Darths & Droids

ARCHIVE     FORUM     CAST     BONUS MATERIAL     RSS     FAQ

Story Planning Notes - II. The Silence of the Clones

[These are our story planning notes for Episode II. Most of this was written before we began publishing strips for the second movie. Some updates have been made as things evolved, but for the most part this is a frozen-in-time snapshot of our plans at the start of Episode II. Some of the ideas recorded on this page were not included explicitly or as-written in the comics: they may have been only hinted at, or left ambiguous, or changed slightly, or revamped wholesale. So this material does not necessarily match the story of the comics in all respects, and should not be considered a canonical description of how the comic eventually turned out.]

Index

Between Episodes I & II

After the events of Episode I, Annie begs some time off for upcoming exams. Jim and Ben have exams too, but being the hard-core roleplayers they are, they keep gaming.

The GM, Jim, Ben and Pete start a new fantasy campaign. After the exams, Ben and Annie are no longer in the same drama class, so don’t see each other for a while. They drift out of touch and Annie doesn’t play games with them any more. Ben no longer needs to babysit Sally, so she doesn’t play either.

The off-screen campaign with Jim, Ben, and Pete went badly. There’s some residual tension between them at the start of Episode II. We reveal the story behind this in small doses over the course of Episode II; it causes Ben to go off on his own (to Kamino), for example. There are several “we swore we’d never speak of that again” moments. Annie tries, unsuccessfully at first, to get Jim to tell her what happened. Their relationship develops as he starts talking about it (mostly on Naboo during the Anakin/Padmé romance scenes).

A couple of years later, Ben bumps into Annie. She wants to know if they’re still doing that game thing, and he invites her back. Ben informs the GM that Annie will be returning, and the GM dusts off his old science fiction campaign. The GM uses this to lure Pete back to the game, since he feels partially responsible for the rift between Pete and Jim (see below).

Ben drags Sally along for the first session since he thinks she is now old enough to really enjoy it “properly”. She is not so keen this time.

Jim and Annie have not seen each other much (if at all) during this time (so that their relationship doesn’t develop off-screen, and so that we can make the most of the awkward reunion at the start of Episode II).

Ideas for the (untold, at least to begin with) details of the intervening fantasy campaign:

The Princess Bride: Ben is a fighter (Inigo Montoya), Jim is a barbarian (Fezzik), Pete is a thief (Vizzini). They answer a job ad from the crown prince, offering a significant reward. The prince wants to boost flagging loyalty and support for himself ahead of his impending marriage to a commoner, and leaves it up to the PCs to figure out a way how. They come up with a brilliant plan to foment some sort of low-key international tension between their kingdom and the neighbouring one, which will hopefully trigger patriotism in the subjects and cause them to rally behind the prince.

They hatch a hare-brained scheme to make it look like the prince’s betrothed has been kidnapped by brigands from the next kingdom. They do various things to delay her but, in a fit of misplaced practicality, Jim decides it would be easiest if they just actually kidnap her. Having done the deed, they try to lay a false trail by absconding to the neighbouring kingdom. They are pursued by a crack squad of troops led by a mysterious masked pirate-ninja. They assume this is a ploy by the prince to reinforce their plan—or maybe they forgot to tell the prince what they were doing and are now simply running for their lives.

In several distant encounters, the PCs think they have shaken their pursuer, only to see him relentlessly following them. Finally Pete comes up with a brilliant plan to deal with this guy: they split up and each PC stands ready to beat the pirate-ninja in a test of their best skill. The pirate-ninja beats Ben in a sword fight, Jim in a battle of brute strength, and then comes across Pete, who has set up a logic puzzle involving poisoned wine. Pete loses and his character dies. The pirate-ninja rescues the bride-to-be and takes her away.

Ben and Jim head back to the prince in failure; not only have they actually kidnapped his fiancée, they then lost her to a mysterious pirate-ninja who it turns out wasn’t in the employ of the prince! He refuses to pay them. Ben then learns that a significant NPC from his back-story—a six-fingered man who murdered his father—works for the prince.

Ben and Jim switch sides and go looking for the pirate-ninja. The GM had him captured by the prince’s men and summarily killed him off in the dungeons, because he wasn’t useful to the plot any more. Ben and Jim take him to a wizard and get him resurrected, and together they storm the castle and defeat the six-fingered man, then expose the prince for the meanie he is. It turns out the pirate-ninja is actually the bride’s True Love, and all he was ever trying to do was rescue her from the evil prince’s men (the PCs). He is grateful and offers Ben leadership of his pirate band, now that he can settle down and live happily ever after.

