After getting married in 1995, there was a long break from the playing of role-playing games. I had to wait for Number One Son to reach an age where he understood enough about things to enjoy a game where telling a story together was the main thing. He was aware of Star Wars through the fourth movie, The Phantom Menace, which we saw together in the Austin area where Grandma and Grandpa Beyer lived. Then, after the next movie came out, The Attack of the Clones, a role-playing game from the 80’s was updated and I bought the rule books in local game shops. Number One Son and Closest Cousin began playing with me whenever we had the opportunity. We even played during our tent-camping trip to Niagara Falls.
Closest Cousin was basically a young girl in her Disney Princess phase when we started playing. So she chose to be a noble. She wanted a Princess Leia-type character, and she created Princess Moreno D’ark to fulfill that need. Number One Son wanted a more action-oriented character, one who could solve problems by whacking them with a light saber. So he created Juba Jubajai, a gung-ho space marine sort of Jedi guardian. We chose to play in the Clone Wars era because that was where I had the most resources in book form and related most closely to the movies they had recently seen and loved. I had a bunch of other old 80’s Star Wars game supplements that I could adapt to fit into the game universe we were using.
Of course, two people is a little short of a full adventuring party, so we recruited some good NPC’s to fill in. We had to have a Wookie. So Hrowwuher became Princess Moreno’s devoted sidekick. He could blow stuff up whenever the Princess’s negotiating and problem-solving skills failed to keep the group out of trouble. Keebo Kloohorn was a musician and often supplied the sneakily supplied game-master’s hints to keep the adventure on track. He was also sometimes the character used by Number Two Son, but at a mere five years old, the game rarely held his attention long enough for him to really be playing.
On upcoming Saturdays, I will recount a few of our memorable adventures in the Star Wars game realm.
Ged Aero was the player character of one of my favorite kids. He was a psionic shape-changer who could transform into other animals, space creatures, and alien beings. He became so powerful that he naturally inherited the job of leader of the Psionics Institute, a criminal teachers’ union that taught psionic skills to psionically talented kids. It was a criminal organization because the semi-fascist government of the Third Imperium had made psionics illegal. He gathered students and taught them to use their powers for good. The students were all non-player characters to start with, but as new kids from school wanted to play the game too, and player characters were needed, the students of Ged’s psionics dojo became player characters.
So, what are Nebulons? Gyro Sinjarac on the left in the picture is an example from Aeroquest of a Nebulon. They are aliens who are human in every respect except for their blue skin. Interestingly they can even successfully interbreed with Earther humans. This is apparently due to either the evolution of Nebulons from Earther explorers, or, more likely, the galaxy being seeded with Earth humans and Earther DNA by the mysterious alien race known only as “the Ancients”. What is not debatable is that Nebulons have unique skin. The blue skin with high levels of natural copper sulfate in it has evolved as a protection from interstellar nebula radiation. No one who has learned their language and studied their culture has ever identified a planet of origin. Instead, the Nebulons have been a space-born race since humans first encountered them, travelling in their symbiotic space-whale space cruisers. They are a mysterious deep-space race of alien beings who use organic symbiotes, in other words, living creatures, as their pervasive technology.
Catch a Falling Star 