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The Jedi Temple on Lothal appears in “Path of the Jedi”,  episode 8 of Star Wars: Rebels.

ENTERING THE TEMPLE: When two Jedi synchronize their focus to create a Force harmony, the large central spire corkscrews up to reveal an entrance to the temple. One of these entrances is shown on Star Wars: Rebels, leading to an area where padawans are taken for the Test of the Cave. In reality, there are multiple rotations available depending on the harmony you create.

STANDING ORDER 429: Commander Racto will call in additional clone trooper reinforcements from the Lothal garrison. But, per standing order 429, no clone trooper can directly enter property owned by the Jedi Order. Commander Racto and his men will remain stationed outside of the Temple.

(Technically, this is actually order 42.9 — the ninth section of Order 42. But the Army of the Republic tends to just elide over the decimals. The entirety of Order 42 regulates the relationship between the Army and the Jedi Order.)

MADAME MEREEL: Madame Mereel, the caretaker of the temple, will greet the PCs. Unfortunately, Mereel has been taken over by mind control bugs: At some point, they’ll crawl out of her clothes and over her skin, penetrating into her eyes and nose and mouth. And then she’ll attack.

Before that happens, however, she’ll offer to take them some place where they can relax and enjoy some refreshments in the “quiet peace” of the temple. (In reality, she’ll be leading them to the Cyst.) On the way there, she’ll try to learn everything she can about what brought the PCs to the temple, feign her concern about Separatist interest in the temple, and offer whatever assistance she can.

The PCs will probably figure out that something is wrong as they pass into the Cyst, and that’s also a good place for Mereel to reveal herself and ambush them with the assistance of two IG-100 droids. (If they can come up with some clever way to free her from the bugs, great. Otherwise, it’ll be a fight to the death with a Fallen Master.)

MADAME MEREEL

IG-100 DROIDS (x2)

DARK SIDE CYST

Like many Jedi Temples, the temple on Lothal has been built around a cyst of the dark side (with the temple actually serving to contain the corrosive influence of the cyst itself). Another example of a Dark Side cyst is the cave on Dagobah where Yoda tests Luke in Empire Strikes Back. Confronting the visions created by these cysts is actually part of the tests a Jedi apprentice must face before becoming a Jedi Master (as seen in Tartovsky’s animated Clone Wars mini-series).

The Red Holocron is being kept at the Heart of the Cyst. To get there, the PCs will need to navigate the cyst. This will take the form of navigating through four visions:

• Fear
• Anger
• Hate
• Suffering

These visions may take the form of dreams, premonitions, or even action sequences (like Luke dueling with Vader). However, each vision should be customized to the PCs. You can do this by either:

(A) Asking one of the players what the greatest Fear of their character is; then the next player what makes them most Angry in the universe; and so forth. (Crafting each vision based on their answer, so that the group collectively confronts the emotional baggage of the others.)

(B) Asking ALL of the players what their greatest Fear is and then crafting a vision which incorporates all of them. Including material that foreshadows the future events of your campaign would also be effective. (See Random GM Tips – Foreshadowing in RPGs for tips on doing this effectively.)

HEART OF THE CYST

When the PCs reach the Heart of the Cyst, they’ll find the Red Holocron: Force Shades extend from the walls of the inner cyst, caressing the holocron in a shadowy dance. (The cyst is being used to reconstitute and energize the Red Holocron.)

When the PCs access the Red Holocron, the stored personality of Darth Sidious will manifest itself. With Machiavellian glee it will answer their questions and then, at a dramatically appropriate moment, the projection of Darth Sidious will reveal itself to be Emperor Palpatine.

MOMENT OF REVELATION: In that moment of revelation, there is a vergence in the Force. The actual Emperor Palpatine is simultaneously declaring the execution of Order 66. Force sensitive characters can immediately roll any non-committed Force dice they possess.

1 Force Point: They’ll see the recorded projection of Darth Sidious say the words, “Execute Order 66.” (But they will have no idea what that means.)

2 Force Points: They recognize that “Order 66” was the reflection of some larger and darker truth. The disturbance of the Force wrought by Jedi being slaughtered is felt.

4 Force Points: They will also have a vision of Commander Racto receiving the Order and preparing to murder them.

Characters with the Foresee power have their Force point results count double.

FINALE: ORDER 66

Commander Racto and his clone troopers are, in fact, preparing to ambush and slaughter the PCs when they leave the temple. The PCs will either need to fight their way through their erstwhile allies or find a way to sneak out.

Either way, they’ll be escaping into a galaxy that is actively hunting and seeking to destroy them. (The next major incident they experience will probably be receiving the emergency signal from the Jedi Temple, followed shortly thereafter by General Kenobi’s warning that the emergency signal is a fake and that the Jedi should stay away from the temple.)

Go to the Sequels

Go to Part 1

NODE 2: NAVAL YARDS OF ENDOR

There is a previously unknown covert naval yard for the Separatist Army built in orbit around Endor’s forest moon. (A half-constructed Trade Federation battleship can be seen.)

