Lit We Hav to Go on an Adventure with Jello

Aren't the intellectual elite normally the kind of people who don't approve of dictatorships in general? You'd think they'd already be lost because COMPNOR has entire divisions devoted to burning (deleting?) holobooks and art.

You raise some very good points but I'm not sure I entirely agree on the subject because the Empire is a vicious police state which has a specific department of its intelligence apparatus (COMPNOR) devoted to suppressing art and promoting Imperial culture that is militaristic and glorifying of fascist ideals. Fete week is very much based on Ancient Rome versus the Nazis but just because it's centered on Coruscant doesn't mean that it's an element the public embraces. It just means someone in the Imperial hierarchy (Grand Moff Trachta? Teshik? Tigellius? Palpatine?) decided the parade day would involve an execution section. It'd hardly be the worst PR blunder the Empire has made.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Imperial_Center_Oversector

Maybe Palpatine did it because he envisioned making the galaxy into a duplicate of the Old Sith Empire.

 

[double post]

 

I don't disagree that it's conceivable the worst elements of the Empire could come up with that kind of thing. I just think it's a little too over-the-top dystopian for the Empire to actually go ahead and do those things not just in the Core, but on Coruscant, of all places, where its hand is supposed to be the lightest and its image the most beneficent.

 

Okay, fine, you've sold me, despite the telepathic ball of light vignette. I'll go with the communicator retcon. Telepathic will-o-the-wisp telephones for the Nagai, it is!

Hens love roosters, geese love ganders, everyone else loves Starfall Flanders!

Maybe you can get in a three-way fight with a Defel bounty hunter.

Woohoo!

I'll come back to this, since it's been such a topic of conversation down below.

I can't remember when I first tried to imagine this parade, with AT-ATs walking down the parade route, but it was a long time ago, and a hell of an image, so count me among those who want this art. I wonder if James Gurney, who did some fantastic parade scenes in Dinotopia, could ever be convinced to paint such a thing?

And yes, Lord Vader standing on the Palatial Balcony, grudgingly waving at the titanic crowds like a constipated Eva Perón ... that's also a hell of an image.

It's also an attempt at an explanation of where Vader's TIE Advanced x1 and, I think, TIE Fighter's TIE Advanced (aka the TIE Avenger) fit into the broader history of the TIE line, particularly as antecedents to the TIE Interceptor (which I'm pretty sure is what the x3 is intended to be). Unfortunately, chronologically early appearances of the Interceptor put the kibosh on that particular through line.

I'm 99% sure you're right about it being the first explanation of Taanab. I do wish they'd done a better job of setting up a battle that would exemplify the leadership and tactical skills that would make Alliance brass give him a general's commission over any number of officers who'd been around more than a year. The Conner Nets idea was (to coin a term) smooth, but while it showed outside-the-box thinking, I don't think it really showed the sort of command skill that would make Madine and Ackbar say, "Yeah, forget Antilles or Varth or hell, even Klivian, we clearly need to give this guy command of starfighter operations."

Wait ... what? "Honest as possible under a fascist regime"? The same tabloidy TriNebulon News that publishes Andor Javin's claptrap? That Dan Wallace called "Gossipy"? That "The Imperial Warlords: Despoilers of an Empire, Part 3" called out for being "known for its flagrant sensationalism"?

While I am not unsympathetic to your position, I tend to look at it this way: more people died in the American firebombing of Tokyo than died in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. But the symbol of total destruction the atomic bomb represented, the suddenness and ease with which thousands of lives could be erased in one swift stroke, made it more powerful than its high body count alone. The destruction of Alderaan wasn't just a depopulation; it was an obliteration.

I've read through the discussion, and I think I have to side with Charlemagne19. It seems to me that festival executions just aren't as incongruous as others would like to think. Indeed, if not for the Constitution of the United States having a dislike for cruel and unusual punishments, if not for our independent judiciary taking a firm role in applying that dislike broadly, and if not for Nazi Germany painting such a clear negative vision of fascism in the American mythology that we've become a bit wary of the most ostentatious forms of patriotic festivals, I can imagine us televising an execution of some convicted Al Qaeda prisoners as part of our Fourth of July festivities. And while there would be no shortage of people dismayed by it, they'd be just another set of voices, like those opposed to the death penalty are in our reality. I just don't think we're so far from the "Come out for the May Day Hangin' and Square Dancin'" mindset of a century and a half ago as we'd like to think.