The aftermath of this adventure is that Pete is royally pissed off at Ben and Jim for “betraying” him and switching sides. The GM offered to let Pete play the princess, but he stormed out of the game in disgust, leaving Ben and Jim to salvage something from the plot, without really enjoying it. Jim is the only real friend Pete has, and now Pete feels utterly betrayed and spends much of Episode II in a mean-spirited mood.

The GM only manages to entice Pete back to play by promising to restart the science fiction campaign that they all enjoyed so much. Pete is happy to be an indestructible droid again. Annie returns and Sally pops up now and then, both unaware of what went on in the fantasy campaign. The guys don’t want to talk about it, but it slowly leaks out. Jim starts confiding small pieces of it to Annie during their awkward scenes on Naboo.

We drop tiny hints in their dialogue, but only reveal a big enough clue to the fantasy campaign being The Princess Bride right near the end of Episode II.

[Old idea: Reservoir Dogs. (No, seriously.) Jim as Mr White, Ben as Mr Orange, Pete as Mr Pink. Ben is a traitor, as agreed with the GM beforehand. He does his job a bit too well, and the campaign continues long after they’ve messed everything up and it’s stopped being fun for everyone involved. Pete becomes suspicious of Ben early on; Jim defends him, then gets thoroughly annoyed when Ben tells him the truth. This sets up for Jim mistrusting Ben early in Episode II, leading to the party splitting up. It also sets a precedent for Padmé’s betrayal by Anakin. And puts the antagonist PC idea in Annie’s head. The cool thing is that the way we reveal bits and pieces of what went wrong in the campaign mirrors how the movie reveals bits and pieces of what went wrong in the heist.]

Fantasy campaign reveals

This is a list of things we intend to reveal about the fantasy campaign over the course of SotC, in order from most the obscure to the most obvious clue regarding what movie the fantasy campaign represents. The clues should be included in strips in roughly this order.

Background Story

[This is material we wrote to describe prior events that explain the situation before the story begins.]

It’s 10 years (game time) after the Trade Federation was defeated and the Lost Orb of Phanastacoria was returned to the Gungans. After the destruction of their orbital HQ and the recovery of the Orb, the Trade Federation is in ruins.

Anakin has been training as a Jedi under the tutelage of Obi-Wan. Despite wanting to visit/rescue his mother, Anakin has not returned to Tatooine. He’s been in regular radio contact, but she keeps urging him to stay away, telling him how the police are still after him for murdering Greedo (and maybe the Hutts too—perhaps Greedo was the son of a powerful Hutt ally or something). The only way to remain safe is never to return to Tatooine.

Chancellor Palpatine has used the time and his new power to advance his plans to bring peace to the Galaxy. He is planning to construct a mobile peacekeeping platform (i.e. a giant superweapon). He knows the Senate will never approve such a thing, so he has disguised it as a project to rebuild the moon of Naboo. The moon had great cultural and spiritual significance to the Gungans, besides causing the tides and geysers which are now missing. So Palpatine has launched a major campaign to secure Republic funding to build a new moon. He’s released public plans and the funding seems likely to pass a Senate vote soon. The project is dubbed the Peace Moon.

Secretly, the real plans of the moon include the superweapon and a hyperdrive. Palpatine’s plan is to make overtures to the Gungans: “Look, I had this nice new moon built for you, but it needs a power source. I was thinking maybe the Lost Orb. It would also keep the Orb safe and it would be in a sacred place.” Once he coerces the Gungans into handing over the Orb, he will reveal the Peace Moon for what it is, presenting his ultimate peacekeeping weapon as a fait accompli.

Unfortunately, the retired Jedi Count Dookû has suspected for a long time that Palpatine is up to no good. He has been convincing the leaders of thousands of systems to vote against the Moon and threaten to leave the Republic. He has no proof of wrong-doing though, until he steals the real plans of the Moon. He is now on the run with this damning evidence. The first people he goes to is the Trade Federation, because he knows they have a strong grudge against Palpatine (and the other separatists are mostly kind of fence-sitting at this point). The Trade Federation offer to help Dookû, but only if he lets them copy the plans to build their own Moon.

Palpatine wants to recover the plans—not that he needs them to continue work, because obviously he had backups—but he doesn’t want the Trade Federation to build their own, or to reveal to the Galaxy the secret of the Moon. So he brings back together a band of adventurers who have helped him in the past, to track down the plans.

Last time he enlisted their help, they succeeded in retrieving the Orb but they insisted on giving it back to the Gungans instead of to him. Privately, he’s not too concerned about this, because at least he knows where it is, it’s well-guarded, and he trusts that he’ll be able to get it back when it’s needed. But he doesn’t want the same thing to happen again, so he gives the party just enough details to get them on track to retrieving the plans, but leaves out anything about it actually being a weapon. In particular, he doesn’t tell them that he knows Dookû is involved.

