Lit We Hav to Go on an Adventure with Jello

Shane Hensley's big claim to fame, in RPG circles, is the Deadlands RPG, which is still rolling on after all this time.

 

Reading the article now, and calling it a dud seems sort of harsh. Mechanically the items are... a little useless, but the Ubooki franchise itself is amusing in an odd sort of way, and potentially could be dropped in somewhere as a bit of side humor.

 

Bah, my group would find some convoluted and utterly ******ed way to use those items. So, they're not utterly useless.

Please do not use the R-word in that context. Thank you.

 

The shop seems more like the focus, rather than the items. There is nothing to stop a GM from creating esoteric items and having them for sale at these little shops, the ones listed are just examples.

 

Have you met Havac?

 

It's a dud by AJ standards. Like, it's not awful. But it's not great, either. There's just not that much there. Like a dud, it fails to really take off.

 

The Jodakan Needler Crab is clearly the work of a rogue Shaper from an early Vong infiltration mission. Rogue and kind of incompetent, I guess?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

The Quality of Mercy, written by "professional freelancer" Nicky Rea, is the second adventure in the first Adventure Journal. We're over a hundred pages into the Journal, now, and not even halfway. These things are big. The adventure revolves around a plague ravaging a Rebel base; your heroes are tasked to provide the cure.

After a scene-setting vignette of the base medic telling the commander just how dire the situation is -- within twelve hours, 140 people have been infected, the sick bay is full, people are in quarantine, the commander is coming down with it, and everybody's going to wind up dead if they don't get medicine. But no one from the base can go get it because they're succumbing so fast they'd be too sick to carry out the mission. The commander and the medic set up an automatic broadcast asking for aid before they get too weak themselves.

That's followed by a very solicitous introduction to gamemasters, telling them just when it's set (between Yavin and Endor), what kind of characters it's built for and what they should have, it points out that they can move the base elsewhere for their convenience as long as it's reasonably isolated, and suggests visual aids such as a book on tropical rainforests with color pictures, and relevant scenes from TESB and ROTJ that might provide some of the right feel. It feels like Rea is making sure any beginning gamemasters in her audience are getting a helping hand.

The adventure begins with the party returning to the base in their spaceship after a supply run when they receive a message warning them not to approach the base because of plague. They need a rare medicine, Shiarha Root, which grows on the nearby world of Kirtania. Why is the medicine people need in these adventure stories always some damn root? Why does nobody ever have a rare and dangerous disease that needs to be cured by an expedition to the nearest planet with a big-ass pharmacy and a supply of Provasic, brought to you by Devlin MacGregor. Anyway, also coincidentally there is the doctor with a name too long to type who pioneered the identification and treatment of this particular disease. There's actually an interesting element in that the characters' ship is short on supplies because they had to blast their way out of port so even if they leave now they won't be able to eat during the trip but it's short enough to survive. If they insist on landing at the base, though, they'll just waste time because the droids won't let them in. If they really push it, the gamemaster is instructed to give these dumbasses the disease and take one off their rolls each day they're infected.

A sidebar on Kirtania, location of the cure and apparently of a cult devoted to Kirtan Loor, establishes that it's recently colonized due to increased traffic on a trade route it's along, with few areas actually settled. It's developing quickly, with the potential for ecological damage and resource exhaustion as multiple states compete, but is doing this with a population of only two million humans and ten thousand people who aren't humans, or about a half of a percent of the population. Man, Coop would fail the **** out of this place on a diversity score. Anyway, a population smaller than that of Houston is ecologically endangering an entire planet, but that's not the only thing endangered here: the population of Araquia, the natives, is listed as fifteen hundred. That's, like, oncoming-extinction level. Chimps are an endangered species and there are ONE HUNDRED TIMES AS MANY of them. Of the three competing states, a concept you almost never see in Star Wars (good for Rea!), one, Kinkosa, the underground sex club of nations, has cut a deal with the Empire for favored trade status. I'm sure that will play into the plot.

