This is a campaign journal for a game that one of my friends is running. It is set during the Old Republic Era, a few weeks after the first battle of Onderon. We started at level 3. The party makeup is as follows.
Kirtap Yesdnil, a Human Jedi played by myself
Xiros Falleen,a Falleen Scoundrel played by Corey
Drix, a Bothan Scoundrel played by Kiley
Kada, a Nautolan Jedi.
Iskaleen, an Ubese Soldier.
Ishkonten Ferender,an Iktochi Jedi Master.
Dxun:
After his unfortunate demise, my master suggest throught the force spirit inside of his holocron that I begin recording the thoughts from my adventures into a holocron of my own as a way to help order my thoughts. My name is Kirtap Yesdnil, and I am Jedi Knight of the Galactic Republic. I have traveled from one end of the galaxy to the next serving and protecting the people of the Republic at the side of my Master, the Iktochi Jedi master known as Ishkonten, and my fellow padawan learner, a Nautolan by the name of Kada. Rather than go on about tales of our previous exploits, I will begin my tale with the start of the our involvement with the series of affairs that led to Master Ishkonten’s undoing.
My master has always been a skilled seer. Using his gifts to observe events yet to come, he ahs been a valued and much honred albeit woefully eccentric Jedi Master. Though I myself do not hold hold much stock into the scattered glimpses of a future that may or may not come to pass. My lack of faith as ti were had been a source of much conflict tand debate between the wto of us. I would much pprefer to focus on and be mindful of the present and the actions that I can take now. The Force lives and breathes through us all now. I do not believe it to be som absolute and unyirlding prison boxing us up into our predetermined roles. My choice and the consequences thereof are mine a d no one elsie’s. It is that concept that I feel give one’s existence meaning. If another could fill my roles and come to my place as well as I not through his own worth but because an usnseen and unknowable power demand it then why am I here? How is that that my choices, be they right or wrong, matter to the gra d scheme of things. Nevertheless, my master seems to insist that it is knowing that everyting in theis universe has point and purmpose should bestow a sense of tranquility and pease. Wile I do not agree on this matter it is not the place of an apprentice to dispute the master.
It was in response to one of his visions of the future that the events that led us to this point unfolded. He seemed that we needed to go travbel to the moon Dxun, a orbiting body of the planet Onderon. I had initially hped that we would be going to assist in the waging conflict on the planet surface. A faction of dark side cultiststs had begun waging a brutal battle against Republic forces and there had been little ir any aid rendered by the Jedi in the matter. Alas, however, that was not our purpose. We were to meet with one Dr. Cornagaothe, a researcher currently dconductuing studies on how the fauna on Dxunwas affected by the shared ecosystem of Dxun and Onderon.
When we reached Onderon m master left me with my fellow padawan Kada, wile he went to commission some needed aid in our trip through the shared atmosphere between Onderon and Dxun. This was not unusual behavior for hime. He was probably going to meet witho our fellow partners at one of the seedy dives he was fond of dining in. I could sear the old mand’s sense of taste was broken. He would dive I into food that I would use to poison my worst enemy with the zeal and urgency of a man eating his last meal, but would then turn around and shun the greatest delicacies a planet could hope to offer.
Kada and I spent the interim time between our landing and appointment wandering the various market stalls around the spaceport. It was quite the taske keeping Kada controlled in response to the myriad sights and sounds of any new area. Wile I do love Kada as the little sister I never had, she can be quite the handful. Due to her very rural upbinging, the Nautolan was not used to anything to do with the galaxy at large. Everything that one might think was mundane was unique and new to her. Which while it did much to add to her charm, it also provides a challenge in maintaining any form of decorum when the person next to you is gawking at everyone and everything arounder her like she just fell off of the turnip truck. One woud ere greatly to underestimate her though, the naivete conceals her profieciancy as a warrior to all except those with the wisdom to notice the battle armor resting on her with the ease and comfort bespeaking of great training.
Eventually I received a call from Ishkonten on my comlink stating where we were to meet him. It was received none to soon as Kada had gotten away from me in the crowd. I found her with her head looking inside of a Kath Hound’s maw looking for cavities. I choose not to keep myself awake at night thinking why she was curious about it. I’m just glad that I did not have to explain why Kada was a head shorter.
We arrived and I confirmed my prediction that it was indeed a complet dif of an establishment. Sure enough there was my master in the back of the restarurant digging into a plate of… sturff that I could not hope to identify even with the most advanced forensic scanners available.
Seated with Ishkonten at the table were two individuals that I could only assume were our assistants for this endeavor. The first to catch my attention was easily the Bothan, Drix. It was not often though certainly not unheard of to meet an individual who radiated a strong sensitivity to the force, but did not wear the robes of a Jedi. The other while less catching to my senses but certainly not to the eyes was Xiros, one of the rarely seen Falleen. Xiros also definitely seemed to be the mouth of the group as it was through him that most of the negotiations took place. We were to board an airspeeder and Drix would pilot us through the mutual atmosphere of Onderon and Dxun.
Our first hurdle was seen at the hangar where we were to pick up our speeder. A group of thugs seemed to be harassing the attendants and engineers. Upon our arrival the rabble even tried to exact a toll from us. This was a matter for local law enforcement not Jedi. I approached the leader making sure he could see the lightsaber at my waist. The sight of it did serve to unnerve them but not scatter them as it should’ve. The recent conflicts across the galaxy had taught people that we were not so invincible as we would like to believe. Petty criminals were starting to forget to fear the retribution that could be brought upon them. Perhaps these scum needed to be reminded of just what a jedi was capable of, and that the metal cylinder at our waist was more than a fancy flashlight. I was saved the trouble as Xiros came to join me with some added words of dissuasion, which served well get them to see that discretion was the better part of valor. It was then that I began to see that just because the Bothan was a force-user did not mean that he was the more interesting. There definitely seems to be more to Xiros than meets the eye.
