The guards are all looking at Haarmon, and the one who had questioned him steps closer to examine the "visitors".  "Very well, but we can't permit them to go in there armed.  The workers give enough trouble without waving loose blasters about under their noses.  Any weapons must be left out here."

He turns away, then looks back at the group again, "And I'll assign one of my men to go in with you, per standing orders."


Rhijans moves away from Vekkis and Mark, and soon finds an exit to the outside.  Locating the comms centre is easy.  It's the tall building with the cluster of antennae on the roof of it, about five hundred metres from him.  He sets off towards it at a fast walk, finding that the trooper's boots, designed for use in ice and snow, make moving across the potentially treacherous ground surprisingly easy.

He passes through the gate into the inner compound in short order, and pulls up short perhaps a hundred metres from the tower.  He can see several squads of troopers dotted about the compound, patrolling and guarding specific targets.  One of those targets is the entrance to the comms tower.  As he watches a second squad arrives at the entrance, there is a brief exchange of some kind, and the new squad takes over guard duty while the old one marches away.


Mark Jacobs and Vekkis Lund stay out of sight near the secure storage for now.  After a couple of minutes, Vekkis says, "Well... I suppose we'll be able to tell easily enough if he does the job.  But how will we know if he doesn't?  I mean, we won't know if he's failed, or if he just hasn't found the place yet."

He pokes his head out of cover for another look at the guards, and pulls it back in a hurry.  "Great.  There's a second group of them coming down the warehouse towards that door.  Not searching.  Marching!"

Haarmon nods as though he expected all this. He's a stormtrooper after all, right? He knows the standing orders. Heck, maybe he even GAVE the standing orders. He kind of starts walking toward the mouth of the mine. He's made no effort to disarm either Shard or Juragga.

"Yeah, sure. Listen. How about I leave this one here, then?" He points toward the Ubese. "He's touchy enough as it is and has a thermal detonator you'll have to gnaw his arm off for. I don't really want him. Doesn't speak a word of Common anyway. It's the Wookie's the important one. Someone thinks one of our Wookies is their guy. Big shock, am I right? Scratch a Wookie, find a Rebel. I don't know we keep them around."

He starts moving with a little more momentum. Stops. Gestures back, "Hey!" he says to the droid, "Tell him to stay here, will you?" He turns to the trooper, "Easier if you keep an eye on him. Ten minutes. We're back."

Rhijans slowed his pace, buying himself time to examine the area.  He had limited resources, needed to create some chaos, and there were an awful lot of people in the area that would start shooting if he did anything too overt.  A thought dawned on him, and he started walking the perimeter of the compound, as though searching the ground.  With his outside hand, away from anyone who might be watching him in the compound, he slipped one of the detonators for the explosives he was carrying out, palming it...his insurance policy, in case anyone asked.

The thought dawned on him, he should probably have started with a lower-priority target for distractions, but he couldn't very effectively turn around and walk out right now...he had to walk around long enough to at least have a chance of being lost in the troopers that were already here.  But he might be able to salvage things from this location.

He kept his patrol of the perimeter going, examining the outside of the compound, looking for power-feeds running to the tower or some other indicator of a central generator, and also trying to get looks at the other targets in the compound that were being guarded.

Oh, hot void.

This is either going to go horribly, or it's going to be the most amazing con-job anyone has ever pulled on the Empire.  Ever.  Shard looks at the trooper who spoke and shrugs, her half-open jacket not revealing anything of whatever weapons she's carrying.  "Left my weapons above.  He didn't let me down here with them."

Heavy coat...stress...she hopes she's not perspiring too much.  The next few seconds are what will tell the tale, and there are too many stormtroopers here.  Her mind isn't in the right place for a fight, nervous and jumpy like a spaceport mouse.

"Hold it!" the trooper calls out to Haarmon Dak, and the rest of the guards immediately start paying more attention as he continues, "We don't have any Wookiees here.  All of you stand still."  UY-3PO looks at Shard and Juragga, "I told you I had not seen any other Wookiees.  But, of course, nobody ever listens to the droid."

As Rhijans circles the compound he spots only two other places as heavily guarded as the communications centre.  As he watches a massive blast door opens at one of those places, the guards stand aside, and a cargo skiff emerges.  From this distance, the vehicle seems to be laden down with dirt and rocks.  It starts across the compound, heading towards the other heavily guarded location, some 200 metres away - a large building whose location, as far as he can recall, coincides with the position of the ore processing plant on the map that they had studied in the break room.

