Your Expanded Universe

[cunning_kindred]

So, I was just doing an update for our rules document and as I was writing the summary of all the stuff the update included, it reminded me of just how much of it is based on lore that is kind of exclusive to my own group's "expanded universe." Over the years, we've developed a habit of just assuming all our games exist in the same cannon universe with characters from old games popping up if they happen to be in the right time period, plots from old games rearing their heads in new ones, Force traditions created as villains in one setting ending up being the tradition of choice for characters in later games. I always felt that the Star Wars universe really lends itself to this sort of thing.

I'm sure over the years many players have created "out there" Force Traditions, fun little drugs, and additions to their own personal SW that others might be able to use. I kind of like to think that those who have stumbled on the stuff I've put online have chosen to incorporate bits and pieces in their own games. I know, for example, that the d6 Holocron has the Ki'ardi, Thade Akarat and Van Lowen listed and all of those came from our game - was never quite sure how that happened.

So, I thought I'd start a thread where we could put down bits of our own cannon that have been fun and interesting additions to our games that might be useful for others if they are looking for something "out there" for their own games.
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You can find the latest document here:
Star Wars Unleashed Edition

[cunning_kindred]

So, to start, I thought I'd share:
Si

This is a little addition that appeared in our games years ago when we were fleshing out the Gand Findsman. I had been thinking about some of the depictions of Spice as a means of gaining temporary access to telepathy and I got to thinking about a Force tradition that was based on drugs that granted access to force powers. I kind of imagined that such a group could correspond to Shamanic practices or be portrayed as a self-destructive drug-addled dark side cult. And then one of my players pointed out that the Gand already fitted this archetype pretty well with their mist-based ceremonies.

This led us to reimagine the Gand as a drug-based cult of Bounty Hunters. As a group we tend to ignore or, at least, really play down the Midi-chlorians in our games but we did sort of begin to imply that the Gand as a species were Midi-chlorian deficient because the Midi-clorians of their world had become an independent species that lived in the mists and that it was only by breathing in the Si from the mists that the Gand could gain access to the Force.

This interpretation of the Gand really gave the bounty hunters an interesting relationship with their order. They were effective dependent on a something that could only be provided by their Hunting Lodges. Playing a Gand Findsman has always been a really interesting and different take on a Force using character, but I’ve personally really enjoyed this addition to their lore.

I sometime consider adding another “drug-based” Force tradition, but the Gand and the idea synergised so well that I’ve just never been able to think of another application that just wouldn’t pale by comparison.
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You can find the latest document here:
Star Wars Unleashed Edition

[FVBonura]

A great thread idea...

I personally like finding loose story ends in the galaxy and I try to tie them back in. I love the works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Ever since Alan Dean Foster's "Splinter of the Mind's Eye" and the temple of Pomojema (Cthulhu), I have been trying to integrate lovecraft's work into my own campaign. Lovecraft's pantheon is ancient, and cosmic, and flawlessly integrates with this galaxy. Alan Moore would also inject Lovecraft into his Star Wars comics as well so I chose to follow suit. Here is my first contribution.

Who Scared The Sharu???
Lester Neil "El Neil" Smith (Former Presidential Candidate) only gave us three Lando Calrissian novels but he left us with some big galactic mysteries. My first is the mystery of who scared the Sharu so profoundly the race stored all their knowledge into life crystals and the race regressed into the primitive Toka???

Lovecraft provides the answer in "The Whisperer in Darkness" with the alien Fungi from Yuggoth. These aliens store the brains of exceptional humans in brain cylinders so they can survive the journey back to Yuggoth to be entered into their libraries. I realized this was a perfect fit. In this case, the Fungi from Yuggoth were capturing Sharu and taking their brains for their own libraries.

