u/ComparisonSmall7394

Hello chat. This is a story from a few years ago and it came back to my head recently. I may not remember every specific detail of the conversations, but I remember the story fairly well.

This is a story about how I caused a crap-show in a Savage Worlds-style campaign in the Star Wars setting using FFG's Star Wars RPG system.

This server was based around Coruscant and its lower levels during the rise of the Empire. The Jedi Temple was destroyed and all the Jedi in hiding. The Emperor was tightening his grip on the galaxy and implementing his new order across the stars. Even below the glittering metropolis of the Imperial capital, the seedy underbelly of Coruscant experienced a time of upheaval and chaos.

Force Sensitive characters were allowed provided that you knew the risk. Using magic powers or flashing a lightsaber around was a one way ticket to a trip by the Imperial Inquisitorius.

I decided to embrace the Scum and Villain angle by picking the classic archetype of a Bounty Hunter, but I decided to add a twist: I was going to play a Bounty Hunter that was Force Sensitive - and not only Force Sensitive, but a Chiss Force Sensitive.

For context for those who don't know: The Chiss do not trust or respect the Force. The Ascendency prides itself on logic, reason, and science. The Force to them is an aberration and Force Sensitives are expelled or quietly disposed of. Chiss who were sensitive to the Force in Legends were treated purely as an anomaly or genetic "impurity."

I am aware newer lore has tried to add this whole concept of "sky-walkers", but I wasn't following that canon at the time, and I had a particular angle I wanted to write my character for.

My character hated the Force. She didn't know what the Force was beyond the Chiss category of an aberration She called it "The Curse".

She was originally a respected law enforcement officer in the Ascendency, and she had a rather unique and uncanny talent for finding criminals. It was eventually deduced that she was Force Sensitive by the authorities, and based on her record of service to the state she was given an option to accept an honorable exile, which she accepted for the sake of her family.

Thus, I incorporated a good deal of investigative skills into her build alongside the usual hardware of blasters, missiles, a jetpack, and a wrist-mounted flamethrower. She was a walking arsenal as a Boba Fett-style hunter should be, but she had one extra trick up her sleeve.

In the original Star Wars Expanded Universe, Force Sensitives tended to have an 'affinity' for one or two particular aspects of the Force that reflected their character. Master C'baoth and Palpatine were mental masterminds. Vader and Luke were more physical. Mara Jade was keenly perceptive and agile. Leia was a gifted Jedi Diplomat.

Rather than taking obvious powers like Move or Force Lightning for my character, I took two Force powers - Sense and Seek, the latter of which was key to her character concept.

Here is the exact wording of the basic power Seek:

The user may spend two Force points (◑◑) to gain insight into the general location or direction of a person or object that [they] know about, regardless of its current distance from [them]. The user may not activate this multiple times.

As far as I am aware, Seek is not generally chosen as a power because it's not directly useful in a fight and is quite vague. It's more of a plot device power, if anything. It's very overlooked.

I used the Sense power for the sake of location and detection as well as for some pretty solid combat buffs it gave as an investment. It made her very dodgy and deadly accurate with a blaster.

I ran a few operations and made some credits to help customize and fix up her gear. She ran into a few other characters and befriended some of them. Over time, one of her friends actually revealed themselves to be a Jedi, but they then made a horrible error.

My character confessed to the Jedi that she had these strange abilities that she didn't really understand. The Jedi did not rely on basic Jedi philosophy to try and explain that the Force is synonymous with life rather than an aberration or an alien energy. Rather, they instead demonstrated how they could all but nullify and then heal over a shot from a blaster wound, reinforcing my character's perspective of how these were dangerous supernatural abilities.

She met a few other characters, as well, and none of them seemed to comprehend why this Chiss had a hatred for the mysticism of the galaxy when it would come up, nor did they bother to engage with her in any sort of real discussion about it. They were largely either ignorant or they focused on the power that it offered them.

--

On one particular day, a gang of players committed a heist on the Empire and stole a valuable Jedi holocron from one of the Emperor's personal vaults. This naturally sparked a lockdown on the planet and the Inquisitorius began to roam around searching for suspected 'Jedi insurgents'.