 

It's true that even today people have morbid curiosity, but we don't exactly have a New Year's tradition of gathering all the party guests around a laptop to watch beheading videos.

But public exectutions were already becoming less common in the 18th and 19th centuries, so it can't be a strictly American thing OR a "Godwin's Law" thing, at least on that specific issue.

I can buy the Empire doing public executions ("fear will keep them in line" after all). I can even buy the more fanatic Imps cheering them on. But doing it yearly, as part of the New Years festivities? And it must be a headache to pour through the arrest records. "This guy stole a landspeeder, we can't execute a common low life for Fete Week. How about Saw Gerrara?" "Are you kidding? He's dangerous and has devoted followers who will break him out, we can't wait another 6 months to execute him!"

Public executions I'll buy, but the implied festival atmosphere seems a bit too Warhammer 40K. (Which, for reference, is the same universe where "The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round" has been replaced with "The Tracks on the Landraider Crush the Heretics")

 

It should be noted that this is the year after the dissolution of the Senate and it's possible the executions are a new thing or a recent addition. I will say, though, the Imperium of Mankind is what the Empire ASPIRES to be. So they're in motion to becoming that under God-Emperor Palpatine. It just is taking awhile to get there. EIther way, I tend to view the Empire as being a lot more crude than people give it credit for as it's a Rome/Nazi/Soviet/Nixonian hybrid.

Remember in Wedge's Gamble, the Empire had its nasty side even on Coruscant.

Ditto Coruscant Nights.

 

Now that you mention it, the Empire in Dark Empire does strike me as having somewhat of a grim-dark vibe. Give them a few thousand years . . .

It says this is the first time in 11 years that they've gone without public Fete Week executions though, so it's not THAT recent. I guess my problem is that out of the real world societies you mentioned that influenced the Galactic Empire, as far as I know Ancient Rome is the only one that turned the executions into public entertainment. (Speaking of which, I hope no one asks me why "nazi public executions" turns up in my search history . . .).

 

Yeah, it's a good, solid explanation of how a lone gambler-smuggler could distinguish himself in battle, given the limited opportunities gambler-smugglers have to do that -- it's just not a "here's the man to lead our forces" scenario. I'm not sure there's anything they could do to reasonably create that kind of scenario short of something like Han's role in the Battle of Nar Shaddaa. It was arguably a mistake not to give Lando an actual military background similar to Han. The way you can run with it now is if Lando's really just making more of a joke about his famous role in the Battle of Taanab when he's actually earned the role through his work with the Rebellion over the past year, but it's still kind of strained.

I think your imagination is running away with you.

 

Well, the short version is that the Empire is an awful government and does a lot of horrible things people would roll with because they'd kill the dissenters.

After all, what loyal Imperial citizen WOULDN'T want to see mass public executions of traitors?



*aims guns at crowds*

"YAY!"

I will say, though, Dentaal's death is a great story beat and I always wondered if Madine participated in the massacre (and is a war criminal) or if he just couldnt' do it and deserted, which his men completed for him (meaning he didn't think this through).

 

It's time to wrap up Adventure Journal 5 with Vengeance Strike. Over the past four issues, Schweighofer's short stories have related the backstories of Dirk Harkness, Tru'eb Cholakk and Platt Okeefe, Jai Raventhorn, and Starter. The framing story of each has slowly progressed the characters through a night of heavy drinking and explosives purchasing, two pastimes that you should always combine, and is clearly building up to something in the present day. Now, we'll finally learn what that something is.

