Well, at long last, I return to the blogger world!

I was pretty put out, there, after a series of Star Wars assignments at the end of last year (among them the ongoing Aliens in the Empire). One of those projects, however, is now available online for your reading pleasure. And the best part ... it's free!

Echoes of the Jedi is my first full-blown adventure for the Star Wars roleplaying game, and it's a smorgasbord of Jedi-on-Dark-Jedi-on-Sith action. Co-written with my long-time friend JF Boivin, this sucker clocks in at a hefty 43-pages and explores that sinister period in Star Wars history known as the "Dark Times," when the Empire is in ascendance and the Jedi are on the run from Imperial hunters called Inquisitors. Echoes of the Jedi begins the second act of the Dawn of Defiance storyline, and, like The Empire Strikes Back, gets a tad on the ... dark side. (Ah, melodrama ... one of the finer things in life).

Lots of things drew me to this project. When editor Rodney Thompson approached me about it at Celebration IV, I immediately said yes for two reasons. First, the adventure was set in the period between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, a.k.a. the long-speculated-about "Dark Times" of Obi-Wan's intriguingly cryptic statement: For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the Dark Times. Before the Empire. So there was no way I was going to pass up the opportunity to flesh out this chunk of the Star Wars timeline.

Secondly, I always wanted to write a Star Wars adventure. Though adventures are technically for use with the Star Wars roleplaying game, the first time I ever picked one up, I actually had no idea what a Star Wars "rpg" was ("Oh ... not "rocket-propelled grenade"). One of the first adventures I ever picked up was one called Domain of Evil, written by Jim Bambra. This adventure introduced the character Halagad Ventor, and was one of the few Star Wars spin-off stories that revealed any substantial information about the Dark Times and the prequel era ... way back in 1991! That adventure was steeped in dark side spookiness and, yes, melodrama, leaving a lasting impression on me--as my Internet moniker will testify.

For anyone who doesn't know what a roleplaying game is, let me try my hand at this retreaded response. A roleplaying game, known by the acronym rpg, is basically a game of "let's pretend" with rules. For the Star Wars version, a few people get together and assume the roles of characters they create and go on an "adventure" in the galaxy far, far away (like Echoes of the Jedi). Each character you create has a certain skill set based on his or her persona and race (i.e. human Jedi, Rodian smuggler, Wookiee princess, Ewok soldier, etc.), and these skills determine how you deal with challenges throughout the adventure. Essentially, you and your friends become the main characters in your own Star Wars movie, which seems pretty darn cool to me.

Well (SPOILERS), in Echoes of the Jedi, the adventure takes place on the planet Almas, a nightmarish place that used to be home to a Dark Lord of the Sith, called Darth Rivan, over a thousand years ago. Following the hunch of a Jedi Master that survived the slaughter of Order 66, the heroes (that's you) are dispatched to Almas to retrieve a holocron, a revered object filled with rare Jedi secrets and wisdom. As luck would have it, however, the Imperial Inquisitor Valin Draco has also learned the location of this artifact while torturing his Jedi victims with such loving precision. Now both sides are headed for a collision course on the dark-side-soaked world, where the heroes must fight monsters, the living dead, Sith cultists, Draco's minions, and finally the Imperial Inquisitor himself in order to secure the priceless Jedi artifact in an effort to restore peace and justice to the galaxy!

Alright, enough melodrama. If you play the rpg, you already know what to do--enjoy! For the rest of you who just love Star Wars, have a look and learn all sorts of cool things about what was going on during the Dark Times! And who knows, you just might see a tip of the hat or two to Jim and Halagad. ~ Abel G. Peņa

P.S. Only two more blogs to go till HALAGAD'S 100TH BLOG EXTRAVAGANZA-GANZA!

BLOG INDEX

MYSPACE PROFILE