Star Wars: Triad
Episode I: Enter the Empire
The Imperial Guard has placed garrisons on some of the more strategic worlds that produce valuable raw materials or manufacturing to prevent any dissent from becoming a problem. These garrisons wait, poised for the merest word from the Emperor to take control of the local government and hand these worlds to the Empire's greedy grasp.
The criminal Syndicate also has concerns about the future of these worlds. many of them are important logistical centers for exchanging illegal goods for legitimate ones. As the Empire tightens its grip, the use of these inner worlds is becoming more and more dangerous.
On Vorgrell, the ruling council was arrested by the Imperial Commander. Most of them were released. The ones that were not are still missing. For the moment, it seems, the Empire is only flexing its muscle. Unease mounts as these sorts of strong-arm tactics threaten to topple the delicate balance of power between the Vorgrell Nobles, the Syndicate, and the new Empire.
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One suggestion:
On Vorgrell the ruling council was arrested by the Imperial Commander on Vorgrell.
The last "on Vorgrell" is a touch redundant. *brushes off DRD badge*
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The first film details the mechinations of the Nobles and commoners to maintain normalcy of the aliance between Syndicate, Empire and Noble.
It will follow the exploits of a few key figures that band together despite major differences to counterbalance the juggernaut that is the Empire and its dealings with Vorgrell.
Imperial Commander Harkness is an ambitious and strongwilled man. He feels that the current methodologies for mining Gardanuim, Rubixium, and Kreichite are outdated, and far too dependant on the whims of independant miners and ancient practice.
He proposes to bring in a virtual army of mining droids and stormtroopers to subjugate the small population of this backwater world and automate much of the mining operations to triple or even quadruple the output from this world. He feels that such efficient service will surely gain favor with the Emperor.
Unfortunately he lacks the clout to gather such resources as are required. Therefore he has made contact with a friend of his - Admiral Ybriss and has made arrangements for his Star Destroyer to come here for leave.
Despite the less than ideal location for recreation, Ybriss and Harkness feel that if the population can be quickly subdued, then the requisition for mining machines will be filled just to meet basic quota. That way they can share the glory.
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Needless to say, the idea of being subjected and replaced by machines doesn't sit well with the populace, nor the local criminal elements. They are working on generating a crisis on the nearby world of Ptanng that will draw off Ybriss and his Star Destroyer and cut the legs out from Harkness' plan.
Ptanng is a world with almost no large continents. It is a series of small to medium islands all interconnected with reefs, long bridges or accessible by short boat trips. They are well known as an excellent recreation spot as well as being one of the foremost exporters of glass in the Galaxy.
Ptanng also has low-key Syndicate involvement in the casinos and cantinas that cater to the tourist trade. The Empire has expressed no interest in Ptanng yet and so there is no garrison there.
The choice of Ptanngis brough ton by urgency, nearness, availability of contacts (through the syndicate) and the need for stealh (the touristy nature of Ptanng makes it easy to justify comings and goings) The problem is, what would draw a Star Destroyer to Ptanng?
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Integral to this plan is the need to step up ore production. This sill also make Harkness' supposed "need" for machinery to replace slack production seem frivolous. The Empire is building an expensive Death Star, it can't afford to indulge these petty Commander's every unneccesary whim.
This will mean granting certain breaks to the miners as an incentive to increase output. It might also mean tromping on more native lands to get to rich deposits in sacred areas that are currently protected by a rather tenuous treaty.
Subduing natives wronged might take military force. Over all it means that a lot of people are going to be making some pretty grey choices in order to enact this plan.
The Syndicate might also have to cash out some of its long term investment in ore for contraband in order to free up ore resources to boost quota. If the Syndicate skims only 5% gross in raw ore production from the government then if it were to return that, that would mean an immediate 5% jump in production.
That means it will either need to find outher ways to make that cntraband flow (the nobles buy it? Perhaps)...smuggle it to Ptanng as an enticement to the Empire? Not sure yet. Just throwing idea here.
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Some of the more direct-thinking people might consider making a physical threat agasint Commander Harkness. Harkness is looking for an excuse to bring troops to Vorgrell. Please don't give him one.
Some of the council is very loyal to the Empire. They need to be kept in the dark. If they get wind of the plan, it'll be a scramble to keep them away from Harkness.
Killing council members is also a way to invite Imperial trouble. (I can hear his report now, "They can't even have a civil government without violence.")
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Like it. Have to say, I like it. Some thoughts on the Syndicate angle:
-Is this other planet in system? I meant for the Syndicate's structure to more closely operate. It just depends on whether or not there will be a local boss who Krell has to negotiate with, or he can just give orders to.