Both the blast door where the skiff emerged and the entrance to the processing plant are covered by both regular troopers and a pair of E-web repeating blasters at each location.

Vekkis waits, takes another look, then complains, "I don't like the look of this one bit.  The extra troops have joined the others at the door."

Inside the helmet, where no one could see, Rhijans' eyes glittered with grim mirth.  E-webs...that was a likely point to start sowing some chaos.  If he could just get close enough to one...he was pretty sure one of the concussion grenades from the snow-trooper's equipment belt would interact quite disagreeably with the E-web power supply.  Not as spectacular as a good anti-personnel grenade would do, of course, but all he needed was something to put on a good light show and disable the weapon.  He altered his path slightly, still apparently scanning the ground, on a route that would take him right beside one of the emplacements.  The detonation cap was palmed in one hand...the other hand was ready to grab a grenade and trigger it, when he got close enough to the weapon to be able to put a grenade in place without having to be too obvious about it.

He just hoped the anonymity of the snow-trooper armor held up long enough for him to put things in play.  He had a course of action figured out...he just needed the right trigger to set things in motion.

Juragga picked that moment to snap his bowcaster up from where he'd held it concealed under his poncho and let loose with a blast at the nearest trooper, bellowing a fearsome roar.  He tried to draw the attention to himself, and away from his friends, hoping surprise would serve where guile had failed.

18:30, Today: Juragga rolled 15 using 4 dice and +2 pips with the WEG Classic system with rolls of 3,4,2,{Wild}4.

Shard can't think of a curse vile enough.  Then everything goes straight into the sun, and there's no time for it.

"Thermal Detonator!" she shouts, holding her hand out to the Ubese.  "NOW!"  Her other hand dives into her jacket; there's a brief war as to where it should be going before it closes around the grip of her blaster.

Out comes the pistol, a simple, everyday weapon rather than Haarmon's stylized blaster.

Mark holds out his hand to display Rhijan's thermal detonator nestled  in his palm.  "I think I have an idea." he says.  Then he primes the device and steps out of cover just enough to throw it in the direction of the large cluster of guards near the door.

He steps back behind the stack of crates.  "Wait for it."

OOC: Mark Jacobs rolled 25 using 4 dice with the WEG Classic system with rolls of 2,5,4,{Wild}6(+6+2). Thermal deto-BOOOM!!!

Haarmon panics. Completely and totally. His brain vanishes in a haze of terror and he starts taking little backward steps, hyperventilating, groaning loudly and completely unaware of it. As he does his finger pulls the trigger on his blaster rifle again and again and again and blaster bolts fly through the darkened mine.

When you take multiple actions you take away 1D for each additional action, yeah? So, three shots. All at 1D. At the very least it might motivate them to jump for cover or something.

Game on!

Haarmon Dak rolled 2. Shot #3.
Haarmon Dak rolled 5. Shot #2.
Haarmon Dak rolled 4. Shot #1.

Sometimes it's possible for everything to go wrong with such precision that you might almost think it was being coordinated from a central location...

The bluff fails, due to the simple (and unexpected fact) that there are, apparently, no Wookiees in the mine.  Juragga wrenches his bowcaster out from under his poncho and opens fire.  One of the troopers drops, but starts to struggle to his feet almost immediately.

Haarmon starts shooting, seemingly at random, and to little effect, other than to cause the troopers who are still standing to scatter and dodge as blaster pulses whine past them.

And Shard feels the cool weight of a thermal detonator slapped into her palm.  The Ubese tilts its helmeted head to one side and speaks, "Chyoo nyak dko'dku dzakta!"  Unfortunately, the one being in the group who could translate whatever it said is currently making for cover behind some heavy equipment just as fast as his actuators can move him.

And the troopers seem to be recovering from their initial surprise with quite indecent haste...

In the warehouse there is a sudden clatter, and the sound of something rolling, and the thermal detonator comes to a halt almost touching the bunker door...  One trooper looks down.  "Therma- " he starts to say, and then his warning is cut short by a deafening WHUUUMP!!!

Behind the containers, Vekkis and Mark are almost sent sprawling as their cover suddenly moves a good metre...

Out in the compound, Rhijans hears a sound he knows all too well, though it is deadened a little by distance.  WHUUUMP!!!  He looks around, and there is smoke billowing from the warehouse roof.

Around him, there is a sudden shocked stillness, and then many of the troopers in the compound start to converge on the location of the blast.  Unfortunately the two groups that seem to be guarding the important targets stay exactly where they are...