Meanwhile, Jango Fett, Darth Maul’s junior partner in their detective business, has been investigating to uncover who killed his partner. He’s discovered that it was a young Jedi named Obi-Wan Kenobi, and has spent the last few years going progressively more deranged and plotting insane revenge...

Plot

[This describes our planned plot for Episode II. Most of this was written very early on, before we began or while the first few strips of this Episode were being produced. Some notes were added part way through the movie as our story developed, and so reference later published strips.]

Coruscant

The party is getting ready to set out to Naboo, which is where their first lead is (the whatever-it-was was stolen from Palpatine’s residence or campaign office or whatever on Naboo). During the night before they’re about to leave, an assassin tries to take out members of the party. They chase the assassin, blah blah blah, and corner her.

Zam Wessel starts blabbing to save herself, but is hit by a poison dart. Jango Fett actually aimed the dart at Anakin as part of his plan to eliminate all of Obi-Wan’s associates. However Anakin callously uses Zam as a human shield, claiming that it’s better to let a criminal take the hit than him, an upholder of the law.

The GM’s plan here was to have the Jedi arrest Zam and talk to her. He has a significant backstory about Zam being Darth Maul’s ex-wife and hopes to develop her into a major character. She is a hard-luck story, turned to a life of crime to support her (and Maul’s) sick son, and trying to work her way out to a respectable job. After some convincing by the Jedi, she will be willing to lead them to Jango Fett. Jango tries to kill Anakin with a poison dart, in front of Obi-Wan, as part of his insane revenge plan. The GM’s plan was that the dart was meant to injure Anakin badly enough to require immediate medical aid, but not kill him. But Anakin detects the danger and instead of dodging, he callously uses Zam as a shield, with tragic consequences. Zam is weaker and already wounded, so failed her first health check, and the GM follows the dice here to allow the PCs to deal with the consequences. The GM reacts by becoming reluctant to let Obi-Wan get anywhere investigating the dart—the dart was never meant to be a clue. Zam was the clue.

[Unused idea: She blurts out, “Remember, Order Sixty—” and dies. (Anakin remembers this later on and gets the full info from a clone or something, then uses it when he goes nuts at the end of Episode III. He resigns as a Jedi just before telling Palpatine to issue the order.)]

The Jedi Council react to the litany of misadventures so far by suspending Obi-Wan and Anakin from the Jedi Order.

Obi-Wan tries to analyse the dart anyway. The GM uses the various characters he interacts with to say, “Look, this is not getting you anywhere. Go join up with the other characters.” This prompts Ben to get Sally to switch characters for the first time.

Jim still thinks Governor Bubble of Naboo is a traitor and becomes convinced that he’s behind the assassination plot. Although this is patently absurd, Annie roleplays that Anakin goes along with the idea—both to develop Anakin as the Senator’s underling and because she’s starting to be attracted to Jim.

Given the tension between the male players left over from their last disastrous fantasy campaign, Ben finally gets fed up and Obi-Wan decides to go and investigate on his own while the rest of the party goes to Naboo. Pete doesn’t want to go with either Jim or Ben, but eventually decides to go with Jim because (a) his dislike of Ben is more deep-seated, and (b) it means he can tag along with Annie (though he doesn’t admit that to anyone, including himself).

Note about the party splitting up: These are the dynamics that dictate what happens:

  • Jim wants to go with Annie.
  • Pete wants to go with Annie, but not Jim, and preferably not Ben.
  • Ben doesn’t want to go with Pete.
  • Sally will do anything as long as she’s not playing Jar Jar.
  • The GM doesn’t want them to split up.

    • So the sequence could be something like:

    1. Obi-Wan becomes obsessed with the idea that the dart is a clue.
    2. The GM tries to talk him out of it; this makes him more determined.
    3. R2 and Padmé try to talk each other into going with Obi-Wan, so they can stay on Coruscant with Anakin.
    4. Anakin suggests that, as a padawan, he should go with his master.
    5. Padmé now wants to go with Obi-Wan (and Anakin). R2 grumbles (Pete definitely doesn’t want to be stuck with Jim and Ben).
    6. Padmé remembers that she wanted to track down Bubble; tries to convince Obi-Wan to go to Naboo instead.
    7. Obi-Wan declines, but says that Anakin is ready to go on his own to protect her.
    8. The GM tries to convince Padmé to stay on Coruscant to deal with the Senate thing; Padmé is now obsessed with Bubble and refuses.
    9. Jar Jar announces that he’ll stay behind on Coruscant and handle Padmé’s duties (since Sally wants to abandon the character).
    10. The GM creates Dex for Sally, intending him to go with Obi-Wan; Sally leaves him behind too.
    11. At the last minute, Pete grudgingly decides to go to Naboo.