We begin with Harkness and Raventhorn taking a shuttle toward Vengeance, an Imperial Star Destroyer in dock over Wroona. They're disguised as technicians, and they're there to kill Bregius Golthan. Golthan, an Imperial Advisor, had led an effort to stymie the Black Curs' intelligence-gathering efforts after Endor, and had even captured and tortured Harkness before the other Curs rescued him; Golthan's responsible for the loss of his left eye. As they land, Harkness is somehow able to trigger an electrical failure on the bridge, which leads to some officer asking for qualified techs to repair it, so that's how they get taken to the bridge. Now look, I'm not one to look a Dirk Harkness story in the mouth, but how does that make any sense? He sabotaged the bridge . . . to get access to the bridge to sabotage it further? How did he arrange this failure? It's totally unexplained. Also unexplained: why an electrical fault on the bridge doesn't get serviced by a designated technician, but results in some guy just hoping he can pull a new arrival off the shuttle. "Hey, anybody on this Star Destroyer know how to fix a short? You look like a technician, you want to try it?" No part of this plan makes any sense as a plan. How can you plan on being randomly pulled off the metaphorical street on a Star Destroyer? They're not even near the bridge. How can you sabotage something before you're even there?

Down on the surface, Platt, Tru'eb, and Starter are ready to take off, where they'll lurk in traffic until Harkness blows the bridge, then pull their friends out.

On the bridge, Harkness fiddles around with repairs while Jai crawls down a maintenance access and sets charges that should blow out the front of the bridge. As they're leaving, trying to figure out how to lose their stormtrooper escort and get back to the hangar for pickup, who should walk out onto the bridge but Bregius Golthan and Beylyssa, the bounty hunter Jai once had a run-in with, as Golthan orders her to kill the Black Curs. They nearly bump into each other, lock eyes, and then it's on. Jai grabs a blaster and tries to get them out, but Harkness is out for Golthan's blood. Beylyssa kicks him off Golthan, only for Beylyssa and Jai to both spray fire everywhere, at the end of which Beylyssa is down, wounded, and Harkness is shot, but not before having murdered Golthan with his bare hands, which is even more satisfying than murdering him with a bridge explosion. They make their way off the bridge into Golthan's chambers as they try to figure out how to escape, wounded and under fire, before the bridge blows up. Then it blows up. The integration with the art here is a bit different than usual, as the battle is depicted in the comic-panel-style art, but also written out; the text doesn't break for the art to take over.

Starter and Tru'eb make an attack run on the Star Destroyer; I'm not sure what a freighter and X-wing are really going to do. Platt takes her ship to the docking bay, where the ship is apparently falling apart. No word on how a docked ship starts listing and exploding and falling apart just because its bridge goes down. Platt tries to stay, but when her friends don't show up with the ship exploding around her, she finally leaves.

What she doesn't know is that right as the bridge exploded, Jai and Harkness were getting in Golthan's private escape pod. Now they're injured and adrift, but alive.

From there, the short story ends, and we get a writeup of Wroona. Wroona, population a shockingly reasonable eight and a half billion, is home to the Wroonians, a blue "offshoot race" of humanity that would eventually include George Lucas. The planet is run by trade guilds, though during the Empire, an Imperial governor ran the planet. Notably, the profile doesn't specify that he was oppressive; rather, he was "just," cracking down on Wroona's criminal underworld. Nevertheless, the population rebelled after Endor and seized control of the planet and the huge Wroona Stardock the Empire had built, which can service capital ships unable to land. They didn't join the New Republic, but rather remained an independent, anything-goes free-trade world. It's a colorful, seemingly pleasant fringe hotspot that's willing to take anyone's business, as we see from their allowing Golthan to refit his ship.

The story is wrapped up by a short adventure scenario. Adventurers happen to be at Wroona Starport while the Star Destroyer breaks up in orbit. They see escape pods launching, and decide they'd be worth salvaging, since the Salvage Guild is offering a bounty already. No word on what anyone plans to do about the giant chunks of Star Destroyer presumably falling out of the sky with them. So the characters grab salvage supplies and go, scooping escape pods out of the ocean. At the first pod, rival salvagers jump them. The next pod has life signs, but has washed up in a cave. Players have to go inside the cave, which is full of Wroonian fly-catchers, creatures that hang off the ceiling and detach to attack their food, which is the players right now. Beat them and the players can pull out the escape pod, which has inside it two wounded individuals who pay you to take them to a friend at the starport. That takes care of Jai and Dirk. The characters will also get a bonus from the Salvage Guild, since this is Golthan's pod with several extra fittings and items of interest.

