Last update: 19/May/2006
Campaign background Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11
DISCLAIMER
This article is not authorized or supported by West End Games. This conversion is unofficial and has not been reviewed by anybody at West End Games or Lucasfilm, Ltd. Star Wars (R), TM, & (C) by Lucasfilm, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Trademarks of Lucasfilm, Ltd., used without authorization, that use isn't intended as a challenge to those trademarks.
ABOUT FUDGE
Fudge is a role-playing game written by Steffan O'Sullivan, with extensive input from the Usenet community of rec.games.design. The basic rules of Fudge are available on the internet at http://www.fudgerpg.com and in book form from Grey Ghost Games, P.O. Box 838, Randolph, MA 02368. They may be used with any gaming genre. While an individual work derived from Fudge may specify certain attributes and skills, many more are possible with Fudge. Every Game Master using Fudge is encouraged to add or ignore any character traits. Anyone who wishes to distribute such material for free may do so - merely include this ABOUT FUDGE notice and disclaimer (complete with Fudge copyright notice). If you wish to charge a fee for such material, other than as an article in a magazine or other periodical, you must first obtain a royalty-free license from the author of Fudge, Steffan O'Sullivan, P.O. Box 465, Plymouth, NH 03264.
DISCLAIMER
The following materials based on Fudge, entitled Fudge Starwars: the Easiest Way, are created by, made available by, and Copyright (C) 2006 by Jorge Arredondo, and are not necessarily endorsed in any way by Steffan O'Sullivan or any publisher of other Fudge materials. Neither Steffan O'Sullivan nor any publisher of other Fudge materials is in any way responsible for the content of these materials unless specifically credited. Original Fudge materials Copyright (C)1992-1995 by Steffan O'Sullivan, All Rights Reserved.
The characters have found out that the governor of the Caprioril system, Amel Bakli, is involved somehow with the separatists, and that they will probably try to kill him. Besides, Torunn hacked Tangram's computer before most information was deleted so he might be following that clue, too.
[ GM's note: unfortunately Torunn is elsewhere, he has better information so is often two steps ahead of the PCs.
Long time ago Torunn suspected weird conspiracies when he found Neelyx. He started to investigate on his own and gathered a lot of information. He found out that the senate was changing, the power games changed quickly and everything seemed to tend to chaos and corruption. From the same sources he found out about the resources that were being moved all around the galaxy for the future war (like for example, the clon army). With a bit of paranoia given what he was finding, suspicious of traitors everywhere he kept all the information to himself.
Some time before the change of chancellor and the start of the clone wars, he managed to talk with Bakli before he left the Senate. Bakli was an old friend of him, one of the few which he still trusted. Bakli had been negotiating with the separatists but after talking with Torunn he suspected he was merely a pawn in a bigger schema. He hired the Shadow which stole information to the separatists including supply lines, safe planets, etc. Bakli told part of this information to Torunn (leading him to Optimus amongs other worlds), but not all, fearing being accused of treason, and retired to Caprioril.
That has also caused the Shadow that amongst its original foes also the separatists want to eliminate "it". The Bothan Spynet offered the highest bounty because it was them who stole originally the information though the Shadow "pickpocketed" them and made them angrier than ever.
[ Soundtrack music: starting theme of the Empire strikes back ]
While the stars fade away on a travelling, a large planet appears in the middle of the screen, a city-planet not quite unlike Coruscant, where hundreds of medium sized space transports seem to be causing a lot of trouble. Large lines of small ships are queued while the authorities organize the landing of so many people.
The characters' ship arrive to that system at a larger distance than usual due to the large volume of traffic in the system. They're quickly called by the authorities and asigned a number in the queues to land, and a delay time of 2 hours. If they use their accreditations they can halve that time, or even reduce it to a few minutes if they bully the civil servants into cooperation (a Great or better Bureaucracy roll).
A Fair Cultures or similar roll will make the characters remember why Caprioril is famous in the inner core and why there is so much traffic in this date. Pod races!.