When you get to planet, there's a Star Destroyer in orbit and it's a chore to convince the Kinkies that you should be allowed to land and to clear customs. "If everything goes wrong, arrest them. They can always break out and continue their mission." If you mention the doctor, whose name I'm already sick of so I'm calling him Phil, you get automatically arrested because it turns out he's some kind of revolutionary. There's some nice atmosphere to the description of a rain-soaked jungle planet in the middle of some heavy-duty industrial deforestation (and a nice joke that this is the dry season -- in the rainy season, it literally rains all day, not just half of it). So the characters go walking around, and if they make a perception roll they can notice a wanted poster for Dr. Phil, who is actually a spider terrorist, much like his real-life namesake. Dr. Phil is an Araquian, one of the natives, and apparently leads some kind of resistance to the Imperial presence and general devastation of his wet jungle home. Once the characters see the poster or ask around about the doctor, they're approached by Kutu, a female Ho'Din who wants to know what they're up to (she gets a writeup. Her capsule bio is that she's a Ho'Din, and here's what Ho'Din are. So no actual biography). She's interested in Dr. Philip A. Spider because they share an interest in soggy jungles and plant-based medicine, so she'll offer to lead the people to him even though she's looking for him herself and doesn't actually know where he is. If the characters say they're hunting the bounty on him, she'll try to lead them into a trap. If they blow off her help which is actually useless anyway, she'll tail them.

Then bounty hunters randomly attack, which is always a great way to kick an adventure into gear. This is a case of mistaken identity -- these bounty hunters, with the awesome name of the Ebon Coursers, think that one of the party has the awesome name of Pierce Mantrell, a thief who just stole a valuable artifact from their employer, a local Kubaz crime lord with the awesome name of Schnil Hakoon. Seriously, this is just a bonanza of amazing names. How could you not want a Kubaz named Schnil Hakoon to exist? If the characters can't escape, persuade the Ebon Coursers that they're wrong, or otherwise get out of the fight, Imperials will come along to break it up, give everyone a stern talking-to, and then let them go. After waging a gun battle in the street. Because apparently these Imperials are just really allergic to paperwork. Anyway, Schnil Hakoon will approach the party and speak floridly to them about his situation. Schnil Hakoon is from a family that holds the patents on several designer insects on Kubindi. Schnil Hakoon is only in the crime lord business to raise money to get himself into the bug business here on Kirtanlooria, since Schnil Hakoon thinks it could be a hot new source of edible insect biodiversity. Man, this stuff is brilliant. Anyway, Schnil Hakoon offers weapons and supplies in exchange for finding Pierce Mantrell and the Amber Eye, his little trinket that got stolen. The guy is probably hiding out in the jungle since Schnil Hakoon can't find him in town.

This is all designed to get the party's asses out into the woods. The jungle is described -- hugely tall trees, a dangerous and dark environment at surface level, an upper canopy full of massive plant and animal life. It's a lovely, vivid description of rainforest ecology enhanced with just a touch of fantasy. Imperial patrols provide an added touch of danger, and the first night, there's a big mysterious explosion in the distance you can choose to investigate or not. Kutu helps them escape. The second day, the big event is to cross a huge river; Dr. Phil should be on the other side. The river's two klicks wide and has to be either swum across or paddled across on big lily pads. You can also fight river serpents, and find Pierce Mantrell's trail on the riverbank.

Eventually, the group sees a lizard drop out of a tree and attack a dude. The party gets attacked, too. They save the dude, who is Pierce Mantrell. He claims that he's trying to find Dr. Phil to cure his daughter, and he only stole the Amber Eye because Schnil Hakoon stole the cargo from his ship and he was desperate. This is immediately followed up by a capsule stating that Pierce Mantrell is a con man and thief with a checkered past and an incredible talent for concocting believable sob stories on the spot. You know how I complained about the placement of the Alex Winger bio? This makes up for that. This is perfect. Actually, he just stole it to steal it, and intends to hide out in the forest with the natives until the heat dies down, and then sell the natives out to the Empire on his way offworld. I love it. Initially I wondered if this guy was just going to be a random throw-in to the main story, a sidequest to spice up the setting, but he's integrating quite nicely.

In the night, the party runs into the giant spider people, who jump out of the trees to attack. Talk about nightmare fuel. But the heroes are either captured and brought to the tribe, or just brought to the tribe if they come peacefully or Kutu vouches for them. The giant spider people are forest guardian types, so they don't like to kill and want to educate people about the value of the rainforest and crap. You know, noble-caricature natives, except giant spiders. Giant, nature-loving hippie spiders. That can fly through the air with web kites. Jesus Christ. I'll never be able to sleep again. Blah blah blah, in their heyday there were "thousands" of them, which is not nearly as impressive as you think it is, Ms. Rea, they're good at medicine, and Dr. Phil was a respected doctor who opposed Imperial exploitation with arguments and legislation, until he was about to be arrested. Then he went full hippie and retreated to the forest with his people to sabotage Imperial equipment but not, like, to kill people, man, because that would harsh his buzz. So now he's the spider people's main strategist and "witch doctor," because native stereotypes. You go before the doctor and he takes the plague thing seriously but says he can't help until after the big attack on the Imperial camp he's planning, despite that whole ticking-time-bomb factor of the very rapidly moving plague that kills within days and it's already been like four at least with at least another two days back but this is an RPG and that's how the story works. You're always doing stupid errands for other, strangely obstinate and demanding, people.