    Obi-Wan gets a lead on the dart from an old friend (four-armed dude played by Sally). He says it comes from Kamino. Obi-Wan tries to find Kamino but the librarian (played by Sally in a fit of trying out different characters with her new-found freedom to not be Jar Jar) frustrates him. Obi-Wan goes to Yoda and the GM relents (after Sally pipes up as a youngling, saying the records must have been deleted), letting him figure out where it is.

    Naboo/Tatooine

    Annie is a bit shy and awkward at romantic stuff. She maintains a façade of not being interested in Jim, but she actually likes him, and this comes out through the Anakin/Padmé relationship. Jim gets mixed messages: he thinks he’s doing well with her because of their dialogue in-character, but out-of-character she doesn’t seem interested any more. At one point (maybe just before the arena scene) Annie accidentally says “Jim” instead of “Padmé” at a particularly dramatic moment, then backpedals furiously. Revelation of True Feelings ensues. (Or maybe not; we could just keep them separate and awkward until he asks her out in the final strip.) Then, in Episode III, once they’ve been dating for a while and Annie doesn’t need a romantic proxy any more, Anakin realises that he’s conveniently married to a senator and goes back into supervillain mode.

    Between the growing romantic awkwardness between Jim and Annie, and more general gaming incompetence, the party on Naboo make no progress whatsoever. Artoo makes futile efforts to prod them into action. The GM comes up with an idea to at least get them on to something with a bit of plot relevance, by having Anakin dream that his mother is in trouble on Tatooine. Annie appreciates the opportunity to ramp up the plot complexity. This gives Jim the roleplaying option of helping the Republic, or helping Anakin’s personal quest to save his mother. Jim chooses the latter. Tatooine hijinks ensue.

    In the years since Episode I, Anakin has been manipulating things behind the scenes to provide for his mother. He made some contacts with someone who could travel to Tatooine and exert some force on his behalf. This mysterious contact found one Cliegg Lars, an ex-slave. The contact blackmailed Lars into scraping together enough money to buy Shmi’s freedom from Watto. When he needed a bit more “encouragement”, the contact cut Lars’ leg off. Lars finally managed to raise enough cash to buy Shmi.

    Nature took its course and Shmi and Lars fell in love and married. In their occasional radio conversations, Anakin never told Shmi that he had arranged for her freedom, and Shmi never told Anakin that she married. Over the years, Lars told Shmi the story of how he’d been threatened by someone unless he freed her, and Shmi works out Anakin must have been behind it. This, combined with other stories of his exploits reaching Tatooine, have made Shmi realise how ruthless and twisted Anakin has become. She now fears him, which is why she never tells him she is married or where to find her.

    Anakin learns from Watto that Shmi has married and is living with Lars. Shmi learns on the grapevine that Anakin is back on Tatooine. She panics and flees into the desert, where the Sand People capture her. Anakin and Padmé arrive to find Lars worried about Shmi’s disappearance. There is some verbal confrontation between Anakin and Lars, where Anakin’s menacing nature comes out.

    We learn that the Sand People were a peaceful race with a philosophy of non-violence, until Qui-Gon showed up back in Episode I and gave them blasters and told them how to use them. By the time Anakin returns now, the Sand People have degenerated into a violent, bloodthirsty culture and are kidnapping people for ransoms. Also, they’ve recently tracked down the connection between Qui-Gon and Shmi, and—unaware that Qui-Gon is now dead—have kidnapped Shmi in an attempt to draw him out of hiding.

    Anakin tracks down Shmi. In their final anguished conversation we learn that although he still loves her, she is now afraid of what he’s become. She appeals to Anakin to come back to the light. Anakin, incensed by his mother’s own deceptions and distrust of him, lashes out, killing her with an uncontrolled Force choke. Anakin doesn’t believe what he’s done and convinces himself that he didn’t do it and that Shmi simply died of her wounds. He goes berserk and kills the Sand People.

    Anakin kills Shmi in rage at her keeping him in the dark. He Force chokes her in such a way that he can convince himself that he didn’t really do it. We show her death subtly, with a bit of choking, and only later reveal that Anakin killed her himself and has been deceiving himself about this. Perhaps have Jim work it out during or immediately before the scene where Anakin is choking Padmé.

    Kamino

    Meanwhile, investigating the source of the dart on Kamino, Obi-Wan is horrified to discover that the Kaminoans are cloning millions of soldiers—and for some unknown reason they think the Jedi Council ordered them.

    It turns out a bounty hunter named Jango Fett is the one behind all this, paying the Kaminoans to clone him as part of an insane plan to wreak revenge against the Jedi and the Republic. As part of his plan to destroy Obi-Wan, Jango wants to undo everything he ever did, which includes the destruction of the Trade Federation. Jango believes the Federation were defeated because of reliance on droid soldiers, so he clones himself as an army for them (since he doesn’t trust anyone else).