Caprioril has one of the largest pod arenas in the galaxy, with the advantage of a level of luxury appropriate for the inner core worlds. Unlike Coruscant which is a vertical city planet, Caprioril is an horizontal world, where most buildings are huge pyramid-like palaces. Kilometer-long gardens, collosal avenues, make this a monumental world.
The characters land in the spaceport of Doolis, the capital of Caprioril. They may request there (or while they wait to land) an audience with the governor, which will be set sooner or later according to what they say. If they show their republic or jedi accreditations, etc, they'll be received much more faster (as Bakli is waiting for republic agents to debate his secret issues).
Bakli's place is like a large pyramid (probably the largest in the whole planet) with exceptional security measures, including a whole army of armed guards and drone probes. They won't let them enter with weapons (there are energy sensors for blasters, vibroweapons, etc) though they'll have the courtesy of letting the jedi carry their sabers.
After crossing the whole labyrinthic building, led by a male secretary, seeing how well the building is defended (after all this is the government headquarter for the whole system), they arrive to a large and very comfy guest room, with an incredible degree of luxury and good taste. There is another door which ought to lead to Bakli's office, and the secretary requests them to wait some minutes till his excellency lets them in.
The room is filled with a large collection of contraptions, devices from a lot of different cultures and species meant as puzzles, ranging from moderate to awesome difficult complexity. This is Bakli's puzzles room, which he uses to evaluate his guest's aptitude and patience (it's a quirk of him!). Of course, there are obvious security cameras in the room.
After making them wait a little, from 10 to 30 minutes or more (depending on what they do, if someone tries to solve a puzzle, he lets the PC try, midly amused if he fails).
When he gets bored of this or is happy with the results another secretary lets them in to his office. It's a somehow austere room where he does the day to day government work, and it's filled with bodyguards, ten armed and lightly armored men with severe expressions.
Bakli doesn't seem worried about what the PCs may tell him, he has the best money can buy for security so he's not easily scared.
He continues telling them that he's found out with great personal risk information about a subjacent conspiracy with the war, and that he wants to negotiate with it. He's worried about his safety hence the security measures, and he previsions a hard and long negotiation with the republic to right the muddle: "Great dangers lie ahead of the path of the republic, even bigger than this war".
If the Shadow is mentioned in the audience, by one reason or another, Bakli smiles and concedes his relationship with that being. However, he knows little else than the PCs about that spy. He only says he payed 1,000,000 dataries to the Shadow to get that valuable information, and that it was well worth the price.
In this point Bakli has probably noticed the PCs have no authority to reach a safe agreement with him about this issue so he won't say a thing. Till he isn't sure he won't be accused of treason he will keep it to himself, waiting for someone with true power or influence. He won't leave Caprioril, either, here is the only place where he feels safe enough.
Bakli is a strongwilled individual, with the skill and oily personality of a professional politician. Hence if a jedi tries reading his mind it will be close to impossible getting any important info. Besides, the jedi would only able to read surface thoughts, nothing very helpful (like that he isn't lying and that he truly believes in what he's doing).
A few moments later Bakli dismisses the characters, and informs them that they'll have to request another date if they want to talk with him later. This evening the utterly famous pod race of Caprioril will take place and he still has meetings with a lot of people before the race, amongst them the well-known (alien) racer Ignar Ominaz who holds the odds at 10 to 1! And what's worse, to argue with the Ratts Tyerell foundation who wants the pod races forbidden.
In fact he dismisses them quite quickly as soon as he notices the characters aren't the ones he had hoped, because he faces a serious trouble. His racer has got hurt when training and won't be able to run that evening. He has a powerful pod racer already inscribed for which he had bet a real lot of money and now he'll have to cancel his participation because he has no one else to run for him. If a PC offers himself to run that probably would help to motivate Bakli to be more communicative. If not he'll be generous enough to invite them to his private box at the arena to watch the race.
If that happens, there are three important details: Ominaz sets the base ease level to beat in the race (Legendary) each round, a minimum Great roll is required to avoid crashing with the obstacles, and there aren't humans in the race. Before the race, however, Bakli will lead the PC (or the whole party) to the arena where he will evaluate his skill on a simulator (he won't let him run if he has less than a Great Swoop skill). He has a private hangar where his race team trains and works on the pod, also with incredible security measures.
