This is a story I just wrote up. Title just about sums up the message, so don't expect any happy endings. The point is to both give out a good message of emotion toward the Empire (although despite the strong message I still feel my story is lacking) and possibly a backstory for characters: joined up in our glorious underdog force from witnessing this very event in the aftermath, possibly seeing recordings of everything that occurred. It might also be good to use in a game that you have in EotE that you plan to convert to AoR, but the players woupld be required to have some sort of heart felt emotions inside of them, saying this because there are plenty of scumbag groups out there. I should know, I GM one.

Now, without further ado, I present...

The Horrors of the Empire

A lone transport vessel, travelling through space: a GR-75, with a pedestrian load onboard. Several turrets dot its exterior, and a small squadron of guard ships flies in low speeds next to it. The captain stands in the middle of the bridge, hands clasped behind his back. He watches his men with satisfaction. They’d been through this run dozens of times. They had all but memorized every last detail of the procedures.

It takes only a small, faint signal coming from the terminal nearby to turn his smile into utter horror. He strides over quickly, his worried eyes locked on the panel. He scans the radar quickly, and his heart sinks at the large red figure that has just entered. Only moments after he shouts orders to avert all shields to the fore, countless miniscule blips erupt from the new ship.

Missiles.

The crew, in their cocky, lax pride, hesitates for a moment, but a moment too much. The front of the ship is covered in large explosions, rocking everyone back and forth. In the holds, hundreds of refugees scream in confusion, children crying and men staring with scared, yet determined looks at each other. A few round everyone up, and they begin setting up for emergency evacuation if needed.

Unbeknownst to them, their efforts will be worthless. As the front of the vessel is finished being racked by explosions, waves of screaming TIE fighters whirl in, green bolts tearing through the scant X-Wings patrolled around the GR-75. Bombers come in seconds later, cascading waves of sonic bombs on the turrets. The landing bay is blasted open, and a troop carrier lands inside.

The Stormtroopers, clad in shining white laminate, stand attentively at the loading ramp of their ship. They’re ready to leap out the moment it’s big enough to see through. In their comlinks, the rigid voice of their commander gives their orders:

“Kill everyone. No survivors.”

In under a minute, the troopers already pass through the landing bay and the first hall, shooting two of the crew on the way. The find one of the holding areas, and line up everyone they find. They then let loose a torrent of fire onto their backs, man, woman, and child. Screams of pain erupt, and children clutch to their mothers even as they are both gunned into a state of no recognition.

It is a similar affair through the rest of the ship. A few individuals try to fight back, but their makeshift clubs are no match for an Imperial E-11. In the halls, a few crew members pull out their holdout pistols, but hardly have them unholstered before blasts cripple their chests. The bridge is stormed, and the captain stands his ground in the face of death, his men all shooting hopelessly at the Stormtroopers, even knowing that they have not a single hope of survival. After thirty seconds, the Imperials leave the room, seeing that not a single survivor is left.

It takes only six hours before the ship is found by a passing vessel. The vessel tries to contact the ship and the crew on board decides to investigate, hoping this might be a long lost treasure ship, luckily brought into their hands.

They land in the empty loading dock, and walk through the deserted hall hearing the blaring alarms and klaxons still beating relentlessly. If the power didn’t acknowledge the recent nature of the ship, the two dead bodies in the first hall and the three in the lobby show it in stark colors. They decide it’s best to hurry up, worrying about upsetting the recently deceased (and any still alive to be upset over their presence). They find their way into the primary cargo hold, and are met with horror.

The five guards could have been a coincidence. An entire cargo hold of aliens, sprawled out, burnt, in neat lines, with horror still struck on their faces and children still clutching in death to their mothers and men standing valiantly but to no use in protection of their wives was not a coincidence. It was a massacre.

Why bother to board a ship if your only goal is to kill everyone aboard? Just destroy the ship and have TIEs pick off any launched escape pods makes much more sense.

Why bother to board a ship if your only goal is to kill everyone aboard? Just destroy the ship and have TIEs pick off any launched escape pods makes much more sense.

For the drama!

And nice story Castle!

Drama without reason isn't appealing to me. If I find a ship boarded and everyone on board is killed, I am going to wonder why it was boarded rather than just blown up with turbolaser fire. If it turns out that there's no reason, I'm going to feel let down by the GM.

Agreed but this sounds like an introduction to a game than the results of a game.

Me, I'd throw in evidence that whoever or whatever did this scoured the ship for something maybe we have a Newt from Aliens situation where an adventurous child playing with others found a secret hiding place unaware that fortune meant she couldn't be detected by the searching troopers and escaped their attention.

Then there's the reason why once they done their horrific task why not just redirect it somewhere where it can either be destroyed or lost forever?

The above story I'm assuming they left it to drift believing it wouldn't be found, so the question is did they do so with the intent on coming back later?

Or more importantly was something left aboard for anyone coming afterwards... hmm what if whoever finds the ship will be blamed for the massacre?

I can't see the Empire overlooking an opportunity to use this for some other diabolical task, were the ship's logs left intact?

Why would they do something like this?

Was this ship fleeing a world currently being put under martial law?

Was there a political refugee aboard?

Why was the ship captain surprised to see an Imperial ship?