There's a map of the camp and you can help plan the attack. Obviously you hijack the AT-ST, right? I mean, obviously. You may have varying degrees of success, and Dr. Phil will be a little pissed if you killed anybody. On your way back to the tribe, surprise their place is on fire! So Dr. Phil tells you to grab as many of the special roots, which grow near there, as you can and then scoot. Pierce Mantrell splits, while everybody else ideally survives. Dr. Phil tells you how to cure the base and tells you to take the noncombatant giant spiders off the planet in return. How many does he think are going to fit in a freighter? Back in the city, the party is wanted by the Empire. If you got the Amber Eye back, you can slip it to Schnil Hakoon, who will get everybody offworld in return. He may also be recruitable as a Rebel spy in the future If not, figure out how to get back to your ship yourself, and expect to see more of the Ebon Coursers in the future. Evade the Star Destroyer and escape, taking the cure back to the base. End of adventure.

Overall, it's a fairly nice, creative little scenario, with the potential to return to the setting for further adventures during a campaign. It's clearly got a little message about rainforest preservation and nature tucked away in it, but it works with the story and isn't too gratingly obvious. It's got quite a few neat little elements tucked into it. I think it works pretty well. Up next is the Smuggler's Log feature, from the legendary Platt Okeefe!

 

I notice that you went out of your way to refer to Schnil Hakoon by name almost every time you possibly could.

 

Mmmm.... Platt Okeefe

 

Schnil Hakoon has a name worth using. And that name is Schnil Hakoon.

 

Following that adventure comes the first installment of Smuggler's Log. This is, as far as I can ascertain, the first appearance of the legendary Platt Okeefe. Okeefe would become a WEG standby, both appearing in stories within the Adventure Journal (such as Chessa's Doom, later in this issue) and most importantly being used as she is in this feature: as an in-universe author. Her chatty, deeply knowledgeable authorial voice would be adopted by WEG authors not only for future Smuggler's Logs, but for numerous sourcebooks. The persona of legendary smuggler Platt Okeefe was used to write segments for many sourcebooks, and as the basis of two whole sourcebooks of her own, Platt's Starport Guide and Platt's Smugglers Guide. She even became a sufficiently big deal to pop up as one of the EU-celebrity cameos in the Galaxy of Fear books.


Platt got her own book. And was kind of a babe.

So while this feature is the start of something pretty big, it's pretty small itself. It only runs four pages, one of which is pretty text-light. Surrounded by the neat little border and accompanying header that WEG often used to make an "in-universe" article look like it was being read off a datapad, it starts with Platt introducing herself to the reader as an accomplished smuggler -- or as she prefers to be called, "entrepreneur." She gives her background, as a kid from the privileged Core crossroads of Brentaal at age twelve to ply the starlanes as a cabin steward on a Sullustan liner. She's tramped all over the galaxy in all kinds of ships, made all kinds of contacts, had all kinds of adventures, and built up a vast wealth of knowledge about ports, ships, technology, and the ins and outs of smuggling and space trade. Now she's sharing her knowledge of the starlanes in this underground publication for the edification of smugglers everywhere.

Platt gets a picture, stats, a quote ("Say, spacer boy, let me give you some advice."), and a bio. The bio mostly just remarks that she has long, silver-white hair and likes to dress in a white shirt with red pants, boots, and a vest. That look, along with the striped headband present in her drawing here, will define her throughout her many appearances in illustration. She's easygoing, out to make money, and likes to help her fellow smugglers whenever possible. It's that eagerness to give advice and help out her fellow professionals that really drives the sort of smuggler den mother persona Schweighofer has created for his mouthpiece. And it's that desire to give a simple expository mouthpiece a strong, definite persona, with both a developed past and a verbal style of her own, that's so typical of WEG. Where there could have been just a bland report on a location -- the actual subject of the article, which I haven't even gotten to yet -- WEG instead gave us flavor and personality, and ran with this persona -- merely one among many it developed -- throughout its gaming literature. It's just typical of the way WEG really stimulated the imagination. Though I'm sure Sarge will tell you that's not all Platt stimulates . . .

