Session X: Chaos on Cloud City

 Opening Crawl: 

While Turk and his apparent accomplices D’Wook and CT-12-0315 remain in jail, Vero, Hal, Jeegn, Grundle and CT-16-0215 have just located Dr. Vreen, who has been assimilated by the Borg, err, I mean, he’s been infected with the “evolution droid virus,” and he is slowly turning into a machine.

Skynet, I mean ExoExOne, has become self aware and is attempting to not only take control of all the droids in Cloud City, but also the people, who will themselves become droids if they are exposed to the virus.

Once ExoExOne has control, its new cyborg slaves will convert Cloud City into a factory for the virus, so that they can infect neighboring systems and bring them under the evil droid’s control. Today Cloud City, tomorrow the galaxy!

So this one makes vanilla pretty good, but not chocolate or strawberry.

This is kind of what Vreen looked like.

Vreen, who looks as if he has been assimilated by the Borg, was questioned by the party and he revealed the following: 

He brought Exo "somewhere," but he no longer remembers where. The place is at the end of a series of corridors, and the corridors are blocked by seven locks. 

He needed the help of a gold-skinned alien and a black haired woman to get past the locks, but he cannot remember their names. 

Exo can control all the droids.

Exo made him make the evolution droid virus and test it on all the scientists, and also himself.

The party heard black hair and immediately thought of Lira. Because... see in the Star Wars universe there are only two or three women and if one of them has black hair then that must be her.

Blissex advised that maybe more than one woman on the station has black hair. Afterall it wouldn’t make sense that Lira knows how to get past the locks to get to Exo if she doesn’t know what Exo is.

The party agreed.

Vreen, searching for more answers, reached into his pocket and pulled out his datapad. In frustration he was about to slam the “infernal device” against the wall and break it, but Hal used the force to catch it in mid-air and Vero grabbed it and read it.

There was an advertisement for a security company called Bellum’s Keys and Copies, located in a part of Cloud City called Port Town. Vero said they better check it out.

Two of the three computer monitors in the lab were broken, but one was still working, showing a weird matrix-like code on it. Vero was able to slice into it and decipher it, revealing a communication between Exo and Vreen regarding the creation of the Exo Virus.

Exo was acting on instructions from Vreen to redesign and rebuild Cloud City. 

Vreen wanted to impress Lira and then get hired by the Empire and become powerful.

But Exo worked too well. It was doing exactly as Vreen said, even if that meant harming Vreen himself... in the Star Wars version of the paperclip problem.

As they were discussing further with Vreen, a small mouse droid entered through a hole in the wall and the doors locked shut. 

The droid had a small baseball-sized canister on it with a timer.

The party had the idea to shoot it, but Blissex told them not to. That it didn’t look like a bomb. Vreen confirmed that the canister was for the evolution droid virus, not explosives.

Vero, with the help of one of the others, diffused the bomb.

[Editor’s note: the game says they need to make three successful rolls in six tries to diffuse this thing. It’s a cool idea, but it just tells you what you need to roll, without really explaining the procedure. I had to adlib by saying.. Okay you’ve got off the outer shell, and now you’re going to cross these two wires... and now you’ve got to input a command into the control matrix, etc etc.. I probably didn’t end up saying it in a way that made sense. This section could have been better though.]

Blissex then asked Vreen if they could use the evolution droids to make a virus that will kill Exo. Vreen said it was possible and then the scene dissolved into a montage of two scientists doing science. I’d have to choose a very ‘80s montage music for the background with the two scientists scribbling equations on a board, titrating various liquids, pouring stuff into test tubes and then giving each other a hi-five at the end.

I found this picture before I decided Vreen looks like Locutus of Borg. So also imagine Blissex, a fat bearded guy in this picture.

Blissex held aloft the injector and asked the party who would keep it safe.

Jeegn said he would and took it and put it in his pocket.

[Note: the adventure suggests that killing Exo will instantly cure all infected with the virus. I don’t like this idea because it is too tidy and also because there’s no rush to defeat Exo quickly if you can wait a few weeks first and everyone robotized by the virus will be okay. Also I plan to use the virus for my own plot device down the road. Stay tuned.]

Just then, everything went dark!

Meanwhile in jail, at the same time that all the discussion with Vreen was going on, Turk, D’Wook and CT-12-0315 were in seperate cells in a cell block of eight cells. There were three Uggnaughts in the next three cells, and the last two were occupied by an aqualish missing an arm and a human with a deformed face.

The human kept yelling down the cellblock saying to the guard, who was sitting in a chair in front of CT-12’s cell. 

Human: Once we get out of here, you’ll be dead, you just watch yourself, we’re wanted men, I have the death sentence on 12 systems!