From that encounter, our journey to the mostly untamed jungle moon of Dxun began. I will certainly never forget the experience of flying between two worlds in an open-air transport. The sensation was akin to being in the eye of a great maelstrom. Winds whipped and funneled around between Onderon and Dxun as various flying creatures migrated back and forth.
We landed on Dxun a short ways from where Cornagoth’s research station should have been stationed. There were two staff camps that would have to be notified of our prescense before we proceeded to Coronogoth, so my master took off to notify them leaving us with the task of letting the other know that we were here.
As we made our way closer to the camp Drix began to notice an unpleasant odor coming from up ahead. When we came upon the camp, there were bodies of the dead staff everywhere. Burned corpses were displayed in a circle. From the cuts on the cadavers it seemed that whatever had assaulted these people was not a wild animal. The lacerations were to long and smooth to be claws or fangs.
After our inspection of the area, Drix and Xiros thought it prudent to take the battery packs from the weapons so that we would be prepared for any trouble to come. It seemed wise but as they were gathering the ammo a massive war droid crashed into our group. It had Kada pinned to the ground before we could react. The droid was large, over three meters tall, and carried two curved swords. My own eyes were drawn to the machine’s chest where, inlaid with crystal, was branded the Sith character for power. I ignited my lightsaber and charge the droid with Drix and Xiros providing support fire, and we were able to bring it down after a pitched battle.
After the droid was finished, I tried to contact my master via my commlink. He stated that he had also run into resistance and that we should make all haste to the doctor. Apparently a bounty hunter/ assassin by the name of Pen Frath had been hired to kill the doctor. What was already an exhausting height had become a pitched race to hopefully save his life.
Along the way we met up with another rather interesting individual. She stumble out of a nearby trail mumbling incoherent jibberish, dressed in mandalorian battle armor, and brandishing an assault cannon. When we finally managaed to subdue her, a cursory inspection revealed not only was she an Ubese, yet another very rarely seen species we I have had the chance to observe on this series of events, but also that the respirator function on her helmet had been malfunctioning. After some quick jury-rigging involving my aquata rebreather we were able to get her coherent again. The Ubese girl’s name was Iskaleen and she was Cornagoth’s chief of security. Apparently during one of her normal hunting excursions, she had an accident and the result damaged her respiration systems. Had we not found her and attended to her when we did it could have been quite fatal.
Continuing on, we finally made it to the cave in which Cornagoth had been doing his latest research. Finding it heavily guarded we attacked and though we did not escape injury (E-web Repeaters hurt, especially when thrown at you.) we managed to rescue the doctor and learned that he had been taken because of his research on a particular breed of parasite called an orbalisk. Orbalisks feed on an animal’s life force, and it turned out that it especially was fond of Force-users. The people who seemed to be leading his captors were a Kel-Doran that I can only assume was Frath, who seemed to be taking orders from a heavily cloaked, four-armed, near-human woman. Dr. Cornagoth was not able to elaborate anymore for just then a sniper shot rang out and struck him down.
I ran to investigate the source of the fire but when I looked to where the laser had come from I found only the shattered remains of a reflection crystal that had seemingly been used to reflect the shot and make finding the trajectory of the shot impossible. Just then we heard the engines of a nearby starship ignite as Frath immediately fled back to the main planet Onderon. We immediately pursued the captain and along the way met up with Ishkonten. It turned out that there were two other of the war droids nearby and he had been delayed disposing of them. Our group then boarded our transport and pursued Frath back through the atmosphere and down to Onderon.
Along the way my master showed us a hologram of Frath’s employer that he had purloined from the memory core of one of the droids that he had destroyed. As it turned out she had kept the hood of her heavy robes pulled up the whole time and aside from her four arms we were unable to arrive at any other conclusion about her.
As soon as we touched back down on Onderon we were met by Republic reinforcements that had apparently been sent to aid in what was now being called the Beast Wars between the Naddist cults and the Galactic Republic. Among those gathered were Jedi Master Arca Jeth, along with his two pupils the brothers Kay and Ulic Qel-Droma. Apparently our battles on Dxun were noticed and they wanted to question us on what was going on. Before we were critically delayed and Frath was allowed to escape we quickly explained our situation to Master Jeth. Seeing our plight he had the assassin’s ship locked down and we were on our way to apprehend him before he could escape. Frath was two steps ahead of us again however. As soon as we arrived, his starship erupted throught the roof of the hangar, and to ensure that local forces would be too busy to pursue him he immediately engaged his hyperdrive inside the atmosphere. Such an action tore a hole in Onderon’s atmosphere as he exited, resulting in a vacuum that began sucking people, animals, vehicles and anything else that it could lift up into the sky. Just as quickly as the disaster happened, it also ending as everything came crashing down.
Though crass and barbaric, the bounty hunter’s gambit paid off as we were unable to pursue him immediatlely. We tried as much as we could to help with the relief efforts the following day. Though we wanted to help more, Ishkonten informed us that we needed to move on in our pursuit. Planetary scanners had picked up on Frath’s ship before it left the system and had calculated its course. He was headed for the planet Cerea. With renewed determination and a new ally, Iskaleen at our side we plotted our course and departed Dxun.
