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The J Pizzel
2009-08-14, 02:17 PM
Well, after about a year of waiting my friends and I finally got a chance to come together for a couple sessions of SW: SAGA. Some might remember when SAGA first came out, I was one of the big supporters on this site. We haven't played since right after the core rule book was released. So we were stoked to get to play again now that there's a ton of other material.

3 players set in a time frame of about 5 years after the fall of the empire. When they're still harrassing the outer planets. We're level 5's. We play free lance smugglers who just signed up with a hutt.

I spoilered the journal so it woudn't take too much space (I don't know the protocol on this site for posting walls of text). Enjoy and let me know what ya'll think of the writing.

PC Cast
Krusk – Trandoshan Soldier (soldier 5)
Morbo – Togruta Scout (scoundrel 1 / scout 4)
Teldin Del’Fey (me) – Bothan Tech (noble 1 / scoundrel 4)


Cast of NPC (as of our first session)
Dorja “the Hutt” Basadi – rising crime boss after the fall of the empire.
Ashkin – Dorja’s first lieutenant and most trusted enforcer.


Johzan B’oh – Herglic who runs the chop shop. He works for Dorja and vouched for my loan and sponsored me to join Dorja’s fraternity of smugglers.
Grouth – Herglic who runs Coastal Bay Tavern in the “Fish Head” District and close friend to Johzan.

Gavin Thorn and Nyu Tiv – Human and Sullustan smugglers who work for Dorja.
Tarn – Bothan smuggler who works for Dorja. He was exiled from his Bothan family.


Entry:
I’m hanging out in Johzan’s chop shop on Nar Shadaa, modifying Morbo’s rifle, when I hear Johzan start swearing loudly. The Herglic sounds pretty pissed. I ignore him for the time being so I don’t lose concentration on my mod. Morbo really does have a pretty sweet rifle, so I don’t wanna screw this up. I piece the last of the firing mechanism back in place and slam the power pack back in. It hums to life. I look down the scope to see if the enhancements I made to the targeting sensors are there. It looks great. As if on cue Johzan starts his cursing again, probably trying to get my attention. I guess I’ll indulge the “fish head” this time.

He begins explaining how “my boy” Tarn screwed up another operation; apparently replacing a large cargo of ship parts with a large shipment of goofy ass head caps. I politely remind him that he isn’t “my boy”. In fact I don’t much care for him, even if he is the same species as me. I ask if he wants me to take care of the screw up, he says that he’ll let me know later. He says in the meantime I should check with Dorja, apparently he’s got some jobs need taking care of. Might as well, it’s what we do, right?

I meet up with Krusk and Morbo outside the Coastal Bay Tavern, a networking site ran by Grouth, another Herglic friend of Johzan’s. It’s a comfy place, even if it’s in the fish head district. I toss Morbo his rifle and he seems pretty happy with it. Just to let the mod sink in, I order a piece of meat and climb a building about 200 yards away. I hold the steak in my hands above my head and let him fire away. I’ve seen him shoot, I ain’t worried. He bulls-eyes it and suddenly every low-life on the street has a blaster aimed at him. Oops. He explains that we were screwing around and everyone calms down. (Note to self: people on Nar Shadaa are little edgy.)
We get to Dorja’s palace and are routinely escorted up past the gaming floors up to his business suites. Ashkin, Dorja’s lieutenant, meets us there to inform us that Dorja won’t be seeing us today, he’s too busy. Ashkin will be our contact for these jobs. We have the option of addressing one of two problems that Dorja is having with his smugglers. One is to track down “my boy” Tarn and find out why he hasn’t come back from his spice run. The other is to track down and bring in (or kill) two screw ups that haven’t made their ship loan payment, or been seen in a while. Dorja wants the ship back too. They are Gavin Thorn and Nyu Tiv, a Human and Sullustan, respectively. I know them. They’re really ****ty smugglers. The credits are good on both jobs but we opt for the screw ups deciding it would probably be the easier of the two, assuming they’re still planet side. Of course, no one has the slightest clue where on the planet they are. (Note to self: find out why people keep referring to Tarn as “my boy”, it’s starting to piss me off.)

We start our search in the “Fish-head District”, at the Coastal Bay Tavern again. Grouth is usually up to speed on the criminal happenings in the city but he was out of the loop on this one. Krusk decides to head over to the human districts and make up random stories about looking for work. Oddly enough, he hears that a couple of smugglers are using a recruiter named Bren Que to hire some muscle. Twenty credits buy him Bren’s address. Morbo and I meet Krusk and head to Bren’s crappy ass apartment.

