  
WELCOME TO THE TEST DRIVE and thank you for your interest! Though the game hasn't started yet, we've put together a mini-mission with a few different goals for your characters to pursue. In the interest of flexibility and allowing players to experiment with the game mechanics, we invite you to pick your own broodmates, experiment with abilities and specializations, talk to each other and maybe make up some pre-established cr, and generally play around however you like. This test drive will not be game canon, so take this chance to go nuts!
For the full experience, we strongly encourage players to write up a short blurb about what their fellow characters might know about them either through shared time on the Station or through the Nest mental link. Handy links can be found at the bottom of this entry if you have any questions or want to place a reserve.
HELINOS TOZ
...is the smallest galactic empire located in the second disk of the Silver Halo Galaxy. For thousands of years, the neighboring CONFEDERATE OF BAL and INIVIAL COR(P) have eaten away at Helinos Toz's territory and now have reduced the once-great empire to a single moon ruled by the Last Empress. Though she is a child who owns little in the way of property on the galactic stage, the Last Empress still holds a precious seat in the shrinking Galactic House of Chairs. From this seat she and her allies have managed to keep a stranglehold on the throats of Bal and Inivial’s expansion efforts into the fourth and fifth disks of the Halo. She has accomplished this task by viciously excising loopholes in galactic regulation. Paradoxical though it may sound, the outer rings view the Last Empress as one of the few remaining heroes for the common man against the absorption of either the Bal or Inivial, a symbol of the dangers the two great empires present and a name and a heritage that even today commands respect. While Bal and Inivial may have radically different galactic goals and famously spend their time hounding one another in the house of chairs, they can agree on one thing: the Last Empress and her tiny moon kingdom are a thorn in their side. In an effort to pluck it, Bal and Inivial have joined forces to do away with the Empress and her moon forever.
While a direct attack on the ground empire moon would be an undeniable act of war, and would result in heavy sanctions which would only serve to set their goals back further, there are ways to destabilize the moon without actually putting boots on the ground. Inivial has decided to sacrifice one of their own assets to achieve this: the planet which the moon orbits. Helinos Prime is a cold, dead rock, without it's own atmosphere, as well as the site of a significant Inivial mining operation. It's this very operation that Invivial intends to utilize. By mining directly to the planet’s core, they will harvest a massive amount of heavy elements, cutting heavily into the planet's mass and degrading it's orbit in space-- making it a risk to surrounding inhabited worlds. Galactic regulation demands such a threat be absolutely absolved- by total destruction. Further, it states that these dangers must be dealt with in no more than eight hours, regardless of any other sanctions or treaties. The act itself is quite sterile: a beam weapon located in the first ring which is capable of destroying most planets in a single shot as long as alignment is correct. And once the planet goes, so too does the empire moon.
But even getting rid of the empire’s last land holdings wouldn’t do away with the Empress herself, which is why the Confederate of Bal’s massive armada has opted to choose today for a sprawling training exercise in their space above the empire moon. As is their right under the Secrets and Sanctions treaty, they have refused the operation of any other space traffic in that sector until their exercise has been completed. The paperwork is filed, notarized, and finalized. Under the guise of the Bal and Inivial’s mutual animosity, the two super powers mean to trap the Last Empress with the very rules and regulations she’s spent her young life manipulating to keep them both muzzled.
In summary: the Last Empress and what remains of her small royal envoy are stuck quite literally between a dissolving rock and the hard place of the Confederate of Bal’s guns with no diplomatic wiggle room. Should the empire of Helinos Toz fall, the majority of the house of chairs will turn in favor of expansion and it won’t be long before the Halo’s outer rings become the stage for a vicious war between Bal and Inivial. Those citizens of the outer rings will find their lives drastically changed as those two powers dash to make opportune land (and space) grabs. If the Last Empress can be saved, she might be able to successfully reveal this act of aggression for what it is, and use it as a way to rally the rest of the house of chairs, around her and the interests of the outer rings she stands for, against Bal and Inivial.
YOUR MISSION is to help the Last Empress escape the empire moon before it can be vaporized by Inivial, and to slide her and as many of her retinue as possible through the lines of Bal’s armada undetected.
PROMPTS
ONE • DEBRIEF: NOT AS SEXY AS IT SOUNDS
You've been given your mission file (see above) and outfitted with the appropriate gear to see it through. Today that means thermal suits designed to withstand face melting temperatures and a small cadre of ships that seem awfully familiar... if you're not mistaken they're the same ships currently in formation above Helinos Toz. You can ask Prince where he got them or Cathaway for some flying advice, but you probably won't get answers that makes any sense. Hopefully some of you know how to fly. Hug your friends, say your prayers, and wave Station 72 goodbye because it's time to...
TWO • HITTING ROCK BOTTOM
...sabotage a giant plasma drill! Down on Helinos Prime, Inivial's massive mining operation is a veritable labyrinth of tunnels and substations. Luckily you've been provided with schematics (if you feel like using them), and with some trial and error you should be able to navigate your way to key points in the mining operation. It won't be possible to completely stop the machine from coring the planet, but you just need to buy a little time. Suggested targets are the drill's targeting interface, its coolant systems, and its auxiliary stabilizer vents. How do you do that? Time to use your imagination. On the plus side, no one's around to stop you. Inivial already evacuated their on-site personnel which, come to think of it, might be a bad sign.
