This story is the conclusion of myself and my husband's Age of Rebellion characters, who we had been playing for over three years. The game finally came to an end, and my husband wrote a nice story to put our characters, Anden and Kera Tolan, on the path to their next adventures. We had an amazing time playing this game, playing these characters, and making a lot of great friends and memories over three years. I can't begin to thank Fantasy Flight Games for this system and the chance to make such well thought out and alive characters, and I can't begin to thank our wonderful GM, Matt, who helped us tell this story, and let us grow these characters in ways we didn't expect. And thank you to our groupmates, those who were there from the beginning and the few we lost along the way for one reason or another. You guys made this game even more fun than it should have been.

And thank you, for reading!

And now, a sample of What You Do

Quote

Kera Tolan reached out with her senses, past the landspeeder she rode across the barren Xorrnian sands, and felt through the Force the wrapping up of the battle ahead of them. The carnage that she couldn’t yet see, at least physically, was ebbing, replaced with a growing feeling of tension from Imperials and relief from the soldiers of the Rebel Alliance and the denizens of Foundry Four. Reopening her eyes, though, Kera saw that her brother’s expression had hardened. It had been joyous a minute prior as the CR90s and Hammerhead corvettes had burst through the cloud. Anden had been whooping and cheering wholeheartedly for thirty seconds as the Rebel relief force descended over the battlefield and brought the conflict to a halt, but now he was back to a tense, grim expression as he stared out through the windscreen, weaving their landspeeder between rocks and debris as they approached Foundry Four.

Kera reached out again with her senses, trying to feel what was troubling Anden, but his eyes darted over to her accusingly. “Sorry,” she blurted. She played with strand of her red hair that had escaped her headband and attempted to look innocent. “I’m just wondering what’s troubling you is all,” she said, a genuine look of concern on her face. “The Alliance is here, the Imperials on the ground are surrendering, and I haven’t seen a single crashed X-Wing here yet.”

“There’s still bodies,” Anden muttered. “There might be more in orbit. That’s where I’m heading as soon as we find the others,” he added, sighing. His own red hair was flailing back wildly behind his head, but he didn’t seem to notice or mind blowing it out of his eyes the way she did. Outside the speeder, fresh debris took its place in her view alongside the rusted Clone Wars wreckage and scattering of rocks in the orange dust. An AT-AT loomed ahead of the Tolans’ speeder, but stood motionless; Rebel troopers were escorting the Imperial crew away. To their left, a pair of wounded Mandalorians, mercenaries that Kera’s allies had secured, were solemnly chanting in something other than Basic over the body of one of their own, while a staff nurse from Foundry Four waited awkwardly behind them to do his portion of the cleanup. Anden angled the speeder in a lazy curve between the broken walker and the broken soldier toward the chasm that led down to Foundry Four itself.

“I’m staying with you,” Kera concluded. Anden didn’t respond. She didn’t have to probe at his mind to feel the icy tension emanating from him, and decided it warranted further supervision.

The rest of the story can be read here: What You Do

And feel free to check around at the other stories on my husband's in progress website. He made a bunch of statblocks for starfighters and ships, those are located under Corellian Sendoff.

If you're interested in reading more stories about Anden and Kera before they joined the Rebellion, there are three stories located at my husband's tumblr

Happy Birthday, Make a Wish

The Tolan Legacy

You Are Here

Feedback would be greatly appreciated, as it may keep my husband writing more.

Thanks, and enjoy!

I enjoyed the story and in particular the scene where we meet clunk. I think your husband is very good. What draft of the story was this if you don't mind me asking? I think he should just look into a bit of standard editing stuff like cutting out ly-adverbs, and making sure he is choosing words that do not draw attention to the writing. I also think that the narrative summary that told about the fleet action was a bit jarring, and would have liked to have seen that in an immediate scene of some kind if possible.

I felt his grasp on the setting was excellent, as was the characterization. I felt involved by much of the story. Tell him to keep at it.

Thank you so much for reading and your reply!

My husband does his own editing, and I try and help when I can. (I mainly try and find any inconsistencies, words being repeated, giving advice on my characters etc) I don't know what draft if was, as we spent a good week to two after he wrote it trying to edit it.

I'll definitely pass on what you said to him! We are glad you enjoyed the story!

2 hours ago, Lanuria said:

Thank you so much for reading and your reply!

My husband does his own editing, and I try and help when I can. (I mainly try and find any inconsistencies, words being repeated, giving advice on my characters etc) I don't know what draft if was, as we spent a good week to two after he wrote it trying to edit it.

I'll definitely pass on what you said to him! We are glad you enjoyed the story!

Great Yeah he is talented but just needs some refining I think. There are some great books on self-editing which could be of use. I noticed that he does a good job of pulling you in and also of making the feelings come to life. I think that is the most important thing. He will want to be tighter though if you guy move on to getting an agent, as an agent is looking for stuff that is publication ready. Perfect practice makes perfect and all that. Good luck to you both.

11 hours ago, Archlyte said:

Great Yeah he is talented but just needs some refining I think. There are some great books on self-editing which could be of use. I noticed that he does a good job of pulling you in and also of making the feelings come to life. I think that is the most important thing. He will want to be tighter though if you guy move on to getting an agent, as an agent is looking for stuff that is publication ready. Perfect practice makes perfect and all that. Good luck to you both.

Haha! As much as we'd love to be published, I don't see that happening any time soon--I mean, if you wanna write SW books, they usually find someone to write them. Maybe there will be a fan fic contest one day! But the fact you brought this up warms our hearts. I've always said his writing is fantastic!

Told husband what you said and he said: "Very constructive. I think the stuff about words bringing attention to the writing are probably accurate, a side effect of my reading so much stuff like HHG2G that's about the wordplay." (I just copied that from a text!)

We are working on a setting for Genesys once that comes out, and I think he's going to write some stories based on that.

Just read this & I'm really impressed.... I thought the way you're husband gets across the relationship between brother & sister was really well done... I also loved the scene introducing Clunk!

I've been writing teaser scenes for my next campaign to pass on to my players, just to get them thinking about their characters & their adversaries again... Reading this makes me want to write up the whole of last campaign that I ran though

16 hours ago, AceSolo5 said:

Just read this & I'm really impressed.... I thought the way you're husband gets across the relationship between brother & sister was really well done... I also loved the scene introducing Clunk!

I've been writing teaser scenes for my next campaign to pass on to my players, just to get them thinking about their characters & their adversaries again... Reading this makes me want to write up the whole of last campaign that I ran though

My husband is an only child, so I dunno how he pulled off Anden and Kera so well. When we played then in our games, they just bickered all the time!

I told hubby you were thinking about writing some more, and he was thrilled about that! Keep writing and feel free to share! I love reading stories of people's characters and all the adventures they go on.

Thanks for reading!

On 03/09/2017 at 2:36 AM, Lanuria said:

I love reading stories of people's characters and all the adventures they go on.

I'm the same... I think some of the most enjoyable posts on these forums are the ones telling the stories of other people's games

And cheers for the encouragement... I'll put some stuff together on our last campaign & get posted it on here!