    When Obi-Wan learns Jango is the source of the clone cell line, he decides to capture him for study on Coruscant, hoping that some genetic weapon can be developed to neutralise the clone army. (Actually, maybe this is Yoda’s underlying reason for wanting Jango arrested.)

    Jango Fett knows that Obi-Wan is the one who killed his partner, Darth Maul. The scene between Obi-Wan and Jango is tense. Jango is an incredibly cool (but deranged) Bond-supervillain, who gives away his entire insane plan, except for the reason why. Jango has also adopted the now orphaned son of Darth Maul and Zam Wessel out of loyalty to Maul’s memory, a boy named Boba... (who, as a prepubescent shapeshifter, imprints his default shape on the closest thing he now has to a father figure...)

    Earlier, to get the money to finance the clone army, Jango hired Zam Wessel to shapeshift into the form of the Jedi treausurer (later determined to be Mace Windu by Sally fiat) and transfer funds from the Jedi Council Treasury to Kamino. While inside the Jedi Temple, Zam also had Boba shapeshift into a youngling and erase Kamino from the archives, so the missing money couldn’t be traced. Boba was injured in a youngling training accident, which hurt his splanch. Flash back to this in Episode V or so when Boba talks to the PCs. He can’t easily shapeshift away from the imprinted Jango shape because of his injured/transplanted splanch.

    Obi-Wan gets nowhere against this brick wall of megalomania and decides to go inform the Jedi Council. Jango sportingly gives him 10 minutes head start before initiating his crazed plan. Obi-Wan reports to the Council by radio, telling them that the Kaminoans think the Council ordered the clone army, and learns that they don’t know anything about this. Jango is preparing to take off when Obi-Wan reappears to arrest him (on Yoda’s orders). They fight in the rain.

    Dramatic reveal at the point where Obi-Wan seems about to be killed: “Do you want to know why?? You killed my partner!!!” Obi-Wan aghast. Jango keeps his word and doesn’t kill Obi-Wan, since the 10 minutes head start hasn’t expired yet, but he cuts him off a rope and lets him (apparently) fall into the sea so he can get away. Obi-Wan manages to arrest his fall and climb back to the landing pad just in time to throw a tracking device on to Slave 1.

    Jango’s motivation in going to the Trade Federation:

    If only Palpatine had trusted Maul and Fett, things would have worked out fine. But he went behind their backs and hired some second-string Jedi who messed it all up. Paradoxically, Palpatine is now in a position of absolute power, even though he can’t organise his way out of a paper bag. Palpatine is clearly too goody-two shoes and wishy-washy, and an easy target for overthrow. Fett wants to depose Palpatine and install someone more effective, someone more ruthless... Dookû Nute Gunray! Fett can go on to be the number 2 in the New Galactic Order.

    The Federation have built up their power base again since Naboo, and are a power among the Separatists. This is both why Dookû has gone to them with the Peace Moon plans, and also why Jango goes to them—he wants to bring down the Republic and Palpatine in particular, and they are the obvious group to ally with. So all three of the Feds, Dookû, and Jango are kind of working together to a common goal, but Dookû and the Feds are thinking to themselves that once the Republic is gone they can dispose of the other two. Jango would like to install the Feds as the new rulers, but thinks Dookû is a “loser” (as he pretty much is, except for his insight into Palpatine’s true nature and his acquisition of the Peace Moon plans).

    Geonosis

    Obi-Wan follows Jango to make him an offer from the Council that Jango can’t refuse, but Jango’s villainy is unwavering, and he toys with Ben’s ship (more monologuing over the radio) before crippling it and then getting on with his plan to destroy the Republic before finally finishing Obi-Wan off in person. Obi-Wan manages to repair his ship enough to land on Geonosis.

    There, Count Dookû captures Obi-Wan, but not before Obi-Wan gets a message to Anakin and Padmé on Tatooine about the clone army on Kamino. While Obi-Wan is restrained, Dookû reveals his master plan (whatever that is by the time we get here).

    Things we need to reveal (or make a decision to merely leave implied) about Jango—we have to decide when before we finish writing this dogfight scene:

    Anakin and Padmé relay Obi-Wan’s message to Coruscant and then rush blindly to Geonosis to rescue Obi-Wan. Mace Windu takes a detachment of Jedi to Geonosis, while Yoda goes to Kamino to deal with them. [Yoda (now played by Sally) manages to convince Kamino to surrender. The Kaminoans inform the clones of the change in plans; they are now loyal to the Republic. Yoda takes some of them to Geonosis.]

