FORCE
EXPLORER
During the days of the OLD REPUBLIC
the first HYPERDRIVES were created, but
the new tech caused many ships to be lost
While they were exploring the galaxy.
One such ship was the FORCE EXPLORER, a
ship that was crewed by the great JEDI, Rensie
Pilif and his bodyguard of republic soldiers. They
took the vessel to the edge of known space.
Unknown to Master Pilif, they were followed on their
Exploration by a malevolent SITH name Darth Angron.
Darth Angron assaulted the ship and, after sending a final
transmission, the ship disappeared into hyperspace ...
EXT. SPACE
The PC’s starship comes out of hyperspace above a strange planet, shrouded in the mists,
the only remains of a long dissipated Nebula. A flashing light shines from somewhere inside
the mists surrounding the unnamed planet.
INT. PC’s STARSHIP—COCKPIT
The PC’s sit around the pilot, looking out at the ominous sight ahead.
1st PC : There it is, that flashing light has to be the distress beacon we picked up.
2nd PC : I have a bad feeling about this, are you sure it’s a Jedi beacon?
3rd PC : Positive - not just any Jedi beacon, but the beacon from the Force Explorer!
4th PC : Big whoopy doo, what exactly is supposed to get me all weak in the knees about this?
5th PC : The Force Explorer was a Jedi exploration vehicle from the days of the Old Republic,
long before the formation of the Galactic Republic, much less the Empire!
6th PC : We have the opportunity to recover lost knowledge from the time of the Jedi Order’s
founding!
4th PC : Consider me swooning then!
2nd PC : I don’t like it though - I re-checked the star charts - that planet doesn’t exist in any
Imperial survey …
1st PC : That doesn't mean anything - the Empire tends to omit sensitive planets from
civiliza-tion star charts - they probably did that to this one.
5th PC : Doesn’t that mean the Empire knows the Force Explorer is here and might have a
presence?
3rd PC : I’m not picking up any other ships or activity on the sensors, so if they do have
pres-ence here they aren’t home.
6th PC : Right, I’m going in then, wake up Hethan and her friends, we almost there!
1st PC : I know they’re Hethan’s friends, but I’m not crazy about the extra baggage—why can’t
we handle this on our own?
3rd PC : They were the ones who first discovered the beacon on long range scans, but didn’t
have a ship capable of getting through the ionization cloud around the Explorer …
4th PC : The deal was they got to come along for materials salvage after we get all the Jedi
ar-tifacts off the wreck.
Force Explorer
3
powerful music fills the vacuum of space with moving rhythms. Captivating text tilts toward the horizon, recapping prior events as it disappears into the void. A rumbling roar shakes the scene, announcing a space vessel’s imminent approach. The star field shifts, the soundtrack blares, a planet pans into view, and another action-packed episode of Star Wars: Age of
Rebellion begins.
Force Explorer is a Star Wars adventure for two to six plyers and a gamemaster. Gamemasters should read the entire adventure before play begins so that the action and storyline can progress naturally, without a lot of page flipping and undramatic pauses.
Players, however, should stop reading this booklet now. The information contained herein is for Game-masters (GMs) only.
n ancient era of space expansion saw the first hyperdives take the denizens of the galaxy far-ther than they had ever ventured before. This travel was not without dangers, as hyperdrive technology was new and unreliable, sometimes causing ships to be-come lost in hyperspace or worse.
This adventure is designed to be run in a single ses-sion for spooky Halloween fun, though it could be con-tinued of expanded to run many sessions in length. Many ideas came from the combined efforts of the board members on the FFG community forums.
The Force Explorer was the ship of Jedi Master Ren-sie Pilif, and was intended to explore new worlds and hyperspace lines. He was however, followed by his nemesis, Darth Angron. The Force Explorer in the be-came the site of the final battle between them and their allies. During the fighting, Master Pilif uses the experi-mental hyperdrive to try and get away, but not before the Sith boarded. The hyperdrive malfunctioned, taking them all somewhere ... else ...
All the crew died along with the Jedi and Sith during the fighting on the way, and as they arrived in this - elsewhere - their essences within the Force were
cor-rupted by the evil of the Sith and with nowhere to go, it "infected" the computer core of the ship itself, turning it into a dark side nexus.
This computer core is now a broiling sinister mass of hate and evil, the malevolence of the Sith mixed with the pain, anguish and insanity of the Jedi and their al-lies after their torture by the Sith. It all combined into a single new intelligence, Caliban. It’s first action was to make a droid body for itself so it can fulfill its need to devour the universe. Unfortunately, as droids can’t be force sensitive, it can't control or access the power it has once it leaves the computer core.
It’s only option is to lure unsuspecting lifeforms to the ship in an attempt to find a host for its malevolence. The catch is that the vessel has to willingly become one with the ship and accept this dark malevolence into themselves. Hethan Romund and the PC’s fit this pro-file.
Meanwhile, the droid it built has achieved a limited sentience, and is still trying to become the vessel itself, so it is collecting bits of flesh from where-ever it can (and however it can) in an attempt to become less ...
droid .. than it is and thus be able to become the ves-sel.
The PC’s will need to navigate this terror while re-sisting the power of the ship in order to deviate the malevolent intelligence in the computer core and cleanse the dark side nexus. Should they fail, then the intelligence will unleash no less than hell in re-alspace.
Below are the primary NPC’s that you will need to be aware of;
Hethan Romund - Should the PCs have begun their adventures using the Beginner Game adventure Mountaintop Rescue, they will already be familiar with their mentor. If they haven’t then Hethan Romund will make their first appearance in this module. Hethand is an brunette with brilliant green eyes, a master scholar who investigates artifacts of the Force and Jedi in an attempt to rebuild lost knowledge. This knowledge makes her the perfect vessel for Caliban, as without force powers herself, she is less able to resist the malevolent intelligence when it attempts to take her over.
