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Director's Commentary
Episode II: A New Beginning
ACT II, Scene iii
Hello, and welcome once again to the Director's Commentary track for Act II, scene iii: "The situation has become much more complicated."
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. I knew that the player who was running Kir
was no longer going to be in the game (his decision), so I had a feeling that
things were going to change drastically for the party once Kir took off. That being said, the
choice of the title was nicely obvious. I took it from a scene in Ep1 when
Qui-gon et all have arrived on Coruscant after duelling with Darth Maul on
Tatooine. All hell was about to break loose with the return of the Sith, which is
a similar situation to what the party would be finding themselves in soon
enough. That, and Qui-gon is cool--he hated Jar-jar as much as we did, you just
gotta love that in a Jedi. 
QUI-GON : Are you brainless? You almost got us killed!
JAR JAR : I spake!
QUI-GON : The ability to speak does not make you intelligent. Now get out of here!
The opening scrolltext for this episode was as follows:
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"The situation has become much more complicated"
Running from the site of their recent break-in at the Governor's Mansion on Isde Naha, the crew of the
Excessive Debt once again made good their escape from the Empire. Shaken by what they had seen,
the return to the GHAMBEEZI DRIFT was a solemn one.
For the first time, our heroes had witnessed the naked aggression that so defined the Dark Side of the
Force. In the form of the mysterious red-headed IMPERIAL ASSASSIN, they had all seen what they
could so easily become.
Secure that their multiple hyperspace jumps had thrown off any pursuit, Kit Reed and the rest
of the Rebel squad prepared themselves to meet with Bah'Ger. It was well known that the Twi'lek
was not to be trusted.
Despite their doubts, our heroes hoped that the data crystals they had recovered at Isde Naha
would allow them to finally learn the location on an unprotected KDY v-150 Ion Turret--and
the control board so desperately needed by the Rebellion...
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I rather liked that opening scroll, one of the better ones I've done. I had hoped
to convey a certain sense of quiet foreboding after what had happened with
Mara Jade on Isde Naha. As stated in the
scroll, the party had seen the Dark Side in its full blatant glory. While they
had seen Vader on Sluis-Van, they really hadn't seen the Dark Side in use.
Sure, Yanna had used it a bit, but not to this extent. Actually, that was what I
was really wanting to draw the comparison too. To hint that chances are this is
what would become of Yanna someday once Palpatine was through with her. I
went into this aspect a great deal in the last commentary.
For this session I wanted a few specific things to happen. First off, Bah'Ger had to
get his hands on the astrogation data transmitted from the Wanderer that the party stole from
the vault on Isde Naha. Sure he would of loved the Rebel and Imp fleet position
data, but he didn't know about those disks. While the party is busy with snagging the
control board form the v-150, Bah'Ger will be doing some major wheeling and
dealing with the astrogation data. This of course will somehow lead to trouble with the
party, but I haven't yet decided exactly how. All I know at this point is that the
party will need that data later during the Coralspace (name to change) invasion.
Really, once the party had the location of the v-150 on Shiningmoon Major the
session was in their hands. I was ready for just about anything they needed, and
even had a pirate ambush ready to roll near Latrocin
if things got slow. A major hint was in the word latrocinor is Latin for piracy.
(I can just see my players digging out dictionaries right now and translating
all my other planet/NPC names--hint, I use German and Japanese too).
Lucky for the party, Jon (Lim) managed to figure out that any system like that should be avoided if
at all possible. In the end, I just wanted to get them to Shiningmoon.
The party did a few things that I wasn't expecting, like traveling to the
Imperial capital of this sector on a cargo run. Without Kir's player there it
was a little hard to run a smuggling session, but the rest of the crew pulled it off ok.
Pity that none of them thought about the BoSS ship's papers still being in the old ship's name.
Maybe Kir would have,
maybe not, but it got them into trouble. I knew that Kir and the Excessive Debt
were going to abandon them once they got to Shiningmoon, so I had no qualms about
fragging the heck out of her. So long as she was still vaguely spaceworthy at the
end of the night I was good with it. The party made a good fight of it, and even
managed to get to Shiningmoon via a lucky instinctive astrogation roll. Sure, it
was blatant plot-relevant GM nudging, but sometime you gotta do what you gotta do.
The bits about the Czerka base were
more or less made up as I went. I knew I wanted to have it earthquake riddled,
and had a sketch of the area near the base doodled out in the margin of my
class notes, but I really didn't have much more. For the prison-city aspect
I just took the evil Sith-allied Czerka Corporation from KOTOR and mixed it with a healthy
dose of The Great Escape.
Great movie by the way. I made sure to point out how the Major planet was Dark Side and the scarred moon was Light Side,
but had not yet revealed that the crystals were living beings. I also hinted at the "embassies"
of light and dark established on their opposite's planet, but did not go into much
detail--wanting to save that for the party's exploration of Broken Circle Spiral Hill.
The dreams: very important bits I needed to toss in here. Lim's was obvious, the ghost of Master Li
was defending him against the Sith ghosts attempting to attack/turn Lim. The big one
in particular was Darth Naufragus, the founder of the Sith temples on Shiningmoon Major
just before the Sith War 5000 BBY. He's still a menace, and is centered around the biggest
temple on the planet. Weather or not Averre Naufragus still lives has yet to be revealed. Haselvlat
did not have the benefit of a the Force ghost of a Jedi Master to protect him, and got the
full luring call of the Dark Side thrown at him. Based on his predisposition to breaking things
it was particularly appropriate. The native near-human Naufragi (guess who they're named after?)
were calling on him to lead them. To do what was never really asked by the players, but given
their dark taint it could be any number of nasty things.
What does the future hold? They need to explore Broken Circle Spiral Hill to learn more of what
happened on this planet. Also, they must not explore Naufragus' Sith Temple before they are trained more
or it'll be end of the party time. By this point, the evil three prisoner's they were coming here
to save are secondary, but should provide some nice plot advancement as needed. They really need to get to
the moon and find the Temple in the pit, the entire rest of the campaign sort of rides on them getting
trained by Marrla before Palpatine's minions (Yanna?) finally catch up with them.
This has been the Director's Commentaries for Act II, Scene iii
 Back to Scene iii without the commentary
On to Scene iv 
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