Some folks who have been following my campaign journals may have noticed that I haven't posted anything about Star Wars for quite a while. I wanted to provide an update on this campaign.
First, the campaign is still ongoing. While there have been a few short dry spells during holidays or periods where the players were victims of colds, the campaign hasn't been cancelled or been on an extended hiatus.
The problem is me. My last post was for Episode 14, which took place in 2018. The campaign reached Episode 36 yesterday
I fell behind on my write-ups because I find that I'm most effective at doing these blog posts if I write them immediately after the session, when my memory of events is fresh. But we play on Saturday nights between 6 and 10 p.m., and when I get home I'm usually too tired to sit down and write up my notes into a coherent post. We also have a Pathfinder game on Sundays and what usually happens is when that game session is over I write up Pathfinder. Then I go back to work on Monday and for the rest of the week I don't take the time to write up the Star Wars session.
As a result of this dilemma, I fell farther and farther behind on my Star Wars posts. Then I misplaced the notebook where I keep my notes, and I couldn't find it for four months.
As a result of this huge disconnect between my blog and where we are now in the campaign, I've decided that I should stop waiting until I get caught up to write about the events in our current sessions. That's just going to make me fall farther behind. Instead, I'm going to start from Episode 36, and hope that someday I'll find the time and energy to write all the missing stuff.
I'll start out by filling in some details of what happened between Episode 14 and Episode 35.
The crew of the Fortune of Greepo were still trying to rescue the kidnapped Imperial Knight Vimma Montari, but as they pursued her they found themselves being drawn into deeper and darker territory. It became apparent that someone else was directing the Shadow Wing pirates and the mercenary Stellite Monks. They discovered that the Monks had Force users among their number. They encountered Vimma on several occasions, initially as a prisoner being forced to cooperate with her captors, but eventually it began to seem that she was voluntarily placing herself as their enemy.
During one encounter with Vimma Montari she gave Taanar Ryl a message: she was collaborating to protect children, which the Fortune crew assumed were the kidnapped children from the colony mentioned in Episode 14. They began working to find out what had become of the children.
During a visit by the Fortune crew to Cloud City above the planet Bespin to pursue a lead, the city was attacked and completely destroyed by mystery ships that seemed to be trying to eliminate a possible informant the Fortune crew had been seeking. The team managed to escape the destruction, but they now had a mission to find out who their hidden enemies were.
This quest led them into the uncharted Unknown Regions, where they eventually found the planet Valdax 3. There they discovered evidence of an organization that had resources equivalent to those of the Empire or the New Republic, including new designs of Star Destroyers. This 'First Order' seemed to be dedicated to restoring the Empire as it was prior to the death of Emperor Palpatine. On Valdax 3 they encountered a resistance group led by Llando Calrissian. After escaping the planet with Llando's help, the New Jedi Order helped to broker a partnership between the Empire and the New Republic to send a joint military task force to Valdax 3 to rescue the kidnapped citizens of Cloud City. Although the rescue was successful, in the time between the team's departure from Valdax 3 and the task force's arrival, the First Order had packed up and disappeared.
In the aftermath, the partnership between the Empire and the New Republic fell apart. The testimony of Llando Calrissian was not enough to give both governments a shared purpose. Political turmoil had also seized the Republic. When Chancellor Mon Mothma stepped down, her expected successor was Senator Leia Organa, but that expectation failed when the secret that Leia was Emperor Skywalker's daughter was leaked. Leia had to abandon her plans to run for the Chancellorship, and the post was won by a representative of the conservative party that sought a harder line against the Empire.
Leia suspected at that point that the First Order had infiltrated both the Empire and the New Republic, and the revelation about her family confirmed that for her. She decided to leave the political scene altogether and establish a secret Resistance organization to combat the machinations of the First Order. As she recruited like-minded people to help her, she asked a major sacrifice of the Fortune crew: leave the New Jedi Order and the Antarian Rangers behind and join the Resistance.
Following a short period of soul-searching and with full agreement from the Order, Taanar Ryl chose to part from the Jedi and join the Resistance. Nema, Den, Ren, Ayja, and Ferb all joined her. They kept the Fortune of Greepo, but to accentuate the significant change in their goals and affiliation they changed the ship's name to the Dark Star.
The First Order's actual location was still unknown, and it was the Dark Star team's first Resistance mission to pursue clues to those coordinates. This led them back into the Unknown Regions, where they eventually ran into a band of Force-wielding pirates known as the Blazing Chain. After some initial trouble, the Dark Star team decided to partner with the Blazing Chain, who were opposed to the First Order's activities.
During a visit to the planet Ta'amel for a rendezvous with the Blazing Chain's leader, the Dark Stars were attacked by First Order forces. They took refuge in the jungle with a tribe of native people whose males had all been enslaved to work in a mine. Nema followed a local ritual to free the slaves single-handed, then rejoined her teammates to take out the slavers. This event advanced her to graduate from her padawan status.
Just as the Dark Stars were about to escape from Ta'amel, they encountered Vimma Montari again, this time utterly dedicated to service in the First Order. During the combat she was injured and knocked unconscious and the Dark Stars were able to take her prisoner. And that's where we were at the conclusion of Episode 35: Broken Vows, part 1.
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