This finally brings us to the subject of this issue's Smuggler's Log. It's Lorana's Labyrinth, a dive bar on the industrial world of Kelada. "Whenever you've got trouble following you, duck into a dive," Platt advises. Kelada manufactures parts for walkers, making it valuable to the Empire, which is struggling to maintain stability in the face of a determined Alliance movement onworld, which makes it a good place for smugglers to cash in on instability. Lorana's Labyrinth is located among the warehouses of the spaceport district, and gets a crowd of spacers, merchants, and townies alike. It has three entrances, no windows, and isn't flashy from the outside. Inside, however, the walls are covered in mirrors, making it look bigger than it is and confusing those unfamiliar with it. The bar wraps around the irregularly-shaped interior walls and juts out unpredictably into the center of the room, which has no tables or booths -- just bar protrusions. It's also usually crowded, loud, and dimly lit -- meaning it's very confusing to get around in and a great place to lose pursuit -- but only if you know it. We even get a little stat box for Lorana, the owner.

This is followed by a "personal addendum" from Platt. Breaking from the more reserved description of Lorana's (sadly, there's no map), she explains its value as a place for smugglers to lose pursuit -- unless they get turned around and end up face-to-face -- and sharing its past with the Empire. The Imperials used to raid it constantly, but the regulars were always able to evade them. So they shut it down, but then realized it wasn't doing them any good at all. So the Empire let the bar reopen, and now relies on planting spies inside to eavesdrop. Platt, of course, knows the owner, and says that Lorana is a good source for information about the planet and Anarid Cluster (pay attention, gamers), and has several secret panels and trapdoors that she can use to help friends escape. So it's good to be her friend.

And that's it. Short and sweet, it gives you just enough information to work with this one location, but does it with some personality that makes the feature itself fun. And it introduces a great character who would be a huge part of WEG's whole line. Up next, we'll get an article on the planet of Lan Barell.

 

Here's my favorite picture of Platt. It's not the prettiest, but it captures her personality and attitude, IMO.

 

Gonna get on my RPG soapbox here - I love 'in-universe' RPG material. It really brings forth the setting (and personality in the case of characters, as Havac noted).

 

I actually really like that idea. It would be an interesting thing to follow up on sometime - exploring some of the notable differences between Imperial high society and its real-world equivalents.

 

Funny enough of all places this gets brought up again in Soldier of the Empire when Katarn meets the Governor of Derra whilst he is a passenger on the Star of Empire.

I always loved this one.

 

Given the wider array on insectoid life in the GFFA, it makes sense. I mean, it's really no different from say lobster being an expensive delicacy despite being a sea-rat.

 

Aye. The stable of WEG's in-universe authors, from the big names like Voren, Arhul, Platt, and Cracken, to the more obscure ones like Toria Tell, Andor Javin, and Cynabar (all of whom we will be meeting soon enough in this tread), is, I think, a big part of what endeared me to their take on the franchise.

Just wait until we get to some of the later issues, after the Internet had been around for a while and WEG started experimenting with Usenet-inspired comment threads in some of their articles.

As a large-antennaed arthropod that subsists largely on detritus, a better description might be giant sea cockroach.

Yum.

 

I think it was more inspired by Shadowrun...

FFG does occasionally provide the 'in-universe' commentary, but nowhere to the extent that WEG did.

 

I think they were both inspired concurrently by what was going on in the world at the time, chummer, unless Shadowrun started doing it a lot earlier than I remember. Would-be slicers and deckers were both just learning what widespread networked computers would look like.

 

Shadowrun's first sourcebook that I've seen (I'm currently going on a reread of old Shadowrun material, which is why it's foremost in my mind) was in 1990. The first SWAJ came out in 1994. (Also, the trick was used in one of WEG's other lines, TORG, prior to SWAJ as well, which was even interactive with their player base - they had regular newsletters where the players would actually rate if they thought a 'rumor' was true or untrue).

