Star Wars - Shadow Invasion

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…

…the “Battle of the Eclipse” had unforeseen consequences. The defective jumpdrive-core of the Vitiation-supercruiser “Harbinger of Doom”, which had been destroyed during the battle, had malfunctioned. It had opened a rift portal to the primeval planet Grond and fallen through. Its impact had split Grond into a light world and a shadow world and only the shaky balance of a second energy core could prevent the forming of a black hole. Archaeologist Dr. Shi Ravak and Ewok-scout Cookie who had visited the planet for scientific exploration unknowingly brought something with them that would seal the fate of the whole sector.

Episode 1: Infiltration

When Ewok-scout Cookie and near-human explorer Larson together with force-sensitive Zabrak-archaeologist Dr. Shi Ravak returned to the republic base on Kintoran II aboard their almost decrepit freighter “Treekthin” they were happy to have survived their last adventure. Smuggler Baran who owned half of the “Treekthin”, however, was not amused as the Ewok not only brought back their ship in an almost non-spaceworthy state, but he also noticed missing components that had not been damaged at all. Since Cookie and Larson were not really acquainted with starship tech they concluded that the components had to be removed on the space station orbiting planet Uprilia, since that had been the only service stop on their way back and without the repairs they had received on that station they wouldn’t have made it back at all.

Since Baran was very vocal about getting back a complete ship Cookie and Larson took off again on the “Treekthin” and traveled to Uprilia to get back their missing parts. They again landed on the space station, but couldn’t find out who had been working on their ship during their last visit. So they followed a hint and took a shuttle down to the planet where they could investigate the cantinas close to the spaceport.

Uprilia was the industrial center of the Zulow-sector. Although most of the planet’s surface was little more than polluted wasteland, resulting from millennia of ruthless exploitation of the planet’s resources, the last city, Upri-City, had risen from the ashes and dominated an area of several thousand square kilometers. The multi-tiered city, that almost reached convenient levels of air composition, was surrounded by industrial areas where machines, vehicles and other heavy equipment was produced. Society, however, was split: The mostly human upper class lived inside their luxurious skyscrapers while the mixed species working class barely made enough money to afford a small apartment and their daily meals. Because of this the parliament had voted for an immigration ban and prime minister Clennor Mastarshan was a fierce advocate of the “Uprilia for the Upris”-doctrine. The local police forces ULE (Uprilia Law Enforcement) had their hands full to suppress the ensuing uproars and riots and keep the city quiet.

At the “Larry’s” the two travelers met a colorful group of people: Human Jedi-Knight Sadwi Callen who had been guided by a force vision, local bounty hunter Carson who occasionally teamed up with the ULE, force sensitive Jawa-mercenary Norefunds and junker Ken Drahin. As it turned out it the latter had been the one to remove the missing parts from the “Treekthin” two weeks ago because the ship had looked like a worthless piece of junk to him.

Before Cookie and Larson could confront him about this matter the peaceful cantina atmosphere was disrupted by Nautolan prostitute Maeve who burst in through the door screaming something about a shadowy creature attacking her partner Ana in the back alley behind the bar. The heroes ran out in the alley, but only found the Zabrak prostitute Ana who seemed to be in shock and behaved strangely, so they brought her into the cantina.

The Zabrak behaved almost like a child, testing her body and its capabilities. All the while her eyes seemed to glow with a purple hue, which hadn’t been the case before according to Maeve. When a drunk wannabe-customer lost his manners and tried to touch her Ana broke his arm with only one hand and knocked him unconscious at the bar. Then she slipped outside and the group followed in hot pursuit. Sadwi and Norefunds definitely felt a dark aura around Ana who also managed to beat up a police patrol without breaking a sweat. But when she stumbled with her unaccustomed high-heel boots and broke one of her heels, Sadwi and Norefunds were able to catch up. Ana fell flat and her face hit the street. Norefunds ignored the puzzled look on the bloodied face of the woman and stunned her with his special lightsaber. At the same time Sadwi could see a shadow leaving Ana’s body and flying through the Jedi-Knight it invoked a horrifying force-vision before it vanished.