THREE • HURRY UP AND WAIT
With Inivial's drill momentarily on pause, it's time to rescue an Empress. Does she even know you're coming for her? Well, she'll find out eventually. There's room for six extra people on the ships provided, meaning you have exactly enough room to smuggle her and her closest advisers off of the empire moon. You've got six hours before you can (and really SHOULD) leave. Right now it looks like there's time to kill. Get to know the locals, the moon's bustling trade port, or its local population of cute dragonbirds. You have a collapsing planet below you and a veritable wasps nest of ships above you. Enjoy it while it lasts-- or bypass it all and wait for your window of opportunity with the Empress and her envoy.
FOUR • INTO THE WILD BLACK YONDER
The stealth ships can travel invisibly while in atmosphere, but there's no tricking the sensors of the Bal's ships. Luckily you fit right in-- almost. Pretending to be Bal ships might make the most sense, but what if someone notices you're out of drill formation? Even worse, what if someone detects you leaving the empire moon? No Bal ship is supposed to be down there. You could always try finding another ship to take into space, something with a little bit of stealth or maybe a harmless trading vessel. Then again, no one's supposed to be coming off the moon and into this space at all. Think fast, talk faster, or hope your pilot is really good.
FIVE • WILDCARD
Honestly? This is your show. Go surfing on some subterranean lava flows while stalling Inivial's mining efforts, try to take all the Empress's gold leaf dining room chairs with you when you evacuate the empire moon, or maybe you're done with this whole mission alltogether and want to try hijacking a ship from the Bal's armada and flying it out into space until this whole thing blows over. There's a whole galaxy out there; what else could be waiting for you?
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emptynesters2016-02-03 09:43 pm
punches (also, one)
But its the least of her concerns. Some piece of her feels soiled, being so closely linked to a Dark user. After all, she had tried to trust Ventress to earn them both their fair due of freedom, and look where it had gotten her -- further convicted, almost certainly sentenced to death for sedition to the Republic.
It wasn't fair. None of it was.]
What's your problem?
[It comes out a little harsher than she means for it to, but she's equally stressed and his stress is not helping her.]
slaps back at
[
cut his life into pieces, this is his last resort, suffocation, no yub nubMore than that, somewhere behind the unreadable span of his mask, Ren is trying not to give in to the linked urge to scratch and scrape at the skin of his own wrists beneath the heavy hemline of his gloves. It frustrates beyond the sting of the Light, calling to him with that rending, ever-present pressure. Worse when she is near; compounded and spun on its heel to amplify her own agitated feelings.
Were it his choice, he would cut short this forced bond. It is not.]
You lack control of your emotions.
[For a Jedi, it is unbecoming-- and difficult to ignore.]
no subject
[She can see right through him, in spite of that impassive mask he tries so hard to force. Ahsoka has flirted with the Dark Side's temptations more than enough (and seen others flirt with that line even more dangerously) to be familiar with his front. At least Ventress didn't try to pretend that her emotions weren't there.
But he is right about one thing, and that's that she needs to stop focusing on the uncomfortable suit -- even if its the only thing keeping her mind off of the mission that she can't find herself approving of.
It reminds her too much of what had happened on Onderon.]
If you had any sense of clarity, it wouldn't bother you.
[After all, she was able to block Anakin out with enough focus. There was nothing stopping Ren from doing the same.]
no subject
Fifteen years later, he feels no different.]
You dislike the mission.
[An obvious statement, but the runoff from her distress as she shifts her focus is an easier topic to latch onto-- a comfort, however pale. Ren has spent too many years finding catharsis only in the misery of others.
Ironic now that he is so tied to it.]
no subject
She can't tell what the Force has decided for Ren. And she isn't sure she wants to know. But she does consider his observation and folds her arms losely, allowing her eyelids to lower in lieu of a sigh.]
Its not our fight.
[And interfering could put many more lives at risk.]
no subject
He has his own reasons for disliking their current assignment - continuing the First Order's charge, however, is not one of them.]
These people cannot be saved. [The panic would be too widespread, the fleet too poised for retaliation-- the Empress too vulnerable to attack. It is a scenario that is more than familiar.] Better to bring order to this diseased universe than waste time lamenting excised wounds.
In that, their deaths will have meaning.
no subject
Now who lacks control over their emotions?
[She'll let that sink for a minute before she exhales to calm her own frustration with the Sith apprentice beside her. He's doing an excellent job of reminding her why the ways of the Force were so clouded to her since being expelled from the Jedi order.
Sith, Jedi, it didn't matter. Black and white -- that's all they ever saw.]
You're simplifying it because its convenient for you. That doesn't make you right.
[And he's wrong. Death doesn't give a life meaning. She had come so close to it so many times, and simply dying would not have made anything better.]
no subject
If it was not such a risk, he would warn Anakin away from her.]
Then what would be your ideal approach, Jedi?
[A title he uses out of spite alone.] Inaction? Stagnation?
no subject
That's satisfying.]
You mistake me, Ren.
[She uses his name in an offhanded and too-friendly manner before she turns to finally face him, mirth gone from her expression. How did the Sith even live with themselves? She'd never understand.]
If it were up to me, they would be given the tools to fight on their own. Swooping in just to save the leaders doesn't do anything when their people are dying on the surface.
no subject
[His head cocks slightly, curiosity piqued in spite of the fact that she works to dig in return (a habit he is more than used to, having endured Hux's fragile, barbed temperament for far too many years). Her strategy is more than fallible - he wonders how much she truly realizes it.]
What tools could you possibly give them?
wow thanks gmail
[She has to concede his rebuttal -- it isn't as if they have the forces to take on an armada, even if she thought it would be the right thing to do. Sacrificing many for the needs of one is wrong. They should be doing something.
It frustrates her, just as much as being in close proximity to Ren does. It takes effort to force herself into tranquility, but she manages it.]
Not that I'd expect you of all people to understand that.