-Skimming: think of Krell like Don Corleone. He may be willing to grant a halt to skimming - even temporary - as a favour. But he'll expect something in return. Then again, he may well try to exort something such as, oh, guarantees of syndicate control over the criminal activity in Plateu City.
Ack, more later. I have to run to campus.
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I am going to suggest no. Close (a few hours in Hyperpace is Close) but not in the same system. Why? Becasue having a Star Destroyer in your system means the hand of the empire will be felt on all of those planets...it not far enough away to make an effective diversion from Vorgrell.
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Just a little question:
There's been talk of both an Imperial Governor and an Imperial head of a garrison (a Commander of some sort).
Are we treating these people as one and the same, or are they different? I would have thought there would have been two different roles, that of the Govenor (who is in on the political scene) and the Commander (head of the Imperial garrison).
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well i had an idea for the whole imperial colonel/ commander whatever rank you wanna give him i think i got a good idea but feel free to give your input i allready started on the commanders npc but i had an idea anywya im rambling
the commander Harkness is in fact an commander from the old Regime fought in the clone wars for the republic and is not put in a back water planet becuase he is not toaly trusted hes not as young as he used to be and isent as xenophobic as the rest of the empire's command structure
now his second in command is an entireley diffrent cookie hes a young officer from a nobel house who never saw combat becuase he was to young * gettin the age idea here, think british army before moderniastion* he bought hius way up the command structure , so when he was made second to an old baffon * i was thinking dave said the commander wnated ti strip mine yea so mabrey the young officer is the one who wants that and his uncel is the one who commands the star destoryer and he needs to find a way to get the old man out of the way and what a better way than as dave said "They can't even have a civil government without violence." so what do you think
if this post isnet realy clear just pm me of im on msn i know i have troubel gettin my idea's througth most time :)
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There is an Imperial Commander in the garrison on Vorgrell. No Imperial Governor yet. Vorgrell is too small potatoes for that. There might be one on a nearby lanet whom Harkness reports to, but that hasn't been detailed.
I think it is brilliant Jamie. It was plenty clear and I think it'll do really well.
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Jamie, although your prose takes a little effort to wade through, I can see that you're a sound thinker. I agree with Dave. I vote "brilliant." I'm already eager to know more about Harkness's brash second in command. And I love the name Harkness. Who came up with that?
If we're taking votes for this second in command's name, I submit "Lieutenant Simeon," which is English, meaning "to hear; listen." I don't know why that strikes me, exactly. "Harken" means to listen." Simeon seems a softer version of Harkness.
Maybe it's a good idea, maybe not. Just an idea. :o
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I'll plead guilty to stealing it from a favorite 70's anime series which had a Captain Harkness (can I remember the show? no, and googling it wasn't any good either).
It is one of those names that has a certain gothic feel to it (Agatha Harkness was the ehad of the coven that taught the Scarlet Witch in the Marvel universe). I have used it for the occasional NPC in other games. Glad you liked it.
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Indeed I did. Sorry I missed that you were the author. This influx of information has drowned me in good ideas. Eventually, we'll get all of this stuff archived for easy reference.
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I only regurgitated a name so that I could refer to him as something other than "that commander guy". Jamie I think has a good handle on an idea and I am willing to let him run with it.
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ive not realy had a chance to sit down and write for the imperial charators dave and i doubht i will sorry im saying to you becuase you seemd to have a good idea what you want6ed for them so far i only worked out that the main guy is of the old republic and isnet cold blooded liek his jr officer
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One thought I have: as part of my opening, and a way to meet other people, Lianna is going to have to track down a Slicer for the Syndicate.
My thought for how this can relate to the Epic is still in the air, but I'm thinking that one of the things they may eventually do is use his skills to decrypt something, which will hint at the larger plot - potentially a communication between Harkonnen, I mean Harkness (sorry, that's the way my mind reads his name) and Ybriss.
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I read it like that too! :D
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I see Atreides when I write Duke Archell...
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Right, we need to get this show on the road, which means setting a definate start date - and probably also any further sketching for this first epic that we want to do in advance.
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Can you write the little [accepted] besides accepted chars, Adam? I like to see it :) and it avoids confusion to newcomers.
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If I can figure out the Edit function, yes. :)
Anyway, unless there are any major objections, I think that we should put up the first post on Monday. We've got an idea of the main plot, what we have to do, and where we'll need to go.
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Cheers, you did figure it out. :D Thanks
About the first post... any volunteers?
