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Dustflier
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 21 Feb 2011
Posts: 140
Location: Upstate New York
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 Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2017 12:26 am Post subject: |
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| CRMcNeill wrote: | | I think it likely that the Tantive was inside the Death Star when it blew up. So unless the PCs are escaping from the Death Star, I think its survival is unlikely. YMMV. |
Now THAT'S an idea for a campaign:
You're one of many political prisoners held aboard the Death Star, wasting away and awaiting your eventual termination. The only break from the day-to-day monotony that you ever experience is when new prisoners are processed and added to your cell block. It's not as if you can see them or communicate, but the flurry of activity and muffled noises indicate that there are new arrivals. And when the only thing you can stare at is these four dark walls, any change is exciting.
And so it happens that there's a flux of new captives in your neighboring cells. But with their arrival brings a new noise to your prison: a rhythmic tapping of metal on metal. The pattern modulates and shifts. You hear it echoing from one end of the cells to the other, where a different knocking responds. It's a code! These prisoners have devised a way to communicate!
In isolation, you wrack your brain to try to figure out the meaning behind this knocking. Is it based on aurabesh? Eventually, you work out a hypothesis: if the alphabet is written out on a grid, the first number is the column, while the second number is the row. So aurek would be one knock, followed by silence, then another single knock.
You test your theory in your head, visualizing the grid and counting off the letters. By the Force it works! The letters come in until you have your first word: "Escape!" They're planning an escape! The next word: "on." Escape on? Escape on what! The next letters are jumbled. Maybe you misheard something? "Escape on tantive," followed by four more knocks.
"What in the heck is a Tantive?" . . .
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Sutehp
Commodore
Joined: 01 Nov 2016
Posts: 1797
Location: Washington, DC (AKA Inside the Beltway)
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| Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2017 3:57 am Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | Sutehp wrote: |
Or perhaps (and this is Legends continuity because it's no longer canon that Corellian Corvettes serve in the Imperial Navy as we saw in the Tie Fighter video game), the Empire had a talk with the Bureau of Ships and Services, gave the Tantive IV a new transponder and voila! a new ship for the Imperial Starfleet. |
"Sir, we are being fired upon by an Imperial Corelian corvette.. Transponder ID lists it as the Coruscant dream, but the engine's unique humm makes it seem like the tantive IV.. " |
Um, garhkal, sound can't carry in the vacuum of space. Yes, I know that this is Star Wars, after all, what with all the space engine noises, but still....
And how could a bog-standard Corellian corvette have a "unique engine noise?"
AND HOW COULD YOU SPELL "HUM" WITH TWO "M"S??? 
| Dustflier wrote: | | CRMcNeill wrote: | | I think it likely that the Tantive was inside the Death Star when it blew up. So unless the PCs are escaping from the Death Star, I think its survival is unlikely. YMMV. |
Now THAT'S an idea for a campaign:
You're one of many political prisoners held aboard the Death Star, wasting away and awaiting your eventual termination. The only break from the day-to-day monotony that you ever experience is when new prisoners are processed and added to your cell block. It's not as if you can see them or communicate, but the flurry of activity and muffled noises indicate that there are new arrivals. And when the only thing you can stare at is these four dark walls, any change is exciting.
And so it happens that there's a flux of new captives in your neighboring cells. But with their arrival brings a new noise to your prison: a rhythmic tapping of metal on metal. The pattern modulates and shifts. You hear it echoing from one end of the cells to the other, where a different knocking responds. It's a code! These prisoners have devised a way to communicate!
In isolation, you wrack your brain to try to figure out the meaning behind this knocking. Is it based on aurabesh? Eventually, you work out a hypothesis: if the alphabet is written out on a grid, the first number is the column, while the second number is the row. So aurek would be one knock, followed by silence, then another single knock.
You test your theory in your head, visualizing the grid and counting off the letters. By the Force it works! The letters come in until you have your first word: "Escape!" They're planning an escape! The next word: "on." Escape on? Escape on what! The next letters are jumbled. Maybe you misheard something? "Escape on tantive," followed by four more knocks.
"What in the heck is a Tantive?" . . . |
This almost makes sense to me. Is that a commentary on my mental stability?
In all seriousness, though, this is a nice Shout Out to the Vietnam War American POWs who communicated with each other this way. Not to mention the You All Meet In a Jail Cell trope used for RPGs.
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Only some of it is for D6 Star Wars.
Just repurchased the X-Wing and Tie Fighter flight sim games. I forgot how much I missed them. |
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Dustflier
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 21 Feb 2011
Posts: 140
Location: Upstate New York
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| Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2017 2:49 pm Post subject: |
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| Sutehp wrote: | | This almost makes sense to me. Is that a commentary on my mental stability? |
I would hope not. I tried to make it clear enough to be understood by the few of us who don't have mental illness, too.
| Sutehp wrote: | | In all seriousness, though, this is a nice Shout Out to the Vietnam War American POWs who communicated with each other this way. Not to mention the You All Meet In a Jail Cell trope used for RPGs. |
Ah, you immediately saw my inspirations. I need to hide them harder next time.
