) has been lax with most goods, outside of weapons. When purchasing weapons, only stuff that's concealable or make-shift would make it through the cursory search when you were detained. use your best judgement and I'm happy to debate anything if you have a question. If you want to buy something that you think would be restricted, I can fit it into the story a bit later when you are free of the resettlement camp.

I'll pick the farmer. I'll get a post up with the details later. The farmer occasionally manages to convince the guards to lend him some prisoners (supervised by guards, naturally) to help him in emergencies. He took pity on Ella and gave her a Thermal Cloak that used to belong to his (now deceased) wife when he saw her shivering in the cold air.

@Aurin This of brings up a question. Wookieepedia has no real details on Torque. I wonder what it's like? Temperature, climate, population etc., in very general terms. If it's temperate or colder, or extremely hot (as in everyone gets 2 setbacks to most things extremely hot) the Thermal Cloak works, but it doesn't really work if the planet is warm.

Wookiepedia sure doesn't! We can go with cold brisk in the summer months and frigid in the winter months

Suits me down to the ground. Like all Twi'leks, Ella is adapted to a warm climate and is even more miserable in the cold.

Ella has become fond of Hartol Dunn , a farmer who owns a decently sized farm next to the closed-off area of the resettlement camp. The middle-aged human owns a herd of Tril, large mammalian herbivores native to the planet, raised for milk, meat and fleece. He has, on occasion, made a deal with the garrison of the resettlement camp to supply him with workers during the annual shearing season, as well as to help him round up his animals after particularly brutal storms that have scattered his flock. Only two days after her arrival at the planet, before she had formally been assigned to any one work group, Ella'asaren was among the 10 prisoners sent, under guard, to help Dunn with the spring shearing. She spent several days with the widowed farmer. At first he took pity on her, shivering in the cold spring of Torque, and lent her an old thermal cloak that used to belong to his now deceased wife. After the shearing was done he told her that she reminded him of his daughter, who was off to university in the capital, and gave her the cloak. Ella thinks fondly of the man, who, unlike the guards, treated her and the other prisoners with respect. It felt good being treated like a sentient being with a name, not just another number in the Imperial penal system.

I don't think I understand how this internment camp works, I had been imagining it as a large open air prison, like a WW2 POW camp, but that doesn't really fit with us being able to go shopping. Is there an example you can point me at?

I'd like to pick 3) A contact within the Imperial bureaucracy on Torque, if that's ok with everyone?

Wouldn't that be someone you'd know from before you were imprisoned?

Re: interment camp - definitely think of it like a mix between the WW2 POW camp, East Germany, and a favela.

For #3 - the contact is within the Torque Transport Ministry - a civilian government organization that has Imperial oversight.

Cool - I'll take the shop owner. Any recommendation about how you want us to do this? Should we just make a post in this thread about the character (as Kymrel did)?

Any particular shop type? I was thinking it would be a remote/microdroid shop that Tycho may have visited to purchase monotask droids for the mechanics bay in the camp. Of course, any visits to the city would be under reasonably serious escort. Does that make sense?

@aclarkbr90 feel free to make it what you want - the droid shop would fit nicely. Kymrel's format was perfect.

@Tom Cruise - want to post the one that you already shared over message?