(Star Wars d6) #47 - Skitter Shot, Part One

The crew of the Pretio in this week's episode:

Ne'vets Aharo - an exotic animal broker, both legal and otherwise, majority owner in the Pretio.
Tarrie - Human pilot "under contract" to fly the Pretio, and drive the Piscopo. Brother of potential terrorist, rebel Latorna Savvn. His climbing skills are suspect, but his dance moves are above par. Edging a dangerous lifestyle of drugs, booze, and loose women.

Duk'k - Sipsk'ud Bounty Hunter, recently rescued by the crew.  Offering his services in order to get off this barely existing hunk of mud.  His warning shots are dead center mass kill shots.

R2-H8(r) - A "new" astromech droid recently purchased by the crew.

Simple Salvagers

In search of a missing YT-1300 Freighter,

The crew of the Pretio, have fallen upon

A missing Imperial Cruise Liner,

The Emerald Empyrean

Realizing that there were living creatures

Inside the ship, the crew found their 

Moral compass and boarded the vessel.  

With a maniacal AI acting as Captain and Cruise Director,

The crew has found the strange lifeforms, 

But at what cost?

The crew of the Pretio had reached the day spa on the luxury liner Emerald Empyrean, and peculiar sight indeed.  In a room covered in sea-foam tile, there were three massage tables in the center of the room.  Around each were a a number of whirring, spinning mechanical arms, probably for a robotic massage experience.  But now the arms were NOT creating a relaxing experience.  

On the closest table, those arms were holding down a scared and flailing creature with green fur and six arms.  On the middle table was a familiar green R2 unit, again restrained by more arms..  Standing atop the furthest table was a small purple creature akin to the green one on the table.  It was laughing incessantly, and wielding a staff with crackling power....

With Duk'k's blaster rifle trained on the massage droids, Ne'vets attempted to distract the droids away from the computer terminal.  Tarrie snuck over to try to hack the system, but all he could manage was dimming the lights in the room. 

R2-H8(r) was getting shocked by some sort of stimulating treatment turned up to 11.   Meanwhile the purple furry creature, still loose and eluding the third massage droid, parrying it's moves with his power staff, but still had time to take a shot at Ne'vets.  The blast was a quick shock to Ne'vets, then the creature parried the droid once more before wagging a single finger at him. 

"Uh, uh, uuuuhhh."

Duk'k switch his blaster to stun, and fired at the purple creature.  The stun hit the the critter square in the chest, sending it flying into a pile of towels and a display of massage oils.  The droid at the nearby table quickly stopped harassing the creature to clean up the mess. 

After dimming the lights, the computer console locked Tarrie out.  With the agonizing screams of the green creature being tortured by that massage bot, Tarrie stepped back and shot and blew up the terminal in a spray of sparks.  It achieved nothing, save Tarrie falling over backwards.  The purple creature had ran through the pilot's legs, holding up a large massage towel to act as cover, scrambling towards the exit.  

Duk'k began firing at the droid detaining R2-H8(r), neutralizing one of four arms.  Ne'vets dashed over the roll the R2 off the table and pushed him to safety.  

With its target escaping, a free arm of the massage droid on the center table took a swipe at Duk'k.  

Ne'vets stood in the center of the room, not much was really occurring with flailing arms all around and general chaos.  One of those flailing massage droid arms actually had a tangler grenade in its grasp, with the pin pulled out.  The tangler grenade detonated, enveloping the center table and the table with the trapped green creature.  

Tarrie ducked under the grenade's effect, and took a pot shot at the purple creature, who was climbing a shelf of essential space oils, wounding it, and forcing it to fall to the floor. 

Duk'k had gotten caught up on the edge of the blast radius, managed to free his non-shooting hand.  

Ne'vets ask R2-H8(r) to shut off the machines. "C'mon little buddy, you can do it." 

The astromech droid stared at the destroyed port and began looking for another access port.  The ship's computer had been very rude the last time he attempted to access the system, claiming that "pets" did not have system access.   An attempt was made in a panel in the hallway, but R2 was outright denied. 

The wounded purple creature, covered in massage towels, fired a blast from his staff, only managing to successfully destroy the relaxing audio recorder in the corner.  The calming sounds of the waves on Triptec-7 were silenced for good, while the purple one reached the hallway and ran off.

Massage droid arms grabbed Tarrie from behind, holding two arms and one leg.  Tarrie could only fire wildly into the ceiling in protest.  

Duk'k finally managed to free himself from the tangler grenade and began firing into the massage droid, with limited success. 

Ne'vets grabbed a massage towel and tied two of the droid arms together.  This gave Tarrie more freedom to fire point blank at he arms, freeing himself and dashing towards the door.  Duk'k continued to unload onto the droid arms, sending sparks everywhere.   The arms finally stopped moving, allowing the green creature to escape, but it no longer moved. 

Smoke in the air, sparks in the background, with whiffs of lavender and space eucalyptus, Duk'k examined the green creature.  If the creature had any number of hearts, none of them were beating. 

Tarrie confirmed the Sipsk'ud's diagnosis and asked Ne'vets, "Is this thing worth anything dead?  Maybe we skin it or get it stuffed?" 

