Mos Durpa Mayhem!

After a very busy spring semester, we had the first game of the year at my place last Saturday. Because the Star Wars games have the biggest draw, I selected it for the game du jour. The turnout was fantastic, with Dave Worley making an appearance all the way from San Antonio! Just about the whole local gang was here too, with Billy making a surprise cameo on the way to look out duty.

The scenario this time was a multi-sided rumble in the small Tatooine town of Mos Durpa. Everyone had their own faction, and everyone's goals were (mostly) kept secret from everyone else. The end result was interesting enough to keep everyone's attention until the end, with the exception of Brad who had to leave early for family obligations.

To describe each faction is more than I want to do at the moment. Instead, I'll just post the snaps I took and leave a few comments. I will probably run this scenario - with modifications - at a convention later this year or next.

An overview of the sleepy desert town of Mos Durpa. At the bottom of the picture is the "space port", and next to it is one of the two Imperial barracks in town - the Empire keeps a relatively strong presence in order to maintain the peace. At the top of the photo is Jawa sector of town, and to the upper right is the palace of Emo the Hutt.

Another pre-action shot from the opposite angle. Just another day in Mos Durpa...

An overhead view of Emo the Hutt's pleasure palace. There are some Gamoreans guarding the place, and a few thugs loitering about. Emo is under the blue canopy, shading himself from the hot Tatooine suns.

Every faction had its own, distinct goals, most of them revolving around the surprise visit of Imperial Chancellor Valmarin to Mos Durpa. The Imperial commander had heard rumors that rebels (note - not capital-R rebels...) were going to try and assassinate the Chancellor, so the storm troopers were combing the streets, interrogating the locals to try and find out where the rebels were hiding. Here they grill three citizens, but without success.

Meanwhile, the Jawas, who had it in for Emo and his operations, set about "confiscating" all the droids in town, because most of them were being used by Emo to smuggle contraband into and out of town. Because stealing droids is a crime, they had to do it outside LOS of the storm troopers. Here, they rat pack a mouse droid. I leave it to the reader to decide where that constitutes irony...

The Tusken Raiders had decided to settle their tribal differences by grouping up to raid town. Thanks to a recent treaty, they were allowed into Mos Durpa in small groups (four or less) to trade, so there were two groups in town already. The rest were menacing from the outskirts of town, inching closer. They eventually burst in and started taking civilians prisoners to use as slaves... or worse! They quickly formed a partnership with Mos Durpa's other put-upon minority, the Jawas. Here, the Tusken have deliberately committed a crime right in front of some storm troopers (just out of shot), in order to distract them from the Jawas and their robot-knapping caper! You can see the Jedi Diplomat, Mon Turwak, sneaking into town in the lower left...

Chancellor Valmarin landed at the end of turn two and proceeded with his four guard droids to Emo's palace, where he was to secretly meet with a Jedi representative in order to discuss his surrendering and receiving amnesty and sanctuary from the Rebels in exchange for sensitive information on the operations of the Imperial Inquisition. Valmarin had not walked 20 yards down the road when the rebels of the Mos Durpa People's Front sprung from hiding and tried to gun him down!

Cad Bane, the galaxy's most infamous and skilled bounty hunter, was in town, killing time. He knew he would receive a hefty bounty for killing any Jedi or Sith (from their opposing factions), and it wasn't long before the other factions in town started offering him work as a spoiler against each other. He was hired by Emo the Hutt to deal with the "Jawa problem", and here he  makes trouble for the Jedi Diplomat, who is frantically trying to deflect Bane's relentless blaster fire. The Jedi was so flustered that he hid behind the nearby people - who perhaps fortunately were mostly thugs working for Emo - a certainly un-Jedi-like behavior! Still, a plastic figure's got to do what a plastic figure's got to do, I guess...

Chancellor Valmarin was trying to get through town as quickly as possible, in the face of a great deal of - highly inaccurate - blaster fire from the MDPF. Because several other factions had a vested interest in at least seeing that the Chancellor made it to his meeting, the MDPF were taking a lot of shots in return. Valmarin was wounded, but his guard droids were deflecting most of the shots.

Cad Bane, intent on killing the Jedi Diplomat, followed him into the devious palace of Emo the Hutt. Unknown to most, Emo had a forcefield projector in front of his viewing stand (the reason for which will become obvious in the next photo). He allowed the Diplomat to leap up, but not Cad Bane, in spite of nominally having an agreement with him! What could the devious Emo be up to?!?

Oh, that's why... Tripping a secret switch, Emo released his Rancor from under the floor of his palace! It took all the Rancor's actions to emerge from his hiding place, which gave Cad Bane the chance to react. He asked Emo to lower the forcefield - Emo refused - and he ran back to the door (which is on the close side of the wall out of shot), only to find it locked. Using his rocket boots, he lept up to the balcony above - you can just see him in the lower left corner. Discretion is the better part of valor, even if you are as tough as Bane!

Eventually, Emo opted to keep his bargain with Cad Bane and, distracting the Rancor by pushing one of his own bodyguards down into the pit as a tasty snack, Bane lept up into the viewing stand and raced after the Jedi. By that time, the Jedi had already met with the Chancellor, and was preparing to escort him safely off planet, when he realized that the dastardly Emo had locked the way out - doh! Bane was hot on his heals, and in a brief fight, the Jedi was killed.

But hot on Bane's heels was the Sith Inquisitor! He burst into the room and, seeing the Chancellor and the body of the dead Jedi, put two and two together and came up with "Chancellor Valmarin must die!!!" He overcame the problem of the two guard droids by using his Force TK ability to bring the Chancellor to him, impaling him on his light saber and functionally ending the game. (There was a brief but inconclusive struggle between Bane and the Sith, which ended due to some bickering of the usual CGC type.)

Props to Shane for winning the game as Cad Bane! He ended up with almost double the VP of anyone else. In hindsight, not all the victory conditions were fair, so there is some balancing to do, but it was a fun event regardless.

Cheers!

- Rod