Caliban - The malevolent intelligence at the heart of the Force Explorer. Created by the combined hatred, rage, and pain of all the people who died aboard the ship, Caliban was driven further insane by millennia of iso-lation and solitude. It now seeks only to spread it’s malevolence across the stars and see the galaxy brought to ruin.
Disciple - A droid created from spare parts around the ship, Disciple was originally in-tended to be the vessel for Caliban. Once it possessed the droid however, it realized it was cut off from the Force, as the computer core itself was the dark side nexus and not Caliban itself. Retreating back into the core to explore new options, part of its intelligence remained in Disciple, who was overcome with
the need to continue in its purpose: becoming the vessel. Its logic circuits undeveloped (as Caliban was the intelligence intended to be behind the droid body) it proceeded to use the corpses of the crew and the medical sup-plies in the medbay to create flesh coverings to make it more “living.” The unhinged droid now searches for more ways to become a living thing in order to serve as the vessel. If the PCs can somehow speak to Disciple, it will try to make a deal with the PC to lend it's parts and processing core to become a cy-borg with one of them (let it's brain core act as a Lobot style cyber-implant) - this would let it become the vessel (in a fashion) with the PC losing their mind to the droid (and by ex-tension) Caliban.
Captain Anders Miller - Captain of the sal-vage crew that first discovered the beacon, he and some of his men now accompany the group for salvage rights, while the rest wait with his ship at a safe distance from the ion cloud. A stoic Corellian, he has dark hair and eyes, and possessed a baritone voice filled with authority. Along with him is his crew, Starck, Ripley, and Dutch.
The PC’s will need to navigate the ion cloud and then successfully dock with the capital ship in order to board. Once aboard, they will need to re-establish power to the ship, as it long ago lost power (Caliban, as part of the dark side nexus, needs no power to operate and Disciple has his own power source). While exploring the powered down vessel, they will encounter creepy scares and lose one of the salvage crew to the predations of Disciple. Once they get the power up and running, the true terror begins.
Once the power is up, Caliban discovers that it can easily access and control any system on the ship. It
E
PISODE
I: T
HE
F
ORCE
E
XPLORER
E
PISODE
II: W
ELCOME
5
proceeds to attempt to control and kill or possess any PC it can as they interact with the ship. The PC’s will need to use the Discipline skill to resist the ship’s fear and control as they attempt to defeat Disciple and save Hethan and the crew, before finally discovering the truth and confronting Caliban and the dark side nexus.
With either Hethan or one of the PCs controlled through possession by Caliban, the PC’s need to act quickly before all is lost. Will the PC’s defeat Caliban, save Hethan and cleanse the dark side nexus or will they be forced to choose between killing their friend and destroying all the knowledge and history aboard the ship to save the universe?
E
PISODE
III:
E
NDGAME
What is a Dark
Side Nexus anyway?
A dark side nexus is a repository of the Force that is corrupted and twisted by the Dark Side. These places are often the sce-ne of overwhelming evil, where acts of ex-treme perversion or malice were enacted. The actions cause the natural energy field of the force to twist and turn, knotting the natural flow of energy into an Mobius strip that causes this same energy to replay and turn in on itself forever.
Like the cave on Dagobah that Luke encounters in the Empire Strikes Back, this dark side energy can manifest in visions of what occurred, or create illusions of things that could occur, even hinting at events in the greater galaxy.
This nexus was created when Darth An-gron, whose victory was achieved with the surrender of Jedi Master Pilif, slowly went mad while trapped in hyperspace and tor-tured not just his captives, but eventually his own allies and apprentices before final-ly killing himself.
se the script in the opening section of this ad-venture to familiarize the players with their situ-ation. The script begins the game “In media res” de-scribing the action just as would the opening of a Star Wars movie, and helps your players get into their characters. Feel free to make as many copies as you need to give each player their own script, or let every-one read from the every-one included. When finished, go to Event 1 below.
Before the PC’s can board the ancient vessel, first they need to clear the ion storms in the clouds of su-percharged gas that is the remains of a nebula cloud that is suspiciously absent. Read aloud;
Navigating through the eerie mists will require the PC flying the craft to make a Piloting (Space) check to navigate the hazard. A total of three successful rolls are required to clear the ion field, and the crack-ling discharges of energy and strange rocky debris
around the field provides 3 setback dice to any attempts to navigate it. While failure on the roll doesn’t directly damage the ship, it does mean they do not make it through, and a ship in the ion field will take 1 system strain each round it remains in the field. Additionally, while the ship remains in the ion mists, it cannot regain strain, as electrical arcs play constantly across the hull. Superstitious characters may notice the ion charge and electrical discharges look almost as if it is trying to find a way inside the ship …
Should the PCs find their ship disabled, there are a couple of methods they will find themselves in a diffi-cult situation. Inside the ion cloud, inform the charac-ters that they cannot see stars to use as a reference point for navigation, in fact, the only point they can use for navigation is the blinking distress lights on the
Force Explorer. To attempt to leave the cloud the way
they came in would be folly—they could find them-selves hopelessly lost in the cloud with no way to re-pair. The characters could use escape pods to head to the planet below, but as the planet has been re-moved from galactic records it is extremely unlikely anyone would ever come to rescue them. The could also use the escape pods to try and board the Force
Explorer, hoping to repair the craft and then pilot it
back to their ship and pick it up on the way out. A riskier option, but the best alternative, is to float the ship to the Force Horizon by creating thrust out of the aft section. A Hard Mechanics check will
reveal that this can be done by allowing the ionized gas to ignite a fuel pod to produce a (semi) controlled explosion on the aft section. While risky, it would gen-erate the thrust necessary to get the ship the required distance. Ripley suggests this if no PC does. To suc-ceed, once the PC who made the check prepares the fuel pod for detonation, the PC’s must send someone outside the craft to place the fuel pod for detonation. To properly place the pod, they must pass a Hard
Gunnery check to “ aim” the ship towards
the beacon without placing the pod in a position where the ship itself could be damaged. Failure on this roll still gets the ship to the Force Explorer, but the ship takes a critical hit, with +10 for each addition-al failure rolled on the check.