Ana was brought back to the cantina where Sadwi used the force to heal her wounds. Meanwhile she described what little she could recall about a fight and then the numb feeling of taking the back seat in her own body. Since the group wanted to keep Ana under surveillance and Maeve didn’t want to be alone after these events, the group split up: Cookie and Larson accompanied Maeve who now had her own life-sized Ewok to cuddle up to, while Sadwi, Norefunds and Ken went with Ana to her place and took turns watching over her sleep. Carson returned to his own apartment.

The night was quiet for all of the group, but the media spread reports about other humans and humanoids all over the city who had been abducted and vanished without a trace. All cases shared a similar pattern, so that the group started searching for strange occurrences of aversion to light and glowing purple eyes. By chance they came across the cancellation of a concert from the currently hyped girl-band “Moonlight Roses” due to the lead singer not feeling well.

This caught their attention and after a short discussion with the band’s manager, a Devaronian named Brad, they were admitted to the band’s penthouse apartment. The band consisted of five girls from different species, but only human lead singer Cammy had shown signs of odd behavior. When they confronted her in the darkened bathroom they realized that her eyes were not purple, but pure black. The teenage girl was incredibly strong and managed to beat up half the group without much effort. After she had been cornered and stunned in bright light another shadow left her body and escaped through a broken window. It took a daring leap into a neighboring building and a part of the group followed suit while the rest went around the back of the building and ambushed it when it came out of a window. It was made vulnerable with an improvised ultraviolet-beam and disposed of with a thermal detonator.

Apparently this entity had been a higher-ranking member of its species and had controlled all the lesser shadow creatures in its vicinity. All missing people came back disoriented, but unharmed and could only report vague memories of what had happened to them. Cammy was also feeling better and so the “Moonlight Roses” were able to play all their appointed gigs in this system before moving on with their tour.

Ken Drahin offered to compensate Cookie and Larson for the missing components and even repair their ship for free. During the maintenance he discovered that something had hitched a ride deep in the bowels of the ship where it had been able to move around the air ducts unseen. A short inquiry at the space station security revealed that they had indeed found a group of around twenty small dinosaurs dead in the air ducts of the station and disposed of the bodies. Cookie and Larson realized that they had probably brought along these creatures from Grond when they had stopped over for repairs two weeks ago. And something way more sinister had been traveling along within these creatures, but the travelers were confident that all was well now.

Indeed, all seemed to go as always. Carson had an argument with his police captain, Ana and Maeve acquired customers and the “Larry’s” was frequented so local crime boss Big Joe did get plenty of business. When the different heroes left the planet they could all see a TV broadcast of prime minister Mastarshan who stated that Uprilia needed an increasing amount of offworlders and immigrants to boost up their economy. After his speech his eyes could be seen glowing with a purple hue.

Cookie and Larson sped up their departure and couldn’t wait to report this to their old friend General Lionel Shore of the New Republic special forces.

Episode 2: Reconnaissance

When this incredible news about an invasion of shadowlike aliens reached General Shore he immediately put together a voluntary reconnaissance-team. Near-human explorer Damaris, bounty hunter Wratzlaw, junker Ken Drahin, mechanic Jeb and Trandoshan mercenary Resst had volunteered for this mission. Most of them had already worked for the New Republic and were no strangers to the General, but he wanted to elevate the status of this operation so he contacted some of the Protectors of the Galaxy.

Wroonian Captain Su who had recently acquired her own modified freighter “Red Crane” was the only one who heeded the call, and so she was destined to lead the recon mission. Their objectives were fairly clear: Fly to Uprilia in an inconspicuous ship, find out if these shadow creatures really existed and bring back word how far their invasion had already progressed. Even though General Shore trusted Cookie and Larson, this whole story seemed so fantastic that he needed proof before he could devise measures. Instead of the “Red Crane” the group was assigned a run-down YT-1300 freighter from the SIS-pool of undercover ships. They named the freighter “Tradesman” just like the factory model was named, as it only featured standard configuration for all systems.

