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Session Outline for 5/30
The game session for 5/30 involved the following characters:

Erin Carick, a human field medic and transport pilot for the Alliance, piloting the Long Shot
Teegray, an Ewok shaman that follows Erin around
Bobabango, a Xexto gunslinger
Ahlv'n, a Dazouri information broker
Zimm Mar'nona, a Balosar sniper
"Jackel," an Ubese soldier and demolitions expert, and the highest ranking member of the squad.

This takes place shortly before Empire Strikes Back.

The squad was assigned to meet with another transport, the Celestial, carrying supplies for the Alliance safeworld of Stronghold, as well as several dangerous criminals and prisoners of the Alliance: Imperial Grand Moff Ravik, Imperial captain Bane Nothos, pirate captain Celis Mott, assassin droid EL-434, and bounty hunter Zardra. Unbeknownst to the party, Bane Nothos managed a prison break, and the prisoners managed to contact an Imperial vessel for pickup. Captain Alain Gryphon managed to make a cold jump into hyperspace, without any coordinates, to escape pickup.

Unfortunately, the Long Shot came out of hyperspace to find the Star Destroyer that responded to the Imperial call for help. In the ensuing fight, its hyperdrive was also damaged, and when it attempted to jump to hyperspace, it went somewhere... else.

According to the nav computer, the new location was neither Realspace or Hyperspace, but was something else that it declared to be "Otherspace." They had no way of leaving with the burnt-out hyperdrive, needing several parts before they could repair the hyperdrive and escape. They did, however, locate the Celestial, floating near a strange nebula. The vessel had been abandoned, and there were signs of scavengers -- claw marks, webbing, and missing objects. The hyperdrive was fused and useless. Having discovered what happened to the Celestial through the logs, they also discovered that all escape pods ended up onboard a large vessel that emerged from the nebula, almost organic in appearance. This vessel, the Desolate (as they later learned it was called), gave very strange sensor readings. Having no real other options, they went aboard the alien vessel.

They quickly discovered the Desolate gave off signs of being alive. It had membranes between different areas of the vessel, and it seemed to grow fuel for itself in pods. They also found signs of altered life -- living beings that had their nerves replaced with technology that mimicked its actions, but were no more alive than animated corpses. The being aboard the Desolate built and constructed life forms that were not truly alive any longer, but mimicked many functions of life, such as crawlers that spat webbing, or leaping creatures that attempted to take Bobabango captive for the labs of the Desolate, or the beings that seemed to have built-in blasters on their forearms, or even the mysterious being that could seem to open portals to shift individuals to different locations.

In their exploration of the ship, they made several discoveries. First of all, the vessel had a thick red mist in several portions that would enter even through the pores of people walking through it, clinging to anything almost like webbing. In small doses, the mist causes hallucinations and brief episodes of madness. Enough mist, and it can cause permanent neural damage.

They also found the fate of most of the crew of the Celestial. Two of the security agents had been exposed to the mist along with the pirate Celis Mott, and believed themselves to be pirates alongside him. After the crew of the Long Shot stunned them and treated them, they returned to the Long Shot with Mott as their prisoner. None of the rest of the crew of the Celestial lived -- some were experimented upon by the crew of the Desolate, some were fed to the ship, and others were killed in skirmishes with the crew of this alien vessel. Most were given as a gift from Moff Ravik to the captain of the Desolate.

The crew of the Desolate was an as-yet undiscovered alien race that called themselves the Charon. The Charon apparently believed only in service to the Void -- all life was a disease that must be eradicated. Moff Ravik, speaking with the Final Prophet of the Desolate, Ber'asco, made a deal with the Charon, believing he could control them. He wanted to help them establish hyperspace travel so that they could attack Palpatine, and allow Ravik to take command of the Empire. In the ensuing struggles, the bounty hunter Zardra teamed with the Long Shot crew briefly, even taking in the assassin droid in the process. (To the Charon, they saw the droid's method of breaking its own programming -- life out of nothingness -- akin to a deadly disease spontaneously appearing in a sealed chamber. They wished to study it, then destroy it.) Bane Nothos served under Ravik, and took Charon warriors to attempt to capture the crew of the Long Shot, but after an accident with a thermal detonator, Nothos vanished into a large hole in the floor and was assumed dead from the fall.

Physically, the Charon were an arachnoid race, with immature males serving as the warriors and immature females serving as the biotechnicians. The leader, the mature male Ber'asco, had armor plating. Thankfully, while they were exploring the vessel, most of the Charon remained in hibernation, but while the crew was passing through the hibernation chamber, they began to awaken, forcing the crew to retreat deeper into the ship, cutting off their own escape route. Meanwhile, they continued to find pieces of a hyperdrive that they could utilize for their own vessel.

Upon arriving on the bridge, they were abandoned by Zardra (who had one of the last remaining pieces they needed for fixing their hyperdrive), as she didn't want to face the individuals on the bridge. Grand Moff Ravik and Final Prophet Ber'asco attempted to persuade the characters to support Ravik's ideal of overthrowing the Emperor. Of course, this led to a battle, during which time, the dome which provided a view to space ripped open. The characters managed to struggle into Charon vacuum suits, and called the Long Shot for pickup. Unfortunately, neither security officer down there could pilot a vessel, but Zardra showed up (with the droid in tow as a prisoner), and flew the ship on a rescue of the characters. They repaired the hyperdrive while Charon fighters attempted to blast them down, and jumped back to Realspace.

Unfortunately, both Ber'asco and Ravik lived, and Ber'asco began reconstructing Ravik, hoping that, once free of the "disease" of life, he would lead them to the rest of "Ravik-culture"...