7
Once the ship arrives outside of the Force Explorer, read the below aloud.
Now that ship is so close, the PC’s will be able to scan the ship (for what it’s worth) and board it. Scan-ning provides only the most rudimentary information; it is currently without power (the distress beacon and lighting are being powered by emergency power which should have died out millennia ago), there are no sig-nificant life signs on board, and the ship appears to be without damage (the Sith boarded the ship in an as-sault action).
Captain Miller bristles at the information, as his ship received a manually sent distress call from the ship. He explains that the image was garbled and almost impos-sible to understand, but that it was tight-beamed to his ship when they passed through. If asked, the comms officer on his ship, Starck, has a recording of the com-munication, and will look to Miller for permission to re-play it for the PCs. Miller will initially refuse, but an
Av-erage Social check (depending on what tack the
PCs use) will convince him to allow it (he decides the penalty for coercing him will be rendered when they see it). What the PCs see is in the side-bar “The Last Transmission of the Force Explorer,” though if no one specifically asks for it, Starck and the rest of Miller’s crew will keep it to themselves (for obvious reasons). Regardless of whether they managed to recover the message or not, the PCs must now dock with the Force
Explorer. The sensor scan will show where the main
airlock is, though docking won’t be possible due to the ancient nature of the ship - doesn’t match the designs of the ship they currently pilot. As such, they will have to use vac suits (which should be included in either their ship or the escape pods) and perform an EVA to get into the ancient Jedi vessel. This requires a Hard
Coordination check. Should a PC fail, it
means they either over shoot the airlock, and risk heading off towards the planet. If no PC fails their check, then when Dutch crosses, he will fail his check and begin tumbling towards the planet below.
A character tumbling towards the planet has one chance to be rescued—it requires both the tumbling PC to remain calm and a heroic PC who has made their check to attempt to grab them by making another Hard
Coordination check. Should the tumbling PC
fail in making an Average Cool check, then the
difficulty is upgraded and gains a setback die as the thrashing target becomes harder to grasp. Dutch will automatically fail his check, tumbling wildly as he drifts towards the planet below.
Each character that has made the crossing success–
5
The Last Transmission
of the Force Explorer
When Starck plays the transmission, an unholy garble rips from the speakers: static and noise and inhuman voices. Alone, each sound would raise the hair on your neck. Together, they are unbearable. The sound mercifully cuts off to static.
After receiving it, Starck and the rest of the crew couldn’t forget the nightmarish transmission out their heads, it haunted their thoughts in the dark, and tormented their dreams. Starck, unable to leave it alone, has run the transmission through countless filters in an attempt to clean up the message. She can play the message a second time with the filters engaged, and a deep baritone voice can be heard, speak-ing a sspeak-ingle phrase in a strange language. Any character can make either an Aver-age Knowledge (Education) check or a Hard Knowledge (Lore) check to recognize it as the language of the Sith. If the PCs made the Lore check, they can additionally translate it mean “Save me.” If no PC’s can, Romund will translate it.
fully can attempt to catch the character once, and any Force Sensitive characters will receive at least one conflict if they fail to check, more if they refuse to try. Once the PCs have made their checks, if the charac-ter wasn’t secured they will float helplessly towards the planet. With no propulsion methods capable of overcoming the gravity of the planet, the poor charac-ter (and any who left the safety of the ship to come after them) will drift off into the distance before disap-pearing into the mists.
Should there be a character who has mastered the
Move force power, then there is ample
opportuni-ty to show off in this scene. If the PC has purchased enough strength upgrades to cover the PCs starship, then they may use the power to dock with the Force
Explorer. Likewise, should they have purchased
enough control upgrades to make fine manipulations with the power, then they can tether a line to the air-lock that will enable everyone to cross with assis-tance, preventing the need to make any skill checks. Additionally, should a player choose to use the
Sense force power to get an impression of living
beings within the ship, a successful activation will get a decidedly unwelcoming response. Much like Luke on Dagobah, the PC will get a feeling that can’t be categorized. Describe it much like Luke did, a feeling of cold - like a chill running through character, ice in their veins, but not living things, just the cold.
As the PC’s crack open the ancient vessel, read the following;
Give the PCs a moment to discuss what’s going on as they consider the situation. Play up the tension - something obvious moved past the door, though it was too dark to see more than a shadow … more the implication of movement than something anyone ac-tually saw. Call for Average Discipline checks,
as the PCs feel unnerved at the situation (in reality the sinister presence of the nexus can affect them now that they are inside the ship). Anyone who fails this roll will gain 2 strain, as their hands shake uncon-trollably and they feel eyes watching them. Starck will lose it at the situation - she begins weeping uncon-trollably and it takes Miller a moment to calm her down. He’ll signal the PCs to move on while he focus-es on Starck.
Let the PC’s prepare for the thing on the other side of the door however they wish. The only thing waiting for them is the floating corpse of a long dead soldier - one of the first casualties when the Sith boarded the ship as he was guarding the airlock when it came under attack. The soldier was cleanly killed with a Lightsaber strike. He has no salvageable equipment after the many millennia.