I like what Schweighofer's doing here in integrating yet another form of storytelling into the piece, spinning out a short adventure prompt that isn't a full-length adventure, but is more than a one-paragraph Adventure Idea. I'm not in love with the nonsensical setup for the story (which doesn't have the page count to spend on much setup, the individual page count of features being a recurring limitation despite each issue's massive overall size), but as a quick little action-packed story, it's decent. And it has an Imperial Advisor. How did Golthan not get a writeup?

A good, solid issue. Schweighofer made some odd choices with the layout, but the content had a pretty good overall level of quality. Next issue has a lot of exciting-looking content, including the Kella Rand story the back cover of this issue promised inside.

 

About public executions in the modern day: the Taliban sure as heck did that, and I wouldn't be surprised if other nations did it as well.

 

I suppose my major argument boiled down to.

Havac: It's cartoonishly evil.

Me: But...the Empire IS cartoonishly evil.

 

The question is whether the Empire wants to look cartoonishly evil... even on Coruscant itself.

 

"I don't understand the question."

On a serious note, the Galactic Empire was a group which did not want to continue the idea of feigned benevolence and they worked very hard at removing that idea. I always felt the idea they'd blame Alderaan with the idea of "superweapons" or not claiming credit missed the point. They don't want to continue the charade which Palpatine hid under during the Prequels. The Death Star is about intimidating the populace underneath it.

Fete Week, at least, is just a reminder of Imperial values being a celebration of militancy, conquest, ruthlessness, and power.

 

I could see the public execution thing going either way really. Doesn't strike me as the sort of thing they'd start the day after ROTS, but after easing people into the idea sure.

I could easily see something like the Starship Troopers FedNet segments being COMPNOR-approved:



"Sentence: Death. Execution tonight at 6, all net all channels!"

 

MercenaryAce Landb

The issue isn't that the Empire has public executions, that's not what people are finding hard to believe. The sticking point is the idea that public executions are part of the holiday celebrations, which strikes many (including myself) as a bit too over the top.

In fact my research (read: "googling") is having a hard time coming up with any real world example of "yearly tradition of executing prisoners to celebrate a holiday" ever being a thing. Even in times were going to a hanging was considered entertainment, it never exactly morphed into a New Years tradition. The closest I can find is the Aztec's human sacrifice and that execution of lowly criminals was part of the entertainment at the Roman Colosseum, but even then I can't an example of a yearly holiday with execution closely tied to its celebration.

Which makes sense if you think about it: executing enemies of the state every once in a while shows the state's power, but if it's able to find multiple enemies every single year, then it starts to look like the state might not be as in control as it would like you to believe, and that maybe the Rebels are stronger and more numerous than the Empire pretends . . .

 

It's weird you're having difficulty finding any reference since the Fete week seems like a very specific reference to Caesar's Triumph and the execution of Vercenegetorix.

 

Except that's not a holiday, it's a triumph.

 

Personally, I think New Year's Fete Week is supposed to be a lot like Carnival, though maybe more the German version than the Brazilian/New Orleans version:

 

Adventure Journal 6 is going to be a great one, or so I hope. A lot of exciting stuff here. The Alex Winger stories finally get to the big event, Kathy Tyers comes back for another Tinian story, there are some interesting-looking adventures, and we have promising source material and short stories from Laurie Burns.

But first, we open with the Admiral's Communique. Let's find out what editor Peter Schweighofer has to say. An issue after awkwardly dancing around the fact that he can't get enough good adventures to run, Schweighofer lets us know that the Adventure Journal gets a lot of submissions, but he only runs the best. As we've seen, though, the submissions have been far from impeccable, meaning that there's got to be a lot of stuff that's even worse. Schweighofer does get into numbers, though, discussing his big charts of submissions and where they are in the process. And at the time of writing, the Journal had one hundred fifty-three proposals. Twenty-one were rejected. Seventy-two pieces were published through issue five. Obviously a lot are still earlier in the process. But the numbers do suggest that actually, the odds of your submission getting published are pretty good. That's less than fourteen percent of submissions rejected outright. Not all those pieces in the works may get published, but eighty-six percent getting a hearing and being somewhere on the publican track isn't really tremendous selectivity. He may spin it as evidence of robust interest in the Journal, but it's clear that Schweighofer isn't actually getting the volume of submissions that would allow him to be truly aggressive in weeding out weak material and accepting only the highest-quality pieces.