Never one to refuse a chance to improvise, Rhijans figured this was the time to capitalize on the sudden chaos in the compound.  He started running on a converging course with many of the other troopers, toward the warehouse...and, also, conveniently close to one of the E-web emplacements.  As he scrambled past, he let the grenade fly, hoping for a landing right next to the power-control system, taking another four or five steps before conveniently stumbling so he was on the ground and relatively flat when the grenade went off.

Rhijans Thanus rolled 13 using 4 dice with the WEG Classic system with rolls of 1,1,6,{Wild}5. grenade toss.

If she throws it in here, armed, they're all dead.  All of them.  The molecular 'explosion' might very well bring the roof down if it doesn't cause something nasty to happen with the no-doubt nearby Nergon.  So Shard takes a quick look at the detonator (to verify it's not actually active), then tosses it toward the stormtroopers with a shout.

"Thermal detonator!"

That better give us a moment, she thinks grimly, drawing her own blaster and opening fire as she heads to her own cover.

"Place your cursed shots, Haarmon!"

As Rhijans throws himself flat, there is an explosion behind him, followed by a second, louder explosion, which actually manages to send the armoured Rebel sliding across the snow for a short distance.  Where the troopers and their E-web had been positioned, guarding the entrance to the processing plant, there is now only a smoking crater and a large hole in the wall of the building.

Somewhere a siren starts...

Shard throws the thermal detonator, which lands and rolls into the midst of the stormtroopers.  It doesn't stay in the midst for long, though, as they scatter to avoid the impending explosion.  Shard, meanwhile has her own blaster in hand, and opens fire.  Unfortunately the troopers are moving too quickly to get away from the thermal detonator, and she misses her target.

Distracted by Shard's yell, and the sudden appearance of the detonator, Juragga's aim is also off, and Haarmon's aim would also be off, if he had one.

Still, the three of them, along with the strange mechanical yelling of the Ubese, manage to keep the enemy confused enough to not shoot back...

Vekkis glares at Mark, though it is, of course, completely concealed by his helmet.  "Oh, that was good.  Remember when we talked about troopers running towards explosions?  I think we're probably going to have more company."

Then the sound of two more explosions reaches him from somewhere outside, "Never mind, looks like there's fun to be had all round."  He hefts his blaster, "Ready?" and then he steps around the corner...

Rhijans triggered the comm unit in his helmet.  "The Ubese!  He's running for the ships!!!"  He could only hope one more voice in the sudden burst of chaos would carry some influence.  While he knew Imperial troops were generally pretty disciplined, a lot of that discipline always seemed to be the assurance that they were part of a force so large that nobody would dare attack them...which was the reason the guerilla warfare tactics of the Rebellion were so successful.  When someone came up with the audacity to actually attack...especially in small numbers...Imperials seemed to stumble over themselves in trying to deal with it quickly, apparently afraid of appearing incompetent by being unable to deal with such a small threat.

He clicked the comm off, and started picking himself up out of the snow, looking around to gauge the effects of his actions.  What he was really hoping for was some break in the ranks around the comm center...even if only one or two broke and ran, he could perhaps slip into the ranks there and be mistaken for a returning trooper.

"I was born ready!" Mark Jacobs replies, and follows Vekkis around the corner of the containers, blaster raised in preparation for dealing with any surviving stormtroopers.  With any luck the grenade will have cleared them all out though, and opened the door.

Haarmon was in way over his head. He was starting to get hold of himself but panic still nipped at the heels of his thoughts like a hyperactive puppy not quite ready to give up the game even though it's been told to knock it off already.

All the same, Shard's words cut through the haze.

Place my shot, place my shot, place my shot, he repeated to himself over and over and over again. He stopped moving. He thought he stopped yelling. He put the blaster rifle to his shoulder, aimed, lead a bit on the closest trooper. Squeezed off one round.

You rolled 16 using 3 dice with the WEG Classic system ((1,6,{Wild}6(+3))).

WOOOOOOOOT! I don't even know how much damage this thing does.

EDIT: 5D, says Rags.

You rolled 22 using 6 dice with the WEG Classic system (({Wild}4,2,3,4,4,5)).
This message was last edited by the player at 17:10, Tue 29 Nov 2011.

Howling furiously, Juragga jacked another quarrel into place in his bowcaster, snapped off another shot and caterwauled for the others to get behind him.  If he was going down, he was going down fighting.  And his Wookiee honor code wouldn't let his friends go down first.

21:50, Today: Juragga rolled 27 using 4 dice and +2 pips with the WEG Classic system with rolls of {Wild}6(+3),6,4,6. Bowcaster shot!