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the main plot being evil imp officer wants to rune our countreyside ? shit never thought i would be envolved in any sort of tree hugging *mutters* :x
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Actually the part about "enslaves the populace to run his industrial machine" should be a worry too.
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aw that sounds a bit more urgent the only thing i kind of worry about is the officer wants this to happen and makes the moves e.g. they start to enslave people the people can rebell but in doing so they would be putting the noose around there own neck :?
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Yep. It unbalances the whole thing. Thats why I thought this would be a good plotline for our first movie.
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o it is, i got a few idea's for it meself :)
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Dave - I hope you don't mind that I stole your first post. It was just too good to do. :)
Anyway, just figured that I should go ahead and make it, even though was kind of hoping that someone else would take the initiative. The games are on. I gave us something like six months for a deadline to reach the end. We can finish up sooner if we want, but the way I figure it, if we can't finish up after that time, we probably aren't.
....not that we've ever finished a season on LNG "on time," but we can hope, can't we? ;)
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Right, here's a few post/plot ideas:
1) Lieutenant Akula is in direct conflict with Commander Harkness. I'm not sure if we should end with Harkness being dismissed, but certainly, Akula will want to undermine him.
2) He's the nephew of Admiral Ybriss (profile still needed), who's supposed to convince him to bring his Star Destroyer here on leave. This could happen sooner or later, before we create the crisis.
3) Commander Harkness has a problem: he's below quota. He's also trying to fix things without too much disruption. This, in part, explains his annoyance with Akula, though it wasn't mentioned yet. Quarterly reports will come due, at which point, Harkness will find out that the situation was much worse - and discover some reports deliberately falsified. This from both independent mines and the Imperial one.
Here's the thing: he's not sure where the falsification was. Were they overreporting before? Are they underreporting now? Investigation ensues, before he becomes too chronically underquota.
This is going to create pressue on Harkness to increase production. He'll try gentle incentives at first, and Akula might see his chance here: make deals. Things get conveniently lost. Shipments reassigned. The bottom line is that production continues to fall... and he starts treating the workers more like shit.
All of this is intended to get rumours of strikes started, and the independent mines annoyed by regulations that they keep having to conform with changing constantly. Commander Harkness is the only one who can keep them all straight, and standardises them on occassion, or even who has what exemption for what reason.
Now, if only Akula and his supporters were not making sure that messages get lost.
4) A specific contribution to uncovering from me: Cael gets used to decode a transmission, either to or from Ybriss, which speaks indirectly of the plan. Gets the Syndicate worried that something is up. Do any of the families have interests in the mines? I know the Syndicate has at least some (thanks to Dave), but it would be interesting if the nobles did as well.
5) Admiral Ybriss will arrive for leave. Plateau City gets to be visited by Stormtroopers and Naval Officers on leave. Not quite invaded, but it won't help matters: we already have the population starting to distrust the Empire, and now there's a Star Destroyer in system for shore leave, in spite of the pleasure planet not three hours away.
I'm not sure where to go from here. Obviously, things could go really, really bad. They should probably get worse, but how much?
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the problem i see with Harkness being fired is the obvious result from that Akula will enslave the people and force them to strip mine the planet if this happens there cant realy be any form of rebellion if there was the empire would just send in thousands of stormtroopers and start killing anything not wearing an imperial emblym
through i have an idea to add in the caliscotians to the equasion, since they wroked for the trade fedration for hundreds of years chances are they are gonna have some intrests in planets i was thinking vrogull can be one as you said the drop on producation would start to cuase some worrying and i was thinking why not the caliscotians since they depend purely on the trade from other worlds, this meens maby a diplomat gets sent to vorgull dose a little to much snooping and finds out the plot which Akula wouldnet like so the caliscotian ambasador gets popped
just an idea cos i was planning on haveing the caliscotians have a little skirmish with the hapan and mabey useing vorgull as a neutral meeting ground presided over by harkness ? mabey the meeting ground gets chosen becuase the caliscotians wnat to find out how there ambasidor got murderd? just a thought
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Lets go with a worst case scenario and work from there...
Stormtroopers on ground. Star Destroyer in orbit. Lots of people kinda unhappy with the Empire. The rumoured strikes actually happen. Negotiations aren't going anywhere because Akula is stalling and dragging the whole thing out. He asks his dear old uncle to stay around a little longer just in case. Days (weeks?) go by with no progress. Harkness starts to panic - production's dropping. He's doing what he can but because of Akula is getting nowhere. But, as far as the miner's are concerned, he's on their side.
