Sean sighs, "We all owe Xeth in one way or another so you wo't find any qualms here. I guess Alzarius is as good of a place as any to begin the search...and just as I was looking forward to a little bit of R and R after that last mission too..."
"We did hope you'd be interested. We would feel that it is... a shame if the likes of Cannes were allowed to go around attacking Republican space and murdering Jedi without anyone acting to do something about it.
"Oh yes. That's the other thing. Whilst no-one has heard from Xeth, one of the Jedi has made a communication. We intercepted his transmission to Coruscant,. Apparently the Jedi attacked Charaeus and found less than they wanted- as we suspected. They are asking for reinforcements- and this is because of something else the report mentioned. Appartently the Cult is employing some type of new weapon system in its attacks. They think the system was used to kill a Jedi who was aboard the attacked liner.
"The idea the Cult has such a potent Jedi-killing weapon is absurd, but as we said, Cirus heads the 'Special Projects' division of the Union. With this information in mind... we fear the worst for Xeth and the others. But you at least can be forewarned."
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"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
"Appriciate it. Do you have any information on whether the council will be sending and reinforcements in responce to the communication? It sounds like we could use all the help we can get for this by the sound of it...even if it is getting help from our former "masters""
fas sighs. "so now we have to go back out and look for xeth. this is just perfect." he pulled out his box and once again began to eat the sweet, green, fungus.
__________________ XBox Live: Unbias3d
Steam: Paradox Method
nothing at all actually. Mace has send us on the next mission which will be the full episode I take. We got to investigate a liner that got shot out (there was a Jedi on board, probably died)... Something to do with a bunch of techno-crazed pirates that are active there. They also would have some sort of superweapon. All was pretty vague. Only thing really known is that the Renegades under the leadership of Xeth are on the hunt there for those pirates.
__________________ Kyuzo: Don't you see? A real sword will kill you. Mr. Earl Brooks: If I were here to kill you, you would already be dead. Mercedes: My mother told me to be wary of Fauns. Mr. Le Chiffre: No, I believe in a reasonable rate of return. James Bond: Now the whole world will know you died while you were scratching my balls!
While this was going on, I had time to reread all the last episodes to refreshen my memory on what happen. I guess Vlad will explain everything to you in game.
__________________ Kyuzo: Don't you see? A real sword will kill you. Mr. Earl Brooks: If I were here to kill you, you would already be dead. Mercedes: My mother told me to be wary of Fauns. Mr. Le Chiffre: No, I believe in a reasonable rate of return. James Bond: Now the whole world will know you died while you were scratching my balls!
So, as I said at the start, these were simple scenarios designed to give an idea about how my games work, and to give me an idea about what your characters are like, in which it succeeded on both counts. That being the case, everyone can proceed to the full game starting soon!
Let’s just have a look at the ‘guts’ of each game
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"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
Although the Jedi players are not going into the Mandragos plotline, I did want this story to be related to similar issues, on a smaller scale, so that the veteran Jedi players did not feel completely left out by these games.
So, this story was in the setting of the declining state of affairs near the edge of the Galaxy, as the Republic continues to lose its grip on things. The Republic offers a charitable deal to the poverty and strife-stricken constellation of Altamira as an example that it still has the power to deal with such things. The problems with this simple sounding idea are twofold- first, if you just write them a cheque you never know where the money is going to end up, and secondly a lot of the deal is in the form of goods (in this case mining equipment) which has to be acquired from private business, as it is not as if the Senate runs its own mining company.
Now, I am not saying all Republican deals end like this or that all Senators are corrupt but the dramatic imperative for this story was that the Senator sent to make the deal simply takes the situation to his advantage by making sure it is a company from his planet that supplies the equipment. He maximises their revenue by making the equipment available on a rental basis only, cuts in the local authorities on the scheme so they will not complain, and makes the agreement too complex for the average person to understand. The money going into his pockets comes from the mining budget and hence from the miners’ pay. They see they will be underpaid and go on strike, but cannot work out WHY they are underpaid as the matter is so well hidden, and the total money being offered seems to be reasonable.
Count Dooku swings into this situation to make advantage for himself. His contacts in the Techno Union can supply the mining equipment and his personal wealth can finance a smaller, though fairer deal. There is nothing innately ‘evil’ about Dooku’s offer other than that he is gaining the political support of outlying systems in this way, and of course the mineral wealth of Altamira will later be used to finance his war effort. I also had this vague idea that his ‘neuronic shielding’ he talks of that will allow droids to mine on Altamira will probably end up putting all the miners out of a job anyway, but unfortunately that’s not Sith plotness, that’s just the way progress tends to work- although still an irony in that his better plan is ultimately the miners’ doom.
So the Jedi are chucked into the middle of this with the objective, basically, of making an informed decision based on knowing the facts. We spice up this otherwise purely talky story by the terrorism incident. Senator Gern has arranged things to that no-one knows about Dooku’s deal and that negotiations will be concluded before he can offer it. Hardly a man to be outdone, Dooku ‘encourages’ certain miners to take matters violently into their own hands so that they will in turn delay the negotiations until he can turn up! The ideal situation is that the Jedi deal with the terrorism without too much violence or loss of life, and then can make a decision on the deal in full possession of the facts. Whilst I would not have forced the matter, the odds were fairly much stacked so that you felt obliged to take Dooku’s deal, and that is entirely fair in the circumstances.
