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Director's Commentary
Episode II: A New Beginning
ACT II, Scene ii
Hello, and welcome to the Director's Commentary track for Act II, scene ii: "This party is over."
My name is Ryan Decker and I am the GM for the
NorthCo Gamers'
Star Wars campaign.
Keeping with the theme of using movie quotes as scenario titles, I set about
digging up a decent line for this episode. Knowing that it was going to revolve around
a large King Louis XVI style party, I eventually settled on a quip that Mace Windu made
from SWEPII:AOTC. Interstingly, this is the first non "Trilogy" quote used as a
scenario title. Well, I find it interesting, but mostly because I already had planned on using
how Mace found his lightsaber crystals (Star Wars Tales #2) as a basis for Lim
to do the same basic thing. I'll go into that more in later sessions, but
for now it's time to bust a funky move 16th century style. 
The opening scrolltext for this episode was as follows:
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"This party is over."
At long last, contact has once again been made with the REBELLION.
Striking out from the Rebel asteroid base at Ison, our heroes have been given a
new and deadly mission: To seek out and recover a control board for an Imperial
KDY v-150 Ion turret.
Unsure where to begin their search, the party has traveled back to their nominal
home base on the GHAMBEEZI DRIFT for repairs to their battered ship. KIR is becoming
increasingly distant from the crew and they have begun to worry about their non-Rebel
captain.
Kir does have his uses, however, as his contacts within the station's underground
soon give them a lead. BAH'GER FENN, a Twi'lek information broker, knows the location
of a relatively undefended KDY v150--but won't part with the information easily.
First the crew has to do a little job for him, a job that requires sneaking into the
Governor's mansion on an Imperial sector capital world in the middle of the social
event of the season...
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I wanted one big thing to happen this session--y'all know what it is, say it with me:
Mara Jade, Mara Jade! Holy frelling dren it's MARA JADE!!!
Ahem.. yes. MJ made her first appearance in my campaign as the infamous Emperor's Hand.
Since this campaign is set in the Empire Strikes Back time period, I was more that happy to
be able to toss Mara in to the fun in all her dark glory. At this point, she hasn't even been given
the assignment yet to hunt down Luke, that's a good couple of years in the future (ROTJ).
At this point she is still, body and soul, the right hand of Palpatine himself.
No, I didn't just toss her into the party scene for kicks, she was placed there very carefully.
I needed someone who had embraced the Empire to show the party just what happens when you
choose that path. She was blatant, she was unbridled, she was a screaming bad ass and
she knew it. Guards? Pah. Vault? Nada. Stormtroopers? *sizzle* Within the setting of that
mansion on Isde Naha she was damn near unstoppable--and that was the point of putting her in there.
Not for saving the party's ass, they could of completed the mission without her help
if push came to shove, but to show the party (and the players) not only how evil the dark side
could be, but also how amazingly powerful it could be as well. Simply put, Mara was there to
warn the good guys, and tempt the not-so-good guys.
Plus, when she eventually learns that the party tricked her (from Yanna no less)
she's going to be pissed. A dark side, lightsaber wielding, pissed off redhead gunning
for the party *shudder* I tremble to even think about it. i.e. as a GM, this is going to
be a blast.
Overall, the session went extremely well. A lot of the Imperial ball was based off a
similar episode of Firefly named Shindig,
which a number of the players had seen. That made it easy to set the scene. I just had to
add a little local flavor like Dran and Ploovo, then spiced things up with a surprise
cameo by Thrawn. I absolutely love how he totally saw through the party's disguises and
yet didn't call the guards. Thrawn can recognize chutzpah when he sees it.
From there it was your basic B&E mission, with the major exception of having to
deal with ruthless, back-stabbing Hitler youth (the COMPNOR kids) and the mysterious redheaded assassin.
Jon (Lim) did an excellent writeup of the events
in Lim's journal that really
summed up the character's feeling about all of that. As of this writing Cindy (Zeryn) is
currently working on her version as well. Any session that can get two players to write side
stories is a good session in my book.
From here the plan is simple, the party needs to eventually retrieve the
control board of the KDY v-150 before I run the Battle of Hoth.
During this time they should hopefully find a Force teacher or two that will
help them catch up to Yanna and Mara's playing field. When the girls come a'
callin', the party needs to be ready for them. Next session: we finally go
to the Evaritt Expanse!
As a side note, the scenes of the mansion used for the Imperial Ball in this session were filmed on location at the Palazzina di Caccia di Stupinigi
near Turin, Italy--not far from Naboo mountain retreat scenes done at Lake Como.
This has been the Director's Commentaries for Act II, Scene ii
 Back to Scene ii without the commentary
On to Scene iii 
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