In addition to the primary naval yards, there is a huge construction facility of impossibly gargantuan proportions being built. Based on its scale, if it were to be completed, it could turn out entire fleets of Separatist Army flagships in mere days.

Fortunately, scans indicate that the entire facility is powered down except for a small landing platform. It looks like the naval yards are in the process of being mothballed.

GM BACKGROUND: This is, obviously, the same facility which will be used to construct the second Death Star in Return of the Jedi. The facility is being mothballed because Darth Sidious’ plans are in flux. The Red Holocron was brought here so that the Death Star plans could be loaded into it, preserving those plans along with the lore of the Sith. The Holocron was then sent to the Jedi Temple on Lothal (see Node 3).

LANDING PLATFORM: The landing platform consists of a small docking bay, several warehouse-size rooms laid out in a grid of corridors, and (at the top of a lift) the local control tower for the docking bay. (Another lift from this control tower heads up into the mothballed facility, although there’s not much of interest up there.)

GEONOSIAN SKELETON CREW: A small skeleton crew of Geonosians has been left to finish overseeing the shutdown of the facility.

• Commander Andromias (a Geonosian Lieutenant General)
• 8 Geonosians
• 2 droidekas, 8 battledroids

COMMANDER ANDROMIAS

GEONOSIANS (x8)

(use this stat block as a minion, WT = 4)

DROIDEKA (x2)

BATTLE DROIDS (x8)

EWOK SLAVES: There are also twelve Ewok slaves on the station, taken from the forest moon below. They wear slave shock collars (controlled by Andromias) and are being forced to assist in off-loading cargo.

CLUES:

• Computer records indicate that encrypted schematic plans were transferred to a device featuring unrecognizable data encoding. The transfer was marked with a digital routing code labeled ER-LOTHAL-8756.
• Questioning the Ewoks: They know that a damaged astromech droid was removed from the Red Hawk just before its departure. Astrogation or Computer checks with the astromech’s databanks will reveal the lightspeed calculations to Lothal that the astromech was making when its power converter burned out.
• Questioning Andromias: A member of the Techno Union named Chal Bakkal took possession of an artifact from the Sith Empire. Bakkal was taking it to the Jedi Temple on Lothal. (Andromias suspects it may have been a super-weapon which will help the Separatists win the war.)

ESCAPE FROM ENDOR

Once the PCs have identified their next destination as Lothal, the Rising Storm (a Subjugator-class warship) exits hyperspace nearby. When their ship (presumably) fails to provide the proper Separatist authorization codes, the Rising Storm will begin launching fighters. If the PCs don’t dawdle, they should be able to easily outrun the Rising Storm, but there will be three waves of droid fighters that could potentially intercept them: 2 scouts, then 4, then 4 more (with a new wave arriving every 3 rounds).

The PCs need 12 rounds to escape the system, although a successful Astrogation check will reduce the time required by 1 round per Advantage.

RISING STORM

DROID FIGHTERS

DROID PILOTS

Go to Node 3: Jedi Temple of Lothal

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

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 it is.

The PCs can ask any questions they’d like.

NODE 1: MUSTAFAR

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

EORLAX – GEONOSIAN OVERSEER

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

CLONE TROOPERS (MINIONS, x10)

Go to Node 2: Naval Yards of Endor

As I’ve done previously for Into the Violet Vale (for Numenera) and Eschatology Code (for The Strange), I’m offering up the prep notes I made for Mastodon — an introductory scenario for The Strange designed by Bruce Cordell — before running it at Gen Con 2015.

Unlike those previous adventures, I didn’t put together a GM cheat sheet for the adventure. But I did put together a bunch of other cool tools that I hope you’ll find useful.

MASTODON – NOTICE OF TERMINATION

(click for PDF)

This Notice of Termination is designed to be given to your players as they approach the table. (Or you could e-mail it to them as a pitch for the scenario.) It’s designed to serve as an initial briefing for the background of the scenario.

CHARACTER BACKGROUNDS

(click for PDF)

The adventure includes pregenerated characters. The PC cheat sheets I’ve prepared are designed to eliminate book look-ups for the abilities that aren’t fully described on the character sheets. (I’ve found that this usually saves about 20-30 minutes of playing time, so their use greatly improves pacing if you’re using Mastodon as a one-shot for introducing people to the game.)

These cheat sheets, however, also include additional briefing material regarding PROJECT MASTODON and a “flashback memory” specific to each character that reveals a slice of what happened 10 years ago. (Note that I’ve specifically altered the background of the adventure to include the “amnesia” the PCs are suffering from.)

If you’re not using the pregenerated characters, it should still be relatively easy to adapt these flashbacks to whatever characters the players are running. They serve three functions:

First, in combination with the Notice of Termination, they eliminate the need for the GM to do a verbal exposition dump at the beginning of the session. Instead, you can frame hard to the PCs having drinks in the hotel bar before going up to their meeting with Alessandra Torres.