"Cover, Juragga!" Shard shouts, lining up on a trooper.  She's behind some now, herself, and take the time.  This isn't going to be a short blaster-war like before; instead, it's going to be a drawn-out affair, with them picking off as many troopers as they can before they get their act together, and then hoping to win once the blaster-bolts (and bowcaster quarrels) criss-cross.

Sadly, she's not a great shot herself, but right now the troopers are confused.  Shard depresses the firing stud, loosing a bolt downrange.

One Shot:(({Wild}6(+1),1,4)). 12
Damage, assuming a hit: ((5,6,5,{Wild}4)). 20

Thank goodness I'm using a blaster and not a heavy blaster - it actually has RANGE.

OOC: Sorry, forgot to roll for damage.  08:38, Today: Juragga rolled 22 using 4 dice with the WEG Classic system with rolls of 3,4,6,{Wild}6(+3). Bowcaster damage.

Haarmon, a blaster rifle does 5D.  ;)
This message was last edited by the player at 16:40, Tue 29 Nov 2011.

Juragga succeeds in dropping the same trooper for a second time, and on this occasion he doesn't start to get to his feet.  Perhaps surprisingly, Haarmon also manages to put down a guard, leaving only two standing.

Unfortunately those two are starting to recover some poise as the thermal detonator fails to detonate, thermally or otherwise.  They open fire, blaster shots pouring out into the main chamber.  Shard attempts to return the favour, but misses her chosen target as pulses of energy whine past her, causing her to flinch...

As Rhijans gets to his feet and wonders if the ringing in his ears will be permanent, he sees that troopers are also starting to stand all around him.  Further away from the blast most of those who were running towards the warehouse seem to have stopped.  Somebody, presumably an officer, seems to be trying to organise them into two groups.  One to head for the warehouse, and one to defend the processing plant.

The two groups of stormtroopers start towards their assigned destinations...

"Look out!" Vekkis yells, as a trio of surviving troopers near the bunker catch sight of the two figures stepping out from behind the cargo containers and reflexively raise their blasters...

Haarmon watched his blaster bolt fly into the fleeing trooper like it was on a wire and, even through his panic, he felt a surge of satisfied joy. "That's right!" he yelled out. "Who's the wild man now?"

He started moving toward Juragga. One part of in his addled, panic-soaked, string-out mind he was aware this was the wrong direction, that behind cover with shard was the place to be. Another part was giving him flashes of things that could happen behind cover with Shard that belonged in a lurid holo-vid. And a third part was amazed at the stupid poodoo you thought of what you were stressed.

All the same, Rags was his Main Man. And he was out there all on his own. So that's where he went. He took a shot on his way, missed so badly that Shard laughed at him in all the lurid holo-vid flashes, and he took up a spot next to his friend. He barely restrained the urge to hide behind him. His moment of heroic self-sacrifice was fading now, and he was starting to tremble and shake with fear and shock.

"C'mon!" he yelled out to Juragga at the top of his lungs, even though the Wookie was right there, "Cover!"

Rolled a 4. I'm assuming that misses. :P

Two troopers left.  Shard with a lousy blaster in her hand, two people out in the cold in front of her, and no balance in her mind at all.  She could take a chance, squeeze off another wild shot...and likely miss.  Or she could line up a shot for a second...and burn down one of the troopers after they've put a hole in Haarmon or Juragga.

Oh, this isn't working out well at all.

She focuses, her concentration narrowing down to one of the two troopers, finger taking up slack on the trigger.  It's her only chance, really; if she missed the last shot, she'll never make this one without taking aim.

...get to cover...

...please, get to cover...

Rhijans got up, but rather than wander around like some of the more dazed troopers, he walked over to the remains of the E-web, as if returning to his duty post.  He crouched down to take a look at the burned framework around what was left of the power system for the weapon, shaking his head in feigned disbelief.

He hoped that, by attaching himself to a definite location here, he wouldn't be conscripted to run off and face another situation...he still wanted to do something about the comm center.  It would get easier if the officer, in his zeal, took a few extra troopers and cleared the compound out.  He was pretty sure it would be wildly optimistic to hope the officer would take EVERYONE from the compound...

Juragga saw the two remaining troopers opening fire and sought cover, returning fire with his bowcaster in the hope of at least throwing their aim off.

09:33, Today: Juragga rolled 8 (11 excluding the wild die) using 4 dice and +2 pips with the WEG Classic system with rolls of 4,2,4,{Wild}1. Bowcaster shot.