Redemption - How Bren atoned for his DSP

[Bren]

Since I had to review my player notes to answer a question that garhkal asked in another thread and in doing so I started trying to summarize my notes focusing on the atonement question. I thought I would post the summary of the adventure in case anyone cares. (Note that even the summary is kind of long.) Most of this adventure is duet play - just me and the GM. My player notes for this adventure are 20 typed pages. I'd be happy to share the notes but they are written for an audience that wasn't me or the GM so if you are really bored, masochistic, or curious send me a PM, but don't say I didn't warn you.

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First some background. This is the situation where my young Jedi, Bren, got his first DSP. Bren is my young Jedi, Mur (short for Murlyn) is at this time his girlfriend occasionally run by my wife but more often a dependent NPC, and Arkel is another player’s Coynite PC and Bren’s best friend and blood brother.

Excerpt from the adventure X-Wings from Incom

Bren, Mur, and Arkel are on an undercover mission for the Rebel Alliance to get the plans to the X-wing fighters from Incom and erase the date in the firm’s computers. We succeed in that but as we leave, ISB Agent Hawkins and his men capture us. He grabs Mur first and threatens her to disarm Bren and Arkel. Bren has to order Arkel to give up his sword. He does, but tells the guard who takes it, “I give this to you at his command. You have not earned it.” Bren manages to hang on to his lightsaber, tricking the guard who disarms him into taking just Bren’s heavy blaster pistol.

They take us to a detention area (different and more secure than the one where Mur’s parents are held). Hawkins threatens Murlyn some more. He uses Arkel’s captured D’Skar or Coynite dagger. It is unclear if Hawkins is really trying to get information or if he is just a sadist. He uses the D’Skar to slice off the top three clasps on Mur’s blouse and he scratches her jaw on the right side of her face drawing blood. Bren is starting to snarl and step forward. Hawkins isn’t scared but he is frustrated by his inability to feel in control of the situation. His prisoners are just not sufficiently intimidated. Hawkins notices the locket that Murlyn is wearing. He uses the dagger point to toy with it. Murlyn tenses. ‘At last’, Hawkins thinks and cuts away the locket, sending it into a slow motion fall to the floor.

Mur elbows Hawkins in retaliation and he stabs at her. Bren uses a Force Point to haste, draw, activate lightsaber combat, and swing, on Hawkins before the ISB agent can hurt Mur. Bren slices off Hawkins hand and, in a rage, slices down through Hawkin’s left collarbone, through his heart and severs the trunk into two pieces. [This action will end up costing Bren a Dark Side Point. He strikes in anger to kill and is glad that Hawkins is dead.] Bren continues by blocking a guard’s shot behind him and then spinning around and killing that guard. Arkel also uses a Force Point that round. He charges and smashes the two guards armed with rifles. They get shots off, but the sound of cracking skulls can be heard.

The next round, Bren has dropped danger sense and does not notice the last guard drawing a gun and preparing to blast Bren from behind. Mur draws her blaster and incapacitates the guard. Bren realizes the room is full of bodies and that Mur may just have killed someone for the first time. He says, “Don’t look!” She asks if the one she shot is dead. Bren fails with life sense, but the guards slight motion seems proof that he lives. Arkel comes over to the downed last guard. This was the one who took Arkel’s sword.

Arkel: Now you may have my sword! (Arkel unsheathes the sword and drives it point-down into the last guard until it grates on the floor.)

Bren picks up Murlyn’s locket. It falls open and Bren can see: on one side a picture of Murlyn’s family that is perhaps 3-4 years old and on the other a fuzzy picture of Bren that looks like it was originally from a security camera from the Benelec Building on Torina (from their first sort-of date).
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I thought it might be helpful to have in mind how Bren got the DSP when seeing what the atonement entailed.

The atonement adventure is titled:

Redemption

Episode I: An Ill Wind
As a result of getting a DSP, Bren has a series of six recurring nightmares. Two related to the incident where he got a DSP and the other four related to key moments of death and loss. These form the problems that the character will need to resolve to atone and heal.

1. The first person he killed at close range and watched die.
   
2. Murder of foster aunt and uncle and several childhood friends by a swoop gang – his first adventure.
   
3. Failure to prevent the swoop gang from capturing his childhood sweetheart Arda.
   
4. People who died or were maimed fighting the Loaggi Assassins on Sidron.
   
5. Killing the ISB agent – which is what got him a DSP.
   
6. Not killing the ISB agent and thus failing to save his girlfriend, Murlyn. (Your basic d@mned if you do, d@mned if you don’t situation.)