Second, they introduce an element of mystery around their experiences on Ruk. I found that this provided an additional driver for the scenario and also delivered a bigger pay-off for the players when they finally reach Ruk.

Third, by giving each PC a different clue/memory about their experiences 10 years ago, it gives them a topic of meaningful conversation for that first meeting in the hotel bar. This allows that conversation to continue at greater length, which means it also works better at introducing and establishing the characters. (Before I introduced this change to the scenario, the hotel bar meeting would usually consist of everyone saying “hi” and then sitting in awkward silence until I cut away from the scene.)

OTHER RESOURCES

• Mastodon Handouts: These include a Deinonychus photo, the whiteboard in the conference room, the Breakaway Couriers logo, Anson’s note, and photos of both Amla-Shoon and the Rukian guards. (You’ll need a couple of envelopes: One for the Breakaway Couriers delivery. The other for Anson’s briefing on Ruk. Glue the logo to the former; paperclip the note to the latter.)
• PC Tent Cards: Using the pregen characters included in the scenario, I put these in the middle of the table. As people approach, they can select whichever character looks appealing to them and put the tent card in front of them. It’s a nice, quick way to facilitate character selection and also means that you (and other players) can quickly identify who’s playing who with a quick glance during play. These files are designed to be printed with Avery “Small Tent Cards” (template 5302), but you could also just print them on normal cardstock. What you need to do is take each A file and then flip it and print the matching B file. (Each sheet has four tent cards, so I’ve designed the three files so that I get two complete sets of character names if I print all three (to minimize wastage). If you just want one set, print sets 1 and 2 and you should be good to go.)
• Cypher Cards: These are for all the cyphers that the PCs can find or gain during the adventure. (This includes the three cyphers that Frin brings them, see above.) These cards are designed to be printed on Avery 8471 business cards, but can easily be printed on any paper or cardstock and then cut out.

In my review of Star Wars: Force and Destiny, I explained how the game’s core mechanic uses three inconsistent pairs of symbols in order to generate a huge mess of meaningless results that even the game’s designers can’t figure out how to interpret or use consistently.

Now I’m going to show you how you can make it a little better.

THE NEW CORE MECHANIC

Build and roll your dice pools the same way.

(1) The Triumph symbol counts as a Success, but also has the additional effect of either (a) cancelling Despair, (b) cancelling all Threat symbols, or (c) if there are no Threat symbols, counting as two Advantage symbols.

(2) Despair does the exact same thing in reverse: It counts as a Failure, but also has the additional effect of (a) cancelling Triumph, (b) cancelling all Advantage symbols, or (c) if there are no Advantage symbols, counting as two Threat symbols.

(3) Any effect in the game that uniquely requires a Triumph symbol requires 4 Advantage instead. Similarly, anything that uniquely requires a Despair symbol can be triggered with 4 Threat.

(4) With the exception of damage and recovery, the number of Success or Failure symbols you roll is irrelevant. (The only thing that matters is the binary assessment of whether you succeeded or failed.) Everything else in the rules that ask you to count or use Success instead uses Advantage.

(5) The guidelines for Knowledge skills are chucked completely: If you succeed on a Knowledge check, each Advantage gives you an additional piece of information. If you fail, Advantage can give you a lead on where information can be found. Threat either corrupts the information in some way (misleading, missing detail, missing context), gives you straight out misinformation, puts you in immediate danger (such as an angry alien in a bar shouting, “You’ll be dead!”), or alerts the bad guys to your search (like stormtroopers noticing that you cut off the alien’s arm).

DESIGN NOTES

Essentially, what I’m doing here is lopping off one of the dice result tiers and having Triumph/Despair cancel each other so the symbols are all counted the same way. The system will no longer generate 18 different possibilities (with varying degrees along multiple axes), but the system will still give you:

Succeed
Failure
Succeed-Advantage
Succeed-Threat
Failure-Advantage
Failure-Threat

You get two bits of information: One is a binary success/fail. The other is good/neutral/bad, with varying degrees of good and bad.

In play, I think you’ll find that this:

(1) Gives you guidance essentially indistinguishable from the original system;

(2) Results in dice pools being resolved about three times faster (because of simple symbol cancellation and players needing to report less tangled information); and

(3) Quietly eliminates a wide swath of the game’s dizzyingly inconsistent mechanics.

PROVISO

This house rule won’t magically fix the entire game: Mechanics that flirt with elegance are still going to be mired in a bloated, inconsistent mess. And you’re still going to have to lay out $180 to get a complete Star Wars game.

But it helps. It helps a lot. And I think if you’re interested in putting a little more elbow grease, then it also gives you a pretty good foundation for cleaning up all the other problems these games have. (Your next stop would be to start stripping all the weird inconsistencies which remain in the game. Working from my system cheat sheet can probably simplify that process.)

Good luck!

FFG STAR WARS – FURTHER READING
Review of Force and Destiny
Force and Destiny: System Cheat Sheet
FFG Star Wars: The Big Fix
Star Wars: Red Peace