    In a new game session, the regular GM is unavailable and has requested Pete take over. This is a cunning ploy by the GM to make Pete realise how difficult it is to run a game where everyone has fun. Pete runs the game as a classic deathtrap dungeon, creating the droid factory scene. Thanks to Pete’s platform game session, Anakin and Padmé end up being captured, tried, and sentenced to death.

    The regular GM takes over, giving them a chance by making up an elaborate arena execution (as opposed to just shooting them on the spot). Jango enjoys yet more villain monologuing during the arena scene. Huge fight scene ensues. When things look bad, Mace Windu shows up and more fighting ensues.

    Mace Windu tragically kills Jango before he and his arch-nemesis Obi-Wan get to finish their fight. This makes an impression on young Boba, who has now lost his father, mother, and adopted father because of Obi-Wan and Anakin. (This could lead to interesting scenes in Episode V when Vader is talking to Boba Fett, and Fett assumes Vader is Anakin...)

    Rinse, lather, repeat; Yoda shows up to save the day. Yoda appears at Geonosis (played by Sally now). Sally suddenly says she has the entire clone army with her! GM stunned. Sally explains how she went to Kamino and (somehow) convinced them to give her command of the clones. Obi-Wan proposes a mother hen thing for the clones to imprint on Yoda and survive the Silence of the Clones. The GM shrugs and goes with it. Because the clones have no Force connection, they are unobservant and highly vulnerable to Force Suggestion, as will become apparent later in the story... Yoda up to now was frail—becomes badass as played by Sally.

    Dookû flies off, the PCs give chase. During the chase, Anakin tells Yoda that he thinks Dookû is a Sith Lord. This begins Anakin’s plan of playing Palpatine and the Jedi Council off against one another, by implying to each that the other is allied with the Sith. As part of his ruthless nature, Anakin pushes Padmé out of the ship into the desert and uses his Force Levitation to prevent her being hurt. He wants her out of the way when the battle with Dookû happens, (a) to protect her in character, (2) partly because Annie knows Jim will go all gung-ho and possibly end up getting Padmé hurt. Anakin may also want to hide some of what will happen from Padmé’s knowledge.

    Laser sword fight ensues. Anakin, played by the sensible Annie, charges in recklessly to the shock of Obi-Wan. Annie wants to stop Dookû talking to Obi-Wan and convincing him that he’s really telling the truth about the Peace Moon. Dookû casts Anakin aside with Force Drain, a Jedi defensive technique that resembles bolts of lightning. Force Drain is purely defensive—its power feeds off the attacker’s anger. He tries to use it on Obi-Wan, but Obi-Wan remains calm and it has no effect.

    Obi-Wan sticks to character and blindly insists that Dookû hand over the Peace Moon plans, or he will take them by force. Dookû begins civilly enough, trying to convince Obi-Wan that Palpatine is the true villain. Dookû lets slip that he has a son, who is somewhat reckless and ambitious—we meet him later after he takes up a military position in the new Empire, his name is Tarkin.

    Obi-Wan and Dookû fight, but Dookû is too powerful for one Jedi at a time, with Anakin unable to help until Obi-Wan himself is incapacitated. Yoda has to deus ex machina them again, giving Dookû the chance to slip away with the vital plans. Several years of all-out war happen between the Republic (with clone army) and the Trade Federation + Separatists (with droid army).

    But first Anakin and Padmé slip off back to Naboo to get married, which gives Anakin what he really wants from Padmé: a firm grip on the first rungs to power in the Republic.

    We skip this bit and insert it as the start of the next adventure: After a few years of war, Dookû flies to Coruscant to meet Palpatine, having set up what he describes as a civil discussion about the fate of the plans/Republic. Palpatine is fooled into the meeting, and Dookû kidnaps him! This leads straight into Episode III, where Dookû’s droid army is besieging Coruscant.

    Ideas

    Consequences

    [This is a very early version of the scene that eventually became #302 and #303.]

    Anakin: The Sand People kidnapped my mother? But they were a peaceful race!
    Owen Lars: They used to be. But a few years ago, something changed. Somehow they got their hands on weapons, and since then their whole way of life has revolved around guerrilla warfare.
    Cliegg Lars: Actually, that would have been about the time you left, Anakin.
    Padmé: Ah.
    Owen Lars: They seem to have a grudge against humans. Whenever there’s a raid, we find messages scratched into the walls—stuff about an “unfulfilled oath”, and “that which was stolen”.
    Padmé: What are you talking about? That’s impossible! Qui-Gon couldn’t possibly have been involved!
    Owen Lars: Sorry?
    Padmé: I’m not taking this any more! Come on Anakin, we’re leaving!

    [IB: Consider idea of having Sand People kidnap Shmi because they found her while trying to get revenge after Qui-Gon got them to shoot at the races, they got arrested, their relationships with the non-Tuskens went sour, etc.]

