On Wednesday we played Star Wars using the Fate game system to start our new ‘West Marches’ style game – a drop-in/drop-out world that allows multiple players to be engaged at different times and dates without major FOMO.
Fate is an intuitive and simple rules-set that is narrative based. Creating a character is as easy as writing a couple of bullet points called Aspects (no stats!) about who they are and takes <20 minutes.
We also had to design the world we were playing in, as this game is completely player and character driven. We define the game world the same way as characters, using a narrative Aspect which is true in the game. Unsurprisingly, given recent media and my own personal interests (stated in the game invitation) we landed on the following game world aspects:
1. Mando Era – set after the fall of the empire, with a fledgeling New Republic struggling to maintain order.
2. Minor Warlords – lots of ex-imperials and others (inc. pirates) all over the place vying for territory and power.
3. Lots of Greed – related to the above – everyone is out for themselves right now and takes whatever they can get their hands on.
So, we had our setting and a shared understanding of the broad strokes of what we were playing.
We also decided that we were going to have a ‘home’ (this didn’t come into the game much… yet!) which also had a few aspects:
1. Cirrus – Decommissioned Separatist Ship – Now operating more like a space-station than a ship, Cirrus has become a haven for smugglers, never-do-wells, and outcasts. It is stationed off in deep space and can only be accessed by some precision hyperspace jumps by those who know it’s coordinates.
2. Big Droid Population – As an ex-separatist ship, there are heaps of droids and they have been repurposed for all manner of operations in maintaining and running Cirrus, as well as security and manual labour.
3. Qing’La – Merchant Queen – is the Bothan ‘owner’ of Cirrus, largely ambivalent and stays out of others affairs unless the flow of credits through the ship is threatened.
4. Black Market – there is a large black market, including in spice, some slaves, droids, and a ‘Body Shop’ where people can get surgical enhancements.
Our characters:
1. Nasaar – A Trandoshan who had failed his ‘rites of adulthood’ and so is shunned by his people. Now overcompensates by causing more challenges to himself, and has a competitive streak, particularly with Fella the Wookie. Followed around by his recording droid, a small video capture drone with which he hopes to broadcast his exploits and earn his trandoshan adulthood.
2. Theo – a Human bio-academic who is now disgraced, and who used to work for imperials before blowing up a facility and fleeing. Has added a few ‘special modifications’ to themselves, including bionic eyes and a bionic leg that has storage space for a blaster and other contraband.
3. Lintar – a Rodian droid mechanic with a desperate streak, constantly borrowing and repaying money to keep going, and who recently burned over the Crimson Claw pirates and is now on the run from them a little. Keeps a lot of the droids around Cirrus functioning.
4. Death Night – A Bith musician who is quite famous as a guitar player (or whatever the Star Wars equivalent is…) but desperately wants to sing – but has no talent for that. They are a rival with Gwrtth, the Wookie singer in their band, who they want gone so they can sing.
5. Fella – A Wookie bounty hunter with a fearsome reputation for always disintegrating his targets. Is a trusted employee of Qing’La and is trying to earn/buy the freedom of his sibling Gwrtth who is currently enslaved by one of Qing’La’s lieutenants, the ex-imperial administrator named Captain Gwen.
We open our adventure with our five characters in a small shuttle heading back to Cirrus after picking Lintar and Theo up from an off-world job – Lintar had been working on some droids at a nearby planet to earn some extra credits, and Theo was exploring local fungal slime species, when they were ambushed by the Crimson Claw. Fella and Nasaar had been sent by Qing’La to extract them from the pirates’ clutches (which had gone well) and had also picked up Death Knight returning from a shopping trip in the core worlds. Their pilot, the ageing Mon Calamari named Habon was just about to make the final hyperspace jump back to Cirrus when the small craft rocked and sensor alarms started whooping and wailing. They were under attack, and it was the Crimson Claw – having followed them!
Nasaar and Fella ran to the gun wells and warmed up the shuttle’s small cannons, while Theo wracked their brains about what the Crimson Claw could want (aside from several severed heads) – rifling through the many droids they had in the hold and finally determining that an especially pricey G-302 Security Droid could be what the pirates were after. Fella and Nasaar began firing at the pirate fighters, while Death Knight joined Habon at the viewport to see that the pirates had a larger corvette with them as well. This wasn’t going to be easy.
Lintar, at the request of Nasaar, set to work reprogramming the hold full of old separatist droids to act as improvised targeting computers for the Trandoshan and Wookie manning the cannons. Soon these ageing combat droids were interfacing with the ships computer to assist with target acquisition.
Death Knight came up with a plan – they had recently purchased a G-301 model ‘personal services droid’ to use in a show, and to cursory inspection would appear to be the 302 model. If they sent that out the airlock as a ‘gift’ to the pirates, they might escape this ambush. Theo took it one step further, filling the 301 droid with a particular type of flammable slime mould they had found on their trip to the planet, but also spilling the slime mould all around the aft hold of the shuttle they were all in.