I think that is it pretty much covered then. Just a couple of other points- the clue on the original threat, as ppicked up by Rex, was the word ‘traitors’, which was a clue to you that the target of the terrorists was not the Senator but someone actually from Altamira (it was Fisk). Meanwhile, if Jovan had used his contact in the Senate to get some info, he would have discovered some things that might have altered your perceptions earlier- that it was odd that Gern had asked for this assignment, as his voting record was not in favour of welfare, that he was currently standing for re-election and was short on funds, and finally that the Senate was actually willing to give the negotiations another two weeks; it was Gern himself that had insisted they finish that day.
Still, all is well that ends well, so, well done!
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"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
The Renegades tend to be ‘direct action’ people so their story was more action and less talky. I think it was also the simplest section, there was no particular complication involved, it was really about co-ordinating themselves as a team to get the evidence and defeat the kill teams in combat. Using the mammoths as a weapon was good, as was stealing the recon droid’s recordings of the area, which satisfied your evidence requirement all in one go!
The Renegade storyline carried a couple of nods to the kind of stuff the Dark Side get up to as a sort of nod to the idea that the Renegades operate in the same sort of area, just normally on the other side. hence we have the presence of the Golden Serpent (and a reference to their recent leadership ‘issues’, caused basically by the fact the Dark Siders killed all of them by mistake) and to the Osokan Hunters being the only ones good enough to take down the mammoths. Two Dark Side nemeses in one! Back in the day, the Dark Siders are the kind of people that might have been hired to do the clearing, which would have made the Renegades’ job much harder, but the advent of the Bureau has brought those kind of days to a close.
The only twist as such in the Renegade storyline is how the Serpent’s counterweapon is not a deadly assassin or a giant killer robot, but a threat to have the Renegades prosecuted. If the Jedi have to live with the idea that working officially means they sometimes end up not being entirely happy about who they are working for and what it represents, the Renegade storyline showed the flipside. The Renegades are free to work for whatever cause they wish, but often they will be working without official backing which makes the legality of their actions very hazy. The right sort of bad guy can take advantage of that. In the end, a “What gives you the right?” question to a Renegade is a good one. If you want to go all Batman about this and realise you must be hunted by the law to be the hero the people need, then that might have to be the way to go! No-one said this life was easy.
The end negotiations were designed to be very brief and any deal which meant that the Serpent were still there but no longer killing anyone- hence basically returning the situation back to where it started before the kill teams started- was going to be accepted, so the situation will indeed now have to be settled legally. As for that final warning about the Coils of the Serpent- well, ask the Dark Siders about that. They might tell you how there is a little more to these guys than you might otherwise give them credit.
In the end, no-one is dying any more and the Houn get to keep their homes for now, so you have clearly affected things positively. Yay!
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"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
With the Dark Side the feel was a little different, Whereas with the Jedi and Renegades the stories were very much about how they operate in relation to the rest of the galaxy, I could not do that with the Dark Side as that is part of the main Dark Side plotline! So instead I took the opportunity of a story where the Dark Siders have to be wily and social rather than outright violent, which is a need I often have to hammer home to them.
So, the Dark Siders were negotiating with the Epirean tribal leaders for their support against the rebellion of Ogros, who puts a name to the face of Epirean resistance. Ogros isn’t an idiot and knows you will butcher him in a fair fight so he’s not going to play fair at all, so most of his schtick is maintaining support amongst the other Epireans seeing as he doesn’t want to fight you face to face. He does this with great personal charisma, his penchant for flashy effects like the ring of fire, and in the end with brutal suppression and extortion of the others tribal leaders to force their allegiance.
The basic voting situation was only slightly weighted against you so if you cocked the game up and only won a couple of Epireans over the game would not have ended in disaster. As it is, it went very well! Good speaking and backing use of Force powers won you over some, and then there was the ‘horse trading’ section to win over some others (ad I also made sure there was at least one that could be won over by you guys being hard in a fight, so that even an all-fighting team could have made SOME impact). There was actually a bit of a kicker to giving stuff away- those you gave increased lands and tech to are not your friends, and you have increased their power by this agreement- something to be wary of. Ogros himself was carrying a vibro axe- not a deep mystery, and he had at least one other trick up his sleeve if anyone had forced the issue to get close to him (unlikely with an Apostate and Heretic), but I can leave explanations there for another time.
As for the two very reluctant Epireans- they were most directly threatened by Ogros, with their families as hostage. There were two ways to win them over- lie through your teeth (Subterfuge helpful) and tell them that their families were already dead, and that Ogros would never let those chieftains live and would put his own men in command after executing them (or lies of that nature). The other option- which you might have had some objections to depending on how much you dislike looking like you are serving them- was to offer to rescue them yourselves.
I had several general ideas about the best approach to win over the group in general. Threats were one, concessions were another, and destiny (‘you can go places with us’) was the third. I think we got a mix of all three in the end- which is fair and it worked, though sometimes you have to be careful about mixing your messages, especially publically.
Glortharg was the big target to be killed in the fight; I didn’t want to have Ogros killed right away. As you have done very well, Ogros is now more of a terrorist threat than a large army moving against you, though part of the irony now is that as his threat slowly grows, you guys might become too busy to take the time to deal with him. Still, who knows? Perhaps the rite of passage for new recruits to your cause will always be to go deal with Ogros. As it is, the biggest difference to you guys is these new gladiatorial games you are setting up in lieu of random killings! Any details you want to out into that, feel free.
So, well done all, I feel that went very well!
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"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
KMC Community Forums
Aug 30th, 2008 08:48 PM