    Moral Relativism

    [This is a very early version of the scene where Anakin slaughters the Sand People: #312.]

    Anakin’s mother has just died. Annie starts hinting that Anakin is turning evil; but her behaviour seems totally sensible to everyone else.

    Anakin: I draw my laser sword and... slaughter the nearest Tusken.
    GM: Okay, roll for initiative.
    Anakin: ... In cold blood.
    GM: Whatever. What did you roll?
    Anakin: Um... 13.
    GM: 8. You start.
    [A few panels of of indiscriminate slaughter & sound effects]
    Anakin: Shouldn’t I be conflicted about this?
    GM: About what?
    Anakin: Going on a vengeful rampage?
    Tusken: Urk!
    GM: Actually, this is pretty much textbook Chaotic Good.
    Anakin: But...
    Tusken: Aaaaugh!
    GM: That was the last one. What next?
    Anakin: I guess I... head back to the farm.
    [Panel: back at the moisture farm]
    Padmé: How did it go?
    Anakin: I... I killed them all. They’re like animals, and I slaughtered them like animals.
    Padmé: Cool! Any good loot?
    Anakin: ... I might need to step this up a notch.
    GM: What was that?
    Anakin: Nothing.

    Snakes on a Shuttle

    Mace Windu: {to Jango Fett} Someone put mother-frakking snakes on my mother-frakking shuttle...

    Laser-Sword Envy

    [This was a very cool and funny idea we had early on. However as Pete’s personality developed and we filled in his real life job details (which were only revealed much later), this representation of his (and Ben’s) character became less relevant.]

    Pete brings his real-life sword to the gaming session. Should happen at the start of a session. The purpose of this is to re-establish that Pete is a geek. Consequently it’s probably best to put this at the start of an Episode, where re-introducing the players is a good idea anyway.

    Padmé: Guys, Pete’s brought his Ren-Faire sword. Check it out.
    Obi-Wan: It has runes on it?
    Padmé: Cool!
    Anakin: What do the words say?
    R2-D2: “LALR PARSER GENERATOR”.
    Obi-Wan: No? Really? Right, no-one ask him why it says that.
    Anakin: But... why does it say that?
    Obi-Wan: You had to ask...
    R2-D2: It’s the sword shown on the cover of the Dragon Book.
    Anakin: Dragon Book?
    Obi-Wan: And there she goes again.
    R2-D2: In the beginning was the Dragon Book. A, nay, the classic computer science reference, by Aho, Sethi, and Ullman, it stands as required reading for anyone interested in parsing and compilation. And verily there is a dragon and a knight on the cover. And the knight doth carry a sword.
    R2-D2: And lo! written on the sword are the mystical words “LALR PARSER GENERATOR”!
    {beat}
    Anakin: Oh, is that all.
    R2-D2: I also have a shield with “SYNTAX DIRECTED TRANSLATION” written in Elvish.

    [The Dragon Book is Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools, by Alfred V. Aho, Ravi Sethi, and Jeffrey D. Ullman. The cover image showing the dragon, knight, sword, and shield is shown on the linked page.]

    The Silence of the Clones

    [A very early version of what became strip #381.]

    GM: The clones all died when Jango died.
    Yoda: No they didn’t! Look!
    GM: They did! That was the clone army’s one weakness! It’s the whole point of the adventure title! The Silence of the Clones! You were supposed to figure it out! It’s tragic and literary and all that!
    Obi-Wan: That makes no sense. If the cloning process involved—
    GM: Oh, forget it. The clones are alive. Do whatever you want.

    Title: Saving Private Anakin (or similar, referencing the vast numbers of Jedi and clones who die to save them).

    The GM versus Pete

    [Strip #287 explained how Jango Fett was responsible for deactivating the Trade Federation HQ ship’s security systems back in Episode I, allowing R2 to fly inside and destroy it. Strip #296 further explained that this also disabled authentication routines, allowing Pete to hack the droid army control system and shut down the entire army on Naboo. When these strips explaining how Jango Fett was behind a lot of the seemingly cool stuff that Pete did back in Episode I were published, several readers complained that the GM was being petty, retconning events in a deliberate attempt to take achievements away from Pete. We subsequently added the following note to our story notes.]

