Episode II "Betrayal and Redemption"

[Jedi Knight Jael Weiss]

Well, I am back for the moment, and just wanted to continue what I started talking about with Episode I of the games I ran during the summer...

The next adventure that we played, with the above title, started on a fairly remote planet with the smuggler and his Wookie companion doing some repairs on their ship, the Big Bubba (while this is going on, the smuggler and young Jedi get into an argument over the reality and "helpfulness" of the Force; it was rather humorous), when the Young Jedi detects that someone is coming. Next thing they know, the bounty hunter comes along, having been sent from the smuggler's boss (a Twi'lek named Zuaqui) with a message that he is late with his monthly payment and he wants the money NOW. After a few seconds of debating, an unknown group of thugs come out of nowhere and try to kill the party, all the while claiming that they, too, were sent from Zuaqui, but their instructions were to kill the party, not collect any money.

After the dust settles, the group searches the bodies of the thugs and finds one of them in possession of a data pad that had written instructions from Zuaqui to find and kill the group (it even had the Twi'lek's personal seal on it). Being rather mad about this , the group, including the bounty hunter (who had NO idea what was going on; he had his orders personally from Zuaqui to find the group and get his money, nothing more), returns to the planet where Zuaqui is based and demand what is going on. Zuaqui denies all knowledge of what is going on , but has reason to believe a rival of his may have tried to trick the group into thinking that he was trying to kill them. He suggests "paying a little visit" and "politely asking" what the heck is going on...

So the group blasts off into hyperspace, but when they reach the destination (an asteroid belt, on which one of them has the rival's base camp) they detect strong energy surges coming from where the rival's base should be; a massive battle had just occurred. They do detect one life form; it is the Twi'lek's rival, who is absolutely furious over what happened. He accuses the group and Zuaqui of launching an unprovoked attack on his base and killing everyone! Now they are really puzzled as to what is going on, so the group offers to take the rival back to Zuaqui so this whole thing can get hashed out.

They do so, and while the two of them are arguing over who did what the entire group gets ambushed and captured by a large group of thugs similar to the ones that they originally dispatched at the beginning of the adventure. The are knocked out, and awaken on board a large, unknown starship. At this time, they find out that Zuaqui has been badly beaten and is at death's door, while his rival did not live long enough to continue the argument that they had started. Strangely enough, they still have their weapons...

Then a voice broadcasts over the intercomm and challenges them to try to run through the maze that he has set up for them. They have to take Zuaqui with them (he is unconscious, so the Wookie carried him for pretty much the rest of the adventure). To make a long story short (because I am getting tired and it's past my bedtime...), the group runs the gauntlet, gets back to their ships (the bounty hunter has his own ship, a modified Z-95 with a hyperdrive), and attacks and even destroys the ship they were on (they got some good hits with the wild die, so I figured, why not? Besides, that doesn't mean the their mysterious nemesis is dead...).

They all get back home and Zuaqui thanks them by cancelling the rest of their debts to him. So they climb on board their ships and get ready to take off.

That is where the adventure ends, but as a jumping point to Episdode III, just when the group is ready to jump to hyperspace an X-Wing fighter comes out of hyperspace and urgently requests to speak to the female Marine. It turns out the X-Wing pilot is an old friend of hers that came to warn her that the Alliance had discovered one of their safeworld colonies destroyed, and they deduced that she was responsible! "What in the world???" she asks, and protests her innocence. The fighter pilot believes her, sends her the co-ordinates to the safeworld, and asks her to come with him in order to figure out what's going on. Before they can leave, though, the group is attacked by an Imperial Escort Frigate and one squadron if TIEs. The TIEs do a flyby and kill the X-Wing, and as the TIEs swing back around and prepared to attack, the adventure ends...

(By the way, that is one way that I have found to keep the attention of players when doing adventures- End the adventure at a tense moment in the game so everyone will want to be there for the next one to see what happens...)

Until next time...