Guard: You wanna make it 13?

Ugnaught: Ugly human! Quiet down! We are trying to sleep! I have spoken!

A picture of these two prisoners from two years earlier.

[Editor’s note: I love throwing in fan service, in case you haven’t figured it out. This is Dr. Evazan, who with his friend Ponda Baba confronted Luke Skywalker in the Mos Eisley cantina! Of course there’s an official version of what happened to both of them, but in my game, only the movies are hard strict Canon, allowing me to do whatever I want with any character, and if I say they were in jail on Cloud City, then that’s where they were!]

Evazan (to the Ugnaught): If these cells were open I would love to make you more handsome. Ponda Baba here doesn’t like you, and I don’t like you either.

Just then the prison guard’s comlink started ringing. 

Comlink: “Officer Dameron, report to area 3 at once. The droids are going haywire! Code RED.”

Dameron: “Did you say Code RED? As in, the droids are killing people?”

Comlink: (Frantic yelling) “YES CODE RED!”

Dameron: “Roger that!” 

Dameron drew his blaster and ran down the hallway, the locked main door opened and he rushed out. It closed behind him.

Both D’Wook and CT-12 noticed that Dameron accidentally dropped a card key in his haste.

D’Wook attempted to use his head scarf to swing it over the card and slide it toward the cell. He was too far away... but it looked like CT-12 could do it.

CT-12 tried it with his bed sheet. It covered the card when he threw the sheet over it, but he could not slide the card along the floor because there wasn’t any weight to the sheet.

It was then that CT-12 .... POOPED ON THE SHEET.

[Editor’s note: the player of CT-12, also known as Golden Wheels is 11 years old. Though I applaud his creativity, never had I ever imagined I would have to ask a player to give me a poop roll. For the purposes of this game, I suggested it would come under strength... I probably would think this was hilarious if I was the same age, so I... let it slide...]

Now with a little more weight to the sheet he threw it out toward the card. Unfortunately he failed his roll so the poop flew out of the sheet and landed on the key card, covering it completely.

CT-12 threw the sheet out at the pile of poop and it stuck to the sheet and OH MY GOSH I WANT TO STOP WRITING ABOUT THIS!!! EWWWW!!!

Long story short he got the card and was able to unlock his cell. He tried to pass the card to D’Wook who instead pointed at the lock. CT-12 opened the D’Wook’s cell and then Turk’s. 

[Editor’s note: at no time did CT-12 say he was going to wash his hands... gross]

He tried to help the Ugnaughts out as well, but they seemed to have no interest in escape.

Dr. Evazan tried to convince the three to let them out of their cell too. CT-12 was about to, but Turk told him maybe since that guy is dangerous he should stay in prison.

Evazan asked Turk’s name

Turk: My name is Turk and I’m kind of a big deal!

Evazan:  Well, Turk, I have a ship. If you let me out we can work together and then I will take you anywhere in the galaxy you want to go. Far far away from here.

Turk and CT-12 ignored Evazan.

Evazan: OK TURK! When I get out of here you’ll be dead! Ponda Baba says he doesn’t like you, and I don’t like you either! Remember we have the death sentence on 12 systems!

They tried to use the card on the locked cell block door but it did not work.

Turk was looking at the ceiling which was 15 feet above, and he noticed there was a ventilation shaft.

The three escapees reasoned that if they stood against the wall, the two roughly six feet humans and the roughly three foot Ewok would be able to just barely reach the shaft. So CT-12 climbed onto Turk’s shoulders and D’Wook climbed up them both, and grabbed the grate covering the vent. 

Turk and CT-12 lost their balance and fell, but D’Wook shifted his weight about until the vent swung open and he climbed into the ceiling.

It was at this point that everything went dark.

He followed the vent to another room, which was dark.

A few moments later in the prison, the auxiliary power kicked in and the immediate area around the prison was illuminated. 

D’wook noticed some light coming from a door on the other side of the room. He jumped down from the ceiling and made his way to the door and opened it.

The light revealed to him a storage room with lots of strange, seemingly unrelated but useful things all thrown together. He saw incomprehensible things that his primitive Ewok mind couldn't contemplate. 

There were models of ships, weird clothes, including the hard bulky ones that Turk used to wear, but his eye was fixated on a stabby stabby stick. It had three stabby bits and looked like it would fit nicely in your hands. It was held by a motionless man who has a squid for a head.

D’Wook asked if the man with the squid head was dead. He had no idea, but decided to grab the stick anyway. The man fell over, stuck in the same threatening pose.

And with that, D'Wook had an in-story version for his trident weapon that AI art gave to him. The helmet is the droid he destroyed when he arrived on the scene.. Now to just get him a big skull.

