Jedi Mission Pool (Brainstorming!)

[Kale]

Droo proposed a wonderful idea in our new [postyoujerks] chat, and I thought we should kick it in here for discussion. With the Jedi settled on Ossus, and with supply ships and Alliance personnel moving in and out on a regular basis, our Jedi characters are much better positioned to go on away missions. So, to help get the ball rolling, we'd like to put together a pool of mission ideas that writers with Jedi characters can choose from and run with. Some may be appropriate for Padawan-Knight teams. Some may just need a Jedi of any rank and a spacer/Alliance military officer. We're looking for plot hooks that can lead to fun, self-contained stories, like episodes of a TV show.

Here are some that Droo already suggested:


The Gilded Cage
The Jedi have received word of a Force-sensitive youth living on an Imperial-controlled world who is being kept a prisoner in his/her own house by his/her affluent and Imperial-loyal parents. They are keeping their child's Force-adept nature a secret and have paid off local authorities to prevent him/her from ever escaping. Go to this planet and find a way to secure the child's release so he/she can seek training with the Jedi on Ossus.

Entrapment
We have learned of a bounty hunter who is targeting Force-adepts attempting to cross the border from Imperial space into the Alliance. He lures adepts with the promise of safe passage, then captures or kills them while in transit. Put a stop to this menace.

Whoever chooses the mission can decide how to go about it, and advertize for other RPers to join in as sidekicks or villains. We could even create some one-off NPCs, like that crooked bounty hunter, to stand as villains of the week. We want the mission idea to serve as a springboard for an adventure with a clear objective that can be completed in a few pages of posting. We could even have a sticky thread in the Ossus forum that can be updated with links to the individual threads as people accept their missions.

And really, this model could be just as easily used for any of our groups, including pirates, bounty hunters, Rebels, Imperials, and the Circle. It's also a neat way to give new RPers, or old RPers who have been away for a while, a concrete idea of how they can get involved in our complex and crazy story universe! :)

[Droo]

A couple of other vague ideas for missions people can build on (or I'll build on them after a bit of thought):



Reports have come in that a swoop gang on [planet] have, by means as yet unknown, came into the possession of several working lightsabers. They have been using them to terrorise locals, cut through the doors of bank vaults, and even kill rival gang members. It has fallen to the Jedi to bring an end to this menace, retrieve the lightsabers, and ascertain their origins.
Rumours of a new religious cult have surfaced on [planet]. Presently, there are no reports of any illegal activity, although curiously, its members have all started to show signs of some latent Force ability. There is some suspicion that the cult is being utilised as a means to distribute dangerous artifacts of unknown origin, and that these artifacts are having a harmful effect upon the wellbeing of those in possession of them. Get to the bottom of this mystery.


Basically, what we're trying to create are scenarios which lend themselves to the skills and interests of the Jedi; missions for which they are best suited. Then it is down to the roleplayers themselves to determine how diplomatically or how bloodily they deal with them. The mission descriptions are deliberately vague to give roleplayers the freedom to flesh things out as they see fit, including details such as how they acquired the mission in the first place. This is an OOC source of plot details, but it stands to reason, what with the frequent comings and goings of spacers, and officials, military personnel, and new recruits, each with a story to tell, that word of these matters will come to the Jedi's attention.

[Kale]

Unexploded Ordnance
You have been dispatched to investigate a Jedi distress signal originating on a Republic-era capital ship drifting derelict in the Gordian Star Wreck. After you board the ship, several blast doors descend and cut you off from the airlock back to your transport, and a legion of battle droids awake and begin hunting you down. It turns out the distress signal was a trap set for Jedi during the Clone Wars, and the program is still running. Not only must you escape, but you must make sure others are not ensnared by the same trap. (Additional idea: the distress signal was sent by an AI the CIS left in control of the ship. As you try to escape, it taunts you and uses the ship itself to try to kill you.)

Exorcism
An Alliance excavation crew on [Planet] has unearthed the entrance to an ancient Sith tomb. Shortly after their discovery, several members of the crew died in mysterious accidents. Investigate the site and determine what, if any, Dark Side presence remains. (Additional idea: Recruit a Dark Side character to arrive in search of whatever knowledge or power is buried in the depths of the tomb.)

Pest Control
A colony of gokobs (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Gokob) has broken into our food stores and is making a mess of our hydroponics gardens! Deal with the problem without giving in to the Dark Side (or the stench).

Runaway
After a fight on the playground of the Jedi compound on Ossus, one of the younglings has run away into the wilderness. Go find the child before some forest predator (or Ysanna) does!

[Captain Untouchable]

How does this relate back to the Alliance, in terms of jurisdiction? Is this the Jedi acting on their own initiative, or is it with the knowledge/consent of the Alliance / Alliance Security?

[Droo]

Either/or, to be honest. Whatever works best for all involved.