Bren’s nervous as hell when we get there. We try to keep things passive and non-hostile. A quick look around the apartment tells us he’s a mid level goon and probably works for the highest bidder. A closer look at his arm tells us he’s a spice junky. This is gonna be easier than I thought. We tell him we’re simply muscle, looking for work and we’d heard he was hiring. Krusk offers a hit of spice he happens to have on him and its smooth sailing after that. He tells us two smugglers are hiding deep in the under city and are hiring protection from their former boss. Sounds like our guys. We thank him for the referral and scan a hand drawn, crude map into my data pad. This should be easy. (Note to self: investigate why Krusk carries spice on his person.)

This sucks. We’re lost as ****t in the belly of Nar Shadaa with nothing but a crappy hand drawn map to guide us. It’s a labyrinth of crates, buildings, junked speeders, and god knows what else down here. We take turns leading the way. At one point, while we all hovering over the damn map, we hear a shaky voice telling us to drop our weapons and hand over our credits. We turn to see four low-lives holding blasters. All I say is “are you serious?” and they start blasting. I admit, I did say sarcastically.

I react first, diving behind a pile of junk and tweaking the settings on my baster pistol. Morbo is right behind me pulling his big ass rifle free. I can’t wait to see this. Of course, Krusk doesn’t really worry ‘bout cover. He just pulls his repeating blaster and throws down a spread of cover fire. If anything, it takes the attention off of us for the moment. Three of the goons are standing behind crates and trash, while one, presumably the leader, is standing out in the open. They return fire with some very misplaced shots. This shouldn’t be too difficult. I take a second to aim and nail the first square in the chest downing him in a single shot. Morbo perches up and wings the second; which is next to the dead one. We’ll call that his warm up shot. Krusk, already bored with the blaster play, throws down is repeater and ignites his jet pack. Now I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a Trandoshan Mandalorian wearing full battle armor with an energy hammer flying through the air, but you should. He lands right in front of the leader just in time for the third thug to open fire on him. The bastard lands a lucky shot on Krusk and wounds him pretty good, but he shrugs it off. The second goon pops a shot off and clips me on the shoulder. It burns like hell. I take aim and fire at the second one (the one that Morbo had wounded and just shot me) and take him down. I can feel my arm failing me though. Morbo fires at the third but misses. One can only assume that his deep concern for Krusk and mines wounds is affecting his aim. Krusk, now pissed off, takes an arm off the leader with his hammer. Now I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a pissed off Trandoshan Mandalorian in full battle armor take someone’s arm off at the shoulder with an energy hammer, but you shouldn’t. It’s nauseating really. Morbo and I exchange fire with the third goon, but he’s pretty shielded by all the debris he’s hiding behind. Krusk takes off the head of the leader. I’d insert another joke about a Trandoshan with battle armor and a hammer again, but I’m not, because it really was gut-wrenching. I holler and ask if the third goon is ready to give up yet and funny enough, the idiot starts running away. I laugh, slap Morbo on the back, and start toward Krusk. Halfway to him, a single blaster shot echoes through the rundown buildings. Morbo caught the thug in center of the back of the head. Of course, he finally gets his aim right after the fight is over; figures. After bandaging Krusk, we take their blasters, power packs and credits. Krusk takes three bags of spice off one of them. We start off trying to follow the crappy map. We’ll probably get lost again though.

We’re lost again. We even came upon the four dead thugs again, only this time they were stripped clean. This place sucks. As we’re walking I almost fall in some sort of junk pile cave in. That would’ve been embarrassing.

Morbo just fell in some sort of junk pile cave in, how embarrassing. He gets bruised up pretty good in the fall, but I gotta admit, he’s a nimble little sniper. Krusk pulls him out and we keep going. We realize we’re ridiculously lost and are discussing whether we want to try and camp out in one of these buildings when we hear some crates get knocked over and some sort of growling. What the hell…

We’re camping in an abandoned apartment building right now, bandaging our wounds. We must’ve gotten turned around at least five times last night. We even came across a katarn. If you’re unfamiliar with these creatures, imagine a mutated, pissed off, seven foot long iguana. I’d like to tell you we dispatched it pretty quickly, but we didn’t. In fact, it kicked our asses. I threw a frag when it started charging us and I’m not sure the grenade even gave the damn thing a headache. It started biting and scratching the hell out of Krusk. Morbo couldn’t hide from it, even after activating his stealth field generator. I contemplated flanking it. Decided against it after seeing what it did to Krusk; and Krusk wears armor, Teldin don’t. So I resolved to popping off a few rounds and helping Morbo wear it down. We killed it eventually. But it was a rough fight.