New ads: for The Art of A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi, and Galladinium's Fantastic Technology.

New Horizons brings us word of other upcoming Star Wars products. First off, Star Wars is coming to audiobooks. It's been a long time, right? There's a set of the trilogy novelizations available for fifty bucks on tape or seventy-five bucks on CD. I'll let you think about those prices. You can get a full Dark Empire audio drama, on the other hand, for seventeen dollars.

Zanart is producing Star Wars blueprints. Artist Troy Vigil used WEG material for reference, as well as the Official X-wing Strategy Guide.

West End Games isn't afraid to plug itself, noting its release of the DarkStryder Campaign. Little is said about the plot, other than the presence of the central ship FarStar and the fact that a story this issue will introduce a major character from the campaign. We do learn, however, that Tim Zahn wrote an introductory short story, and Dave Dorman did the cover. Tim Zahn! Buy it now!

Lastly, Tomart is coming out with a price guide for Star Wars collectibles. It has a "comprehensive listing" of all Star Wars merchandise, which would be hard to believe except that Steve Sansweet co-wrote it. If you really want to know about each and every item of Star Wars merchandise and its estimated market value as of 1995, boy, is this the book for you. Plus there are tips for new collectors! Also, Tomart's Action Figure Digest has a Star Wars update each issue, so you're covered on the latest news, if you're the kind of person who reads Tomart's Action Figure Digest.

I am not, but I am the kind of person who reads Star Wars short stories, and we get one from Kathy Tyers to lead the issue off next!

 

To Fight Another Day leads off the issue. It's Kathy Tyers's return to the pages of the Adventure Journal, making her the first pro author to write twice. We'll soon be seeing much more of the professional Star Wars authors in the Adventure Journal pages, though. She returns to her original protagonist Tinian I'att, seen in Adventure Journal 4, and also slated for an appearance in the upcoming Tales of the Bounty Hunters.

Tinian's aboard the Quandary, a crappy tramp freighter, when the second mate reports that someone has threatened to blow up Silver Station within a day. This is the station they're about to dock at, which I'd think could be an issue. The freighter needs repairs, though, so they have to stop. She's still on the run from the Empire with Sprig Cheever; it's only been three weeks since Tinian on Trial. She still feels hollow, empty, grief-stricken, purposeless. She means to deliver the prototype technology from the last story to the ridiculously-named Una Poot, who supplies several resistance cells. After that, she'd be pretty content to just die.

A protocol droid takes Tinian and her group (consisting of the rest of the band from the end of Tinian on Trial -- Yccakic the Bith and Redd Metalflake the sound droid -- minus Cheever's wife, whom Tinian is impersonating) to their quarters on the statio. An interesting note is that the story specifies there are several gravity reorientations as they make their way through the mazelike space station, an interesting little detail and bit of worldbuilding. Aside from Lusankya, we rarely see much done with that concept. Part of the problem, I think, is that fantasy authors are used to writing pseudo-Earth settings and are thus unaccustomed to using the sort of weird world-building details science fiction offers. Tinian has Redd check out the local information net, and finds out that the bomb threat is from a nest of Ranats who have vowed revenge after Poot tried to wipe them out when they were found stealing supplies. It's pointed out that they're only "semi-intelligent," little more than very bright vermin. The EU could never quite keep this straight, likely because it found the concept of semi-sentience rather baffling, and you get stuff like talking Ranats involved in business, which makes the stuff where they're just bright vermin kinda shady. Also in the news: the Death Star. So that dates this pretty firmly. The Empire built the Death Star and blew up Alderaan, but the Rebellion blew it up right back. Tinian being Tinian, she wants to know what kind of explosives they used.