    Readers think the GM is being mean to Pete, taking away all his achievements. What’s really happening here:

    1. The GM is pointing out to Pete that he was given some serious bonuses on his rolls during that sequence of hacking-and-shutting-down the droid army. Pete did succeed in doing what he intended, but that success did not occur without help from others (as Pete seems to be claiming every second chance he gets). So the GM is not so much taking away Pete’s success, or putting him in his place, as explaining that the context of his success was the actions of other players and other NPCs too, so he shouldn’t be so “me me me”.
    2. This GM is also the kind of GM who has extensive notes, and so the Jango/TC-14 thing and his security hack were things the GM had in mind way back then at the time they happened. So the GM isn’t retconning; the bonuses he gave to Pete at the time were given for a reason and not just plucked out of the air. Similarly, if the players kill one of the GM’s treasured NPCs, the GM rolls with that punch and doesn’t override the situation. In other words, the GM is actually very honest in his dealings, and abides by his own dice rolls and plotted backstory.
    3. Pete doesn’t mind this at all. This is the sort of semi-adversarial gaming challenge that Pete loves. The GM is actually playing into Pete’s preferred gaming style by making achievements difficult to near-impossible, while perhaps bending the rules a little, but not breaking them or reversing any established events. The events still happened, just the underlying reasons are explained differently.

    The GM’s Original Adventure Plan

    [Like Episode I, we wrote up our idea of what the GM’s original adventure plan was, before the players derailed it. This was never published as an intermission strip because following this movie we decided to publish the GM’s original plan for the Princess Bride fantasy campaign instead.]

    It’s 10 years since the PCs defeated the Trade Federation and returned the Lost Orb of Phanastacoria to the Gungans.

    During the assault on the HQ ship, Darth Maul’s junior partner in his private investigation firm—a young man named Jango Fett—was actually on board, disguised as the protocol droid Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan met in the opening encounter of the campaign. He’d been feeding information to Darth Maul and finally discovered that the Orb was hidden on board the whole time. He was escaping with the Orb when R2-D2 blew up the ship. He lost the Orb (which R2 found) and survived just long enough in the vacuum of space to enter an escape pod.

    Jango later found out Obi-Wan killed his partner and is now bitter and bent on revenge. He plans to make Obi-Wan suffer, by killing everyone around him and destroying all he holds dear, then finally kill him. He begins by attempting to blow up Amidala (now a Senator) as she arrives on Coruscant to vote for Chancellor Palpatine’s new initiative: an artificial “Peace Moon” to replace the moon of Naboo that the Trade Federation destroyed. The assassination is intended to be dramatic, rather than foolproof—the PCs should easily prevent it.

    Palpatine assembles the PCs: Senator Amidala, her assistant Jar Jar, Obi-Wan, Anakin, and R2-D2, and gives them a mission: recover the plans of the Peace Moon, which a retired Jedi named Count Dookû has stolen! Count Dookû doesn’t trust Palpatine, and has been leading an alliance of Separatists to vote against the moon and perhaps to leave the Republic.

    The Federation wants to rebuild power and sees Dookû and his Separatists as a convenient stepping stone. Jango Fett has also been negotiating with the Federation, since he figures that rebuilding the Federation would be another way of getting back at Obi-Wan (who helped destroy them 10 years ago). To this end, Jango has been building an army of clones of himself, to use as a bargaining chip.

    With Amidala surviving the first assassination attempt, Jango turns to an old acquaintance: Darth Maul’s ex-wife, Zam Wessel, who is a shapeshifter. Zam has been working lowly jobs to support her sick son Boba. Jango offered to help her, but she is too proud to accept charity. Jango decides to hire Zam to carry out another spectacular (but impractical) assassination attempt, using poisonous centipedes. The Jedi should foil this attempt, then chase down Zam and arrest her. After some coercion, Zam spills the beans, revealing everything she knows about Jango. This gives the PCs the vital clue they need to find Count Dookû.

    The PCs should head to Geonosis, where all three factions are meeting to decide what to do about Palpatine. Dookû says that the “Peace Moon” is actually a giant weapon and that the stolen plans prove it. The PCs face a moral dilemma: Do they stay loyal to Palpatine and the Republic, or do they trust Dookû and switch sides to support him and the Separatists?

    Stupid Things We Need To Explain

    [As in the first movie, we made this section to lists things that make little or no sense in the movie, as a stimulus to us trying to find some plausible explanation within our comic. The list this time was significantly bigger! Many of the answers were written here first and then developed into the overall plot detailed above.]

    Our comics: Darths & Droids | Irregular Webcomic! | Eavesdropper | Planet of Hats | The Dinosaur Whiteboard | The Prisoner of Monty Hall | mezzacotta
    Blogs: dangermouse.net (daily updates) | 100 Proofs that the Earths is a Globe (science!) | Carpe DMM (whatever) | Snot Block & Roll (food reviews)
    More comics we host: Lightning Made of Owls | Square Root of Minus Garfield | iToons | Comments on a Postcard | Awkward Fumbles
    Published: Friday, 10 January, 2025; 15:31:14 PST.
    Copyright © 2007-2024, The Comic Irregulars. irregulars@darthsanddroids.net