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garhkal
Sovereign Protector
Joined: 17 Jul 2005
Posts: 14249
Location: Reynoldsburg, Columbus, Ohio.
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| Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2017 6:25 pm Post subject: |
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I wrote the hum as what they get on sensors.. ANd who's to say the Tantive was not modified by Leia's staff?
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Sutehp
Commodore
Joined: 01 Nov 2016
Posts: 1797
Location: Washington, DC (AKA Inside the Beltway)
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| Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2017 8:58 pm Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | I wrote the hum as what they get on sensors... And who's to say the Tantive IV was not modified by Leia's staff? |
That's actually a good point. In the novelization of Rogue One, when the Tantive IV is parked inside the Profundity's docking bay, Antilles and his crew are desperately trying to repair the Tantive IV during the Battle of Scarif to get her spaceworthy again. (I don't know how she got damaged in the first place; I skipped around the book since I had seen the movie already.) So it's outside the bounds of possibility that she was modified with jury-rigged repairs. Then again, judging by the opening scene of ANH, the Tantive IV doesn't look any different than a stock CR90, so any modifications that were done were all likely internal, rather than external.
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Sutehp's RPG Goodies
Only some of it is for D6 Star Wars.
Just repurchased the X-Wing and Tie Fighter flight sim games. I forgot how much I missed them. |
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16341
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Sat Mar 04, 2017 12:23 am Post subject: |
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| Sutehp wrote: | Or perhaps the Tantive IV was never transferred to the Death Star at all and was instead piloted to an Imperial shipyard where it was salvaged for spare parts and materials like the Empire was doing to those Y-wings at Reclam Station during the Rebels Season 3 Episode "Steps into Shadow".
Or perhaps (and this is Legends continuity because it's no longer canon that Corellian Corvettes serve in the Imperial Navy as we saw in the Tie Fighter video game), the Empire had a talk with the Bureau of Ships and Services, gave the Tantive IV a new transponder and voila! a new ship for the Imperial Starfleet. |
This is unlikely for several reasons:1). Operational Security: sending the Tantive IV off on its own would require travel on regular hyperspace routes en route to the shipyard, which means the risk of being spotted and identified at a transit point somewhere. A remote possibility, yes, but still, why bother taking the chance over a single Corellian Corvette with a hot transponder?
2). Efficiency. Or, in the case of the Empire, lack thereof. The pre-Endor Empire is not hugely concerned with conservation of resources. Their entire ethos is built around uniform, mass produced, disposable units. A Corellian Corvette is, comparatively speaking, a dime-a-dozen for the Empire.
3). Time. Even assuming the Empire did eventually decide to return the Tantive to service with the Imperial Fleet (as opposed to just stripping it down for parts), they wouldn't have done it right away. They would've hidden it somewhere out of the way and just parked it. Taking #1 into account, the best place to stash the Tantive would be the Death Star, which was destroyed shortly thereafter.
So, assuming Vader didn't just simply order that the Tantive be ejected from the Devastator while it was in hyperspace, the Death Star remains the Tantive's most probable last stop. Other destinations are possible, but highly improbable.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
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Dustflier
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 21 Feb 2011
Posts: 140
Location: Upstate New York
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| Posted: Sat Mar 04, 2017 1:02 pm Post subject: |
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If the Tantive IV ended up in the Death Star, I suspect it would be so that intelligence analysts could have additional time with the astronavigational computer and communications equipment in an attempt to glean hidden or erased data from them. The Devastator was headed to the Death Star anyway.
It's like the US capturing a Soviet spy trawler at the height of the Cold War. You don't just sink it, instead you take it apart methodologically to at least figure out their capabilities and at best crack their codes and find their secret bases.
The Death Star has ample holding cells and has been used in Star Wars media as a sort of black-site prison before. Dedicating a docking bay to "tearing the ship apart" in a literal sense doesn't seem unreasonable.
| CRMcNeill wrote: | | Operational Security: sending the Tantive IV off on its own would require travel on regular hyperspace routes en route to the shipyard, which means the risk of being spotted and identified at a transit point somewhere. A remote possibility, yes, but still, why bother taking the chance over a single Corellian Corvette with a hot transponder? |
Remember, the Tantive IV was out of sight in the Devastator's ventral hangar and headed from Tatooine to rendezvous with the Death Star. Even in the incredibly unlikely event that a non-Imperial vessel gets close enough to the Devastator to peer up into her belly and identify the Tantive IV and escapes, you're forgetting that at this point, the Empire controls all media.
Operational security isn't a concern. The Empire can erase a holy city from existence and call it a mining accident. Simultaneously, they're preparing to blow up an entire planet to send a message. Not only would the story never get out, but if it did, they wouldn't care in the slightest.
The raid on the Tantive IV would just be its own message: even senators aren't diplomatically immune when the charge is treason. Oh, and by time the story spread, the Senate would have been dissolved, too.
Edit: I just typed all of this, then re-read your post and realized you were talking about the Tantive IV being sent somewhere other than the Death Star. Nevermind.
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