Are there more of these ships out there trying to flee and the reason this one was left to drift was because there was too many for their base ship to destroy once they finished their search and clean up and that would mean it would be coming back to finish up this task... how would the players react if they learn the stormtroopers left explosive charges aboard to blow up the ship but someone interfered once they left rendering them somewhat defused and was responsible for sending the ship away from the battle site allowing it to escape being blown up by their base ship (thinking star destroyer) but its only a matter of time before they learn where it is and head over to clean things up permanently...

Why bother to board a ship if your only goal is to kill everyone aboard? Just destroy the ship and have TIEs pick off any launched escape pods makes much more sense.

To make sure the target is on board and actually terminated? Exercise for the ground troops? They needed something (or someone) on board?

Could have easily been a case of mistaken identity as the Rebel Alliance use that kind of ship, but to kill everyone aboard... I'd wonder if they wiped the ship's logs and made sure there was no survivors before leaving but still agree about blowing it up rather than waste time boarding if you were going to kill everyone anyway.

So they were definitely looking for something, perhaps it is the wrong ship... but how do the players figure that out?

Hmm could have just used an ion cannon to disable the ship... did they state what ship the Imperials were using?

What if they were posing as pirates to blame someone else?

Goes back to whether there's anything proving their involvement, if there is then they were seriously incompetent so they will be trying to find out who figured it out... is it actually possible the attackers are posing as Imperials?

A very dangerous tactic but who would know the difference if nobody survived?

Why didn't the empire just send in a few tie bombers to obliterate the jawa sandcrawler rather than go through the effort of making it look like sandpeople attacked? They wanted something and plausible deniability. You may never find out what they wanted, but it makes a great hook for an adventure.

Thanks for all the good input! To be honest, I'd simply overlooked the reasonable nature of not bombing the ship (which, actually, could hold the same horrific message, which is the entire point of the story in the first place). However, if using this as grounds for a mission, which would be a fun one for a party of Rebels, you could say that the group has been sent to investigate the whereabouts of a missing transport that was supposed to have arrived already. Then you could find the above stated scene, with the computers shot in the deck (though with mysteriously accurate blasts).

It might even turn out that secretly on board this ship was an important Rebel individual that the Imperials planned to capture, and as this is a light attack force that came aboard, possibly just one transport loaded up with missiles to disable the ship, they left to go get reinforcements. There might be some oddly enough long dead bodies from a pirate organization or the like somewhere on board...

Do as you wish with the story. In its essence, it's just about as the title describes, but thanks to you lovely bunch of people, I have some ideas for my group's next mission! I could see one of my players getting especially in touch with the story (it's separate from the kill-/em-all group I have, and is more peaceful).

Thanks again for the input. I might rearrange the actual story to be seeing the people freak out as the hull opens up into space from multiple blasts and the frantic nature of a chased escape pod.

However unless the ship launched a buoy or played a "Tycho" (where one of your players is on a av comlink to that ship as its attacked) how are they supposed to know whats happened?

Now if they didn't find what was aboard wouldn't they have either waited for backup to tow it somewhere where they can complete their scans or worse still calling back on an old star wars story where a pirate band made up of former Imperials were raiding ship and basically disabling their drives and life support leaving them to die and afterwards looting the ships since by then nobody was left alive aboard...

I believe both Lando, Han and Chewie were involved in that story and as I recall Lando was asked by the New Republic to investigate so he had them dust off a museum ship that had a working cloaking device so they could blindside the pirates once they were ready...

Hmm never did check to see if that was Maul's ship from the phantom menace but there aren't that many working cloak spaceships let alone rusting in a museum aren't there?

However unless the ship launched a buoy or played a "Tycho" (where one of your players is on a av comlink to that ship as its attacked) how are they supposed to know whats happened?

Also, I think I might have the Stormtroopers have a few troops hide on board to shoot the records and wait for a rescue party. The rescue party will draw the attention of a hidden individual, who comes out with tear marks and vomit at the corners of their mouth, saying that they cowardly hid them self and watched the others die so he could deliver... Something. The 'thing' will depend on your group.

After he starts to wrap up, a squad of troopers comes out and tries to kill the party and take the Rebel.

Of course, as I've said a million times now, this is meant to show the horrid nature of the Empire, and this might lighten the blow to add in a survivor. It might be more traumatizing-ish to have the Imperials be waiting just for a rescue crew, to kill off a few more Rebels with an Admiral Ackbar ("It's a trap!").

Might work better if they used droids instead.

Make it a little less obvious, it will be obvious who was responsible but there shouldn't be any clear cut evidence its the Empire so they can claim it to be Rebel Propaganda.

For example the droid attempts to secure the prize but to throw off the PCs activates a self destruct so it can get a few surprise rounds maybe throw whoever it is into a remaining escape pod and send it clear to be picked up its masters whilst holding off the PCs as the ship begins to break apart.

If the PC ship is docked who will stop the droid getting aboard whilst they're searching for survivors?

As for what the Empire is looking for, what if it was something someone aboard knew but they were killed leaving the Pcs to figure out where to go from there, that's if those who know they were aboard don't figure they know otherwise and pursue them because they don't know better.

That would make a great way for the Rebels to draw out who was responsible since they didn't find what was aboard would they believe the PCs if they had intel saying otherwise?

Ship security footage could let the PC see first hands what happened. Throw in a holo of a torture moment with the Stormtroopers asking about "fill in blank" and you have a great introduction story to the wonders of the Empire.

Do you mind if I re-purpose "steal" your idea for a campaign?