We then get some Poot POV. An old lady, she's Cheever's great-aunt, and has hated authority ever since corrupt customs officials shot up her ship as a young merchant for refusing to pay them their usual bribe, which is why she's a committed arms dealer and supplier for the Rebellion. She's quite grumpy about these Ranats, and about the fact that her hatred of authority and uniforms has made her avoid establishing a security detail on the station that could help her drive off the Ranats. It's back to Tinian's POV when the group is brought to her. Tinian offers her the special shielded armor components free ****ing gratis, a concept Poot cannot understand. She demands that Tinian ask for some kind of compensation, so she doesn't come asking favors later. So Tinian thinks, and she asks to be put in touch with Wrrl's family, some relative who can be told how he died and help her honor her dead bodyguard's memory. There's some back-and-forth about what the Empire's taken from Tinian, and a contribution to the recurring theme of Tinian realizing just how cushy her former life as a rich heiress was compared with the majority of the galaxy, and compared with her lot now. It's a nice touch in a genre that's prone to creating these sort of wish-fulfillment powerful, elite heiress/noble characters and not really doing anything with that.

That night, Poot brings Tinian back to see Chenlambec, a Wookiee bounty hunter who was already docked at the station and who knows all the Wookiee clans. So they speak privately, and she tells the story of Wrrl fulfilling his life debt. She's upset that he's a bounty hunter, a concept she hates, until he lets her in on the secret: he's a Rebel. He has a bad habit of taking Imperial bounties, helping the targets escape, and then claiming the bounty after faking their deaths and donating the money to Poot to buy arms for Rebels. That idea she likes. In fact, she likes it a lot. It's the first thing that's really interested her since Daye's death. And she knows she doesn't fit in with Cheever and his group of musicians. What she knows is explosives. So she asks Chenlambec if she can become his apprentice bounty hunter. He refuses. He's already had two partners die on him, and he's decided to work alone. And she's a tiny young girl with no experience. She's not cut out for bounty hunting and he's not interested.

The band goes to bed, but Tinian thinks about her future, now that she's started caring about things again but doesn't know what to do. She worries about the Ranats before realizing -- she should be out trying to find the explosives. Given her experience, and her keen ability to smell different varieties of explosives, she could do some good. So she grabs Cheever's holdout blaster and heads off. She smells some, and follows the scent until she finds two Ranats. She really should have backup, man. She shoots them both dead when they attack, but not before one chews up her leg. She disarms their bomb and kicks it off the exterior bulkhead it was poorly welded to.

She staggers off until she gets medical help. A grateful Chenlambec, impressed by her actions, offers to give her a chance to prove herself as his apprentice, which she accepts, parting ways with Cheever and the band. They go to his ship, Wroshyr, where she's able to identify a whole litany of weapons and break down and reassemble a blaster rifle.

Then we check in suddenly with Daye Azur-Jamin, who we knew secretly survived the last story. His own set of Rebel companions are also taking him, still badly wounded, to see Una Poot. Before he'll get medical attention, she interviews him, and is startled to realize that he's the dead love Tinian was talking up earlier. When she shows him the circuit boards Tinian gave her, he realizes that Tinian was there, but she tells him Tinian's not on the station anymore. A rather sour old crone who's outlasted three husbands, she tells Daye that "young love doesn't last" and she's only interested in using him if he can move past his love and commit to fighting the Empire. He can; he already decided to let Tinian think he's dead. I'm not sure why people think this sort of move is romantic. "Oh, I love you too much to burden you with me . . ." When they finally do reunite (thanks, Balance Point and Who's Who in the New Jedi Order!) I hope Tinian kicks him in the balls. Poot also doesn't intend to tell Tinian, because she thinks Tinian's more effective fighting the Empire the more she hates them, the more she's had taken from her. And nothing's more important than fighting the Empire. What a crappy outlook on life. Anyway, he gets his medical treatment.

Tinian wakes up aboard Chenlambec's ship, still docked (this being how she's technically not on the station anymore) to alerts: a Star Destroyer just emerged from hyperspace. Since his shields don't have enough juice to hold up under direct bombardment and the Imperials will fire on all departing ships, Chenlambec simply detaches and drifts away unpowered, hoping to go unnoticed.

Daye is only in the bacta a few minutes before his companions break him out again so they can make their escape. They get onto Poot's tugship and fly off. She's still got the armor components, which she thinks Daye could develop with the help of the regular Alliance. To keep his spirits up, since he's now never going to get bacta treatment in time to prevent him from needing some serious cybernetics, she points out Tinian making her escape.

