STAR WARS: RETROSPECTION- Trials
Stonia, Almania
The city is burning. But there is one rather large home that receives special attention in all this.
Boom.
The door blasts inward, filling the hallway with a brief flame. The polished white panels are immediately scuffed by debris and tarnished by smoke.
A stocky man steps into the room, drawing his ridiculously large pistol as a protocol droid comes to greet him. His face is menacing, thick black eyebrows over beady black eyes, a full beard braided with gold wire and beads.
“Greetings, I am T-3PO, human cyborg rela- oh, oh my!”
BLAM. The robot collapses into a melting heap as the gun blows him in two at the waist. A charge casing patters along the floor.
“Find the girl. If anyone tries to stop you, blast them.”
They pour past him, roughly a dozen assorted thugs. Scales, skin, fur, all with mini-repeaters or heavy stun clubs. Two Trandoshans stay by their leader as the rest move into the house. Furniture is overturned and windows smashed.
A gunshot roars through the first room and blows through a Rodian’s skull.
“Ah, there’s the bodyguard,” the leader says, feigning joy. He raises his large pistol again, towards a well-built and armor-vested man with a rifle. The single-shot rifle guts another of the thugs before the leader opens fire. The blast catches the man in the chest, sending him spinning to the ground.
A moment later, one of the thugs drags a young blonde girl into the main room.
“I found her, sir! Hiding in a cupboard.”
“My father WON’T stand for this!” the girl screeches.
“Shh,” the leader says, tapping his oversized pistol’s nozzle on her forehead. “You wouldn’t want to say anything to anger me, would you? I don’t like whiny little brats. I prefer them to take the Long Sleep, like your friend here.”
She bites back a scream as she notices her slain bodyguard.
The stocky leader grins, his teeth yellow and crooked, jutting from his massive beard.
“Take a nap, girlie,” he says, and with a sharp crack! he brings his pistol’s grip across her forehead. She collapses in her captor’s arms, out cold. “Take her to the shuttle and put her in chains.”
As the pirates move out the way they came in, the leader remains behind. One of his Trandoshan escorts hands him a battered metal ball that easily fits in his fist. He presses the trigger of the thermal detonator, holds it to set an appropriate time, then hurls it further into the house. Satisfied, the leader leaves, escorts in tow.
“The Senator is going to have a fit. I love my job.”
Boom.
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Welcome to “Trials,” an episode of the new Retrospection games! As an episode of this series, “Trials” will be a very personal plotline, exploring events involving the player’s character. Going off of Ushgarak’s ever-popular Star Wars role-playing game, these mini-episodes occur in game-play’s past. In this case, it will specifically explore an important moment in the life of Xavier Kolarn: his fall to the Dark Side.
Formerly a Jedi with a Master whom he loved as a father, Xavier took to the Dark Side at some point in his career and left the order a murderer. From there, he went to work as a mercenary in the Outer Rim, until he came into contact with a certain group of Dark Jedi, formerly led by Nume Rand. But he would have been sought out by this group had he not been a Dark Jedi of notable skill and power. He is also a member of the Psycho Brigade (an unofficial group of lightsaber-wielding maniacs within Rand’s group), notably the second one to have come from the Jedi Order.
The time period is set in 29 BBY- just three years after the Battle of Naboo and the events of The Phantom Menace. Xavier is a young Jedi Padawan on the path to Knighthood under Master Ko Cabas. Despite his prodigious skill with the lightsaber, Xavier’s path looks troubled to many. His pride in his abilities has turned to arrogance. When defeated in combat and thwarted on a mission, his temper is fierce. But the Council has one last test for him; if he comes away from the Dark Side’s temptation without falling, he will be a Jedi. But he has to survive the mission, first.
Remember, have fun!
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At this point, I will need to know which, if any, predictive power the players will be using before the game starts. Once the plotline is in motion, you can’t make use of these abilities. As a reminder, your available predictive powers that you may have taken are:
Dreams. Using this gives you a small chance that the Force will have given you insight into what is to come in the upcoming story, giving you a chance to better react and deal with these events.
Foresight. This is better than Dreams- it represents you actually spending time to navigate the future to deliberately try and get warning of upcoming events. It can give far more clear and comprehensive visions than Dreams.
Instincts. The power of the Living Force gives you no warning about the future at all, but makes you more likely to do things right once you get there. A successful use of Instincts will give you a certain amount of re-rolls to use during the story, which you can use whenever a die roll goes badly to get a better result.
If you have Foresight, forget using Dreams. Foresight is better. The real choice, though, is whether you’re taking the future-predicting abilities of the Cosmic Force or the here and now Living Force.
If you want to, you may reduce your Force rating by one for the story to get +1 on your prediction roll. The Force power Augury also gives a bonus to these rolls. If the upcoming storyline is dramatically relevant to you, you get +4 to that roll, but you will not be told in advance.
If you wish, you may reduce your force rating by one for the story to get +1 on your prediction roll. The Force power Augury also gives a bonus to these rolls. If the upcoming storyline is drastically relevant to you, you get +4 to the roll, but I will not tell you that in advance.