My bounty hunter was sitting in a diner and chatting with a friend when an Inquisitor and squad of Purge Troopers entered the club and began the usual villain shpeel of announcing "there has been a daring theft of the Emperor's personal property. We suspect Jedi insurgents to be involved. Any information is to be turned into me immediately and anyone harboring these traitors will be punished."

My character is a mercenary and doesn't necessarily have any hatred for the Empire. The Ascendency isn't hostile towards them in any way. She saw an opportunity for a solid payout and an opportunity to help the authorities with the promise of future valuable bounties.

My bounty hunter stood up and asked the Inquisitor if she could be of assistance. After all, she has her bounty hunting license and her permit for her weapons, and she's very skilled at finding people.

The Inquisitor immediately registers that my character is Force Sensitive and starts to make veiled threats about that knowledge.

But my character turned the tables on them with a single admission. She HATES the "Curse", and she would be glad to track down any criminal who has such an aberrant and dangerous power.

The Inquisitor is kind of taken aback by this, not having expected someone with that sort of mentality. She becomes intrigued, and then agrees to hire my character. She includes another veiled threat about 'serving well to be allowed to live' as Sith types are want to do, but my character only cared about the money at this point and it was just another job.

In my head, I was already formulating that my character might start to respect the Inquisitors as a necessity. There are all these dangerous Force Sensitives running around. Maybe she should try to join them to deal with this aberration - or at least be a regular contractor with them. And perhaps they could instruct her on ways to purge this curse from herself. A bit naive of course, but she didn't know any better, and the Jedi had failed to convince her otherwise.

My bounty hunter specifically asks for a readout and description of the artifact that's been stolen, and the Inquisitor provided a datapad with the specific item in question.

Now I want to point out that the players behind this heist had been very thorough and competent. They covered their tracks well through electronics and underworld contacts.

But I had Seek.

Nobody takes Seek. Who uses Seek?

So I used Seek and got a successful roll.

The GMs didn't know about Seek. And when they saw my request for information on where the holocron was, they went into a panic.

In the discord channel for my character sheet, there was a three way argument between the staff of the server - the GM who roleplayed the inquisitor, the GM who ran the heist, and the GM in charge of the whole server.

They get very, very pedantic with what "knows about" actually means and they've now had to write down a house rule that you need a piece of something. The Heist GM tried to argue my character doesn't "know about" the holocrons she was looking for because she doesn't know what holocrons are, but I point out my character had specifically asked for a description of that specific object. I don't need a degree in archaeology or to have met Dart Vader in person to know about them.

I also specifically made the argument that rules as written say it is a general sense. The GMs could have been as vague as they wanted to be. It was up to me to interpret the clues and narrow down my search with my character's own investigative skills, which is what I had specifically built my character to do. I'm a Bounty Hunter. That's my job.

The lead GM ultimately ruled that the Inquisitor-GM could run the scene the way she wanted, and she gave me a general idea, but the situation was already soured and some of the GMs were pre-disposed to work against me.

You can make the argument that the Seek power itself has problems. I'd probably agree with. I'd also say that if you don't like it, ban it outright and refund my EXP so I can spend it on something else like my skills to make up for losing out on a core part of my character.

For the brief time that I played that character, I basically contacted the Inquisitor GM and explained that my character would start coming to the Inquisitor for advice and to even seek to join the Inquisitorius.

The lead GM made a broad blanket announcement that was pretty much targeted at me declaring that "You cannot join the Empire. IF you do, you become an NPC".

At that point I said, "Fine", and I retired the character and said to the Inquisitor GM that she could use my character as an antagonist NPC in the future.

In my headcanon, my bounty hunter joined the Inquisition to hunt down those with "The Curse", and to hunt and exterminate this space wizard aberration from the galaxy!

I briefly tried another character in that server but the toxicity ended up with me leaving anyway. That's a story for another time. I hope you enjoyed this read. Have a nice day - and may the Curse be with you.