Then things start going wrong. People start crossing the picket line. Vorgrell and then Imperial troops are sent in to maintain order. Fearing a riot, Harkness, the Noble Houses and the miners get together for another chat in Plateau City to try and calm things down before it gets out of ontrol. One of the miners is assassinated (by Akula perhaps?). The miners blame Harkness - they think that he arranged the whole thing and point at the Imperial soldiers 'maintaining order' as evidence. They call for his blood and riots break out. Vorgrell troops refuse to put them down. Stormtroopers are sent in...you know what comes next. Maybe even a skirmish between Vorgrell troops and Stormtroopers happens.
Then Harkness is assassinated. Or maybe is kidnapped and held ransom? (either by miners, the crime syndicate or even Akula to implicate the miner's). Either way, Akula assumes Harkness' position with Ybriss' support. He declares marshall law, seizes government buildings in Plateau City, disbands the Cooperative and sends in more Stormtroopers to send the miners back to work.
A number of massacres and countless executions later, Vorgrell becomes a small-scale copy of Coruscant. And we're all buggered, to put it bluntly.
Unless we can a) foil any of the assassination attempts
b) reach an agreement
c) posion the relationship between Akula and his uncle
d) all of the above
Not sure how Jamie's Caliscotian situation could be worked in with that above, but I have plague and can't think straight for too ong :?
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The Calicostans can be worked in easily: third party mediation. It's something that Harkness, at least, would be willing to do. His main concern is keeping order, and the best way to do that in this sort of situation would be for everyone to sit down with a disinterested party serving as the go-between. While this would normally be the Empire itself, he decided to only "sponser" someone else; a more indirect form of influence, and closer to Republic traditions.
They could probably help to poison the relationship also, though I don't really know how.
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A new thought occured: Harkness can be simply detained by Akula. In secret, of course, framing another group for it. Why? It helps his situation, and then he can still do things like have Harkness forge false statements. Yes, it will be obvious that his statements are getting made with a gun to his head. Just not whose gun.
Perhaps the Caliscotians, in the midst of their negotiations, help to figure this out and get word to someone to help.
What brings it to an end is simple: Harkness is rescued. He quickly negotiates a seperate settlement, which will result in the increased production, and the importation of some machinery. Which gives us an interesting situation: to even remove Akula, Ybriss forces Harkness to move away from his conservative policies.
Harkness would temper Imperial rule, so it won't be quite so bad, but we would still have COMPNOR (Committee for the Preservation of the New Order - think secret police) applying pressure there, and at the end of the day, the Council becomes an Imperial puppett.
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Just been glancing over the stats for an Imperial Mk1 class Star Destroyer...
From http://hangarbay.tripod.com/td-isd1.html
Yeah...might I add that we try and avoid the whole rioting thing as much as possible. I don't know about you, but 20 AT-ATs stomping around Plateau City is gonna be a little much to deal with... :S
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Well, we have to do something to move the main plot foward. So, here's a thought.
I'm going to have Lieutenant Akula start to take a freer hand. About the 12th or 13th, something like that, he'll have a larger fight break out, and randomly execute some miners - he was on scene, and just decided to do that to get everyone to fall back into line.
I propose a 2-3 week time jump at that point (the date of the atrocity can be altered), since Akula will have started threats of a strike being declared more openly. At this point, we can have Ybriss' Star Destroyer show up.
Anyone have any ideas for how to get our characters involved in the overall plot? Any thoughts on this idea?
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Instead of "executions" how about he deals with a mining riot by collapsing the mine on the miners. The atrocity level is so much greater.
The surviving miners have to dig out the bodies of their comrades in order to being operations again and then production is delayed again (making his point of lowering production to press the need for automation) and then ultimately he can blame it on the miners to Harkness by saying it was the miners' attempt to sabotage the equipment that caused the cave-in.
For him it is a win-win...except that some important folks - more level headed folks - got killed in the cave in and the new labor leaders might want to act with violence or worse.
Ybriss might just relent and let his people come to Vorgrell after all...he is keen to visit Harkness and Akula and Akula's portrait of "wild and rugged" Vorgrell has attracted the men under Ybriss' command.
But once there he isn't going to want to throw his weight behind Akula. He (like Harkness) is Old-school Republic. A show of force is a last-ditch effort to establish order (unlike Akula's hero Admiral Tarkin who favors "shoot first - ask questions of the survivors later").
Ybriss won't act unless there is open rebellion. So stopping that rebellion before Ybriss and Akula do is the PC's job.
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Let's not forget the humancentric policies of the New Order. Palpatine is viciously "racist", and non-humans become second-class citizens and slaves under his Empire.