Due to the DSP and the nightmares he has a series of angry episodes where he barely refrains from acting in anger or hurting someone around him. (This was character driven. We don’t use a mechanic for this.) A key element in this episode is a scene showing Bren acting angry and out of temper thereby allowing him (and others) to realize something was wrong. He left on a journey - sort of a Star Wars version of a walk about - to get away from his friends so he didn't hurt them and to sulk (and eventually get better, though the character didn't know or think that at the time). He takes his lightsaber (which is what he used to kill the ImpThe episode ended with Bren going AWOL, getting drunk with a friend, and just before passing out saying: "I killed him. I killed him and I liked it."

Episode II: Lanthrym
Bren goes to Windover, a location where he can be isolated (and sulk). He encounters some people he had previously helped and is given advice to "Look to your roots. There you will find your strength, your support, and your truth." That night he has a dream or force vision and heads to his home planet.

Pretty sure that took about 10 hours of play.

Episode III: Osirrag
Bren learns a bit more about his family history and travels to the Isle of Winds to face his former girlfriend (who he feels he failed to save - long story). She has become something no longer quite human, but he learns that she believes this is her fate and she is at peace. Returning to the mainland he has a dream or vision of his mother Sareetha's grave. He goes there and has a conversation with her Force ghost (or is it another vision?) on the nature of failure and choice.

Sareetha: Every child must learn from his mistakes, my son. Being a Jedi doesn’t make you perfect. What matters is how you face what you have done and what you will do after. Choosing the Dark Side is easy. The way of the Light is much more difficult. With the Light you must choose again and again. (Pauses.) What will you choose, my son?

Bren: I want to choose the Light. But I don’t know how.

Sareetha: Seek out Merak Tan. He will aid you.

Bren recalls a very early memory of Merak Tan (and recognizes the name style) which identifies Tan as someone from Merisee. Bren resolves to go to Merisee. This 'conversation' ends up being extremely important for Bren and the idea of Choice and the Light side requiring repeated choices (unlike the Dark Side) becomes a central element in his ethos and moral code.

Episode IV: Merisee
Bren goes to Merisee. His intention is to see Merek Tan and to return his lightsaber to the Temple to the Jedi that it came from. He still does not feel worthy to keep or use it. He enlists the help of CarJo Nor, a Redeemer he knows from a prior adventure, to find Tan and he stays with Nor. Before he does he visits an old friend. (Doc Carson is a former players PC who ended up having a mental breakdown after he was captured and tortured by the Loaggi Assassins. He has spent a year or so recovering at the Merisee Grand Medical facility. Bren and Doc talk. Apparently Doc has thought a lot about his experience and about the nature of bravery and heroism.

Doc: I know I’m not a hero. Not like you. I’m not brave enough.

Bren: Maybe I’m not brave enough either.

Doc: Yeah you are. I’ve thought about it a lot and I know you are.

Bren: I wish I could believe that.

Doc: You’re angry now, but if they bent you, they didn’t break you…They broke me.

Doc’s pathos and the thought of the cruelty behind his suffering causes Bren to flash into rage. He is ready to kill something. He realizes that this emotion has no appropriate target here and that he may frighten Doc, which, in Doc’s fragile state, could harm him. Bren spends 2 character points to gain control of his emotions. Doc seems to have given up. Bren doesn’t want him to quit because that is what the Loaggi want.

Bren: But I’m not angry at you, Doc. They want you to believe you’re broken. They lied to you! Don’t let them win. (Bren spends a Force Point to command Doc. He wants to give Doc the belief that he himself has.) You don’t have to be a hero. Just don’t let them win. If everyone did just that much, maybe we wouldn’t even need heroes. You can do it Doc. I know you can.

Doc hesitantly agrees to do this. Bren tells Doc that he is not sure how long he will be in Caronath, but he promises to visit everyday. Several days pass. Bren usually visits Doc in the morning. Bren takes Doc to the thinking gardens. Being surrounded by peace and quiet and growing things appears to do both of them some good.

Bren returns to CarJo Nor's home and ends up rescuing Nor from a trio of Loaggi assassins. Bren uses the lightsaber to deflect an attack, but won’t use it to strike. With the help of FPs and CPs he manages to defeat or drive off the assassins anyway.

