The Alexandrian

Star Wars: Red Peace

August 31st, 2015

Star Wars: Red Peace

It’s the end of the Clone Wars. Order 66 hasn’t happened yet. General Grievous is at-large.

During the latter days of the Clone Wars, the Council became increasingly desperate and began pushing less experienced Jedi into service. In order to mitigate the risks, a large number of less-trained Jedi would act in small groups. You form one of these Adept Task Forces. You have not been active for very long (one or two operations; or this could even be your first mission in the field).

One or more of you could easily be an older Jedi who has been assigned to the task force in order to oversee the adepts.

The Council’s restrictions on the age of would-be Jedi have also weakened over the long years of the war. And the war itself has brought to light a large number of potentials who would otherwise have never been identified. So if you want to play someone who was raised outside of the Order, there’s your window. You could also be a force-sensitive potential who got swept up by the task force on their last op.

Another option would be that four of you are playing force-sensitives outside the Order who are working with a Jedi contact. This would be highly unorthodox and you’d want to come up with some sort of back story for how/why the Jedi ended up working with a ragtag band of misfits.

SANGUINE SHRIKE

Star Wars: Red Peace - Sanguine Shrike

The Sanguine Shrike is the Adept Task Force’s vessel. It’s an ILH-KK Citadel-class light freighter (Edge of Empire, pg. 260).

(My players christened their own ship, which is where the name Sanguine Shrike comes from.)

MISSION BRIEFING

The PCs are contacted by Mace Windu via hologram.

  • While the PCs have been in the field (possibly while they were out of communication on their last mission), the Separatists have attacked Coruscant.
  • General Grievous’ flagship was captured by General Kenobi and General Skywalker.
  • General Grievous himself escaped.
  • The databanks on Grievous’ flagship have been analyzed. They’ve yielded dozens of possible leads on where Grievous might be hiding.
  • One of these leads are records of encrypted communications with a planet called Mustafar. The contents of the message couldn’t be retrieved, but any communication using such high-level encryption methods must have been of vital importance to the Separatists.
  • General Grievous must be located for the war to end. It’s possible that he’s hiding on Mustafar. If not, it’s likely that there are Separatist contacts there who may know where is.

The PCs can ask any questions they’d like.

NODE 1: MUSTAFAR

Star Wars: Red Peace - Mustfar

The PCs are arriving on Mustafar just before the events shown on the planet in Episode III: Revenge of the Sith: General Grievous has not yet ordered the Separatist leaders to Mustafar, but Darth Sidious knows that he’ll be sending them here shortly.

LANDING PLATFORM: There’s a squad of six battle droids on the landing platform. (Edge of Empire, pg. 410)

CENTRAL CONFERENCE ROOM: As seen in the film. Geonosian protocol droids (insectile in appearance with fractal-digit arms) are making preparations for the imminent arrival of the Separatist leaders.

VOLCANIC CRUCIBLE: Below the central conference room is a large, industrial chamber of blackened machinery and force screens — a volcanic crucible designed to channel the heat and lava of the volcano upon a single structure surrounded by heat-shielded droid arms and laser arrays in the center of the room.

Lying near the central crucible is a half-slagged ovoid. It has the appearance of green jade, but its surface (what remains of it) is marked with incredibly intricate, scrimshaw-like carvings that resemble computer circuitry filled with some kind of reddish-gold material. It bears the mark of a phoenix (which can be identified through a Knowledge check as the emblem of the Jedi Empire).

GEONOSIAN OVERSEER: Eorlax, a geonosian overseer, has been left to oversee the facility. He might be encountered in the central conference room giving orders to the protocol droids; or he might come out to greet the “visitors” on the landing platform. If questioned:

  • Doesn’t know what was being studied in the Volcanic Crucible. He’s just an ensign charged with base maintenance.
  • A black float-palette was being sent to Endor. He heard Captain Andromias mention it by name.
  • General Grievous was never here, but Darth Sidious and Darth Tyrannus both came here frequently.

CLUES:

  • Computer records indicate a Theta-class shuttle named Red Hawk recently departed the facility, heading for the gas giant Endor.
  • Holographic records in the Volcanic Crucible were purged, but can be partially reconstructed: They show Geonosians moving a black float palette. Commander Andromias (their leader, see Node 2) mentions the name Endor.

GM BACKGROUND: This facility was primarily constructed in order to house the Volcanic Crucible, which was used to crack open the Jedi Empire seal which had been placed upon the Red Holocron. When that work was completed, the Red Holocron was moved to the Naval Yards of Endor (see Node 2). Darth Sidious then decided to repurpose the facility as a convenient place for killing all the Separatist Leaders.

BATTLE DROIDS

Star Wars: Red Peace - Battle Droid Stats

EORLAX – GEONOSIAN OVERSEER

Star Wars: Red Peace - Geonosian

INTERLUDE: REPORTING TO THE COUNCIL

If the PCs report their findings to Master Windu, they’ll be ordered to pursue their leads to Endor. Furthermore, with significant results in their pocket, their investigation has been prioritized and additional resources are placed at their disposal: They’ll be ordered to rendezvous with Commander Racto and a squadron of clone troopers on the edge of the Endor system.

COMMANDER RACTO

Star Wars: Red Peace - Commander Racto

CLONE TROOPERS (MINIONS, x10)

Star Wars: Red Peace - Clone Troopers

Go to Node 2: Naval Yards of Endor

3 Responses to “Star Wars: Red Peace”

  1. Xercies says:

    It always surprises me how simple your nodes are. How do you get a lot of gameplay out of them?

  2. Justin Alexander says:

    Nodes are a very flexible/fractal concept. If you look at Eternal Lies, for example, each major city is functionally a node and those obviously contain a lot of content (which largely consists of nested nodes). In my Ptolus campaign, each node is typically a dungeon containing anywhere from 20-100 rooms (or more).

    In the case of this particular scenario, we’re looking at something designed to be played in one or two sessions. So the nodes are relatively compact. This particular node basically consists of three interactions:

    – The landing pad + battledroids
    – The conference room + Eorlax
    – The crucible

    There’s a number of ways in which each of those interactions could be approached (bluffing, sneaking, combat, etc.), but I’d anticipate spending at least 10-20 minutes on each of them. So I’d expect to get anywhere from 30-60 minutes from this sort of node in most systems. (In actual play it went for 105 minutes from arrival on Mustafar until they left, mostly because combat takes too long to resolve in this system.)

  3. Naakan says:

    This is very nice. I am doing some small work repurposing this to 5e using some homebrew rules for it, seeing as how it is such a widespread system and i think many would appreciate playing some star wars without learning an entire system (me included, but as a GM). This module seems easy enough to create some NPCs for, and there are some good Jedi classes out there. Would you be interested in publishing such a rework if i send it to you (after some testing of course) for other people to use, seeing as how you are the creator?

    Either way, very nice work, i might even write some stuff for the sequel parts as well as they are too nice ideas to just be floating around.

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