The race was too technologically superior to the Sharu so they uploaded their knowledge into a format incompatible with their brain cylinder transfers, enter the life crystals. Then the Sharu to protect their culture buried their society in phasic plastic pyramids, as we read in "Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu". The Fungi from Yuggoth also had a way to phase their bodies (something about the frequency of their electrons) but the Sharu technology prevented them from gaining access. With no brains to collect and no access to technology, the Fungi from Yuggoth departed the Rafa System in search of new prey.

Fast forward many centuries, and Lando uses the Mindharp, and the Toka are restored to the Sharu. My next installment will explore more on this book series.
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Star Wars Deckplans Alliance
Star Wars Prequel Commentary

[cunning_kindred]

[Ziz]

My "British-to-American" translator must be a little out of date - "Force Tradition"?

[cunning_kindred]

Not sure if I've missed something myself. I thought the term "Force Tradition" was the widely accepted generic term for an organisation of Force users with a specific set of beliefs about the Force. So, Aing-ti monks, Jedi, Sith, Baron Do Sages and Matukai are all each a separate tradition that believes in and teaches about the Force (in one guise or another).
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You can find the latest document here:
Star Wars Unleashed Edition

[garhkal]

Or the Ubbba suupppa duppa mages of awesomeness!
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[FVBonura]

Installment 2: Again we explore L. Neil Smith's Lando Calrissian Adventures, and the adorable little droid called Vuffi Ra. Here I can see some very compatible connections with the "Elder Things" from H. P. Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness":

[cunning_kindred]

[garhkal]

Our group also has 'blue' drink. VERY hard to drink it.. IIRC the first shot is a moderate stamina, then diff stamina, then very diff stamina, then heroic stamina...
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Whill]

cunning_kindred and FVBonura, I really like these ideas! Good stuff.

I have a compendium of Lovecraft "Cthulhu" works, and I've read some of them, but it has been many years.

I'm rarely ever a player for SW (I'm almost always the GM). The most fun I have ever had as a player in an RPG was actually in a Call of Cthulhu campaign. The GM (one of my SW players) was excellent and really captured the "Cthulhu" mood.
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Star Wars D6 Damage

[cunning_kindred]

So, as anyone who has seen our rules will know, we have diverted from the RAW system quite a big. Over the years, we have drifted quite a bit in how Force Points work, how different races operate and the like. I was thinking that it would be fun to include a few of the races we have created over the years, but I realised that if I did, the rules in our book would be all but useless to most of the people reading this. So, as a bit of a fun exercise for my own amusement, I thought I'd try backward engineering them into races that could be used in a RAW game.

So, a few races that you might wanna try out in your own games:

Ash'ad Walkers

The Ash'ad Walkers are a race of nomadic near humans native to the deep galactic core. With hyperdrive technology unreliable and often dangerous in these deep core systems, the Ash'ad have developed a culture where they spend years between the stars. Many are born, live and die without ever stepping foot on a planet. They have a culture that takes safety and mechanical engineering very seriously. With slower than light vessels as the predominant means of travel for much of their history, they evolved cultural and even inherent physiological means to survive in deep space.

Attribute Dice: 12D
DEX 2D/3D+2
KNOW 1D+2/3D+1
MECH 2D/4D+1
PER 2D/3D+2
STR 1D+1/3D
TECH 2D+2/4D
Special Abilities:
Hibernation Trance Ash'ad Walkers can enter into a trance light state very similar to that which the Jedi can. All of them can make a Knowledge roll to enter into a deep trance as per the rules for the Hibernation Trance power. All Force Sensitive Ash'ad learn this power free when they purchase their first 1D in the Control skill.
Intuitive Astrogation All Ash'ad Walkers can attempt to plot an Astrogation route without a normal Nav Computer, but this adds +10 to the difficulty. They receive a +1D bonus to all Astrogation skill rolls.
Move: 10/11; 13/15 (zero gravity)
Size: 1.9-2.4 meters tall

Talakulas

The Talakulas are a semi-sentient metamorphic parasite native to the world of Fagardo in the Unknown Regions. On their homeworld, a large gas giant, they bond with the local life forms, including the enormous Balna, normally a herbivore, transforming them into monstrous predators that sate the Talakulas desire for death and destruction as much as feed their endless hunger. The high atmospheric pressure, lack of any useful resources and the monstrous nature of the local predators, all conspired to keep the Talakulas locked in their home star system for centuries.