You must make sure the PCs follow Bakli to the races, to trigger the next scenes of the story. If they insist in loafing for a while, you may consider ambushing them with a gang of crooks sent by a criminal organization (Ploovo Two-for-One's), warned by their informers, to get rid of the pesky PCs. This might also make them think that there is going to be an assassination attempt against Bakli, very soon.
Crooks
Attributes: Dexterity Good, Perception Good, Knowledge Good, Strength Fair
Skills: Blaster Fair, Dodge Fair, Brawl Fair, Melee Fair, Search Fair, Sneak Fair, Brawling parry Fair
Health levels: Ok, Hurt, Out of the fight.
Equipment: light armour DF+1 (flak jacket), Heavy blaster pistol (OF +4)
Special: the crooks' leader has Blasters: Good and Dodge: Good.
They are all aliens who were sent to kill the PCs without further information. They don't need it. The most the PCs can learn from them (with Superb Intimidation rolls or jedi powers) is that they work for Ploovo Two-for-One and were sent there to kill them.
A Great or better Streetwise roll allows the PCs to know that Ploovo's organization is a criminal mob set in the Corporate System, not quite near Caprioril (however gangs are always trying to expand their power base so it's not unlikely). Ploovo is well known because if you mess with them they usually kill you and someone you care for, for free.
The arena is an incredibly large instalation, with room for 1 million of sentients. The raceway is spectacular, with small monticles where the pods can win some height and pass each other, and monumental obstacles to dodge. Only around 4 miles of the race have place in the arena, the remaining 15 miles are outside it in the only untamed part left of the planet (rocky canyons with grass and shubbery vegetation). There are, however, amazingly large screens (of around 50 square meters) showing the whole race and details of it, plus a great amount of commercial advertisements eveywhere. Standing out there is a humongous repulsorlift zeppelin-like ship over the arena, with hundred of commercials and even larger screens with three or four different angles of the race and analysis of it.
[ GM's note: Tangram and/or his droid (we'll suppose Tangram died in the first chapter so the droid carried on with his directives) arrived to Caprioril earlier than the PCs, as Tangram's ship is very fast on hyperspace and had no delays. The droid landed on a private landing bay held by Ploovo's gang, with a fake transponder masquerading it as a private ship from Coruscant. Then the droid evaluated from his data banks and first hand experience the best possibility to eliminate Bakli. After seeing the severe security measures its logical centers evaluated that the best place where Bakli could be assassinated was the arena, and the easiest way was using something as destructive as possible. Infiltrating the arena the droid noticed the advertisement ship, and sabotaged it... (nobody pays attention to droids!) ]
Bakli will let the PCs enter on his private box, where the luxury is exceeded only by the security measures. Besides Bakli there are other important figures of Caprioril and offworld, twilek maidens (Bakli says he's hired them, they aren't slave dancers), and armed guards. There are even blaster shields covering the bullet proof windows so no sniper can harm Bakli.
While the PCs and the VIPs enjoy the race, with food delicacies from all over the galaxy, Bakli exchange bets with some of his wealthier guests, like for example 1,000,000 dataries if the PC running for him is Superb, 200,000 if he's at least Great!
[ Soundtrack music: The Phantom Menace, The Arrival at Tatooine + The Flag Parade ].
As soon as the race starts the chaos rages in the arena, the crowd filled with excitement. If the PCs surveil the zone looking for enemies they'll find none, for now.
However, a few moments later, a Fair Perception roll makes them notice in one of the large screens of the arena which is showing a section of the terraces filled with bouncing and yelling sentients, an unique protocol droid they've seen in the past, watching through macrobinoculars (which is strange in a droid!) and directly to the VIP box (which is even more strange!) but who quickly dissapears in the crowd (not that the scene in the screen lasted for long, though).
They can of course leave the room and try to find the droid hurriedly, but having in count the size of the arena and how crowded it is, they'll have to split. Choose a group of PCs, they'll arrive in time only to see the droid near an exit corridor, activating what looks like a remote control...