Captain Miller will suggest the PC’s to take Ripley to engineering while he takes Starck and moves to-wards the bridge. The PCs can split their group how-ever they would like, though Miller will explain that with Starck in the shape she’s in she’ll be no good to anyone - he can get her to the bridge, he can get her checking on the ship’s systems as a means to get her head straight. He won’t budge on this course of ac-tion, but he will accept any company that wants to come along.
The trip to engineering will be uneventful, but don’t let the PCs know this. Play up the sparse sense of isolation, the dark corridors which echo with strange
Gore and the Star
Wars Roleplaying Game
This adventure borrows heavily from the movie Event Horizon for it’s feel and style. As such, blood and gore are presented in generous helpings, and may be too mature for your group. If that is the case, by all means skip as much of the text box as you fell appropriate, as I’ve tried to keep any important information in separate para-graphs from graphic descriptions.
sounds as tools and other items float in the zero gravity and bang off walls in far sections of the ship. As they explore the ship, Ripley will keep conversation with the group heading towards engineering, talking about her-self, how she has a daughter back on Corellia she can’t wait to see (she’s having her 9th birthday soon), and sharing other small talk with the PCs. Let them make an Average Vigilance check. Success indicates the feeling that they are being watched, though they can’t locate where it might be coming from.
When they reach engineering, they find the power core still intact, but shut down due to emergency proto-cols. An Easy Mechanics check is all that is
re-quired to get it back on line, and Ripley will leave it to the PCs as she checks the engineering section for sal-vage. As the PCs make the roll to switch on the power, read the Cut Scene below;
7 5
Cut Away to
Ripley in Engineering
INTERIOR: ENGINEERING: The camera
rests over Ripley’s shoulder as she wan-ders through rows of machinery, (if appli-cable) the PC(s) wandering the next aisle over, their glow rods providing dim illumi-nation. Suddenly there is a shadowed movement to Ripley’s left. She moves to-wards it …
INTERIOR: MAIN HALLWAY: Ripley
ap-pears through the doorway, her glow rod shining the way. As she enters the main corridor, her glow rod fails, flickering out. She swears under her breath and taps the malfunctioning equipment, when move-ment eclipses the camera. She looks up and squints into the darkness, unable to see anything.
RIPLEY : Hello?
As the core thrums and the lights flicker on with the restoration of power the camera comes in tight on Ripley’s face, whose eyes go wide with fright and her mouth opens in a scream … CUT TO
INTERIOR: ENGINEERING: The PC’s
snap their heads up at the sound of Rip-ley’s bloodcurdling scream.
Running this part of the adventure is very fluid. Episode 2 has a series of events that can be run in any order, and operate off of qualifiers that signal when they become available.
Once Episode 2 begins, the end is night. How long the PC’s have to defeat the dark side nexus depends entirely on their actions, and the length of session that you are running. Work out at the night’s begin-ning what time the group wants to end the session. Make this the “countdown timer” to the end scenario. Allow the PCs as much time as they would like, run as many of the scenarios as they activate, and gener-ally keep the tension high, all the while waiting … Should the PC’s complete all the events, then things will move on the final episode once these are done. Should any PC fall prey to Vignette 7: The Ves-sel Revealed, then immediately after it go to Episode 3. Finally, about an hour before the scheduled end of the session, should none of the PC’s fall prey to Vi-gnette 7, then Hethan Romund does. She then be-comes the vessel of the nexus.
Leaving the PC’s in engineering to start Episode 2 is a great way to increase the tension and unnerve the party. A great way to set this up is to focus on the engineering group first, saying you’ll switch back and forth between them and the bridge group and running engineering first (seemingly on a lark). Since Event 3 goes so fast, this won’t leave anyone bored, and pro-vide an agonizing tease to your group when you pick up on the Bridge with the power coming on.
The PC’s along with Miller and Starck have had a much longer trek through the ship than their engi-neering bound compatriots, and it’s not until the en-tirety of Event 3 plays out that they reach the doors that allow access to the bridge. The doors them-selves, though, are locked and without power, there is little they can do aside from wait - something that they didn’t have to do for very long.
Start this vignette with the following;
The bridge door can now be opened, allowing the PCs to see what happened to the crew, and begin to piece together the history of the Force Explorer. The thuds on the bridge come from the multiple corpses, those soldiers, Sith and Jedi that weren’t otherwise secured began floating about when the gravity failed. After Master Pilif surrendered to the Sith, Darth Angron demanded that he bring them out of hyper-space. When they discovered that the hyperdrive wasn’t responding, they began a waiting game. After the hours rode into days, Angron suspected duplicity, and began torturing the soldiers in an attempt to get the truth. After days of this, and weeks in hyperspace, he began torturing the Jedi, and after this yielded no results, he tortured Master Pilif himself.
When all of it proved fruitless, Darth Angron and his Sith began to slowly loose their minds. When they ran out of food, they turned to cannibalism, and when the soldiers and Jedi ran out, they turned on each other. Only the soldier in the airlock, long forgotten,
5
was spared the cruel fate (as the Sith kept to the fore of the ship along with their captives). When the PC’s open the door, read the following;
The most frightening discovery still awaits them though. Let the PCs take it all in as Miller grabs Starck and turns her around from the scene, getting her to stare into his eyes as he motions the other characters to enter the bridge while he calms her down.
Let the PCs decide if they post a guard with Millar and Starck (it doesn’t matter as they are quite safe … Disciple is busy with other things at the moment) and then when the PCs actually go onto the bridge, read
the below out loud to them;
This is all that remains of the great Darth Angron. After watching the rest of the Sith descend into mad-ness, he killed what remained of his compatriots and then proceeded to turn himself (using the force power
Move) into this tapestry of depravity.