 

Now it's time for an article about Lan Barell. It has the scintillating title of Lan Barell. By Paul Sudlow, the same fellow who brought you the Spira Regatta earlier this issue, it begins, "Three days and five hours beyond the Outer Rim terminus of the Enarc Run lies the remote Lan system." The system's in the middle of nowhere, but it's full of ore. Lan Barell is the only habitable world and the only one with developed life of its own, but the other planets have had mining habitats set up. In an interesting touch, the mineral rights to the inner planets were bought from the insectoid Qieg natives thirteen hundred years ago by an Old Republic corporation that's long since gone. The agreement also allowed them to build a city on Lan Barell. This has all passed out of memory, though, and the colonists have integrated with the natives and everyone regards the whole system as jointly owned, with various mining operations managing the system through a conglomerated government. "When the Empire came to power in the inner systems, Lan Barell discovered it had a resource besides ore to offer the galaxy: extreme isolation and a lax legal system." See, it's now become a haven for people who want to hide out or otherwise escape the Empire's grip, as well as a hot spot for smuggling. The Empire has nominal control of the system, but hasn't done anything besides show up, get some signatures, assess it for taxes, and leave.



Sudlow does a pretty good job of creating an interesting sci-fi planet. It's a dry world, so rather than having oceans of water, it has oceans of sand. Its continents are three high-altitude plateaus that are fairly habitable, separated by inhospitable lowlands of bare desert. The soil is blue and the sun a dim red-orange, making it a pretty ugly-looking planet. The Qieg are big bugs that live inside giant cacti that thrive in cactus forests. The planet had three moons, but one has been mined right out of existence, broken down until only a smattering of asteroids are left with refineries built on them. That's a pretty great image. The world has the population of Russia, making it our greatest metropolis yet. Everyone seems to get along well, rather than the typical conflict between native and colonist. The Qieg wear masks that translate their bug talk, while the descendants of the long-term human population tend to express emotions with their arms, as sort of proxy antennae, rather than their faces, which creeps new people out (the humans are outnumbered, eight out of one hundred forty-three million, so it makes sense they'd adapt more than the Qieg would). Just a lot of good details, like how the system's economy is specifically shaped around selling its ore to resource-poor Mid Rim worlds. The Core isn't getting its resources from one-horse backwater nowheres (someone please explain this to Troy Denning and his middle-of-nowhere mom-and-pop asteroid mines that control the galactic supply of all the minerals); the one-horse backwater nowhere gets by by selling to slightly more prosperous nowheres that need cheap suppliers but not massive quantities. All commerce is done in the human city of Shulell; everything isn't shipped through there, but that's where all negotiations are held and contracts signed. Sudlow also discusses the presence of mines on Lan Barell, which includes lowlands mines only the Qieg can work, and the larger economy, which includes ranches raising dingories; their isolation means regular cattle drives to take the dingories to market. It's a nice detail that reinforces the idea that we're getting kind of a Western planet here, or maybe the Australian Outback. The government, called the Human-Qieg Guild but basically a coalition of mining corporations, is gloriously libertarian; it provides security and economic stability and pretty much leaves everything else alone as long as it's not way out of hand. The mining companies are much more like co-ops. They take care of their own and provide services like healthcare and education. Aside from semiannual courtesy visits from the sector Moff's representative, there's just an Imperial embassy, which "hosts a caretaker staff of four diplomats who obviously have greatly displeased their superiors at some point in their careers -- no one volunteers to spend time on Lan Barell."

There's a section covering Shulell City, the capital and only human-style city; it's mostly industrial, dominated by the ore industry, all processing and shipping. At the heart of the city is the Quilan Hive, an ancient Qieg cactus fortress reinforced with stone that ties a whole network of cacti together. It's been expanded and modified and now hosts tens of thousands of Qieg and humans who conduct the business of the city. Players who want to conduct ore business will have to come here, and probably hire an intermediary to help them out in the complex negotiations that are only allowed to take place here. Being largely organic, it's windowless but full of plants and streams and all kinds of weird stuff, and smells really obnoxious to olfactorily-developed species. Sudlow's throwing in a lot of great world-building touches here. Another area of the city is the Grill, a wildly diverse mishmash of Qieg and offworld civilizations, an anything-goes fringe district full of trade and crime where you can find literally anything. The description is pretty bustling for a backwater nowhere, but it certainly makes for an exciting setting for players. There's a fairly large population of Wookiee expatriates hiding out from the Empire and running tech-oriented businesses; it's specified that they shear their fur short to deal with the heat, which is a whole image of its own. There's also a surprisingly large community of Old Republic exiles -- politicians, businessmen, and government-in-exile leaders laying low on Lan Barell. Many are rich and live in private villas, but many are also poor and in the middle of surprising second careers as bartenders, clerks, or small businessmen. Despite the free-trade atmosphere that has the Grill full of crooks, there's little actual crime in the area thanks to natives' habit of going armed, strong community consensus against rampant crime, and tendency toward a more frontier style of justice (the Wookiees are especially dedicated vigilantes). God, this is a libertarian paradise. I love it. There's a small Rebel cell in the Grill that smuggles, recruits political exiles, and . . . runs a soup kitchen. They generally keep their profile low, given the fact that both the community and the government broadly approve of the Rebellion but don't want the Empire's attention attracted to their planet by an especially active, flourishing, aggressive Rebel presence.