Although the occasional visitor to Fagardo would encounter a new-born or unbonded Talakulas and so become infected, for the most part the Talakulas were unknown in the Galaxy until the Emperor sent imperial scientists to the world to discover the source of rage and hunger he had discovered there during his farseeing expeditions. The encounter unleashed several hundred Talakulas-infected specimens into the Galaxy.

Well, this one will be a little tricky to do in RAW, but let's have a go.


Race: Choose another normal race for your character.
Attribute Dice: Subtract 2D.
DEX +1/+1
KNOW -2/-2
MECH -2/-2
PER +1/+1
STR -2/-2
TECH -2/-2
Special Abilities:
Metamorphic Transformation When angered, the host of the Talakulas can release it, growing in size, growing barbs and other natural weapons and becoming monstrously more ferocious. This is an action. Once its done, the host becomes almost feral, unable to control its violence. It will attack the hosts enemies but if there are none present, it will attack whoever is present, regardless of how the host would normally perceive them. It gains a +1D bonus for every dark side point it has to all unarmed attack and damage rolls and to all rolls made to resist physical damage. It gains a +1 bonus per dark side point to all rolls to resist energy damage. All action that involve concentration or which are not dedicated to hunting down, attacking, or harming another or noticing threats or ambushes suffer a -1D penalty for each dark side point you have.
At the end of each round, the host can attempt an easy Willpower roll (with the -1D penalty per dark side point) to regain control and return to their normal form. If the host attempts to regain control for a number of rounds equal to the number of dark side points it has, it automatically regains control at the end of the next round.
Dark Side Creature All Talakulas start with 1 dark side point. They cannot remove this last dark side point by any means without having the Talakulas removed.
Parasite In principle, it is possible to be cured of this infection. How this could be achieved is left entirely in the hands of the Game Master.
Move: As base race
Size: As base race

Vesh

Vesh are a symbiotic species native to a now forgotten world in the Rog-Yapa cluster in the core worlds. They are an ancient starfaring race that contacted the Old Republic in its earliest days when that institution was first colonising the core worlds. When first encountered, the Vesh called themselves the Vesh Merru, a term which could be translated as “spirit” or “will” of the Merru.

The original host species of the Vesh, the Merru, were herbivorous anthropods with delicate manipulators but limited intelligence. They gave the Vesh their first taste of technology. When colonists from the stars arrived on their homeworld, it was the Merru those colonists believed to be the native intelligence of that world; even though so many of them were kept as little more than pets and slaves. Why the Merru were insufficient for colonisation and space travel is a piece of information that has also been lost to time. The Vesh have theories. The Merru are believed to have been so claustrophobic as to make containment in starships unfeasible. Other records seem to indicate that the Merru brain chemistry had an adverse reaction to hyperspace travel.

In any case, the greatest breakthrough of nascent Vesh technology was their ability to expand their parasitic qualities beyond the beasts of their world of origin and to invade the bodies of the alien colonists. In one simple step, the Vesh became a starfaring species. The Vesh abandoned the Merru en mass and bequeathed their homeworld to their original hosts. Such is the nature of the Vesh.

Vesh are almost immortal except by accident and “suicide”. Many do choose to return to the “breeding pools” where they dissolve and are re-mingled into future generations of nestlings. But so long as a Vesh has a host and the will to live, it can persist for millennia. Most live apart from others of their kind, taking up residence in the greater Galactic community. The peculiarities of their breeding, and perhaps a quirk of the technologies which opened the stars to them, the reproduction rates of the Vesh are very slow and they give rise to a new member of their race only rarely.