Fella and Nasaar kept shooting the small cannons, blowing up a pair of enemy fighters and further enraging the pirate captain. The pirate captain hailed them over the comms, demanding they surrender the valuable droid immediately or else be eradicated. Enacting their plan, Death Knight and Theo released the 301-model droid from the rear airlock. Sensing the opportunity for greatness, Nasaar turned on his holo-recording droid to capture the moment he hit their bomb and subsequently destroyed an entire pirate corvette. Alas, he shot too soon, missed, and the pirates responded with a barrage that connected with the explosive robot – right next to the small shuttle, destroying the shields and damaging the hull, causing several sparks to arc out and igniting the flammable slime mould Theo had smeared everywhere.
Death Knight (DK from here on in…) got the fires under control with help from Theo and Lintar, and then rushed to the cockpit and demanded that Habon make a jump immediately to get them out of there. Habon did so, but in his panic didn’t wait for the navicomputer – rather, he made a small hop completely blind in the hopes that it was enough to escape the pirates. It worked. The small shuttle, badly damaged, was now floating somewhere inside a nebula, and despite the best efforts of Habon and Theo to read the star charts, was not in any known location.
Lintar ran around fixing systems, firstly and most critically he got the life support systems underway so that they wouldn’t freeze to death or asphyxiate. The shields were gone, and so were several other systems. The situation looked desperate. Theo scoured the cupboards and access hatches looking for supplies but rather than find anything of use, came out with a bedraggled Wookie youth – Gwrtth, sibling of Fella, and bandmate/rival of DK. DK was enraged and immediately went toe-to-toe with the hairy brute, but was knocked back by a sizeable wallop from Fella. Gwrtth, insulted by this, immediately quit the band which was what DK had wanted all along – finally, the chance to sing!
Suddenly, a shadow engulfed the tiny shuttle as they were absorbed into the docking bay of a much larger cruiser – a Trandoshan slave ship! (In Fate, any player can declare a story detail by spending a Fate Point. I said ‘you can’t just decide there is a rescue ship’ which was fair I thought. Fella’s player decided that still, a ship came upon us stranded, but it wasn’t friendly. Nasaar’s player decided the ‘unfriendlies’ were Trandoshans. As the GM I love it when players do this!! It makes my day).
The little shuttle was quickly absorbed by the larger ship and clangs and bumps were heard outside on the hull as a docking ring was connected. Fella and Gwrtth prepared for a fight, Lintar hid in the access hatch that Gwrtth had stowed away in previously, and as the airlock opened and a handful of Trandoshans stormed in, Nasaar greeted them warmly telling them he had brought new slaves!
The dim-witted lizardmen bought into the lie and welcomed him with open arms. DK chimed in that they were a performer and musician here to entertain and was also welcomed. Nasaar and DK were escorted off the ship while a scuffle broke out between Fella, Gwrtth, Theo, and the captors. Taking an extreme risk, Fella used the emergency latch to release the shuttle from the docking ring on the larger ship, sucking the remaining Trandoshans on the shuttle out into space – but also eliminating Habon the elderly Mon Calamari pilot.
On the larger Trandoshan ship, Nasaar tried to use a grapple-gun in the hangar bay to secure the shuttle which he assumed was being jettisoned to space with his friends on it, managing to get the claw onto the cockpit of the shuttle. This though attracted unwanted attention from the two remaining Trandoshans who were with him – they recognised him as the failure who hadn’t passed their rites of adulthood! The two Trandoshans started to grab for Nasaar, but DK picked up their guitar (equipped with a flame projector for show purposes) and sprayed fire with it at them, setting them alight! Nasaar quickly disarmed them and left them to burn to death on the floor.
Fella jammed the shuttle door shut to prevent the remaining atmosphere venting, narrowly missing cutting his sibling Gwrtth in half, while Lintar emerged from his hiding place and took over the shuttle controls to try and get them out of there. Fella started shooting up the hangar bay with the shuttles cannons, rendering it unusable and also disconnecting the grapple-gun cable, freeing the shuttle. Taking the shuttle back out, Lintar quickly established that the shuttle wasn’t going very far, so brought it around to an external docking ring on the hull of the larger Trandoshan slaver craft, securing a snug fit.
As soon as the shuttle had docked, Fella let out an almighty Wookie warcry and dashed off into the depths seeking vengeance, closely followed by Gwrtth. Shrugging, Lintar sent a contingent of his reprogrammed battle droids to support him, and knelt down at a computer access terminal and began trying to hack into the Trandoshan ship logs, covered by Theo. Realising that his ‘competition’ Nasaar was aboard, Fella grabbed a comm and made a ship wide broadcast – ‘Whoever kills the most of these scum is the best of us’ – or something. No one could understand his Wookie roaring in the heat of the moment and all he did was alert the entire ship full of Trandoshans that there was a Wookie loose.
Hearing their friends voice though gave DK and Nasaar a sense of relief – they must have found a way aboard. All they needed to do was find the bridge and take the ship over, so Nasaar led the way having grown up around this sort of ship.
Amidships, Fella, Gwrtth, and Lintar’s battle droids had set up a deadly crossfire and were beginning to eliminate the Trandoshans heading their way one by one.