He also searched the room for a trinket to put in his head scarf. He found a small shiny button that pinned on nicely, but he didn’t quite know its true function.

Leaving the storage room he came to a hallway. To the right was the locked jail door and straight ahead was another room. It had a desk with lots of buttons on it. 

D’Wook, who can’t read, decided he’d go in there and start pushing buttons.

The first button turned on the jailbreak alarm. He didn’t like the annoying sound so he turned it off.

The second button turned on a sprinkler system in Dr. Evazan and Ponda Baba’s cells.

Ponda Baba let out a roar

Evazan: “He doesn’t like this, and I don’t like this either. You just watch yourself. We have the death sentence in 12 systems!”

D’Wook left the sprinkler on and pushed the third switch. Turk could hear the door buzzing and pushed it open. He came to the hallway. To the right was D’Wook, in the prison control room, per the label on the door.

Across the hall was the other door to the storage room, labeled “Cloud City Museum storage.”

Turk and CT-12 entered the room and were drawn to the display titled “Evolution of Clone Trooper Armor”

Turk saw a suit of 1st and 2nd generation clone armor, and recalled from his training that these were superior because they had a HUD and included night vision. 

How incredibly convenient!

The regular stormtrooper helmet in service today had motion detection, but night vision was sacrified for this. 

He and CT-12 put on the two suits of armor, grabbed the guns, and CT-12 found a lightsaber that he turned on. It was purple, but horribly underpowered such that the blade was only about a centimeter from the hilt.

 and made their way down the dark corridor, hugging the walls to sidestep some wing guards who were stumbling around in the dark, making their way toward the prison (because why would cops need flashlights?).

Once they were far enough away, they used the comlinks in their helmets to contact the rest of the party. D’Wook could also hear the whole conversation, his shawl pin being an archaic type of comlink.

Vero relayed that they were about to go to Bellum’s shop in Port Town. The lab computer was still operational because the lab’s auxiliary power had kicked in. Vero asked where they were. Turk said he had just busted out of prison.

Vero looked into the map of the city and found that there were four prison areas. 

Turk explained they were near a storage room.

Vero found that all of the prisons had storage rooms nearby.

CT-12 said it was near the Cloud City Museum

Vero found that none of the prisons were near the museum.

Turk said it was museum storage. Vero then could pinpoint the exact prison and relayed the instructions to Turk.

The two groups agreed to converge on Bellum’s shop and question the woman about her role in all this.

They approached the relevant sector from opposite sides of the corridor. Turk, D’wook and CT-12 could all see two maintenance droids loading a large basketball-sized canister into a ventilation shaft. Vero, Hal, Grundle, Jeegn, CT-16, Blissex, and Vreen could see that there were two security droids behind them keeping watch. 

Additionally there was a cart full of about 20 identical canisters.

Turk and CT-12 took aim at the two robots loading the canister and fired, as D’Wook ran and launched himself at them.

The guns did not fire, because they were museum pieces.

CT-12 drew his lightsaber, activated it, and threw it at the droids.

Hearing the commotion the security droids fired back at Turk and CT-12.

It was then that the “lab team” began firing at the security droids. 

Shots were fired back and forth and ultimately the good guys won. Turk and CT-12 tried to see if they could rip off the guns from the droids and use them in future encounters, but they were built into the droids. Instead Turk figured he could remove the power cells and put them in the museum guns and they would work just fine.

Grundle decided to look into the shaft to see if he could get the virus canister out, but the vent dropped down hundreds of feet. He started thinking of ways they could safely lower themselves down there to retrieve it.

Jeegn explained that maybe that wasn’t a good idea. Afterall, all of the canisters had the same timer. The ones in the cart read 112 minutes. 

This was also likely not the only place that the droids were putting virus canisters. There were probably hundreds of droids all over the city doing this, so recovering one canister would be doing nothing at all to stop Exo’s evil plan.

Vreen confirmed this, saying that the only chance they had at stopping exo now would be to deactivate it, and then the order to release the contents of the canisters would never go out.

They tinkered some more with one of the droids, who said “Oh, yes, master. It should be no problem at all. Put the canisters in the air shafts and return for more" 

Suddenly the Droid's body was covered with ion bolts, a cloud of smoke billowed out of its neck joint, and it fell silent. 

Hal picked up the purple lightsaber and had a brief vision.

There was a lot of lightning and an old decrepit man shouting “UNLIMITED POWERRRRRRRRRR”

He put the saber on his belt clip.

The group carried on to Bellum’s shop, which looked as if it had been ransacked. It was illuminated by four glow rods.