A decent nights rest and we’re ready to go. After another four of five hours we finally round a bend in the street and see a glow lamp far ahead with two humans on watch. They’re holding crappy blades of some sort. Its pitch black behind them but way off in the distance we can see the silhouette of a YT series freighter surrounded by shipping crates. It looks like we found our guys. We casually walk up to the guards, planning on using the “looking for work” approach, when they suddenly start swinging. Apparently they were already on to us. I duck under the swing of the first guard and bring my blaster right up to his chin. Morbo and Krusk aren’t even helping me; they’re too busy assessing how the hell we’re gonna get to the freighter. I quickly dispatch the other guard and join the deliberation. This should be interesting. (Note to self: figure out how they knew we were coming)

What we’re looking at is an old, out of commission, rusty horizontal fan. The blades are huge. From the center motor to edge of a fan blade is damn near 250 feet. Thankfully one is stopped right in front of the ledge we’re on acting as a loose bridge to the center motor. We can see that the YT is parked on the motor at the center of the fan. We can also see three figures scrambling for cover. For two dumb smugglers, I must admit, this was a pretty good hiding place for a freighter. There are about ten thugs down the length of the fan blade, all carrying those home-made swords. Looks like it’s time to go to work.

Morbo crouches down and starts lining up shots, I starting picking off the goons on the fan blade, and Krusk charges down the fan. He fights for his balance and we all realize the blade isn’t all that stable. He says screw it and jet packs the rest of the way. I quickly dispatch the closest thugs and they all fall into the black beneath us. Eventually we hear a splashes indicating there’s some sort of liquid down there. At least if we fall, it’ll be into some water. What sucks is that it’s pretty dark between the ledge where Morbo is sniping from and the center motor where the YT is, so I’m having a little troubling seeing. I pull a glow rod from my utility belt and use it to see the next hired muscle and drop him. Suddenly, a hail of blaster fire launches from the motor. Apparently Gavin, Nyu and Bren have repeaters; luckily their awful shots.

Realizing I’m gonna have to battle the fan blade if I wanna see any more goons I start slowly walking forward. . Of course, I lose my balance and slide down the edge of the fan blade, roughly at a forty-five degree incline. I have to drop the glow rod in order to catch myself, fair trade. I can see Krusk jetting down the length of the fan and can hear Morbo sniping from the ledge as I pull myself back up. The goons on the fan blade are apparently so scared to move they don’t even bother attacking us. They just wait for us to get to them. I can’t even see ten feet in front of me, but I blast away any way. I actually shoot two of them without even being able to see them. I didn’t even know I was that good. Morbo immediately steels my thunder though. He finally gets a clear shot on Nyu and snipes him…through his targeting scope. Seriously, I thought that only happened in Holonet movies. He’s actually pissed that he did that, apparently he wanted that scope. Krusk touches down on top of some crates directly above Gavin just as Morbo shoots Bren through the head. Morbo’s my hero. Krusk, holding his six foot energy hammer above his head asks Gavin if he really wants to do this. Gavin throws down is blaster and puts his hands in the air. I eventually make it the motor (after almost falling again) and Morbo walks over with ease. I hate him.

Gavin is scared out his mind. We can kill him, turn him in, or hide him and let him live. If we turn him in, the bounty is higher alive. Admittedly, I feel for the man. He’s not a bad guy, just a bad smuggler. I talk it over with Krusk and Morbo and we decide to let him live. He’s to hide down here in the under city and not surface until we tell him to. In the mean time we strip the gear and weapons from the fallen and prepare Nyu’s body for transport. A quick systems check on the YT and we’re in the air and headed to Dorja’s palace.

Dorja’s busy again so we deal with Ashkin. I lie and say Gavin’s body was lost in the fire fight. Considering we have the ship, and Nyu’s body, Ashkin buys it. He gives us the bounty for the ship recovery as well as both smugglers which comes to 10,000 credits. I call it a win.