Missindi weaves the Ashen angel through the debris field, using the large floating ship parts as shields and forcing the droid starfighters to move around them to get a clear shot. Katerr and Traxim Kallos blast away at the fighters, picking them off one by one while Rallyn redirects power from the engines to the weapons to give the gunners an edge over the starfighters.
The battle takes the Ashen Angel out of the debris field of the wrecked Confederate ship and close to a large asteroid, where they pick up a faint distress signal just as they destroy the last of the Droid Starfighters. The transmission is garbled and weak but strengthens as they approach the asteroid. A blue-skinned humanoid with red eyes appears in a repeating message, "This is Jedi Knight Nuru Kungurama to any Republic ships, my escape pod has crash landed on an asteroid in the Aduba System. The Republic Cruiser Remembrance has been destroyed after a battle with a Confederate frigate and I am stranded here with little food or supplies. Please render aid." Katerr recognizes the Jedi to be Chiss.
Although intrigued and slightly spooked at the reference of the Jedi, the crew deduces that this distress call is likely decades old and they will be able to find the source after they have done their job and surveyed the wreckage of the Confederate Frigate. After a few days of very successful surveying and cataloging, Fri Penuabb feels confident their work is done and the map and information they have compiled, along with the battle droids will fetch a good paycheck when they return to Ord Mantell.
With the job well done, the crew turns their sights on the Jedi's wrecked escape pod. Missindi lands the Ashen Angel on the Asteroid near the crashed pod where the distress signal is emanating from. Traxim Kallos and Katerr don enviro-suits and disembark to search the escape pod.
They find the pod to be pressurized but without oxygen. A rotted and desiccated body of the Chiss from the transmission is found on the floor of the pod near the engine compartment. On his body, they find several items, including a Jedi Holocron, a Jedi Credit attached to a necklace around his neck, as well as a comlink and hologram recording device. Katerr establishes that the cause of death for this Chiss Jedi was exposure along with complications due to losing his right hand, which she deduces was crushed.
Traxim Kallos activates a recording on the holo-recorder, which shows the Chiss Jedi relaying a report to his Jedi Master. "Master Ambase, We have reached the Abduba System and have scanned the surrounding space for the Katana Fleet for several days now with no results. We will depart from this system for Eadu after launching our probes in less than a day from now. We will resupply at Eadu and continue our search of the Outer Rim. I hope this message finds you well and that my next message will be better news of a break in our search for the lost dark force! May the Force be with you!" The message ends as the blue-skinned Jedi smiles and bows slightly before the hologram finishes.
The revelation of what this Jedi and Old Republic cruiser's mission are is lost on no one. The Katana Fleet is supposed to be a tall tale old spacers tell each other to pass time or to be the "what if" question to entertain their wildest dreams of wealth and prestige. It's supposed to be a myth, but here is hard evidence and possible clues to the actual existence of the fabled lost Katana Fleet.
They search the rest of the pod and find 14 enviro-suits, allowing the rest of the crew to also assist in searching the pod. Rallyn and Missindi are able to gather navigation and telemetry data from the escape pod's engine computer which might be useful later. After gathering everything of value, Traxim Kallos suggests demolishing the remains of the Escape pod and everyone agrees. It is done and the Ashen Angel begins the long journey home to Ord Mantell.
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GM Notes:
As a player, it's not a lot of fun spending hours making a character and having them die at a low level, especially when you're still trying to figure out your character's strengths and weaknesses. As a GM, I know that by starting my players at level 2 they have a high probability of character death since they don't have access to their main class features. Knowing this, I still started us at level 2 because I wanted to ease us into this new campaign with its new lore, abilities, and setting. With that said, Jebbo Wugz technically died while attacking the Spider Droid in the combat described in Session One post.
This was not what I would call a good PC death and I ultimately decided to retcon it so Jebbo would live, taking away the pleasure of my first PC death for several reasons. One, as I stated above, it's our second session and losing your character that soon sucks. Two, Jebbo's player played a super awesome Monk in our last campaign and wasn't used to being so squishy and hadn't gained enough of a feel of his new character to know how to best play him in combat. Three, at this point the rules for Bacta tranks/Medbay hadn't been released yet so there was no safety net. The combination of all this didn't make sense for a PC death this early so we retconned it. Going forward, this will not happen again.
My philosophy on killing PCs is that the number one priority for when a PC death happens is for there to be RP consequences. Whether that is roleplay of the rest of the group mourning the loss or more long term effects, something good should come out of it roleplay-wise ("good", meaning something that adds to the game). In this situation, it was too soon for this to happen for it to add to the game as a whole.
As a GM, this would have been my first actual killing of a PC, which I've been looking forward to for a while. "But you said you GMed your last campaign for almost two years, how have you not killed a PC before?" Yeah, yeah, that's a whole other story in a whole other blog I'll be working on soon. Stay tuned!
The other big thing that happened in this session is Traxim finds a Jedi Holocron. At this point, a stumbling block for this campaign being set during the Galactic Civil War, is that there are no Jedi to train the player characters who want to be Jedi, and there has to be some sort of training going on for a Jedi PC to gain power (Level up) in their force abilities. So, enter the default Jedi training MacGuffin: the Jedi Holocron. I have plans for more things to be revealed through this Holocron, but Traxim will have to be higher level for those things to happen!
Thanks for reading and May the Force be with you!
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