Force Explorer
All of the bodies suffer from exposure to the frigid temperatures of deep space from when power was out on the ship. Scraps of Jedi robes and Tythonian soldiers uniforms still cling to the skeletons, as they were cannibalized over the many months of hyper-space travel, but the remains of the Sith are far more complete. Evidence of self-mutilation and outright debauchery mar the corpses, and while some have also been the victims of cannibalism the three “freshest” of the corpses were slain via Lightsaber and then flayed. These were final disciples that Darth Angron killed in revulsion and worship to the dark force that overtook his own mind.
None of the Jedi or Sith Lightsabers can be found, in fact, the only piece of equipment anywhere is Darth Angron’s Lightsaber, which is firmly imbedded into his skull (the last act of a mad mind, Angron used Move to imbed it there and then switched the activator on). In fact, aside from scraps of clothing and the bodies (and an exorbitant amount of blood everywhere) there isn’t anything on the bridge that isn’t part of the bridge workings itself.
This vignette is a constant danger that hunts the players. Whenever a PC is alone, for whatever rea-son they might choose, the dark side nexus (now that it has power and access it’s “body” in the form of the ship) attempts to subvert the mind of the PC. As the PC sits or wanders the hall isolated, have the PC make a Discipline check with a difficulty determined as below;
Should the PC fail this roll, he or she becomes “the victim” in vignette 5 “The Airlock.” Should the PC suc-ceed on their roll, they experience a disturbing event from their past - something that they wish they could have taken back or done better. Choose something that happened in your campaign, a roll that went spectacularly bad, or a villain or minion that defeated
the character, and then describe them coming for the character again - but this time make it truly ominous, play up the sheer helplessness the PC has. Play the scene up until the PC dies or runs - then cut the sce-ne as if nosce-ne of it was real and give the PC 2 strain. Should a PC go over their strain threshold from this, they succumb to the nexus, go to Vignette 7.
Once the bridge has been investigated by the PC’s that went there, it is reasonably likely the PCs in engi-neering will want to find out what happened in their scene. Feel free to skip back to them and read the
follow- ing;
Disciple has taken the rest of her body, and with-drawn into the depths of the ship before her head even stopped rolling. No trace will be found of him at this time.
This vignette can be run when the PCs get around to researching the ships operating files and crew log. The ship doesn't wish to give up its secrets easily, so any attempt to access something other than naviga-tion and star charts will require the PC to hack through the dark side nexus’ defenses. The difficulty
# of Run
Vignettes
Difficulty
1 Easy 2 Average 3 Hard 4+ Daunting5
for this check is only Average but it will have two setback dice to reflect the nexus’ interference. Should the PC manage to crack this code, then they can access all of the ship’s logs, learning the history of what transpired through the series of holo-logs below.
Holo-log 1
Holo-log 2
Holo-log 3
Holo-log 4
Holo-log 5
The images of the final log can be cleaned up should any of the PC’s be brave enough. To do so will require Force Explorer
a Hard Computer check to work through all
the distortion. Once cleaned up, the PC may well wish they had failed the roll. Make the PC take a
Daunting Discipline check, failure on this
roll results in the character being so shaken, that for the rest of the Episode, all of their difficulty checks are automatically upgraded by one. Should no PC decipher the final holo-log, then Starck will complete it herself just prior to the start of Vignette 7: The Ves-sel Revealed. Should she be the one to decipher the video log the horror of what she see’s will result in her committing suicide at the monitor after she finishes watching it, clawing her own eyes out and chocking on the orbs as he stuffs them forcefully down her own throat.
Holo-log 5 Revealed
Any character can make the same Hard
Knowledge (Lore) check as before to
trans-late Angron’s final words. Again, if no PC’s can, Romund will translate it. Now hearing the entire thing, the PC (or Hethan) will realize that it wasn’t ‘Liberatis Me’ meaning “Save Me” rather it was “Liberatis tute-met” meaning “Save yourselves.” The phrase trans-lated they finally realize means “Save yourselves from Hell.”
So what killed Ripley? Well, that would be Disciple, a droid and the first attempt by the dark side nexus to develop a body that would sustain its power and al-low it to spread out into the galaxy. A failed experi-ment, Disciple was left with the desire to become the
5
vessel if it can. As the nexus had correctly surmised that only a living body could serve as the vessel, it re-ceded its intelligence from Disciple shortly after creat-ing him, leavcreat-ing a trace of the nexus’ sinister intelli-gence behind. This intelliintelli-gence refers to itself as “Disciple” - a term that the intelligence would have maintained from its Sith origins.
Realizing that it needed to become more “alive” in order to be the vessel, Disciple has taken the habit of covering itself in the flesh of the living, hoping that should it shroud itself in the flesh of these inferior para-sites that it will become a proper vessel for the nexus. Up until this point, however, it was only ever able to use the flash frozen flesh of the Sith and Angron, and so it was unable to resist the temptation of taking Rip-ley when the opportunity presented itself.
When the PC’s search the ship in an ordered fash-ion, they will eventually find Disciple in his “quarters” in the maintenance accesses beneath the hyperdrive. The area he resides is a collection of odds and ends, but this is where the equipment that the previous resi-dents of the ship went to, though it’s obvious that noth-ing remains usable - Disciple was forced to use parts and pieces over time to repair his own body, leaving the pile of equipment little more than spare parts. Also in his quarters though, is the remains of Ripley, decapi-tated and skinned, Disciple now wears her flesh in a mockery of human life.
Depending on how long it takes for the PCs to go on a “droidhunt” for Ripley’s killer, they will encounter Dis-ciple differently. Should the quickly (if not immediately) search room by room for the killer, they will find Disci-ple in his quarters putting the final touches on his new “body” before he realizes he has failed even with the new coverings. Should this be the case, he will be con-siderably more violent in nature, angry that they would interrupt his ascension to become the vessel with their petty concerns for a single fleshling.