Personality For a species which finds it hard to exist outside the bodies of other sentient creatures, the Vesh are nothing like what some fear. The Vesh’s principal mental characteristic is curiosity. They have a lust for existence which is almost unparalleled. They are a race which prefers to share everything (including the bodies of their allies) but they are as giving in this regard as they are demanding. After an initially “difficult” introduction, the Vesh entered the nascent Republic as open and productive members; determined to give back as much to their hosts as they took. Disregarding a few outlying psychopaths, the majority of the Vesh live out their existence in the bodies of friends with whom they share many benefits: direct access to memories that can go back centuries, improved healing, increased longevity, and engaging conversation.

Physical Description In their natural form, the Vesh are a mingling of tender worm-like tentacles which are as fragile as they are complicated. Each of these tentacles is actually a separate creature, breeding and growing independently but combined with the others into a conglomerate intelligence. Only when at least a few dozen of these tentacles merge is a new Vesh “born”. When a Vesh spawns too many “divergent threads”, it will deposit them in a “breeding pool” secreted away on one of the core worlds. If it grows tired of its existence, it dissolves itself back into the pools; its memories and experiences ready to be reincarnated into a new “nestling” of tentacles. Physicians have compared their physiology to brain tissue and while it is more resilient than that, the Vesh can survive outside a warm liquid environment only for a short time before perishing. Their preferred environment is nestled around the nervous system of a host.

Homeworld The homeworld of the Vesh is now long forgotten. Some claim that the Vesh themselves deleted all records and hyperspace routes which could reach the world themselves as a reward for the Merru, that those simple creatures could continue their existence unmolested. Others claim that the world was destroyed by early colonists who mistook the Vesh for a dangerous intelligent infection and that the Vesh merely chose to forget this horrible truth. Now the Vesh maintain breeding pools on more than a dozen worlds, protected from outsiders by old allies. The Empire’s draconian nature destroyed several of the Vesh breeding enclaves and drove the species into hiding. The Empire could not tolerate the Vesh’s ability to infiltrate their ranks and would have worked to exterminate the species were it not already so elusive.

Languages The Vesh speak the languages of their host, but most remember fragments of Vesh’merru, the language of their distant ancestors.

Examples Names The Vesh share the names of their hosts but also have names which they carry from one host to another. These names are usually simple, so that they might be spoken easily by different alien mouths. Each is unique and no Vesh would dare use a name that had already been taken by another Vesh they knew and would likely change it if they did encounter another using the same name.


Attribute Dice: 10D
DEX 1D/1D
KNOW 2D+1/4D+2
MECH 2D/4D
PER 1D+2/4D+1
STR 1D
TECH 2D/4D+2
Special Abilities:
Concealed Within the Host When inside a host, the Vesh nestle in one body location. Any attack to that location inflicts damage on the Vesh but otherwise, they can avoid harm. Unfortunately, they do suffer a light stun for each wound inflicted on the host. Injuries the correct body location or to all body locations are inflicted on Vesh in full.
Neural Poison Vesh can release a toxin which slows down and incapacitates the host’s higher brain function. This inflicts 4D stun damage on the target. With a brawling roll, the toxin can be injected into another victim through the Vesh’s mouth. Otherwise, it cannot be avoided while the Vesh is inside the host. For each stunned condition this toxin inflicts, the Vesh gains a +1D bonus to all attempts to dominate the body and control what it does.
Out of Body Experience The Vesh do not like to exist outside the body of a host or at the least in a warm (vaguely human body temperature) liquid. While they can survive for a short time, they have -5 penalty to their move score, have no manipulators and each hour that passes, they suffer 4D physical damage. They also cannot breathe in extremely dry environments and begin to suffocate.
Neural Connection By digging down into the flesh of a potential victim or entering through a surgical opening, you can connect to the nervous system. This permits you to act through its body. You can use the body’s STR or DEX in lieu of your own (but this does not all you to use the host’s skills). Both the Vesh and Host can physically act in the same round, but not during the same action.
Move: 7/9
Size: 0.7-1.4 meters tall
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You can find the latest document here:
Star Wars Unleashed Edition