The shop appeared to be empty, but Hal was able to determine that someone was hiding behind a table turned on its side. D’Wook took out his trident and leapt over the table to find a woman hiding behind it. She stood up frightened and the rest of the group told her not to be alarmed because they came in peace.

They explained the situation to her.

Vreen seemed to recognize her but did not quite understand who she was. She did not recognize him as a person, instead thinking he was a malfunctioning droid. When they explained he was Vreen, she looked horrified.

She confirmed that she had indeed made seven keys for Vreen, the first led to a maintenance corridor near K’cri’s Cafe, but she had no idea where the others went.

She did not have any spare keys, but she said she had the plans and serial numbers for the keys in a “cold box.”

To use the cold box you have to first type the command "CATALOG" and then "RUN SERIALNOS"

[note: Ah, “futuristic tech” as imagined in the pre-internet era. A cold box was supposedly a data storage unit connected to a computer terminal and not to any kind of network. Essentially it is a briefcase that contains a computer monitor and keyboard. The fact that now, this would be put on a usb flash drive or even a tinier SD card makes this silly... but whatever, this is the ‘80s and we can imagine ships that go faster than light speed, but can’t imagine tiny storage devices and have little idea how computer networking actually works.]

Blissex understood and said that with the codes they could still use the locks without keys, provided (they rolled high enough)... er, they could um... enter the code somehow into the lock’s programming transmografyer matrix... uh.. And uh.. Tacheon particles tech tech blah blah...

But the cold box was missing, Bellum said. Anyway, she pointed at a dustless square on the shelf where the cold box once was.

The party examined it to find little gold flakes littered about. One of them said it must have been Helm.

"Helm Iskmker!" Bellum shouted. "Why that swindling, lazy, useless idiot. Come on! You help me get my cold box back and I'll give you those serial numbers for free. I know where his ship is docked ..." 

Her tirade was however cut short as a blaster bolt slammed into her face, killing her instantly.

The party turned to see another droid similar to the one that attacked them when they landed on cloud city.

I don't’ remember if they defeated it or if it got away. 

With Bellum dead, CT-12 decided he would look for some kind of cutting tool from the shop. He found a small laser tool used to cut keys.

Either way, they now knew that they needed to look for information on Helm and where his ship was docked.

They decided to go to traffic control for answers, but along the way they heard some noise. It was the fuzzball alien who had stumbled over a discarded crate.

They asked him where they could find Helm’s ship.

"W ... w ... what would you have me do? Betway my onwy fwend? Do you take me fow some sowt of w. .. w...w...wuffian?" 

They told him that they were deputized by the Cloud City Police and they wanted only to clear his name, so it was important that they go speak with him now.

“Is Hewm in twouble?” he asked.

With a good con roll, they said that no, he’s not in trouble, they just wanted to ask him some questions and then they both could be on their way.

The furry alien took them to the docking bay where Helm had parked his ship, the erratic orbit.

As the doors opened, they were temporarily blinded by the rose-colored light of Bespin’s blazing sunrise pouring through the hangar bay door.

After getting used to the light, They saw Helm handing a briefcase to Lira, and several armed mercs at her side, standing in front of a light freighter about 100 meters away.

The bad guys all turned and stared at the party of 11 individuals appearing in the doorway.

[Editors note: our group is large. There are 8 players! EIGHT! Sneaking around with eight is a little far fetched, but breaking them up into two separate groups all the time is also not a great solution because it slows things down.] 

Lira whispered something and half the mercs immediately dropped and began firing at the group. Lira retreated to a catwalk in the distance and the other half of mercs fell back to protect her. Helm rushed into his ship

The good guys began firing at the mercs nearby, making short work of them. Hal rushed to the ship and held out his hand, as the engines began firing up.

Vero, Turk and D’Wook made for the catwalk, firing at more mercs and killing them. A few of the mercs stepped onto the catwalk as Lira continued along the curve of the city, disappearing from view.

Hal’s grip on the ship using the force was tight. Unfortunately, his grip on the ground was not, and as the ship was ascending, it began to pick up Hal.

Hal loosened his grip and the ship turned on its afterburners, zooming off into the morning sky.

Ont the catwalk, a large gust of wind caused the two remaining mercs to lose their footing, they fell over the railing to their deaths. Vero, Turk and D’Wook caught the railing with their hands, as did Lira.

Lira connected a wire from the box into her head, as the good guys slowly made their way closer to her.

Another gust of wind blew everyone almost over the edge, but they all grabbed the railing.

Lira edged away even further, still connected to the box, blown over the edge. She grabbed the railing and held on for dear life.

The wind blew the box out of her hand and it fell into the depths below. 

The party made their way to her. D’Wook pointed his trident at her fingers. Hoping to get the chance to poke the pointy stabby bits into her digit flesh.

