Of course you can

@Ahrimon you could call for help over the suits comm-link, since it wasn't removed.

Regardless of if you call for help or not you should still act. Give me a simple Discipline check that I upgraded to easy because of flipping the point. Success or failure you will need to then give me a hard Athletics check. Your brace Talent will give you a boost and the mag lock boots will give you an automatic success.

Not to downplay the situation going on, but did I make it in safe with all the droids?

With nerves of steel Khaine tells everyone not to come outside as a sandstorm is raging through the area.

Discipline : 1eA+1eP 2 successes, 1 advantage, 1 Triumph

Athletics coming up.

But I get up again... : 1eA+1eP+3eD+1eB 1 successes, 2 threat
+1 success

14 minutes ago, Ahrimon said:

With nerves of steel Khaine tells everyone not to come outside as a sandstorm is raging through the area.

Discipline : 1eA+1eP 2 successes, 1 advantage, 1 Triumph

Athletics coming up.

But I get up again... : 1eA+1eP+3eD+1eB 1 successes, 2 threat
+1 success

You correctly identified the direction to go and begin slogging your way through the tempest, until you reach the airlock. By the time you cycle it open enough to slip inside you have taken another two strain and your suit is at the first level of damage. The door closes behind you and you can hear the constant patter of gravel and sand beat against it.

For the discipline advantage, could I recover 1 strain? I'm getting up there. For the Triumph, could the wind storm have uncovered a smaller ship close by, say a sil 3 fighter that is mostly intact. Maybe not flyable, but intact enough to be salvageable/repairable.

Edit: My second idea on the triumph is that there happens to be a traffic accident down below in the city and the way to our alley/turbolift is blocked off. It's a particularily nasty accident and it's going to be a while before it's cleaned up. So, no one is going to miss our patrons for a while.

15 hours ago, Ahrimon said:

For the discipline advantage, could I recover 1 strain? I'm getting up there. For the Triumph, could the wind storm have uncovered a smaller ship close by, say a sil 3 fighter that is mostly intact. Maybe not flyable, but intact enough to be salvageable/repairable.

Edit: My second idea on the triumph is that there happens to be a traffic accident down below in the city and the way to our alley/turbolift is blocked off. It's a particularily nasty accident and it's going to be a while before it's cleaned up. So, no one is going to miss our patrons for a while.

Yes you did get the droids inside Tox.

That's a fine use for the advantage. But I am having a hard time justifying the Triumph. It is supposed to be something related to the roll.

How about this. The check was related to your spacial awareness. The crit you took earlier can now be used to buy the Sixth Sense talent like we talked about. As a benefit from the triumph you can use the talent now but will need to pay for it asap.

P.S. it is my anniversary tonight and I am putting down the phone. Talk to you later.

12 minutes ago, Ryoden said:

P.S. it is my anniversary tonight and I am putting down the phone. Talk to you later.

Happy anniversary!!

Happy Anniversary!

I edited the above post. What is everyone doing?

Since there is a storm starting and raging, Tox will not be going back outside at the moment. She will direct the droids to move everything into one of the rooms near the airlock so that when it's time, they can go quick.

Anyone need help?

So what is everyone thinking here?

If you're just waiting for something to happen to you, I can do that, but this is a chance for you to decide what you want to do and where you want to go.

I was really hoping @Weedles and Fries would be back by now. Are you?

Uh, cut power to the turbolift? Since we seem to be stuck inside the C-ROC, and I don't think we can take on a city run by the Empire and supported by the royal Zygerrians, S'zish is somewhat lost as to what to do next (and I am also lost).

I kinda agree. If we can't go outside safely, then I am out of ideas.

Unlreated note: RMT joined the world at 12:46 yesterday. She is healthy and mom is doing great. I may be really slow at posting the next few days, but I'll try to get on at least once a day to catch up.

So to clarify the area was described as "City like" And you also have a bunch of Zygerrians to interrogate if you want more information than that. The big reveal is supposed to be for Neelig but he seems to still be MIA.

