I had to find a reason to incapacitate Rob, Justin, and Parker, as they weren't going to show up, even though it was Bruce's second-to-last time with us before moving. Rob came halfway through, but didn't see any combat. We also got started nearly an hour late when Lance finally showed up.
Rushing to the escape pods, they launched to the pre-programmed coordinates to pursue the droids, who they were only minutes behind. An errant blast rocked the escape pod, knocking it off-course and jarring the beings inside. When the escape pod slammed into the desert planet, all its inhabitants were unconscious or disabled. A few hours passed and the hardy Dashade awoke. He checked the others, finding that only the Verpine regained consciousness. They left to undertake the mission, leaving a note on one of Fi’kz’ta’s datapads, and shielding the pod as best they could from the unmerciful heat of Tatooine’s twin suns.
The unlikely duo trekked towards the nearest settlement, guided by the Verpine’s ability to catch radio waves. The Dashade also came into telepathic contact with the human Kinsei, who woke up not too long after them and followed their course. After a few hours in the heat, they crossed a natural rock settlement to see a Jawa sandcrawler. Unfortunately for the Jawas, it had been blown off its treads and was overrun by marauding Tuskens, who had killed the Jawas and were scavenging what interested them from the sandcrawler. The pair noticed a gleam and saw their objective: an R2 droid and a C-3PO unit, which had taken a nasty beating and had been torn in several pieces. The R2 was held down by an electric net which was continually forcing it to boot down and up again.
The droids hadn’t garnered the attention of the Tuskens yet, but it was only a matter of time until one of them came over and smashed them, destroying the information that the Empire needed. Unfortunately for the pair, a few dozen Tuskens milled the area between the rock formation and the Sandcrawler, with even more inside and in the surrounding area. An open attack against a hundred angry Sandpeople wasn’t going to turn out well for them, so they turned to more subtle methods. Also unfortunate for the pair was that such subtlety was not the strong suit of the very strong Dashade.
Seeing the occasional brawl break out between the violent Tuskens, they devised a plan. The Dashade, trying his best to hide his hulking frame in the rocks, threw a few pebbles at an unwary Tusken with the Force. Believing it to be an attack from another Tusken, he lashed at the nearest and gave the pair enough of a distraction to snatch and subdue two Tuskens who had wandered near. Donning the garb of the Sandpeople, they snuck towards the droids, trying to avoid direct scrutiny.
Once they were at the entrance to the Sandcrawler where the droids were, the plan took on a role the Dashade was far more comfortable with: violence. He seized the Tusken about to begin dismantling the droids and began a tussle similar to that which had distracted the raiders earlier. As he did this, Fi’kz’ta began to get the net off the R2 unit, allowing it to boot up correctly. The distraction fight lasted a few more seconds until the powerful Dashade gathered his rage and snapped the Tusken’s neck with a powerful blow. He then caught the Tusken and began to shake him as if their tussle was continuing, which bought him and the Verpine about half a minute more as the Sandpeople began to notice that the other Tusken wasn’t really fighting back.
With a few Sandpeople moving towards them, they dragged the droids to the nearby loading bay of the Sandcrawler. It was at this point that the R2 surprised the Verpine by beeping in Binary that it was coming with them, then wheeling to a nearby landspeeder and powering it up. The Kinsei, who had carried the dead Tusken with him, charged the Tusken who remained in the loading bay and flung the corpse at him, slamming him against the metal wall of the Sandcrawler. He fell to the ground, broken. They leapt in, throwing the droids in the back, and sped out of the Sandcrawler, with Fi’kz’ta piloting the speeder.
In case you're curious, a Tusken raider does d6 damage when used as an improvised weapon. They're unwieldy.
The Kinsei had torn off the Tusken helmet and brought out his lightsaber, still gripped by the dark rage that had given him the strength to kill the Tusken earlier. He leaned out of the speeder, lashing at any Tusken who it went near. The Tuskens shot at the speeder with their slugthrowers, hitting the enraged Kinsei twice. Fi’kz’ta managed to evade the majority of their fire by using a Bantha as cover, while the Dashade cut both it and its rider down. The Verpine managed to slide the landspeeder through a pair of columns of rock, and piloted them to escape.
With their objective attained, they sped back to their escape pod to pick up the others, getting the diminutive Kinsei on the way. After loading everyone up, they made their way back to the nearest habitation, which was the spaceport of Mos Eisley. While they were there, they managed to sell the speeder for 3,000 credits, which they bartered (in addition to the Verpine helping with some modifications) for a ride to Alderaan. Their pilot was a charming and gracious rogue with a heart of gold by name of Lando Calrissian, owner of the Millennium Falcon.
There were only about 5 rounds of combat in this entire adventure, but they were really entertaining. Lance, who had been doing some HackMaster earlier that day, was presented with a challenge that wasn't kick-down-the-door, and he and Bruce came up with some pretty strange plans to complete the objective. Most of this was made up on the spot, as I had planned for a full party of 5, not 2 people who bothered to come this week. Fortunately, they were rewarded with one of the more entertaining sessions in a while and got to level up, where the other two didn't.