Lira: "I've entered the serial numbers of Vreen's card keys into my biocomputer implants."

The party realized that she wasn’t simply wearing a strange looking hat. She now had a computer connected to her head, kind of like Lobot, but tucked neatly under her weirdly shaped hairstyle.

[Edit: Remember, from the weird concept drawing for Leia.. as shown in the writeup for session 9. Ah, nevermind, I’ll just post it again here.]

That's a weird looking computer implant.

Lira: "I suggest we work together. You need my memory and I need your muscle. What do you say?" 

Vero and D’Wook reluctantly agreed, pulling her up onto the catwalk.

She turned up her nose and barked at D’Wook to unhand her with his dirty paws.

Both D’Wook and Vero didn’t like her attitude and immediately leg swept her.

Lira: “I mean... lead the way... friends.”

Together they made their way off the catwalk to the rest of the party. And then to the maintenance corridor near the K’cri Cafe.

Lira connected her head with a wire to the locking device and the door opened.

[Editor’s note: The module as written made it such that the group would need to make three separate rolls to open the door and the security code is only a means to identify the correct door. They need to pick the lock with a security roll, after which Exo will relock it and then they need to roll computer programming and then a more difficult lock picking roll. Vero was the only one with skills to do any of this, so rather than make this next whole session all about Vero’s player rolling again and again and again with everyone sitting around... I figured, we have Lira and her computer head here. Why can’t she just open the door?]

They went through the door into a plus shaped maintenance access corridor with pipes and wires and all this other stuff on the walls. Straight ahead was a door, and there were other doors to down the hall to the left and right. They decided to go left first and told Lira to open the door. It didn’t work. So they decided to go straight from the door they entered. Lira opened the door.

The next room was T-shaped, with another door far far down the hall straight ahead, in the section that branched off to the right there were lots of flashes of blue light illuminating the darkness.

The party first decided to ignore the blue flashes on the right and went straight ahead. Lira tried to open the door but could not.

So they decided to try the branch to the right. As they got closer and closer to the blue lights, D’Wook, who was on point, heard up ahead Jeegn whispering... “Hey hey! They’re here!” The voice had somewhat of an odd robotic quality to it.

He looked back to see that Jeegn was in fact sneaking along with the rest of the party ahead. With his night vision helmet, Turk looked ahead and saw that there were two Jeegns and two Grundles building a metal barricade.

Vero decided to stay back at the rear so she could keep an eye on Lira, Blissex and Vreen.

Turk took a shot at one of the Jeegns, killing him instantly. The other Jeegn climbed the barricade. A Grundle fired at the real Jeegn, missing badly, while the other Grundle jumped up and over the barricade.

The party took a good look at these guys and realized they had been robotized like Vreen... and they didn’t like it.

The real Grundle shot the Jeegn on top of the barricade, and he fell, impaled on one of the jagged metal parts at the base of the barrier.

The Grundle on the other side of the barrier began lobbing grenades over it, while the Grundle on this side took another shot at Jeegn, hitting is sweet rockstar belt buckle and causing it to ricochet harmlessly onto the wall.

Turk dispatched the Grundle on this side of the wall, and Hal dashed forward to the barricade lightsabers drawn, and began cutting a hole. CT-12 also ran forward and tried to cut a hole using his laser keycutter. He realized it would take him about 30 minutes to be able to cut a hole that he could get his hand through.

He drew his weapon and decided to try to shoot at the barrier at point blank range. [He rolled a total of 3.. On five dice] The laser blast ricocheted off the barrier and into the space between his neck and armor plate and he began to bleed out.

The real Grundle picked up a grenade and lobbed it back over the barricade. It exploded... neutralizing the threat. Hal had successfully cut the hole through the barricade.

With his last breaths one of the robotized Grundles said something about curing himself and retaking his life, and being sad at how things had turned out for him after he crossed paths with Vreen and Exo.

Vero rushed forward and treated CT-12 so he wouldn’t die.

Anyway, they continued onward to a door and Lira unlocked it.

The floor of the next room was really shiny, reflecting the light of their glow rods back at them. Someone tossed a glow rod into the room and it made a splash. Then bolts of electricity jumped onto the rod and broke its bulb.

The ground was about an inch deep of water, and high-voltage wires were dangling into the water, meaning anyone who stepped into it would be shocked.

Hal used the force and levitated everyone at the same time over to the other side. Lira opened the door and they all stepped into the next room.

Hal then climbed on the walls, being careful not to step into the water. He stepped through the door to join the others.

[Editor’s note: With all the individual climbing rolls that would have been necessary to do this the old fashioned way, we would have been stuck in this room for possibly 45 minutes of realtime. Moving 10 people through this narrow corridor simultaneously is a bit of a stretch, but I was happy with the results.]