In this moment a huge blast is heard even over the noise of the arena, and the advertisement ship starts to list to port and fall over the arena. It looks like if falling on slow motion, though in fact it is falling quite fast. It will fall over the VIP box and a large section of the arena. Ominaz is (probably) crossing the finish when the ship falls over it, too. If a PC was running in the race, unless he was ahead of Ominaz, he can easily stop and avoid the blast and crash with a Swoop roll ranging from Fair to Great (if he was second). If the PC won, he'll have to roll Legendary to avoid being killed.
The other PCs may require Dodge or Run rolls of an ease factor according to how far to the blast area they are, to avoid the falling debris, the wave of heat and flame, etc. For example, if the PCs were near the droid, in a corridor, request Fair Dodge rolls as the whole arena quakes; if they were amongst the crowd but you consider they're far enough of the blast, request Good to Superb dodge / run rolls. If failed by little the PC will be hurt, if failed by a lot he'll be severely wounded.
If anyone is directly under the ship, make the PC burn 4 FP to survive, seriously wounded, but alive.
Anyone who stayed at the VIP box has no chance of survival. If a PC did stay to watch over Bakli, make him burn those Fudge points to justify the coincidence that made him survive, albeit also seriously wounded (the easier explanation is that the other PCs called them to join them in the search so they left before the sabotage). The ship, being 400 meters long, falls like the corpse of a huge animal over the terraces. The ensuing explosion destroys a large portion of the arena and kills around 20,000 spectators, including the governor (and with it, the holodisk with the Shadow's stolen information) and Ominaz, possibly the most famous pod racer ever, in an event that will be long remembered as the Caprioril incident leading to the first bans set on assassin droids.
After this the droid tries to flee and return to its ship, but it is probably followed by the PCs. In this moment, his protocol droid masquerade blown away it enters combat mode. It is a true killing machine, probably the best design ever made by Tangram.
[ GM's note: if the droid was cornered by more than one jedi, you may consider reinforcements for him. He might have brought with him in the ship two prototypes of the IG-100 droids armed with the same electrostaffs they saw in Tangram's hands, which get together after the explosion and face the jedi with extreme prejudice ].
Assassin droid, unique model
Attributes: Strength Good, Dexterity Great, Knowledge Good
Skills: Blasters Great/Fair/Mediocre (OF +4), Melee Great/Fair/Mediocre, Dodge Superb, Tactics Great, Sneak Superb, Hide Superb, Con Superb
Health levels: like a PC.
Special: light armor DF +1, shields DF +3 (soaks 30 points of damage until recharging), Rapid fire (Blasters: Good / Good / Good / Good / Mediocre / Terrible or Fair / Fair / Fair / Fair / Fair / Poor / Terrible), Redundant systems (ignores wound penalties).
IG-100 prototypes
Attributes: Strength Good, Dexterity Great, Knowledge Terrible
Skills: Superb Melee (OF +4), Superb Dodge
Health levels: like a PC.
Special: light armor DF +1, Redundant systems (ignores wound penalties), electrostaff prototype.
As quickly as possible the emergency services arrive to the ruined arena and start trying to save as many beings as possible. The fire and wreckage is slowly controlled and the forces of order try to investigate what happened. Probably the PCs can clarify the whole issue, helped by the security records of the arena.
The PCs may want to stay on Caprioril to investigate the sabotage and the links with Ploovo's gang but actually there is little valuable to be found here, right now. The jedi council calls them as soon as the news of the catastrophe reach the core worlds. They inform them that two jedi investigators, an ithorian and a miraluka masters, called Rotthen and Notok respectively, are already travelling to Caprioril to help the local authorities and investigate whatever the PCs found there. Besides, the council has found out through a merchant friend of the jedi that Torunn was apparently seen in the twilek homeworld, Ryloth, 1 month ago. Though the clue may be already cold is probably the best they have....
[ GM's note: make sure you tell your players about the jedi masters sent to Caprioril to investigate. They'll be important characters later and it'll be better if the PCs already knew about them! ]
[ Soundtrack music: finishing theme of The Empire Strikes Back ]
| Campaign background | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 |
| Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 |
| Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 |
| Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 |
Back to SubterFUDGE main pageBack to Lich's Lair
| 
|