"Unless I had a buyer lined up, then no."

Duk'k was disgusted, "It is a sentient creature.  Perhaps you should stick to wild animals."

Abusing a civilized lifeform's corpse was beyond Duk'k, but searching the body for loot was nowhere close to the edge, adding a small stun baton, a med pack, and one Imperial credit to the spoils. 

As the rest of the crew finally emerged from the room, the ship's AI broadcast over the ship's PA system.  

"Attention Passengers.  All scheduled massages are now cancelled.  We apologize for the inconvenience. Please visit our buffet."

As everyone else recovered, R2-H8(r) continued to pry it's way into the system logs.  He only managed to pull up a ship schematic, put it was so limited in data, that he could only discern the doors to the bridge, as well as the door locked door further back in the ship led to the buffet.  

The crew instructed R2 to open the bridge doors, but he only got an odd response from the ship's AI, "Hey dumbass, the bridge doors won't open, and you can't be hungry, but the buffet doors are finally open."  Red lights lit up to replace regular lighting and a low alarm responded through the 

"Attention passengers. There is great news!  The buffet is open, after a great wait.  There is currently no wait for the buffet." 

"There is a security breach in Sector 7. Please avoid Sector 7 while the security issue is being resolved.."

"Today's excursion is about to leave through the airlock.  If you have a ticket for the excursion, please reach the airlock in the next three minutes."  

Realizing that their ship was attached to the only airlock, the crew decided it was best to leave quickly. 

As they dashed through the room with utter darkness, everyone made it through safely, but as Ne'vets emerged in from the central ball of darkness, he could see the obsidian pillars turn into giant, flying millipedes of darkness and shadow.  

Instead of bumping into Ne'vets, R2 carefully navigated around the human and continued towards the ship.  

Everyone's com's lit up with a message directly from the Pretio.  Dr P3PP3R, the medical droid, was calling from inside the ship.

"Mister Tarrie, Mister Tarrie, I can't help all these people.... They're very angry... OW!  And there's a small purple one shocking me.  Many are malnourished and dirty.  I'll need assistance scheduling all of their appointments, if you'd like.  HELP!"

"We're on our way."

Passing the previously closed doors to the buffet, the opening revealed some sort of encampment inside.  

Duk'k was more worried that Ne'vets wasn't with them. 

"Tarrie, get the ship fired up, I'll be right there."

Ne'vets was still stuck in the room full of recliners... and darkness, marveling at the strange creatures.  He was certain if he removed one of the obsidian pillars, the creature would go back inside and everything would be fine.... So he did just that. 

Duk'k worked his way back, only to find Ne'vets running towards him, holding the obsidian pillar in both hands.  The brightly lit passageway behind him was growing darker, with flickers of something flying in the darkness.

Ne'vets was stoked. "It's going to be awesome.  Go-go-go-go-go!!!"

Duk'k stood his ground, let Ne'vets pass, and fired repeatly into the encroaching darkness.  He felt complete unease, when one of the shots actually hit something. More flickers in the darkness could be seen coming at him.

R2-H8(r) was the first to make it through the airlock back onto the Pretio, the AI for the Emerald Empyrean continued a looping message. 

"We're sorry... We're sorry... You appear to have left your pet on board. We are not responsible for any unattended pets."

At least twenty complete strangers were running around the Pretio like the end stages of a house party as the authorities would arrive.  The medical droid was spinning around, completely helples, "I can not help anyone of you if you do not form a proper queue."  Some of these people were trying to ransack what wasn't bolted down. 

Tarrie reached the ship soon thereafter.  Brandishing weapons, he at least could keep his distance from their anarchical pirates.  

"Hey you mother-karkers!  Look at me!!! Look at me!!! We all gotta sit down..."

Back on the Emerald Empyrean, Duk'k was running out of the encroaching darkness, begging Ne'vets to drop the Obsidian column he was carrying.  Ne'vets disagreed, "No way, this the payday we've all been looking for!"

Nev'ets boarded the Pretio just in time to hear Tarrie's demands, and a the ensuing screams and almost compliant silence.

Duk'k finally reached the Pretio, chucking a flash-bang grenade at the darkness before sealing the airlock.   The explosion was the final act to subdue the crowd.

A few brave souls meekly asked, "Can we just leave... please. We need to get out of here."  Tarrie lowered his blaster, "We can do that," and he headed towards the cockpit.  

The scene on the ship went from utter chaos to general confusion, with new passengers reassuring themselves that everything might be alright. 

Amongst the pandemonium calming down, no one heard an channel left open on the coms.  Somewhere on a ship, one squeaky voice was talking to another one, 

"Dude did you see how many grenades these guys have!!!!"

GM:  This was a revised take on the #FreeRPGDay module Skitter Shot for Starfinder by Paizo.  I like the module from the start, and even picked up the Pocket Edition of Starfinder in hopes of playing it, but using 60% of a module is always better than letting it collect dust.  Don't plan on getting rid of it, so the Starfinder option with a different group is always there.  

I'll call this as I'm writing up the adventure, that obsidian pillar is going to plague the campaign... or it might turn out to be the greatest red herring of my GMing career.  

Next: #48 - The Conclusion of Skitter Shot