The next room was another plus shaped room. Again they chose to check the door to the left first. Lira tried to open the door but she couldn’t. The loud whirring of a large cargo droid came from the corridor behind them turning around, they saw that it took up the entire space of the corridor and was accelerating towards them. 

Lira: It won’t open! Help!

Vero sprung into action, and together she and Lira figured out what was wrong with the lock as the cargo droid careened down the hallway towards them. Hal used the force to try to hold the droid in place.

The door opened and they all jumped into... a turbolift. They held the doors open and Hal dived inside and they quickly pushed the button.

The turbolift car zoomed downward and the cargo droid crashed into the doors an instant later.

Blissex noted that they were moving entirely too fast. Someone slammed the emergency stop button but it didn’t work.

A monitor in the turbolift flashed red. Collision imminent! Emergency stop.

Vero hotwired the elevator’s controls to cause it to stop.

They opened the escape hatch above and saw it would be a 30 minute climb to get to the nearest level up.

They opened the escape hatch below and saw it was a 10-foot drop to the next level down.

Vero and Turk used a rope to dangle downard towards the door, which they opened with brute strength. They tied the wire to a pipe on the wall and someone in the elevator tied it to the hand railing.

The monitor inside the elevator indicated that another car was approaching at full speed and a collision was imminent.

Grundle started strategizing given their predicament. 

[Nothing against Grundle’s player, but this seems to happen a lot. When I present a situation that requires a split-second decision, he’ll call for a debate and discuss strategy with the others. I understand he is doing it outside of the game, but I, somewhat cruelly treat it as in-game conversation. Maybe I should give him more slack.... Naaah!]

CT-12 suggested going up on top of the elevator and messing with the cables.

Jeegn explained that this elevator used repulsorlift technology and that wouldn’t work.

While they were talking, CT-16, Hal, Vreen, Lira and Blissex slid down the rope and through the doors.

Vero shouted up to the elevator telling them to hurry up.

Grundle came to his senses and slid down the rope along with Jeegn.

CT-12 stumbled and would have fallen to his death if Turk and Vero hadn’t caught his arms. They were losing their grip and shouted that they needed someone to hold the doors open, So two of the others held the doors, they pulled up CT-12 and they all jumped through as the second elevator crashed into the first, both zooming past the doors, which were now closing. They had just escaped death.

[Editor’s note: there’s no other car coming. But they were sitting around debating their next course of action inside the elevator. No! Get going!]

They had a look around them. They were in the carbon freeze chamber from the Empire Strikes Back!

Wow! 

Making their way across the room, Vreen bumped into Blissex and they both fell into the chamber.

Lira called out to her father out of concern.

Blissex shouted: "We're trapped in a carbon-freeze chamber! You've got to get us out before ..." 

Unknown voice: "I activate the unit."

The party turned to see a security droid making its way to the console to turn on the carbon freezer. 

Those with guns fired at it, while it edged closer and closer and activated it.

Lira: Father, Grab my hand!

Blissex: I cannot reach!

The security droid blew up after taking too much damage. Grundle and Jeegn rushed over to the console to try to deactivate it.

Grundle couldn’t easily read the console because it was in the language of the Ugnaughts. He did his best to try to read it, eventually figuring out which button on the touch screen he needed to push.

The touch screen did not work with Ithorian skin, so Jeegn touched it and it stopped.

Vero and Lira pulled Blissex and Vreen out of the chamber and they continued onward to ...

A catwalk that led to a wind tunnel and a large winged structure.

[This is the place where Luke fought Vader and lost his hand!!! WOWee!!!!]

There were two droids that were spreading lubricant on the catwalk and.. Blam blam, they were dead and...

The party walked across being careful to move slowly so they wouldn’t slip.

[Editor’s note: Again, this would have taken everyone an annoyingly long amount of time to make their way along the catwalk and then they would be 2D off because their feet would be slippery. We all agreed that this is stupid way to lead into the final battle, so we skipped it.]

Inside the winged structure was the computer core.

Blissex looked at his watch and said they had only a few minutes before the canisters would release the virus, so they needed to act fast. He pointed at two service skiffs and said one would need to take the anti-virus to kill Exo, who was dangling from the roof high above the computer core. 

Meh, close enough.

Exo’s tentacles were moving around touching various computer terminals and generally looking very robotic.

Blissex further explained that they would need to deactivate the computer core so that Exo would be unable to upload himself into it as he is dying.

Lira protested that shutting off the computer core would mean that Cloud City would not be able to maintain its altitude and would sink into the depths of Bespin.