We also get a randomly placed blurb on dingories -- they're actual dingoes. Jesus. Well, they're canine predators that actually eat the Qieg. So humans raise them on ranches and slaughter them for delicious meat, but while generally domesticated they'll go nuts if they smell a Qieg, so they have to be raised well away from them. There's also a tiny bit about Carmelle, the dingory ranching/slaughterhouse center nearest Shulell. So, basically, if you want your heroes to get involved in the whole ranching, cattle-drive scene, go here. There's an accompanying adventure idea suggesting that the characters might be interested in shipping on dingories, as they've become popular pets in the Core. They can buy them legitimately, buy them off poachers, or catch them in the wild themselves, depending on how much money they want to invest and how much adventure they want to have. In the same area there's an adventure idea stating that the Empire is sending a commission to Lan Barell to determine if it has enough resources to build a Star Destroyer. If it does, they'll basically confiscate the system and enslave the Qieg to build it. The Alliance sends your characters to negotiate with the Guild and make sure the Imperial commission doesn't recommend Lan Barell for "development." The characters will work with the local Rebel leader, Felix Habel, a former SFS executive who happens to have a team of bounty hunters closing in on him because it's an adventure.

Out in the wilderness of the plateaus, many of the cactus forests have been cleared and, over time, replaced with bioengineered grass that will take hold in the dry soil and prevent erosion turning the plateaus into more desert. In some of the most remote cactus forests live the Qiemal, primitive Qieg who remain hostile to offworlders, as well as packs of wild dingories. The lowlands are a nightmare of desert, volcanoes, and earthquakes, and even with sealed buildings at the mines few humans work them. It's mostly Qieg, but even the Qieg don't like to be out there. The only people who live in the lowlands full time are Qieg monks who maintain religious shrines used in rites of passage where Qiegs are forced to make pilgrimages out into the wastes.

Speaking of Qieg religion, its main precept is predestination, so accept the status quo. The Qieg are hive-based rather than family-based, with children raised communally, growing from clutches of eggs that are communally fertilized. Bugs are gross. The Qieg have strong communities, with ties both to hive (a concept that has basically shaped the mining co-ops) and to race, there being multiple colors of Qieg because of course race has to come into it. Qieg are technologically adept, and despite being at basically a feudal level of devleopment before contact, had primitive electronics and extensive mines. They wear vocoder boxes to communicate with humans, but their natural language of clicks and chirps allows some Qieg to speak droid languages. There is political conflict between mainstream Qieg and the Qiemal, who believe the mainstream are out of touch with traditional Qieg culture and want to maintain a simpler agricultural lifestyle. You know, Jeffersonians. Some do live in the city, however; they're not at war with offworlders, just morally opposed to their presence.

A final adventure idea has some local Rebel firebrands secretly stockpiling heavy weapons out in the lowlands, in contravention of agreements with the government. An explosion at the stockpile, the result of Qiemal sabotage, has destroyed their habitat there, and four survivors are stranded in vac suits in the lowlands. The characters have only hours to save these Rebels, at Felix Habel's request, and try to avoid alerting the government, which has picked up on the explosion, to the breach of the agreement.

Overall, this is a pretty great article. With a pretty good page count, Sudlow has had the room to create a big world full of striking settings and compelling ideas. There are several ways you could use the planet in the game, rather than having it tailored to just one thing or a fairly specific adventure. You read the article, and you can just feel your imagination kicking into gear, taking you away with all the possibilities of the setting. It really is a shame that nothing has ever actually used it as a setting. I'd have loved to have seen a book or comic set here. It's definitely a rich enough setting to support a storyline, and much more memorable than many of the generic locations we've gotten. Up next, we have Escape from Balis-Baurgh, which, yes, is a short story about Ewoks. Light the McEwok signal.

 

WEG was great in creating a number of believable worlds and locations. There was an interesting dichotomy though, between their numbers on some things- like ships (while the ISD was generally considered the high end of the size scale by WEG, they threw around large numbers of ships all over the place) and economy (Corporate Sector buy-ins, ect) but population tended to be rather minimalist. A lot of these worlds, especially Core Worlds, would be much more plausible if they added between 1 and 3 zeros to the population totals.