[Kale]

It depends on the mission, obviously... going behind Imperial lines (like in "Gilded Cage" and "Entrapment") may require some coordination with intel, while responding to contraband lightsabers or the unearthing of a Sith tomb would be more squarely in Jedi jurisdiction. Part of the point of a thread like this is to figure out those details in advance so the mission is ready to go whenever someone wants to take it.

These are all meant to be story springboards, and some of them are conducive to including non-Jedi characters as partners in the mission.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Yes it's a "here's a possible mission, execute it as you feel best"

[Captain Untouchable]

I understand that these are just springboards, since you already explained it.

I've not been privy to these discussions, so I have absolutely no idea what has been discussed. I don't know if you've just talked about "what could the Jedi hypothetically do?", or if you've taken the next step and talked about "how does this jive with the Alliance?", or if all you've done is draw out scrabble pieces from a bag.

The answer seems to be "work it out case by case, because we've not really talked about it"?

[Taataani Meorrrei]

I'm not seeing anything in what's been mentioned that would need mentioning to the Alliance. It's pretty small scale stuff without major galactic portent. If there was something big being done, I could certainly see it being within council due diligence to discuss it with the Alliance though.

[Captain Untouchable]

The Jedi are "taking the law into their own hands", potentially. Taking it upon themselves to deal with issues that they feel is relevant to their interests. Only one of the examples so far is explicitly not in Alliance space, and another is explicitly dealing with immigration into Alliance space.

Would you not want to mention to the Alliance that someone is murdering immigrants, and that you've decided to deal with it yourself rather than letting Alliance Security handle it?

Like I said, "jurisdiction". It'd be reassuring to know that it was an issue that was discussed when coming up with stuff like this, rather than being ignored.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

So should I make a sticky thread in the Ossus forum for the missions?

[Taataani Meorrrei]

I don't think anyone is ignoring the Alliance part of the equation. Rather to the contrary, these are missions designed to be low impact enough where the Jedi wouldn't have to run it up the flagpole to get out there and be the guardians of peace and justice they ought to be. And even the ones that do end up having cross-purposes with Alliance folks trying to keep the situation in check, that could also be a rather fun thing to write out. It's kinda like a cop drama, when the feds loop in and put the kibosh on the local fuzz investigation. They're on the "same team" but maybe with different styles of going about things.

[Kale]

To be honest, this is one of the reasons we're approaching it this way. We're trying to come up with stories of the sort that you'd read in novels, or that we might see in a TV show about a new Jedi Order on Ossus, that we can dive into, have fun telling, and finish up in a reasonable amount of time, without extended discussions of jurisdiction and interdepartmental coordination. There's a place for it, but sometimes exploring the details can get in the way of storytelling.

The Jedi are a lot of things in the Star Wars universe, but at their core they're knights of fantasy on the galactic stage. They need to have the leeway to go on meaningful adventures without individual RPers feeling like they need to get permission from whoever's playing ranking members of Alliance intel. I know you're concerned about the cohesion of the story world rather than permission, but when the story world is so complicated that it chills storytelling, it amounts to the same thing.

Anyway, I don't see it as the Jedi taking immigration into their own hands. If we did a briefing scene for "Entrapment," a member of the Council might say, "We have conferred with Alliance Security, and they agree that our best option is to confront this threat directly." I just don't see the need to spell it out explicitly. In universe as well as OOC, the Jedi need to have some freedom, or they're literally and figuratively not going anywhere.

[Captain Untouchable]

I'm not expecting to have some guy from Alliance Security as a recurring guest star in your analogy TV show... literally, all I'm asking is whether or not it even came up in discussion. It seems to me like it's something that might potentially come up at some point in the future (even if it's an in-passing mention, a la your example), and it seems wise to have an idea in mind from square one, rather than making up something half a dozen threads down the road and then having to look back and go "Well shit, we probably should have factored that in during those threads too".

It was a simple question, about a discussion I wasn't included in or invited to. Wasn't looking to provoke some kind of debate on the matter: I purely wanted to know what, if anything, had been decided; so that I can know whether it will impact my characters or not.

[Kale]

This is the discussion. All we did in the chat was mention the idea and brainstorm some missions. You're not being shut out of anything.

[Dasquian Belargic]

These all sound great, and it's definitely a concept that would be cool to replicate across factions.

[Serena Laran]

I am starting the sticky thread if you want the missions expanded or whatever, please post them here and I will edit my post.

http://theholo.net/forum/showthread.php?55430-Jedi-Mission-Holocron

If you have new mission ideas post them here so I can keep the Ossus thread updated. Thank you!

[Halajiin Rabeak]

I would love to take on the Swoop Gang one with Hal, and I think the ideal partner for him on such a mission would actually be Kale. It'd allow us to bring Kale back into the fold, while also giving Hal an opportunity to be a bit... unortohodox. Also, his speciality back in the old days was infiltrating criminal organizations, and he does still have a few tricks up his sleeve.

And, for laughs, Dirk Neighborly might be fun to throw in with the baddies. Anyone else in particular want in on this one?