If they don’t immediately hunt for him, and instead get embroiled in the other vignettes first, then Disciple will have time to realize that merely covering himself in skin and flesh isn’t enough, and he must become more of a living thing to fulfill the need that the nexus has. He will then be far more willing to seek parley with the PCs, though he will happily mow through them if they turn violent (he is, after all the creation of a dark side nexus who was in turn the creation of the most vile and debauched of Sith).
Should the PCs hear him out, he will attempt to make a deal with the PC to lend it's parts and pro-cessing core to become a cyborg with one of them (letting it's brain core act as a Lobot style cyber-implant) - this would vastly increase the PC’s Intelli-gence characteristic, and give it complete access to the history of both the ship and the nexus. If asked why he would do this, Disciple will explain that he only desires to become a living organism, so that he can experience the Force for himself. If asked how he knows of the Force, he will claim to be a droid that was in service to Jedi Master who was on this ship, and when it was at-tacked, he was left unbothered, but over time without maintenance or memory wipe he will acquiesce that his programming has gotten a little … skewed. This is of course, all a ruse - Disciple knows exactly what he is doing, though he will attempt to play the PCs sympa-thies.
Should a PC accept this offer they will know of Cali-ban, the intelligence within the nexus, however the PC will meet a bad end as the addition of Disciple’s memory core allows the Caliban to possess the charac-ter, turning the PC into the Vessel. Go to Vignette 7: The Vessel Revealed.
Force Explorer 15 Cruel Blades Disciple’s the Dis- ciple
After a PC fails their Discipline check to resist the ship's control while alone, they make their way to the airlock, and the rest of the PC's receive word that the airlock has been engaged. When the PCs arrive, they find the entranced PC inside the airlock without a suit, and the countdown to purge process already running. As it is an external facing door (even the interior one as the airlock counts as both an interior space and exterior space at the same time, the wall pos-sessing the inner airlock door is just as heavily built as the exterior walls are as a safety measure) the PC's would need a Lightsaber as blasting the door open won't be possible in time. If the PC's do have a Lightsaber, (such as Darth Angron’s) then it will take time to cut through. Set the countdown timer for the purge to be one less round than it will take the aver-age damaver-age the Lightsaber wielder (s) would get to breach the hull door - meaning the PC's life hinges on the Lightsaber wielder (s) doing above average dam-age - and if you want to really step up the danger, factor the average damage off the PC(s) spending a Destiny Point. Even if they cut through in time, they will still then have an airlock door that is wide open as the outer airlock opens and vents the ship into space. The only way to reasonably save the PC is to have one of the PCs slice the door controls. In order to do so, then they will first need to fight Caliban for control of the airlock doors. This requires clearing security gates that Caliban is creating in the system first to access the deep systems and thus the door controls. Make it so that each round the PC slicing the door has to successfully pass a Computer check with a difficulty & setback dice exactly equal to their own
Computer skill (they aren't really slicing against
security gates, they are really trying to work through the haze of Caliban and it's evil mind affect). Should the PC spend a Destiny Point to upgrade, then Cali-ban spends a Destiny Point to upgrade a difficulty die to match. For every boost die that a PC receives from their Talents, add a setback die and for eve-ry setback die that a PC removes, add an additional setback die to the base difficulty before the roll - the idea is that after the PC has removed all the dice and added their PERSONAL boost dice, they should find they have a dice pool exactly equal to the difficulty pool. The trick comes if any PC's assist them, the boost dice that get added ARE NOT matched by set-back dice. The goal here is to give the players hints
that what is going on is in the slicer's mind, and not actually a real thing at all. If players do assist the slic-er, describe to the assisting players that they aren't slicing alongside the PC so much as talking the PC through doing really simple things - "press enter on the datapad, Bail ... No, not that one ... the Enter but-ton!" Once the PC's figure it out, let the slicer make an Average Discipline check each slicing
attempt. If they succeed, then the difficulty pool be-comes normalized based on a challenging difficulty for their skill level, but it won't be matched to their actions or talents anymore. The number of successful slicing rolls to open the door should be set to match the countdown timer (assuming the slicer's skill against the normalized difficulty - this represents the fact that if the slicer doesn't defeat Caliban’s mind-control, there is little chance they'll save the character in time).
As all of this is going on, skip around to each PC, ask what each one of them is doing each turn. De-scribe the situation each time, narrating the actions of the previous PC's but not as the calm cool collected action the PC described, but instead as the panicked, twisted distraught version of it the PC sees (it's easy to say "I assist Bail in slicing the door controls" but the next PC in line would see "Padme screams at Bail to hit the enter button, repeating 'the enter button' over and over like a mantra, becoming more pan-icked with each repetition as Bail, sweat beading on his forehead fumbles with his datapad as the pres-sure of the moment mounts"). At some point, once you as GM see it's clear that the PC's won't make it time, or you see that your difficulty was too low and they will stop the airlock from opening, have the PC that is in a trance awaken - distracting the group as they ask what is going on. Build up the confusion that they PC has, they last remember being in another part of the ship, and not knowing how they got there, or what is going on. Describe to them that the airlock door controls are locked out of the system for some reason (in reality they locked control of it themselves under Caliban’s influence and that is now what the slicer is attempting to undo).
If the airlock opens, the PC will have to make re-peated Hard Resilience checks until the
others can mount a rescue ... or the PCs give up and let their friend float into the void of space. If this oc-curs, feel free to be generous with conflict.
5
The final vignette of the Episode begins when either one of the PC’s succumbs to Caliban’s influence through Disciple’s bargaining, time, or going over their strain threshold while battling the nexus in private. Should neither of these situations come to pass before all the other vignettes have been run, then Hethan Romund is the one who falls to the control of Caliban, her knowledge of the Force providing a pathway for Caliban to enter her mind.