I'm not actually looking at a detailed timeline right now, but I'm assuming the Holonet is completely under Empirial control at this point. Also, anyone aware of the situation as far as overt enslavement of planets like Kashyyyk?
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well i was planning on haveing harkness have a small medical problem that can easly be fixed with star wars tek so thats how my charator is meeting him, i would still like it if it was possibel that the caliscotians got envolved even if its something as simpel as a diploma visiting and asking where the hell is all that ore we have been promised
i agree with dave on that one, but if a riot dose break out alot of innocnet people are going to die and i think itll spread throughtout the whole planet not just confined to a few mineing towns or the big city
The other thing is if this riot dose break out it would be a perfect time for Akula to bump off harkness allow a few rioters o get close to him and let them do there work or even a Akula himself so the way i see it i think our charators will be doing two things
protecting harkness from the rioters and Akula's stormtroopers becuase if our charatoirs get harkness chances are Akula would say we have kidnaped him and are trying to ransom him off anyway ill lt you all try and decode my words :roll:
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Well, I'm currently proposing to Jim Corin's venture into Severus' ship to find out what happened to Zayen...as the good Inquisitor likes to keep up to date on all sorts of things, its possible he may have something related to all this stashed away. Maybe not something big, but something that gets Corin thinking, maybe something that even incriminates Akula...but he doesn't realise this until some time after (like, oh I don't know, he stumbles across a report of explosives missing from the Imperial Armoury or a release form signed by Akula, Imperial troops in the mine the day before and an Imperial inspection by Akula the day of the 'accident').
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As I recall, the reason Chewbacca is so attached to Han Solo is that Chewie swore a life debt to Solo in thanks for being rescued from slavery. Judging from their dialogue in ANH, I think it's safe to assume they had been working together for several years. Let's say 5 years for the sake of argument, though I think it was probably closer to ten. So, bare minimum, the slavery ring on Kashyyyk had been operating for 5 years prior to ANH, but then we'd have to factor in the time it takes to set up the infrastructure and develop the markets for an operation of than scale. Now, these are just estimates based on what I know from the movies. I'm not a big reader/gamer in the "Expanded Universe" -- in fact, Knights of the Old Republic, which I'm currently playing, is the only thing I've dealt with in the EU since that horrible Shadows of the Empire POS.
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Any luck finding timelines? I was planning to have some mention of slaving on Kashyyyk, but was holding off until we knew for sure what stage it would be at.
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Well, at the beginning of Han Solo: The Paradise Snare Han has just recently freed Chewie (I think...been some time since I read it, but I'm pretty sure that's right). The Han Solo Trilogy is set, according to the timeline in the New Jedi Order books, 0-10 years before Star Wars: A New Hope. So I'm thinking...yeah, a full slaving operation would already be in place on Kashyyk. With this in mind, it probably got set up just after Palpatine declared his New Order.
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In my new post, I have some stuff about plasma grenades being smuggled into Plateau City. If anyone wants to continue with that idea or use it somewhere, feel free. Same goes with the guy who is fingered as the buyer.
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ill do a colab about it if you want an intresting idea actuley think it would allow me to add in a npc im thinking about makeing
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So there'd be possible application of New Order dogma on Vorgrell. Possibly getting aliens not direction attached to the noble families "quaranteened" in Shipwreck. Maybe not even something that overt, maybe cordoning off Shipwreck, and the aliens there. Have a massive overcrowding issue develop in Shipwreck.
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Louisa and I have been talking about trying to get things moving along, and think that between the two of us, we've bounced a couple of ideas off each other (apoliges in advance, my dear, if I left something out - you know my memory has been terrible).
After the ball, we have a couple of things left... mainly, causing trouble. So....
-Admiral Ybriss arrives with his Imperial-class Star Destroyer, for his troops to enjoy shore leave.
-After this, we have the mine collapse, and rioting begin
-Some minor subjugation. We thought that Zara might use the event to try to increase her control again (if any council member is eliminated, the mayor of Shipwreck or the Elencho family would probably be least disruptive). In any event, we would be ending with a major disruption of the status quo, giving us a "cliffhanger" ending: the Empire has increased its garrison, and remember Louisa recomending that there might be the beginnings of a small rebel alliance on Vorgrell.
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ive been wateing a while to post alot of my Vish stuff up becuase alot of it envolved matt's charator but i had an idea that before all hells breaks lose on the planet that two diplomats from the hapan and caliscotions ,i have wrote a post were they have a altercation which could cause war so this is how peopel could descover vish's past just an idea
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Actually that was somthing Jim told me that Matt had mentioned :D hehe. But I thought it sounded pretty cool and something that would give us an excuse for our characters to interact more.