Darths & Droids

ARCHIVE     FORUM     CAST     FAN ART     RSS     IPAD     FAQ     ACADEMY

<     Episode 1847: Soft Voices Die     >

Episode 1847: Soft Voices Die

<<FIRST     <PREVIOUS     NEXT>     LATEST>>

No one ever thinks they're the bad guys. So what if they do?

Have the heroes in your game be contacted subtly by some of the bad guy's flunkies, with a message saying they realise they're working for the wrong side, and want to stop supporting evil and defect to the side of good. But they need help, because of course the Big Bad monitors his mooks and throws them into the piranha pool at the first sign of dissent/incompetence/for his own amusement. "Please help us!" they write.

Your heroes now have to decide if they want to spend time on a dangerous mission to rescue some evil underlings from their own evil overlord. What would a true hero do??

Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)

Ok, so Finn's less concerned about the helpless villagers and more concerned about getting revenge. Luckily, the perpetrator's being brought on board right now. Pretty sure they're unarmed now too. Unfortunately, they're also effectively under Kylo's protection, at least for now, so Finn will have some difficulty in actually getting revenge for Gil. I'm going to keep my guess on a 50-50 party split, but Finn's only reason for working with the Rebels will be to get a shot at killing Poe. It'll take some time, but Finn seems like he'll figure out there was only one person shooting at them that had a gun, and that will be that for Poe's anonymity.

In the movie, I do have to wonder what exactly kept Poe from being grouped in with the villagers and being shot. BB-8 seems about as independent as R2-D2, and Poe has no way of knowing where BB ran off to, so there's no immediate reason he wouldn't be cut down like Lor was. Lor would have had a better idea of what the data was than Poe would if obtaining the data was the most important thing to the First Order, and he was killed pretty quickly. Perhaps in the movie, Kylo is planning on letting Poe escape at some point with a couple methods of tracing their movements back to a Rebel base. It'd be similar to how the Millennium Falcon was basically allowed to escape in Episode IV after Leia was rescued. If Poe's actually an ace pilot, then he should be able to fly just about any kind of ship, which would let him take whatever ship's on hand inside to flee.

Of course, that'd only make sense if the First Order is intent on beating the Rebels rather than finding Luke or the mythical world, and I don't have a way to tell how much the campaign matches up with the movie. Sometimes guessing like this feels a bit like planting epileptic tree sprouts and waiting to see if any of the ideas take root.

Oh, and white's not necessarily a sign of being on the good side, mister random trooper; there's lots of different examples of people in white costumes and doing various evil things. Saruman the White, the Dark Elves in Thor 2, the White Witch in the first Narnia book, the Cerberus troops in Mass Effect 3.... Really, it's just easier to link the TV Tropes page for more examples of this and hope the Darths & Droids universe has extra-dimensional internet access.

Commentary by Keybounce (who has not seen the movie)

We have the end of the poem.

The First Order. The Knights of Ren.

And in the last panel, the general has two troopers next to him, who are not firing, but rather look like they're looking over the other troopers. As in, if the trooper doesn't follow the orders, these two will shoot to kill the misbehaving trooper. This is a perfectly reasonable way for an evil bad guy to stay the evil head Lord. And it is straight out of history - have a trusted high ranking officer ordered to kill the low ranking troopers who don't follow orders.

But then, why was Finn not shot? In panel two, we see him raise his gun and very clearly miss the special effects of being fired. Finn realizes that he is looking for someone who is armed, so none of these (now dead) villagers is his target.

And Poe, descending defector, is taken up the gangplank into the ship.

And the GM comments about two troopers expressing doubts about the order to fire, yet still firing. If they are doing this because they are afraid for their life if they don't fire (reasonable), that would raise questions about Finn not being shot, as well as whether or not they are good guys. And if Finn expects to not be shot, why wouldn't the others decide not to?

Transcript

General Phasma: And nothing shall remain, but the decay
[SFX]: Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow!
General Phasma: Of village that defied First Order. There
[SFX]: Pow! Pow!
Finn: {not shooting} No! Wait! Any of these villagers could be the one who shot Gil. I have to find out who it was!
[SFX]: Pow! Pow! Pow!
GM: The other troopers keep firing on the unarmed captives.
Poe: Hey, that’s not fair.
[SFX]: Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow!
Trooper Mike: {dragging Poe into Kylo’s shuttle} So you’re defecting, huh? You’ll like it here. Last night they served the incrediblest ratatouille up.
[SFX]: Pow!
Finn: Unarmed? Unarmed... The person who shot Gil wouldn’t be unarmed.
General Phasma: The all-concealing sands stretch far away.
[SFX]: Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow!
Trooper 1: {shooting unarmed civilians} Have you ever wondered if, maybe, we’re the bad guys?
Trooper 2: Don’t be ridiculous, we’re in white costumes!


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: Tuesday, 02 June, 2020; 03:11:14 PDT.
Copyright © 2007-2024, The Comic Irregulars. irregulars@darthsanddroids.net