====== Entry 10: Enter: Darth Kallus ====== [ [[starwars:protagonists:tara:reports:entry09|Previous]] ] [ [[starwars:protagonists:tara:reports:index|Back]] ] [ [[starwars:protagonists:tara:reports:entry11|Next]] ] After modifying Savn's current clothing with the help of some slain local wildlife, he looked sufficiently Darthy to bust in on the hyperdrive operation. We loaded up into the dignitary speeder and headed off to the facility at a brisk pace. We pulled up to the deserted-seeming building and dismounted the vehicle and approached the door. Turret assessed the situation and gave a short description of how to approach the building. So, I banged on the outside door with my blaster while he cringed. A robotic eye popped out of a small access panel on the door and demanded our credentials, to which Turrent presented his own. With that, the door opened. We headed inside and were greeted by a gay droid, who tried to get us to leave. Savn, playing the Darthiest lord ever, axed him into two pieces, and I proceeded to interface with the base's internal systems from where the gay droid had been plugged into the wall. A moment later, three heavy battle droids appeared and gave us 15 seconds to stand down before they opened fire on us. I hacked into the system quickly and took control of the droids. I set them into defensive flanking positions for our march down the hall, turned on thematic music, smoke and back-lighting to give us a grand entrance. Then I downloaded the specs for the base and the personnel deployed here, installed a remote wireless device, turned off the red-alert, and then off we marched to the main hangar area. With a button press the doors to the hangar opened before us, and in we marched. I stood back with the droids while Turret fumbled through talking to the main researcher here, then finally Savn took over with a ridiculous Darthy accent. He got those researchers going on giving us a demonstration. Meanwhile, we had the main researcher off getting us lists of things they'd need to fully stock a facility to build this type of hyperdrive, including the full specs of the thing. Savn being Savn, went a little too far in his Darth game, ordering me around as if I was some kind of slave of his; he's gonna pay for that later. In bed. So while the researchers were busy giving the demonstration, I was busy hacking up a worm that would destroy the engine the next time they tested it after we left. Once the demonstration concluded, we headed out to take down the Republic base to which we had been tasked by the Empire. We took the battle droids to the Tempest and then use the cloaking device to simply air-dropped them into the base to take care of business. Within a few minutes, they had pretty much wiped out everyone and everything. All said and done, we had most of one droid left, and took him back into the ship with us. When we went to collect from the Empire, the coordinator tried to give us the run-around. But Savn stepped in and put him in his place and he paid up (3L3) without any more hassle. So we then headed off to meet back with Zrak to collect our payment from him (3L4). We met on Nar Shaddaa in a cantina. I handed him the schematics while Savn rambled about Jawas. Savn did pass along to him that they needed dark acolytes to power the thing; I kind of wish he hadn't done that. But then again, the Republic only has light side force users, so they wouldn't be able to acquire the personnel to power it without being just like the things they hated about the Empire (kidnapping, slavery). Zrak said he may contact us again since we seemed to have a little more insight into the hyperdrive than the schematics let on. From there, we headed back to the ship, off to non-populated neutral territory, and discussed what we would do from here. We have the hyperdrive schematics. We know more about it than anyone else since we had seen a functional one up close, saw how it worked, and even watched it work. We just didn't have the personnel and facilities needed to research alternate power sources than dark force energy. We tried contacting researcher dude at the base, Dr Rew Blovis, a few weeks later since he seemed very knowledgeable and might be willing to come work for us instead. But he was quaking in his boots and not answering questions when I was trying to get his alliegences out of him (not surprising, given the hyperdrive had exploded and he hadn't told Baron Malevius yet). But then, moments later, Baron Malevius popped into view of the holocom behind the good doctor and decapitated him. Obviously a clear message from him to us that we were now on his shitlist. Fine, whatever, come find us if you can, asshole! The bigger problem was that put an end to our main line of assistance. We sat down discussed it some more and decided that it would just be too difficult to trust anyone we might pull onto this project from external sources. The only people we could trust to do this and do it right was ourselves. We didn't have a lot of people, but given time, we could probably git-r-dun. I would be the engineering expert on the project. Savn would be the force-user expert, since the current specs required dark energy as the power source. Turret would be our turret, and assist with acquiring resources and facilities and anything that needed to be taken by brute force. With that settled, I sat down with my garbage can droid and studied the specs in-depth. I made lists of mundane components we'd need, and the special components we'd need to scavenge from some of the ships. I then researched facilities that we could possibly take advantage of to build this thing. I made lists of these, and had Turret look them over to see if there was any we could use that he could use his pre-fab identities to forcibly take over. I looked for abandoned facilites. Possibly just empty remote moons or planets or asteriods that we might be able to build a facility on ourselves (although that would take much longer than I would like). But we needed options, and needed to consider anything that might work. Then we would need to find the perfect balance of time-to-cost (credits or effort) needed to acquire the best facility possible. We sat down and considered our options. -------------------- Loot to spend (xLy == x level y cost items): * 1L4 (personal) * 3L3 (1 to each person) from taking out the Republic base * 3L4 (1 to each person) from destroying the engine and delivering the schematics to Zrak