Changes to Long Arm of the Hutt
The Long Arm of the Hutt adventure is a good one, but I've made a few changes for bits I thought weren't wonderful.
Act 1: Rugged road to the ryll mines
I played this one fairly straight. The only change I made was to name a few NPCs in the settlement of New Meen and among Drombb's thugs.
Bura'bann the PCs already know, having rescued him from Trex's holding cell. In his absence, New Meen is being run by his husband, Gunn'bann, another aged Twi'lek. Their son, Shom'synda (genesplicing, if anyone asks), has decided that the grass is greener on the other side and has thrown his lot in with Drombb. Shom'synda's wife, Ayyn'synda is still in the village but is trying to persuade the other villagers to take Drombb's money. Many have.
When the PCs arrive, they see a family putting the last boxes on a transport speeder as they pack up to leave. As they leave, Shom hangs out of the cab, waving a wad of cash around and calling on people (fairly robustly) to take Drombb's cash and leave.
At the town meeting that evening, Gunn says how the situation has worsened recently and she expects Drombb and Shom to resort to direct violence soon. Ayyn says that the situation is hopeless and urges everyone to leave soon.
Later that night, move into the Drunk and disorderly episode. Shom is one of the drunkards, which makes combat with the drunkards a bit more complicated as it takes place in front of Bura and Gunn.
(As an aside, the PCs captured one of the bounty hunters from the lylek den, but failed to tie him up securely (failure and a threat). When he escaped when the PCs attacked Drombb's compound, Gunn was a convenient hostage for him to take. The bounty hunter's attempt to trade Gunn for the PCs didn't go too well for him.)
Act 2: Geonosian negotiations
I made a lot of changes to this one, cutting out the second Duke and the whole of the party.
When the PCs arrive back in Nabat, they're made an offer by Nyn. With Drombb now out of action, she's intercepted his latest shipment of ryll. It's destined for some Geonosians in exchange for some of their weapons. The trade will take place soon on a deserted part of Rodia. Nyn wants the weapons, but needs a light freighter to transport the spice there and the weapons back. She doesn't know exactly what the weapons are. She's arranged for the trick transponder to be reinstalled on the Krayt Fang and will happily tell Teemo the code if the PCs double cross her.
Ota doesn't turn up yet.
When the PCs arrive after an uneventful trip, they see another light freighter already landed at the rendesvous point, a "forest" of limestone columns like the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park. When the PCs land, the Geonosian Captain Krylla is jumpy and hostile to the PCs, saying that he hopes that this won't be another double cross like last time, and demanding to see the spice before he hands over any of the heads. Just as the PCs are getting to the bottom of this mix-up, but before any goods can be exchanged, four or six Teemo's Cloakshape fighters appear and attack both ships (half will attack the PCs as a minion group). At first, the fighter pilots are friendly to the PCs and hail Trex on the Krayt Fang, but soon change their tune when they work it out.
| Cloakshape fighter with minion pilot (2 fighters) | ||
|---|---|---|
Ship
|
Pilot
Convert G → Y if three ships. Convert Y → G when one ship eliminated. |
Weapons
|
You may want to use the Dogfighting in terrain and alternative Gain the Advantage rules.
After any battle, survivors have to escape quickly before Rodian system defence forces turn up to arrest everyone they can find. if the PCs want the weapons, they'll probably take up Krylla's offer to return to Geonosis.
In audience with Duke Dimmock, the story comes out. Teemo was buying a large force of battle droids from Dimmock, paying for them with ryll. Someone had attacked the previous shipment and stolen the droid parts. The PCs turned up in the middle of the final delivery, the heads (control units that make the droids operational). Dimmock is now convinced that Teemo is double-crossing him and what the PCs tell him about the fighter pilots only corroborates this.
The PCs may negotiate the purchase of more suitable weapons for the Nabat militants for the ryll they have.
Ota's in the audience with Duke Dimmock. After the Duke dismisses the PCs, Ota goes with them. He introduces himself as an agent of Jabba the Hutt. If Teemo has really been assembling a battle droid force as well as getting into the ryll trade, Jabba will be very upset. Ota makes the PCs an offer they can't refuse. If the PCs can get proof of Teemo's plans to usurp Jabba, Jabba will make the PCs' problem with Teemo disappear.
Act 3: Return to Mos Shuuta
This act I created entirely afresh.
We know that Teemo the Hutt has been engaged in the ryll trade to finance his assembly of a battle droid force. He plans to use the droids to overthrow Jabba. That means that he wants to keep both of these activities secret, so they can't take place in Mos Shuuta.
Teemo has recently bought a moisture farm called Doni Skanthi about thirty kilometres from Mos Shuuta. He's using this as the base of his new operations. There are a number of clues that point to Doni Skanthi.
- Teemo has been recently spending a lot of time away from his compound and the rumours point to a moisture farm he's just bought.
- Teemo commissioned a lot of building work at the farm, mainly digging out and enlarging the underground storage spaces. He hasn't paid the workers all they were owed. The workers, led by Orron Laga (human male), are protesting both directly at Teemo's compound and through the Imperial authorities. They're not having much luck with either but will happily tell their woes to anyone who buys them a drink. The workers don't know what the expanded chambers were for, but the farm itself seemed run down.
- Teemo's hired a couple of extra droid technicians recently (Koobis Kena, Rodian female and Do'sara, Twi'lek male). Two days ago, he started a seemingly desperate search for another couple of technicians and is buying up as many humanoid-form droids as he can. Soont Izes (human male) has just been hired and is about to leave for Doni Skanthi. The original two technicians haven't been seen for the last few days, but when they were in Mos Shuuta they chatted about the droid repair work they were doing at Doni Skanthi.
- If any of the cloakshape fighters survived the earlier dogfight, and the PCs can get access to the air traffic control records, they can learn the some damaged fighters have landed at Doni Skanthi.
Doni Skanthi
If the PCs visit Doni Skanthi, they see a fairly typical moisture farm. Most of the farm "buildings" are underground, with entrances into a central well. There's also a large above-ground fenced enclosure containing a few vehicles and outhouses. At the rear of the farm is a large pile of earth and rubble, spoils from Laga's excavations. Anyone looking at the pile will be able to tell it's been there for few days or weeks.
Behind the rubble pile are any surviving cloakshape fighters. Repairs have started on them, but not got very far.
Outside the compound is the Dangon Travelling Circus, led by Kreiva Dangon (human female). The circus has a couple of beat-up speeder trucks, a few people on dewbacks, and a rancor tethered to one of the trucks. Kreiva wants to put on a quick show for the "farmers" in return for some shelter from the sun and water for her animals. The people inside the farm aren't having any of it, and things are beginning to get a bit heated.
The farm is occupied by three of Teemo's Gamorrean thugs, two Imperial Stormtroopers in civilian clothes, and Koobis Kena and Do'sara the technicians. They won't let anyone into the farm. The thugs are all brawn and bluster, but the stormtroopers are cool professionals. The technicians will generally stay indoors, working on the droids, but will come out if something interesting looks to be happening.
If the PCs get into the farm, they find precious little in the way of active farming going on. Two chambers have obviously been worked on recently. One contains several hover-pallets of ryll. The other is the droid storage area. It contains about thirty B1 battle droids, without heads and inactive. A couple have heads spliced on from other droids. The computer in here is trivially slicable to find a set of plans for killing Jabba, ranging from a surgical assassination on his sail barge to a full-frontal assault on his compound.
Plans for Teemo's overthrow of Jabba can also be found in Teemo's compound, as described in the adventure.