There are some character profiles at the end, but they don't really establish anything new since the last story that this story itself doesn't cover. Except, of course, for Una Poot and Chenlambec. Poot is the mastermind of Rebel cells throughout Doldur sector, but has no military experience and no security force. Her expertise is in supply, and she depends for her safety on the secrecy of Silver Station's location and on employing background checks on all her visitors. Her first husband, Drogue, was her fellow merchant who died prospecting the Dragonflower Nebula. Her second husband was the engineer who helped her set up her operation on Silver Station (originally Machenry Station), who died in a plague. Her third husband disappeared on a Rebel procurement mission. Marrying Una Poot appears to be bad luck. Chenlambec got no backstory in the short story; here we learn that he was originally a peaceful civilian who had to flee Kashyyyk when he killed an Imperial who was beating a Wookiee child. Chenlambec is a fake name he operates under, having remade himself as a bounty hunter and no longer speaking of his past life. He takes only dead or alive bounties on Rebels and escaped slaves, and has never brought back a target alive. Which is, of course, because he helps them escape, but the Empire doesn't know that. Instead, they think he's one scary-ass Wookiee bounty hunter. The people he actually kills, though, are the occasional Imperial.

There are two Adventure Ideas. One is that you're fringers who show up on Silver Station but Poot isn't satisfied by your credentials. So she makes you do a job for her, running arms to the Rebellion with a Rebel enforcer on board to make sure you don't abscond with the weapons. They could do the job, they could sell Poot out if they realize she's a Rebel, or they could become such good friends with the enforcer character that they decide to join the Rebellion. The other idea is that you're the crew of the Quandary and are caught up in the attack and locked up aboard the station. Another prisoner locked up with you knows there's a privateer ship docked at the station, so you have to break out, reach it, and escape. But watch out, because this other guy might be an Imperial spy setting you up to try to find the location of whatever Rebel base you flee to. Or if you don't manage to escape, the captain of the Star Destroyer might see you, decide you're innocent fringers and not Rebels, and offer to let you go with the privateer ship if you deliver a message to an Imperial outpost in exchange, with two Imperial Navy troopers aboard. You could deliver the message before going back about your business, or try to overpower the guards and abandon the mission, but either way, of course the ship has a tracker on it to locate whatever Rebel base you take it to. That's a good adventure seed. I really like that one. It's got layers.

Pretty good story overall. It manages to feel fairly robust, which isn't always a given with these short page counts. In fact, it's pretty rare. It moves through a couple scenarios effectively, pushes Tinian's and Daye's stories forward. Tyers has a lot of ideas lurking in the background, about privilege, about dedication, about Tinian's grief and depression, and manages to develop them in a pretty economical, effective story that is about more than just the surface-level action. I'd be very content seeing more Tinian stories (we'll eventually get one more, plus Tyers's Tales of the Bounty Hunters story). I like that Poot is a deliberately unlikable character despite being a Rebel leader. I love Chenlambec as an idea. It's a good, solid story, and I'm glad Tyers was obviously excited by the ability to work with the Adventure Journal and return to her character.

Since Tyers was already interviewed in issue four, there's no interview in this issue. Instead, that space gets dedicated to more content as we get an article on greel wood logging and its secret ties to the Rebellion. This should be interesting.

 

First novelist, perhaps? The Adventure Journal stuff was paid, I thought, so the other repeat authors are pros too.

 

The other writers are amateurs or semi-pros at best. The work is paid, but they don't write for a living. Some of the adventure writers work in the industry as freelancers, but Tyers and Zahn are the only full-time professional authors writing short fiction for the Journal so far.

 

I disagree with your assertion that if it's not your full-time job, you're not a professional author. If you're being paid professional rates, you're a professional, regardless of how much time you spend working on it.

I can name an author who had a day job and was an author for twelve years, who averaged more than one book published per year, and probably had more words published than GRRM during that time period. But according to your rules, he wasn't a professional until he got laid off from the day job.

 

Well, speaking as an part time author turned full-time professional author.

I liken it to being an actor.

You are an actor if you're acting part time or full-time.

You're just a GOOD actor if you can make a living at it.