In either case (PC or Romund) Captain Miller is the unfortunate sacrifice used to seal the communion be-tween the Vessel and Caliban, and the PCs are quickly summoned to the frightening scene below;
Give a moment for each player to state what they are doing (which will probably be to get to engineering) then read the below once the PC’s reach the entrance to the hyperspace chamber.
(cont)
Force Explorer
ere we are, the end of the millennia long jour-ney of the Force Explorer. For ages, the dark side nexus known as Caliban has waited and schemed to birth itself into the physical, and now it has achieved all of its plans. The PCs face the unen-viable task of defeating Caliban, though how they will do it may seem like a mystery to them. There does exist a way to both banish Caliban and save their friend, though it will not be easy.
There are three possible conclusions to the adven-ture;
The PC's abandon their compatriot to the pre-dations of Caliban and run to their ship The PC's fight their friend and slay them,
sending Caliban back to the nexus where it draws power from. They then blow the Force
Explorer up while Caliban searches for a new
way out, hopefully destroying Caliban in the process
The PC's break their friend free of Caliban's influence and then either retreat to their ship or blow up Force Explorer
With so many combinations of outcomes at this point, this final episode is broken down in ‘parts’ that can be mixed and matched to produce different sults and a climactic ending that can be built in re-sponse to the actions of your players!
Caliban has completed his aims at gaining a vessel capable of taking his evil outside of the Force
Expor-er, but he hasn't necessarily understood the dangers
this form accepts. As a being of flesh and blood, Cali-ban is vulnerable to the attacks of the PCs and could quickly find himself attacked.
Luckily for him, being an extension of the dark side of the Force, he is a considerably intimidating oppo-nent. Though the body he possesses may not be
physically intimidating or especially potent with the Force, Caliban’s horrific nature has gone to consid-erable lengths to bolster any shortcomings.
To begin, consider the possessed character to have Force Rating 8, representing the fact that Cali-ban is a physical manifestation of the Force itself (albeit a twisted and totally evil manifestation). Next, Caliban knows all Force powers, with all upgrades. In combat (should the PC’s frontally attack him) he will use these powers in the following ways;
He will commit 2 Force Dice through
En-hance to increasing the Brawn and Agility
of his vessel by 1 each (leaving him 6 Force Dice for powers)
He will attack with Bind, allowing him to deal 1 wound for each spent on the power (ignoring soak) and hitting additional targets for 2 each in addition to immobilizing all targets
He will increase his defenses with Foresee, increasing his Melee and Ranged defense by 2 in the first round, and spending to get additional successes on the initiative check and a free maneuver
Once he has committed his Force Dice for
Bind, he’ll use Harm to additionally attack
(this will be at 4 Force Dice after all his com-mitments)
He’ll use Heal to restore his vessel as its in-jured
He’ll use Influence to strike characters close to their strain threshold, dealing 2 strain for each spent on the powers activation as he rends their mind with nightmarish visions of the dark side
Once in each fight, he will use Protect to re-duce the damage of a powerful attack
He’ll commit 2 Force Dice to allow him to twice each round use Sense to upgrade the difficulty of an attack against him twice and upgrade his own attacks twice
5
The PCs will quickly find that Caliban is a deadly foe, the stats below are to be used if the vessel was Hethan Romund, but if the vessel turned out to be a PC, use their characteristics instead, adding the above and re-placing the Willpower with a score of 6.
Should the PC’s defeat and kill the vessel that Cali-ban is housed within, his essence will return to the cen-tral computer core, and he will need to begin preparing a new vessel to contain his essence. If the vessel took Disciple’s deal, this will prompt Caliban to begin the process by one again building a droid to serve as Disci-ple as he had once before, other wise, Caliban will not repeat that mistake.
Should the PC’s vanquish Caliban by using the relic (see Part 2: The Relic), then his essence will be trapped within the computer core until it can regener-ate, as the wounds received will follow Caliban as sys-tem strain to the Force Explorer. Almost immediately, the ship’s power will fluctuate, evidence that the dark side nexus was damaged as they expected it would be. Hethan Romund (or the PC) will be free of Caliban’s input, and as the last of Caliban’s presence fades, she will use what little remaining connection to the Force she has to perform a Heal power check on Captain Miller - with the Mastery upgrade unlocked, she will return him to life before finally losing her grip on the Force. Whether she goes on to become Force Sensi-tive from this encounter you can determine based on
her continued presence in the campaign and her spe-cific role in it.
Darth Angron’s Lightsaber stands as a direct link to the actions that created the dark side nexus, and through its attunement with Darth Angron, acts as a tether to the consciousness that created Caliban. This link still connects the Sith weapon to the evil intelli-gence, and can be used to battle the dark side nexus. Unfortunately, the ancient blade has long since run out of power. In order to get it working again, an indus-trious PC will need to make a Hard Mechanics check to convert a power cell from and existing
weapon and attach it to the ancient blade. Once oper-ating, the blade will provide protection to those holding it. Immediately, the character holding the blade will feel the oppressive and terrifying presence of the ship ease, and will no longer have to make Discipline checks when alone against Caliban’s influence.
Should a character use the Foresee force power to get hints or direction about how to defeat the dark side nexus, all their visions lead them back to the Lightsa-ber. Hethan Romund (before she becomes pos-sessed) can explain that once a Jedi or Sith attuned the crystal within a Lightsaber, it was always tied to them. She explains that it is possible that the Lightsa-ber could be used as a sympathetic focus to undue the nexus. Should one of the PC’s be the Vessel, she can explain that a direct hit from the blade should force Cal-iban from the PC’s body and free the control (in this case, immediately upon a critical hit or reaching his wound threshold, Caliban will leave the PC’s body, which itself will not suffer the critical - in effect the criti-cal result on Caliban was exorcism)
Should the PCs already be in Episode 3 and Hethan already be possessed, another character can gather same information as Hethan by making a Hard
Knowledge (Lore) check.
