Collan and Niil: Assignment Ossus

[GM Craig]

Navara is looking more impatient. "This is now it works: I'm given a destination, I figure out how to get there. Your little rock is off the beaten path - there is no published route to the coordinates I was given. I can follow the Perlimian Trade Spine to Columex to get us close, and there is a published route to Belderone. But after that, the official navigation is dark. However, I happen to know a smuggler route between Belderone and Murkhana that should drop us almost on top of Ossus, if I did my calculations right."

He grinds his teeth together a moment. "You're looking at me like this is some big joke and I am in on it. I'm just a taxi driver. I have no idea why they're sending you pukes out there. And I'm not sure who I pissed off to get this nerf-drek assignment, but I got a few ideas."

He then flips his hands at you a few times, as if shooing you away. "Go be cargo." He then turns his chair around and busies himself with his console, all the while mumbling to himself about drek jobs with newbies and plotting revenge.

[GM Craig]

Niil examines the crates. They appear to be standard transport creates. They are latched, but not locked. A simple activator will open them.

[Collan]

Collan grunted and went back to see Niil.

[Niil Spaar]

Niil glanced up at Collan, and muttered under his breath, "Sounds like all three of us got nerf-slapped on this run."  He pointed at the crates and shook his head.  "No idea what's in them, but they're easy enough to open them.  I'd say we leave 'em alone for now."

Niil straightened.  "Let's check out our gear thoroughly; maybe they left us some malfing recording rod with the mission briefing on it.  If there ever was to be a briefing.  After that, tell me everything you know about this planet we're headed to."

[Collan]

Collan pointed to the boxes.

"My kit was exactly how I'd left it. My guess is that our briefing is in one of the cases. As for what I know about Ossus, it was the home of the Great Jedi Library till about 4000 years ago. Up until that point, it held the sum total of all Jedi knowledge and a significant number of Sith artifacts. It was ransacked twice during the Great Sith War. The second after the Sith made a nearby star cluster go nova. It burned out the planet. A few Jedi remained and survived. Their descendants are called the Ysarra and if I remember correctly they guard the ruins."

Collan's hand hovered over the actuator to pop the lid.

[Niil Spaar]

Niil shook his head, and muttered, "No locks and no warning symbols.  Oh, frak this, it's gotta be asked."  He looked back at the pilot, and said, "Sorry, ensign, one last question and we'll become, umm, 'cargo'.  Did they give you a manifest of what's in these crates?  They safe to check out?"

[GM Craig]

Navara ignores you.

[Collan]

Collan shrugged and then ran his hand over the actuator to pop the first box.

[GM Craig]

The lid slides back into a recessed position. There are what appears to be enviro suits in the crate, along with a tent and other survival gear. Sitting on top of the gear is a datapad.

[Collan]

Collan reached in and grabbed the datapad.

"This looks like our briefing," he noted and sat by Niil to flip it on.

[GM Craig]

You see a translucent blue version of General Kota's head appear in the air over the datapad.

"I'm sending you to Ossus. It was the site of the Great Archive, an ancient library of knowledge the Jedi had assembled from all over the galaxy. Early in the Clone Wars, a team of archaeologists was sent to Ossus. The Jedi Order lost contact with the archaeological team shortly after they arrived, and with the chaos of the clone wars, never followed up. I want you to find out what happened to the Jedi there, and recover any data they collected.

"Oh, and watch out for the natives. They are primitives who revere the ruins as sacred places. If they see or even think you have a blaster, they will kill you on sight. If they have reason to believe you are looter, they will kill you on sight.

"The planet is an arid wasteland with areas that still have dangerous levels of radiation, so I've packed you environmental suits and survival gear.

"Try not to get killed, hmm?"

The image glitches and winks out.

[Collan]

Collan set the datapad down.

"Well that was anticlimatic," he wryly noted, "Go to Ossus, discover the fate of a Jedi Archaeology team, recover any artifacts they had or found, and don't get killed."

"Hmm...a team of Jedi should have been able to handle the Ysarra. That suggests they found something they couldn't handle. Any ancient Sith artifact or something similar."

[Niil Spaar]

Niil stared at the holo recording with his mouth slightly open.  Once it had finished, Niil sighed and unbuckled his gun belt.  "Or the team could still be there.  Sooooo . . . diplomacy, then.  I don't suppose there's any other information on the locals, is there?"

[Collan]

Collan frowned, "Lemme look. We should brief Navarra too."

He ran a few queries on the pad to see what he could find. He also wracked his memory to see what he could recall.

[Alien Species roll. Do I need to do a computer/programming repair roll for the datapad?]

[GM Craig]

The datapad is sparse on details, but what information is there, combined with what Collan already knows, leads you to the following conclusions:

When the Cron Cluster exploded, the populated planet of Ossus was devastated. 99% of the inhabitants were killed. Those that survived were limited to a subsistence-level existence. With no ships and no communications - indeed no technology of any kind - the survivors gradually reverted to a primitive lifestyle. The survivors were, to a large degree, Jedi, so the Jedi code became deeply embedded in the tribal society that grew from the survivors. They are normally a peaceful people, but revere the extensive Jedi ruins on the planet as holy ground, and will defend them with violence. They would be classed as 'near human' as a species, and likely speak a dialect of Basic. As their forebears were almost exclusively Jedi, most of the Ysanna are  force-sensitive, and many will have Force powers.