STAR WARS: RETROSPECTION- Puppets

The dodge is hardly worth it. Whoever this Puppet Master is, he has chosen poorly is creating an army of mind-slaves. Mechanics and station hands are far from competent enough to bring down a Jedi Knight, not to mention that they pose very little threat unarmed. If you were beset by a mob, maybe, would you be worried.

But one Puppet is hardly worrying. You sidestep his efforts and promptly smack him upside the head with your stun baton. He falls unconscious, like the others.

Kay means to make short work of the Puppets attacking her. With super-snapped attacks, she strikes out with a 20, a 10, and a 17. The MKP of her specialized weapon and her good rolling sees to it that her fierce jabs knock the Puppets back.

"Now that that's settled..." Kay says, admiring her handiwork.

"Where to?" Tanic asks, "He will have sealed off the route to his lair."

"That should not be a problem," Kay says. "The question, what do we do when we get to him?"

"If we can manage to keep him sedated, then we can get him back to Coruscant. If not, then surely we'd have to take more drastic measures."

"I will have to prepare the high-grade sedatives," Kay replies. "There are healing methods which can clense the body and remove the sedation which require a strong will and connection to the Force... but such abilities are not common amongst followers of the Dark Path.

"I have no doubts that he is a Dark Jedi. What is strange are his motives. What can he gain from this? Personally?"

You wonder this yourself, Tanic. This insurrection of his will cause problems for the gas industry on Garel, but unless he has stock in some rival company this does not really get him anything. Something to ponder.

"I have no idea," Tanic shrugs, "Maybe he's mad."

"Perhaps, but I feel there is some greater motivation at work..."

You come to the stairway that leads up to the control room, still littered with corpses.

Let's go, then.

Tanic heads up the stairs.

You come to the blast door to the control room. It slides open, revealing the dark control room as before.

The Puppets have flooded out of the control room, having used the maintenance shafts to get to the hangars or followed you out in the initial fight. Those that were struck down remain in rigor mortis on the floor.

Someone else seems to be missing...

(I seem to have forgotten all about KMC recently, but I'm back! Not too late, is it?)

Tanic looks around the empty control room, then notices that Kay is no longer with him. He spins desperately about, throwing out his Force senses to find her.

Kay is still there, it's the Puppet Master that has vanished!

Oh 😮

Well, Tanic moves further into the room, using the Force to try and find him!

Nothing. Users of the Dark Side of the Force can be awfully skilled at hiding themselves from the supernatural senses of the a Jedi. But Kay makes a logical deduction.

"The maintenance shafts," Kay says.

There are two entrances, one to the left, one to the right. Which one will you take?

To the left!

And Kay to the right.

You're in! Moving amongst the pipes and wires, further and further down the maintenance corridor...

A supreme Observation roll allows you to notice signs of someone having passed through this area. Pipes and wires that would have slowed your progress have been cut away... with a lightsaber.

Haha, I think i have time to be playing this again - getting settled in here took a while.

Tanic keeps on going, but takes note of that, and reaches ahead, looking to see if Kay has somehow moved back ahead of him, or if he recognises any Force users in the area.

Hooray! Glad to hear that you are settled in. I am not running these games at any particular pace and you can play off-and-on as you please, but I will be sad if they never get completed.

-

Tanic cannot sense anything out of the ordinary, which you know must be wrong. The Dark Side is at work here, with this strange hooded man manipulating the minds of the workers here...

But why here? Before you would have assumed that the miners had gone on strike with some pay-related motive in mind, but... a Dark Sider?

The maintenance corridor that you have been following, with its severed pipes and wires spewing steam and sparks into it, ends abruptly in a work room.

The hooded man is striding towards a large window that looks out over the station, his back towards you. He stops when you enter the room.

"So," he says. "Here we are again."

There is a notable difference in his voice. It sounds as if it is being sent through a filter.

Tanic steps forward, confident in his ability. He also activates his comm, so Kay can hear him speak.
"Why have you done this?" he asks.

"Why do all men do foolish things?" he asks.

He turns to you. His face is still obscured by the dark hood that he wears, but you can see the glint of reflected light from a glow panel off of something metal on his face. It seems to be some sort of breathing mask.

"I am not here to play word games," Tanic says, as he advances, "You must release these people."

Intrigued by the mask, he looks closer at it.