Blissex explained it was a risk, but they could shut off the core, inject the virus, wait for Exo to expire, and then turn the core on again.

At that moment Vreen asked Jeegn to give him the injector. Jeegn took it out and Vreen lunged at him, trying to pry the injector from his hands.

Vreen: “Exo is my master now. I’m sorry for all this, but I am being forced to try to stop you.”

One of the party decided to let Vreen taste hot laser, and that was that.

The two skiffs could hold three people each. One to drive, one to shoot at things, and one to do other important activities.

[Editor’s note: In retrospect I probably should have had three skiffs and three things to do, because six of the party members got on the skiffs and the other two members hung out on the ground. They almost had nothing to do.]

Exo with some HAL 9000-esque banter questioned the party as to why they were trying to stop him when he could improve their lives, help them to live forever etc etc...

The skiffs took off, one headed for exo and the other for a computer terminal. Exo launched tentacles at both skiffs, forcing the drivers to take evasive action. Turk on the ground shot upward at Exo. Other party members on the skiffs shot at the tentacles and the drivers zoomed about dodging tentacles and trying desperately to get to their destinations.

Blissex called up through the comlink... “Quickly, we have less than a minute left.”

Vero made it to one of the computer terminals and began a main core shutdown. Suddenly everyone’s stomachs left their bodies as the city began falling downward at high speed.

Two tentacles were headed toward the other skiff, so Hal, with lightsaber drawn, did a backflip and cut the hand off of one of the tentacles, landed on the tentacle and jumped off of it toward the wall, bounced off the wall toward Exo, dug his lightsaber into the other tentacle, slid down the side of the robot, flipped back against the wall, and bounced downward toward the skiff.

Another two tentacles were headed towards the skiff, causing it to move far away from exo. So Jeegn got a running start and jumped towards the evil droid, reaching out with the injector. He made contact with Exo’s metallic skin just as the tentacle caught his legs. He pushed the button and the poison was now inside it. Destroying it from the inside.

Jeegn began to fall but the skiff caught him.

[Editor’s note: I have to embellish a bit of what happened here, because the way I ran the battle it may have been a bit anticlimactic. But hey, retcons are allowed... and Jeegn, clad in leather pants doing an epic stage dive onto an evil octuple-tentacled droid bent on taking over the galaxy sounds a lot better than driving a glorified bicycle beside a goofy metal octopus and simply touching it with the mcguffin.]

It took a while but Exo began to dissolve and Blissex called up to Vero to turn the core back on.

Just then a little paperclip guy appeared on the screen. 

“It seems like you’re trying to turn on the computer core. Can I help with that?”

Would you like help?

[Just kidding. Though that would have been funny.]

What really happened was that the computer terminal said that a restart had to be performed at station B. 

The skiff drove to the next station and Vero quickly turned the core back on. The city slowly began to rise. 

Blissex shouted out in triumph, explaining that the canisters surrounding the place read a timer of “00:00:03.” They had defeated Exo just in time!

The two skiffs traveled downward to Turk and the others below. But at that moment Lira grabbed ahold of her father and held her blaster at his neck.

Lira: Now... this is what’s going to happen. Listen up or the old man gets it.

D’Wook said through CT-12 that Lira had tried to save her father in the carbon freezing chamber. She wouldn’t kill her father now.

Lira: Fool! I only needed him to figure out how to stop Exo. Now that this is done, I have no further use for him.

Blissex: She means it. I have no doubt. But don’t hurt her.... PLEASE.

Just then the familiar sounds of jackboots grew louder and louder and everyone was again surrounded by wing guards.

Lando Calrissian stepped forward and took the gun out of Lira’s hands.

Lando: “Aha, Lira Wolf, first lady of the Tangerine sector... We were worried about you. You see, we intercepted a garbled transmission sent by you sometime earlier today. I’m afraid it never got past the system’s ion storm interference. The strange thing was, in its garbled form, you seemed to be suggesting that you were on some sort of 'rogue' mission outside of Imperial authority. Since I know you would never involve yourself in matters such as this without Imperial permission, I have little doubt that it was all a mistake." 

The charismatic administrator brough himself face to face with the flustered Lira, and smiled at her coyly.

Lira: "Perhaps it would be best if this matter were kept strictly between the two of us." 

Lando had two guards escort Lira out of the room and then asked other guards to escort the rebels to their ship.

He winked at Vero, saying “"Always keep the deck stacked in your favor, my friends. And never fold too soon," in his old man voice.

Since she already knew he was pretending to be the old man earlier, she was not at all surprised.

Lando joined the escorts and they discussed what had gone down with exo.

They arrived at the Silverlight and found that it was ransacked and almost everything valuable was stripped out of it, including several components to the hyperdrive.