To use the Lightsaber as a sympathetic focus to clear the nexus, the PC’s will need to use it to destroy both itself and the root of the nexus. Any character that has viewed the ship’s logs can make an Easy Per-ception check to realize that the focus of Darth
An-gron’s hatred and rage was the hyperdrive. From there, it the PC’s are at a loss to identify the source of the nexus, an Easy Mechanics check will confirm that
Force Explorer
the only system advanced enough to develop intelli-gence is the nav computer housed inside it.
From here the answer should be obvious - by us-ing the Lightsaber to destroy the nav computer, the dark side nexus can be dissipated. Rigging the Lightsaber to overload and explode will require either another Easy Mechanics check or an Easy Gunnery check once the characters are
ready to detonate it. If the Lightsaber is first activated and driven into the hyperdrive, then the resulting ex-plosion will dissipate the dark side nexus permanently … but it will also destroy the Force Explorer in the process.
Caliban will do everything in his power to stop this from happening, including sending Disciple to kill the PCs (should he still be around). If dissipated and sent back to the core, there isn’t a lot that Caliban can do directly, but if they’ve been hiding from Caliban in the Vessel (see Part 3: Hide and Seek) then the proposi-tion may be more difficult.
If the PC’s get caught aboard the craft, do not elim-inate Caliban, and are forced into hiding, then the Hide and Seek scenario is appropriate. In this scenar-io, the PCs will need to navigate around the ship us-ing side tunnels and maintenance corridors in an at-tempt to either get off the vessel, or plan an attack to blow it up or defeat Caliban somehow.
Caliban is susceptible to this tactic, as he is now mortal and no longer ephemeral. While he has the capacity to wield the Force on a more physical level, he isn’t able to access the omnipresence that he could as the dark side nexus. He will attempt to use the Sense force power to locate the PCs as he searches for them, but he must still use his normal skills to find them once in the right area. This grows increasingly frustrating for him, and should be ex-pressed through your descriptions of his searching. PCs on the other hand can totally blind Caliban if they have access to the talents that make invisible to Force Powers. If not, then they can still hide success-fully using Stealth checks, as Caliban (unless in a PC) doesn’t have either Perception or Vigilance. Should Caliban catch the PCs, then see Part 1: Cali-ban Ascended for details on how to run the combat.
When the PCs are ready to leave, it’s time to run Part 4: Getting Outta Dodge. This may be because they’ve rigged the hyperdrive to detonate and destroy the nexus, or it could be because they’re cutting their losses and just want to go home. In either case, the PCs will be fleeing through the ship as either explo-sions rock the Force Explorer or Caliban chases after them, unleashing lightning and hell in their wake. To get from engineering (where they find Caliban and Miller initially and where the ancient Hyperdrive intelligence exists), they will need to navigate through certain key areas that, when moving quickly, are very hazardous.
First up is the oscillating hallway. This hallway, de-signed to act as a magnetic field generator to contain the hyperdrive as it powers up, is pictured on page 17. As the ship begins to destabilize, the gears that generate the magnetic field lose their cohesion, and the magnets themselves begin attracting each other and causing a chaotic mess of spinning blades and metal shards. Characters moving through here must make a successful Daunting Coordination check or suffer a critical hit, with +10 being added
for each failure in excess of the first as metal shards and bladed supports fling about the area. Characters can stop and help those that have fallen, but every round they remain in the area, they need to make a new check, and if something is following them (either an explosion or Caliban) they have
5
Once they clear engineering, they have the long “neck” that leads to the mid-ship airlock that is closest to their ship. The danger in this area isn’t necessarily that they are facing direct danger, but rather that what-ever is chasing them has no care for how long the run is. They must a Hard Resilience check or
be-come so tired and winded that they fall behind. A char-acter can declare they are falling behind to assist a winded character (thus allowing a second check) but should the character fail this second check, both char-acters fall behind, and unless both make a second check immediately, they both are overcome by their pursuer.
Finally, at the airlock, unless the characters are al-ready in vac suits, they’ll need to suit up in order to exit the ship and get to their own craft safely. This requires one of the two rolls; they can either make an Average
Coordination check, or they can make an Aver-age Pilot (Space) check, as pilots are well used
to getting into and out of flight suits quickly. Characters have two chances on this roll, failure on both results in their being caught.
In the case of Caliban, this means that the charac-ters are forced to face him and you should refer to Part 1: Caliban Ascended. In the case of the explosion of the ship, then the characters are unfortunately con-sumed in fire.
By this time, the story of either Darth Angron or your PCs should have reached its end, and while some questions may remain, we’ll discuss what happens
Force Explorer
here under the assumption that the evil didn’t win. For escaping the nightmarish ship, grant each player 15 experience. For each member of Captain Miller’s salvage crew that survived, award an additional 5 ex-perience, as it will be very tricky to keep them alive. For each member of the salvage crew that died, assign 1 conflict to any Force Sensitive PCs.
Should Hethan have survived, award another 5 ex-perience, but if she died (or worse) then assign 5 con-flict to any Force Sensitive PC’s as the loss of their friend and mentor will be a heavy blow.
A few things still exist in regards to the Force
Explor-er. For one, the planet that she orbited is unlisted, and
surrounded in mists. Many story possibilities exist here; was the planet removed from Imperial records (indicating they were here themselves), was the planet from some other place (as the mists of a nebula that didn’t exist suggest) that got pulled here when the ship exited hyperspace?
And there is always the possibility that the con-sciousness of Caliban wasn’t destroyed - it might have dissipated into the energy field of the nebular mists, ready to haunt the PCs in a future adventure!