I think this was probably another 10 hours session (or possibly back to back sessions totally 10-12 hours). Let’s call it one 10 hour session.

Bren then travels to the Temple of Redemption (which is where his lightsaber is from). He speaks to the holocron image of Aigeelops, the Jedi whose lightsaber Bren bears. To enter the Temple and reach the Shrine of Aigeelops Bren has to pass 4 tests that correlate to the 4 line version of the Jedi oath. Since he has done this once before this is easy until he gets to the last test.

The Shrine of Aigeelops
Question What endures beyond all endings?
Answer The Force.

At first Bren keeps trying to give back the lightsaber and does not answer the question. To admit that the Force is stronger than death would require Bren to continue to carry this burden which he feels is too heavy. Finally, the image of Aigeelops swings his ghost lightsaber at Bren. At this point Bren is content to die as long as that will prevent him from turning to further evil and he quietly says, “There is no death, there is the Force.” Bren falls to his knees and the lightsaber rolls forward on the floor to the roots of the image of Aigeelops.

Bren: I failed the test.

Aigeelops: No young Jedi, this is the test. Will it break you or will you grow stronger?

Bren hears his mother’s voice, “Anger is one emotion, self-hate is another.” He realizes that he has been selfish. He made a mistake, a bad mistake, but not a final one and he has made others suffer for his mistake. The only way he can make up for this is to shoulder his own burden. One which, as Doc said, not everyone can do.

Bren: But what I did was wrong!

Aigeelops: Ah the certainty of youth. No being comes unscathed through all his challenges. Not even a Jedi. But the Jedi are still needed. A sapling cannot deny its nature. It seeks the light and grows ever upward, just as a Jedi seeks the Force. You, like the sapling, must seek the Light. It is always a struggle, but your struggle will be rewarded…Will you take up the burden.

Bren: (Picks up the lightsaber and stands.) I choose the Light. I am a Jedi, like my father and mother before me.

Aigeelops: May the Force be with you now and always. (Aigeelops looks pleased as he slowly fades.)

Bren staggers out of the Temple and falls asleep in the courtyard beneath the eroded statues of the six Jedi that saved Merisee from the Loag. While he sleeps, he dreams the same set of nightmares, but with a difference.

Back on the mainland he sees Doc one last time. Doc seems better. He finally speaks with Merak Tan and learns his father’s name. (More long story/character background - short version Bren’s parents were Jedi. His father left. His mother was killed. He was raised with her last name, not that of his father. And his mother died under mysterious circumstances when he was very little leaving him to be raised by Merak Tan’s sister and her husband – sort of a foster aunt and uncle.)

Each of the Nightmares from the initial set up is countered with a scene from Bren's journey.

1. The mother of the child, Tika, that Bren killed the man to rescue – “I thank you. Everyday, I thank you!” and an image of Tika playing with Reena her puppy.
   
2. His surviving childhood friends on Osirrag speaking about the defeat of the swoop bike gang: “We stopped them. We’re still free.”
   
3. Arda’s parting words to him on the Isle of Winds: “It is my fate…May the winds follow you and sweep you upward,” and the calm seas on his return from the Isle of the Winds.
   
4. Doc Carson on heroes and Bren saying, “Don’t let them win.”
   
5. Bren’s mother, “There is no emotion, there is peace. It is the Jedi’s first rule. Anger is one emotion, self-hate is another.”
   
6. Mur as they are saying goodbye, “I made my choice and I chose you…I’ll take that risk!”

At this point Bren has completed his atonement. He has helped people despite his feeling of failure and he has realized that he still has more to do.

This was a short session for Bren, but we spent the rest of the session playing out some of what was happening with Murlyn and Arkel while Bren was off sulking/atoning.

So call Bren's part another session of maybe 4 hours.

Episode V: Sidron
Bren knows he needs to travel to the planet Sidron (a desert planet where Bren is known from a prior adventure). Once there he links up with a friend (and the only native survivor of the Seven Who Were Chosen) who needs his help (and the help of a Jedi). On Sidron Bren and Murlyn meet up on. Since this ‘high level summary’ is already pretty long and since the DSP is atoned for I will draw the curtain on our stage. If you really want to see what happened next, PM me.

[Raven Redstar]

Sounds like it was a fun set of sessions. I wonder how my GM will have me atone for my DSP gained. If she lets me...
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RR
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