I'm here, just trying to catch up. A lot has been going on here in my absence

11 minutes ago, Weedles and Fries said:

I'm here, just trying to catch up. A lot has been going on here in my absence

Double post ignore this

12 minutes ago, Weedles and Fries said:

I'm here, just trying to catch up. A lot has been going on here in my absence

After the fight started you were not in a good position to contribute up on the catwalks so you went to the ground floor but rather than getting involved with the fighting you went and protected the female ithorian. Her name is Fennis. After consoling her and keeping her calm until the blasters stopped firing she eventually told you what is going on here.

She does not know all of the details but for the last 4 years her herdship has been enslaved by the empire. It was forced to land in a crater on the moon and your people were used to mine a strange mineral that the Imperials had found in the moon. She does not know exactly why but the forcefield that kept atmosphere inside the herdship is now being used to support a layer of battlefield debris and dirt.

Feel free to relay this information to the party.

OK folks, On occasion in the past I have been accused of overestimating how obvious the plot hooks I have seeded into a story are. I fear that has happened again.

Putting together all the information you have gathered so far will lay out the following situation.

During/after the battle of Nar Shadda the empire seized the Ithorian Herdship. It was then used to start a mine on this moon, presumably to harvest the blue mineral that deflects scanning. They have used debris from the battle to hide the mine and the herdship. They are also using the herdship infrastructure as a place to perform R&D on the mineral for the "Phantom" project. All of this explains why the Imps have been so covetous of this location and have stopped all salvage here.

The particularity of the scanning deflection would have made it difficult to detect doing normal scanning. With the Imps having been relegated to parking way out here for years "watching" the system, there would have been ample opportunity for them to realize there was something strange about this particular moon.

On a side note, the moon appears to have nightly storms. Some combination of gravity and rotation combine to cause nearly all of the moon's atmosphere to stay in the "night side" hemisphere so it moves around the moon like a massive wave. It is barren and nearly airless during the day but a raging sandstorm at night.

The gas giant planet and all of it's moons are owned by the Qunaalac Kajic. Given how much effort the Imps have put into hiding this mine, it is unlikely that all of the Kajic are privy to the operations going on here.

This brothel is apparently a "secret" however the patrons are potentially going to be missed at any time.

There is a group of escaped slaves living within the herdship that are called "The Insurgents"

Casea, the Medic/Mechanic, has had some spotty communications with them.

As far as each of your motivations here I had figured the following would appeal to you.

Fzaexx: Knowing more about what is going on here is incredibly valuable information. Either this entire operation would be viewed as a theft from the Qunaalac Kajic and they will reward you handsomely for bringing it to their attention. Or the Qunaalac are hiding it from the other Kajics and any of them would reward you handsomely for bringing it to their attention.

Khaine: The Blue mineral has properties that could rival nightshadow coating. Obviously the Imps think so. Getting your hands on a decent quantity of the raw ore would be nice but getting your hands on some of the rifines material would be even better.

S'zish: This operation is being hidden by the Empire. They are using slaves that should not be slaves. It would be very compromising to them if this operation were brought to light.

Neelig: Obviously you would want to help your people in some way or another.

Tox: There is a wrongness to this that does not sit well with you. There are innocent lives below that need help.

Brin: Besides the motivation to help your allies with the pursuits that they have regarding the herdship below. something strikes you as odd. Casea mentioned talking to someone in the Insurgents named Brin, When you get around to asking her about it she says "Oh yeah, Brin, a Rodian I think, based on his accent. Said his name was Brin Baxler but we both know that the radio wasn't secure so we were using fake names."

Regarding Casea, I noticed that you all had a lack of someone with good medical training so my intention was to add her in as an NPC ally that you can rely on. She is built as a Soldier Medic and could gain xp along with you. If you would rather not have an NPC play that much of a role in your story then she can simply go away.

19 hours ago, Mattimeo84 said:

Unlreated note: RMT joined the world at 12:46 yesterday. She is healthy and mom is doing great. I may be really slow at posting the next few days, but I'll try to get on at least once a day to catch up.

CONGRATULATIONS!

I was just typing up a similar post but you beat me to it. Mine was more along the lines of suggesting a possible campaign direction to rescue the herdship which would hurt the empire quite a bit.

Thank you so much for the summary. It helps so much to have all of the clues from the last couple of months summarized into one spot. I'd had touched on several of the ideas in my head, but having it all together really helps bring things into focus and brush off the cobwebs of anything that we may have forgotten. Like the storms for instance.