Back at the rear of the ship, Lintar struck gold – he managed to access full ship schematics and logs, and vented some Trandoshans out into space though manipulation of the remaining airlocks. Lintar searched further in the computers, finally identifying that this ship was carrying a number of slaves down in the hold. Realising that this might be their best bet to cause a mutiny and take over from the reptilian slavers, they headed down to the main hold to free some slaves.
DK and Nasaar reached the bridge and bluffed a couple of Trandoshan deck officers to head off in search of the ‘escaped Wookie’ they had heard over the comms. This just left the captain, a beast of a Trandoshan with many battle scars and scales peeling with age. DK started talking and quickly realised that this guy was a big FAN of their music. Starstruck, the Trandoshan captain could barely notice as Nasaar slunk away behind him, lifted a large piece of computer equipment, and brought it crashing down on the unfortunate captain’s head, rendering him unconscious. DK lithely hopped up into the captain’s chair, declaring the ship under their command now.
By now, Fella, Gwrtth, and Lintar’s battle droids had eliminated over a dozen Trandoshan slavers, and all was becoming quiet on the ship – perhaps this was all of them?
Theo and Lintar entered the long hold main corridor, seeing groups of slaves behind force fields in small holding cells to their left and right for quite a way. As they walked the length of the corridor towards the control panel at the far end, they read the electronic names above each cell – ‘Group 1, Group 2, Group 3, Group 4’ etc… all the way up to group 20, with a seemingly random assortments of sapient species in each cell. Towards the end of the corridor, the oddness of the situation hit Theo hard – surely they had seen that same Twi’lek before? And that Human? And that Bothan? With a shock, they realised that these were all groups of clones! Seemingly many of the same people over and over – multiples of each!
With no other thought in their head, Theo hit the ‘release all’ button, and all hell broke loose.
A Rodian leapt from the cell and began arguing with another, identical, Rodian – soon turning into a brawl, with one bashing the others heads until bloody on a bulkhead. A Twi’lek dove at its clone, screaming obscenities and pummelling with fists. A human, dressed in an aged Imperial military uniform, began demanding answers, while an exact copy of him nearby tried to break up the brawling Rodians. A pair of (identical) Jawas gave a third clone a boost and escaped into an air vent, carrying important looking electronic equipment with them.
Theo and Lintar tried to calm the crowd, but this backfired when many of them recognised Dr Theo from the compound they had been held in previously. Although Theo protested that their genetic work was not related to sapient species cloning, this was a red flag for these captured people. Thinking fast, Theo talked them down with offers to find them shelter and support after the ordeal they had been through, including offering free black-market body mods when they got back to Cirrus station. This was just enough to calm the crowd. Theo and Lintar asked who could fly a ship, and a handful of human female clones speaking with an elite core world accent identified themselves as Allira and said they could manage a large ship like this. Theo sent them off to the bridge.
Lintar set off looking for anything he could loot and came across a space locker in what might have been the captains’ cabin, but careful inspection determined it was probably rigged with some kind of booby trap.
Fella arrived at the bridge just at the same time as the Allira clones and declared proudly to his ‘rival’ Nasaar that he had won their bet – he’d surely killed more Trandoshans. Nasaar shrugged, not understanding what the crazy Wookie was on about, when his commlink beeped – Lintar needed him down in the crew quarters for something, so he wandered off leaving a confused Fella.
By now, clones of various species had taken over the entire ship and were ransacking it for food, valuables, weapons, and anything else they could get their hands on. DK got the Allira clones into their positions on the bridge ready to take control of the ship, all they needed were some hyperspace coordinates to get them out of here and back safely to Cirrus. Fella piped up and gave them some coordinates – not to Cirrus, where his sibling would surely be re-enslaved – but to a ‘more civilised’ world near Taanab which was currently under New Republic jurisdiction.
Nasaar eventually found his way to the cabin Lintar had indicated, and tried to jimmy the space locker open – struggling with it. Lintar leant over his shoulder to provide advice when BOOM. Ears ringing, eyes stinging, Lintar and Nasaar came too laying on the floor among a shower of credit bars that were now scattered everywhere from the explosion. Sitting up, Nasaar noted with some concern that his left arm was now missing just below the elbow, something which made Lintar incredibly guilty. Even though the Trandoshan species could regrow limbs, it was a slow and painful process for which Lintar would feel great shame and guilt having caused.
Back in the bridge, the Allira clones finished the hyperspace plotting and sent the ship spinning into infinity, stretching the stars out into star-lines as the ship settled into the familiar blur of hyperspace.
As Nasaar and Lintar begin picking up the credit bars in their dazed state, they noticed a pair of Jawa clones walk by in the corridor outside, tossing an incredibly delicate hyperspace motivator between them in some kind of playful game. One of them stopped to pick up a credit bar that had been thrown to the hallway by the explosion, just as his clone tossed the vital ship part. The motivator smashed into a dozen pieces on the floor, but the Jawa just shrugged and walked off. Lintar, with his knowledge of equipment and mechanics knew if they were ever to exit hyperspace successfully, they were going to need that motivator operational.
The end.
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