The party asked if they could get repairs, but Lando said they had to leave right now, otherwise he would need to arrest them all again. 

You see, he wasn’t about to tell the people of cloud city that they could have all been wiped out by a droid. There would be mass panic, people fleeing the city with their ice cream machines. So unfortunately they were all still wanted for murder... but he would let them go if they left right now.

Eventually people would forget what happened and he would expunge their records and they would be allowed back sooner or later.

They took off and began the journey back to Hoth at sub-light speed, knowing it might take several weeks.

[Editor’s note: Han Solo was able to get from Hoth to Bespin with no hyperdrive. They are therefore very clearly in the same system. As to how fast one could get from one to the other, that’s a bit fuzzier, because we aren’t sure in The Empire Strikes Back as to how long Luke is doing training, how long the Falcon is on the run from the Imperials, and how long Han, Leia and Chewie spent on Bespin before Luke arrives. It could be anywhere between two weeks and several months.  

That said, there’s a huge debate online suggesting this is a major plot hole because the official distance between Hoth and Bespin is at the very least more than 1,000 light years. This would mean that the Falcon has a reserve hyperdrive and... well, with a reserve hyperdrive the whole problem with the hyperdrive not working is not a problem. 

So.. the only answer is that they MUST be in the same system. It’s not inconceivable. If Hoth is located where Earth or Mars is, and Bespin is Jupiter or Saturn, there’s an asteroid belt on the way... (that is, if this system is like Earth.)

About two days into their trip, Hal received a voice in his head.

“Chosen ones! Help us! Or all will be lost! Our kingdom will fall! Thousands will die!”

Hal began muttering to himself... 

Hal: What should I do?

Voice: “Change the coordinates and switch on the hyperdrive.”

Turk stopped the ship because up ahead was the infamous Hoth asteroid field. He knew he would likely not be able to safely traverse it.

Hal began frantically typing something into the hyperdrive and he turned it on.

Sparks began flying out of the hyperdrive and he instinctively reached for the hydro spanner, thinking he could fix the problem if he just adjusted the 2nd bolt on the left. Hal got shocked badly and was knocked out.

In the cockpit, Turk and Vero braced for impact as the ship zoomed forward towards the asteroids.

The hyperdrive made a grinding, popping noise. For a split second nothing changed; the ship continued to hurl through realspace as dozens of asteroids pulled steadily closer. Then, all at once, reality shifted. 

There was a different feel to this particular jump. As the ship moved faster and faster, the streaks of color began to break up and drift away. Weird holes appeared in the hyperlane corridor, holes that exit into pinwheels of light or maws of absolute darkness. This was NOT what hyperspace normally looks like.

Suddenly everything went back to normal ... sort of.

The ship was floating towards a small planet, and a large white star could be seen in the distance. Sensors showed there was also a “class 7 pulsar” nearby, behind the star and Magnetic readings were off the charts. 

Turk recalled from imperial training that class 7 pulsars emit EMP making most technology inoperable. 

Suddenly all instruments turned off. 

The ship was completely inoperable. NOTHING electrical worked and a crash landing was again imminent. 

Turk knew that he could slow the descent with the ship’s mechanical atmospheric rudders, but without the electrical parts of the ship specifically controlling them, it would require that they are operated manually. There were exactly 8 of them scattered on the perimeter of the ship, and impact would happen in likely 50 seconds.

Turk did his best to explain to everyone that they needed to deploy the rudders. He told them what they were looking for, explained how to work it and off they went.

7 of 8 managed to understand, locate the rudder, and deploy it. The ship landed somewhat gently in the middle of a grassy field.

Wait a minute... haven't I seen that somewhre?

They looked out the window to see an old castle built of stone. The draw bridge came down and they could see knights on horses exit the castle and head down the road toward the ship.

Turk manually opened the entryway, grabbed his blaster and stepped out of the ship. He tried to shoot into the sky, but as he suspected his blaster did not work.

Vero, inside the ship attempted to shoot her blaster. Nothing happened.

The knights arrived at the ship, surrounding the entryway.

Wait a second. What's going on here?

“Identify yourself!” the head knight barked, as some of the others exited the ship.

Turk: “Well, I’m Turk and I’m kind of a big deal.”

Knight: “Are you with the Republic or the Separatists?”

Jeegn: “Sad news, friend, there is no more Republic.”

Knight: “Nonsense.”

Hal stepped forward from inside the ship.

Hal: “I’m afraid it’s true... Sir...”

The knights, at the sight of Hal and the lightsabers dangling from his belt all dismounted and removed their helmets, revealing that they were all Fett clones of a somewhat advanced age.

Knight: “Welcome to Tir Asleen, General! We are at your service!”