At their heart most of my stories, including role-playing game stories, are about being a teacher. In the Star Wars role-playing game, that manifested itself in the Master/Padawan relationship. According to the rules, a Jedi character becomes a Master at experience level ten. For Number One Son’s Jedi character, Juba Jubajai, that happened in the middle of a deep space adventure.
At the time the adventuring group was traveling in space in an interstellar tug boat, in trouble with both the enemies of the Republic, and the Republic itself for their actions on the planet Naboo. While traveling incognito in deep space, they came across a battle-damaged ship that was mostly wreckage and had no life signs. But as they investigated the ship, they found two children frozen in carbonite and still alive, even though the ship had been destroyed thirty years before.
The children were Trad and Verina Paddox, heirs of a noble house in Tapani Sector that had been reported assassinated years ago as aggressive House Mecetti had forced their noble family to give up most of their planetary holdings and killed their parents. Tracking down folks that it would be safe to return these children to was next to impossible. They ran into folks from House Mecetti with a shadowy agenda that probably included erasing the two children from history and existence.
Wraith was a scarred and ferocious agent for House Mecetti that seemed intent on finding out everything he could about the children. He had several run-ins with the adventurers and shots were fired. At one point he was seriously wounded by the Wookie. But he didn’t give up, and was apparently impossible to kill.
During the struggles with Wraith, Verina began exhibiting force sensitivity and immense power that needed Jedi training. So they located a friendly Jedi who seemed to overlook the adventurers’ wanted-criminal status. This dippy and jovial Jedi was named Jean D’Ark, who continually joked around, but would ask clearly inappropriate questions followed by a quick, “Never mind!”
He naturally became Nevermind, or the Nevermind Jedi. They began treating him like a jolly old uncle. It was assumed that he would train Verina as a Padawan and take charge of the children.
Fortunately, more than one character turned out to be the opposite of what he seemed to be. Wraith returned from the dead to reveal that Nevermind was a dark Jedi with Sith ambitions. He was working for Darth Sidious and the evil parts of House Mecetti, and intended to kill the children. Wraith not only revealed the plot, but helped Jubajai to drive the dark Jedi off. So Master Jubajai began teaching Padawan Verina Paddox. The player characters adopted the children and began to fight to reclaim the children’s birthright, leadership of House Paddox and possession of the planet Pelagia.
It is satisfying to tell stories where the teachers are the heroes. But, of course, role-playing games are on-going stories, and there is always more to tell.
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 