After an uneventful journey the group received landing permission on Uprilia space station. They stayed there for an extended amount of time, kept an eye on the message boards and even offered a ride to the ice-world of Lastea that was also part of the Zulow-sector, just to keep up their cover of a freighter crew. In the meantime they watched out for unusual activities and pursued suspiciously looking persons through corridors and maintenance ducts.

The most useful hints were that prime minister Mastarshan had suddenly switched positions on the much debated immigration stop and now even promoted a new simplified immigration procedure which had already swept tens of thousands more people onto the planet. The residents of Uprilia protested wildly against this liberalization, but could do little about it. There were also disturbing reports of many freighters delivering materials that were harmless by themselves, but could be combined to form weapons of mass destruction. They also confirmed that all of these activities had started after the freighter “Treekthin” had returned from a failed expedition to planet Grond. Several small dinosaurs had apparently hitched a ride in the derelict ship and had entered the space station through air ducts where they had been found dead.

Despite all these hints there was no hard evidence of shadow creatures, so the group searched the station for an underworld cantina where they hoped to gain more information. Half the crew got into trouble on the wrong deck and managed to survive a shootout with some wanted criminals while the other half found the “Pierre’s”, a high-class lounge for the wealthy upper class who could afford any and all delights for their taste-buds. While they did not get information on their actual topic of interest, the personnel and clients of the lounge encouraged them to get down to the planet and search there. While Captain Su was firmly confident that the force would reveal to her where this alleged threat was supposed to be the crew managed to convince her that they should leave the space station and land directly on the planet.

Before they did this they launched a message drone with a complete report of all their findings up to this point, so General Shore would know if something happened to them. But on its way out of the system the drone was detected by Uprilian patrol ships and eliminated as a hostile, so no word got out.

In “Larry’s” cantina in Upri-City the recon-team met prostitute Ana who had been possessed by a shadow being before and she was the first person on this planet to confirm that there was something strange going on. She also mentioned one of her customers, Jeff, a university student whose field of study was chemistry, and who had also been acting strange lately.

So the group went to Jeff’s apartment and the nervous student first wanted to check their eyes before he would entrust them with his findings. When they revealed themselves to be New Republic agents he was relieved and filled them in. His story was quite weird, but utterly important: He had discovered that a scientist named McDoryan who had vanished some time ago had invented a device that enabled traversal into another dimension. His work on the “McDoryan-Generator” had brought about much attention at Uprilia-University, and some renowned scientists had felt reviled by his wild theories. In order to preserve their renown and power they had started a campaign of slander against him, so he had been stripped of all his privileges, his work had been destroyed and he had been left without financial support. McDoryan had disappeared shortly afterwards and nobody knew where he had gone or if he had even been disposed of. According to Jeff the patterns of shadow behavior and the accumulated materials led to the conclusion that someone was trying to rebuild a McDoryan-generator – large scale.

The team thanked Jeff and went to the campus library to look for a copy of McDoryan’s work, and with a little bribe they were actually able to get one. The professors, however, stated that McDoryan had been nothing but a crackpot with weird ideas that nobody had taken seriously. Somewhere along the line the name of Jeff was mentioned, until the group eventually realized that he could be in danger. But when they raced to his apartment it was blown to pieces and there was no survivor.

At the site they noticed a suspicious person and followed them into a back alley. There they could witness firsthand what a shadow could accomplish with its host body when cornered. Eventually they could defeat it, but they had no means to verify if the creature itself had been killed or not. So they hurried back to their ship and left the planet as soon and as fast as possible.

When the recon-team returned to General Shore they reported all their findings again and also handed in their copy of McDoryans work. The general was thankful and seemed convinced that there was indeed something fishy going on on Uprilia. His scientific advisors confirmed a suspicion that the officer had had since the first appearance of the shadows: The plans for creating a McDoryan-generator had been sold to the empire years ago which in turn had led to the development of the new experimental jumpdrive technology that was deployed in all of the Vitiation-class supercruisers. And suddenly it didn’t sound so weird that it had been the damaged jumpdrive core of the derelict supercruiser “Harbinger of Doom” which had caused the dimensional split upon impact on Grond and thereby the birth of these shadow creatures in the first place.