I wouldn't worry about overestimating how obvious plot hooks are. This is my first PbP and I'm finding that even obvious plot hooks can get lost in the expanded timeframe of playing. Especially when there's a lot of things going on IRL. Having a baby, finals, and moving internationally for instance.

So, here's my thought. I lean more towards the defeat the bad guys down there, rescue the slaves and free the herdship. The side benefits are that we hurt the empire a lot by hurting their operations as well as possibly earning some rewards from the hutts for exposing the secret business in their area. I would prefer to not let the hutts know about the blue ore, but I don't know if that can be helped. At a minimum I would like to get my hands on a bunch without the hutts knowing. I'm a little stuck on getting the herdship out though. Sure, now it's possible, but once those star destroyers return it's not going to happen without sabotaging them, which is a whole different can of worms. One option is to get the hutts involved earlier to chase them away. But then, I don't know if the hutts will be too inclined to letting the herd-ship go instead of keeping some already in place infrastructure and workforce for their own means.

In the short term, it may be worth trying to find a way to use the C-Roc as a base of operations for this that we're simply not provisioned for. So, here's my initial idea. First we lock down the lift and use the console to set it to an loss of air message if anyone comes looking. I'm hoping the middle of the day will be like the eye of the hurricane and things will be a little more calm atmosphere wise. We maneuver the YT next to the C-Roc and use the docking clamps to attach the two. Then we load the freed slaves and the soon to be new slaves into the ship along with anything else we can bring. However, if the atmosphere is breathable, then we simply have to walk them over, which would make things so much easier. Once we're safely aboard, we can either open the seals to one of the cargo containers, exposing the ship to the outside or gently use the YT to pull one off of it's seal. We high tail it back to Nar Shadda, and as night falls the storm will blow through the hold making it look like the storm ripped a container off and sucked everyone out. With any luck, the Zygerrians will not look to re-set up this operation again and we can come back to use it as our base. Once on Nar-Shadda we can free the slaves with my earlier idea of allowing them to set up a small camp and work at our salvage yard to save up money to leave world. We can sell off the Zygerrians to raise some funds and check bounties on the dead ones. Fzaexx can make some subtle inquiries with the hutts about their reaction. Perhaps they would be willing to fund our anti-empire action which would leave them with plausible deniability. But we'll definitely want to keep that there is a herd-ship down there from them so they don't just try to take over. If they just know that the empire is running something on their moon that should be enough to get them to help. Then, we could use a smuggling ship and the storms to come back to the C-Roc and set it up as our base and kick off phase II of the campaign.

It's ambitious, but what do you guys think?

Sorry I need to add in that the reason the C-ROC is set up the way it is, is so that it's reactor can power the force field surrounding the herd ship. without it the shield could collapse. Which would basically kill everyone in the herdship. the shields are designed to keep air in not debris and dirt out. The reactor of the C-ROC is not the only one contributing power to the shield though. There are 12 extra reactors being used. That's what the spires in the picture are. Each one supports a reactor that powers a section of the shield.

The fact that Alsen decided to use the hold here to set up a brothel is incidental to its intended purpose, maintaining the force field.

You are going to have an incredibly hard time selling Zygerrians as slaves. The worst/ most ruthless slavers are the Zygerrians themselves. You would probably need to go out to wild space to find someone ignorant or desperate enough to buy illegal Zygerrian slaves. However Zygerrians performing unsanctioned slavery inside Hutt space would be considered criminals by the Hutts so that is a possible venue.

There will be a raging storm outside for about Orbital period of the moon : 6d4 15 hours.

The herd ship is probably functioning at near 100% ability. Otherwise it would not be able to support the thousands of lives here.

I had only figured out about half of that... But I agree with Ahrimon, that PbP makes plot hooks harder to notice.

So it sounds like they would come back in that case, what if we physically cut off the turbolift from the herd-ship. Or would that also cut the power off from it as well?

I think that it might work, but we would probably need the former slaves to help us either just as guides or possibly fighters.

But S'zish would probably at least want to find out what the "Phantom" project is, and if disrupting the Empires mining operation means freeing slaves, then bonus.