Dark Greetings (Star Wars GSRP)

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Clem Shacklemorr first rose to fame in the twilight of the Clone Wars, spinning an Arquitens command into prestige and renown for daring and aggressive raiding tactics against the CIS. The elation of his ascension to captaining a Venator and beginning to prosecute his own planetary conquests was only matched by the betrayed bitterness of the war ending.

His bitterness only festered as he sat on outer rim garrison chewing on old glories, jumping on any half-imagined chance for action in desperation to make his fortune. His proprietorship began as local black marketers paying protection money and positioning themselves as Shacklemorr's fiefdom to play to his pride, but over the years it has grown into an increasingly open and domineering control of slave trafficking as Imperial law grows ever more permissive to abuses of power.

Cheerfully brutal in enforcing Imperial order, and blithely reflexive in profiteering off misery. Vengeful against any slight to his person, and a murderously skilled duelist and pistolier. Proud of the purity and efficacy of his frontier justice, and has often lamented that the Empire is too soft on the pampered and wealthy core nobles who believe they can flout the law. Immaculately untroubled by any potential hypocrisy of full-throated backing of COMPNOR high culture, trafficking with alien slavers, and a myriad of other sins co-existing within the same person.

Preferred Oversector: 4, for being both core and bordering Hutt space. Failing that, any other oversector that is at least one of either core or borders Hutt space.
 
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Grand Moff Shi Thurock
'A Machine Woman, with a Machine Heart'
Some joined the republic military out of patriotism or ideaological fervor, some out of a sense of adventure and some out of personal advancement. Thurock joined because she loved machines and the military had the most interesting machines of all. Of course if someone asked her she would say it was to defeat the dastardlyt seperatists or some other truism; but really its just that serving in the navy allowed her to interact more with the things she loved. She happily served aboard the bridges of venators and organised shipyards to build bigger and even better warships. Her veiw on things was that once the turbolaser left the barrel her work was largely done, why should she care where it landed unless it was not the intended recipient; that was someone elses department. Thurock was unparalleled with a spreadsheet or a timetable. While other generals one was on the battlefiedl she did with logistics.
As such the Imperial military has been a wonderful happenstance for her. With ever more funding and power she has been able to build ever and ever more wonderful machines. Indeed the emperor, a kindred soul in Thurock's eyes, was so enamoured with her vision, with her genius that she was appointed Grand Moff and given an entire oversector of shipyards to play with. She would make the emperor proud and produce such wonderous things for him. She has so many ideas already. She would make the Emperor so proud.
There were others though. They didn't see her vision, they didn't appreciate what she was doing. They tried to stop her, she could almost hear them, creeping around ... Call them what you will; rebels, wreckers, traitors or saboteurs she hated them. She hated them all. They lacked vision. They pretended that the frictions of the process tainted the whole thing. They were evil and Thurock knew how to deal with evil.

Tldr: Logistics/Engineering Moff whose a bit unhinged ​
Oversector: Preferablty 4,6,7 as I understand thy are the more heavy industry ones.
 
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I am very exited to ruin Star Wars archeology for the next thousand years

"And here is where the first great temple was"

"What happened to it?"

"Some guy blew it up because he thought the real temple was under it"
 
Grand Moff Inderion Hargrad

Elevator Pitch: The Star Destroyer Mafia's Man

Biography

Twenty years ago, Captain Hargrad was a bright young officer, part of the massive expansion of the Republic navy for the clone wars. Now, his hair has turned grey, he could not fit into his old uniform, and his moustache is even more elaborately curled.

Grand Moff Hargrad is the Navy's man, through and through, and everyone knows it - where the Navy is defined as "the men who command Star Destroyers", and thus cynically could be considered a fully owned subsidiary of Kuat Drive Yards. There is no problem that cannot be resolved by additional funds for battleships production. There is no experimental battleship mounted superweapon that he will not hear out the case for. There is no amount of funds he will not attempt to cut from other branches of the military to ensure that he and his don't ever have to face the horrors of budget cuts. There is no end to his disgust for fighter pilots who believe their role in life is to be more than a form of smart munition employed by the nearest large ship.

As a man of the New Order, he is of course a man of many skills. As a military theorist he has built on the base principles of the Tarkin Doctrine to create the Hargrad Rule, which weighs armour, manoeuvrability, firepower, speed, ability to destroy civilian infrastructure, cross section ,and ability to project force, and invariably comes up with the conclusion that the best tool for a task is a heavily armoured and armed battleship. He was on the commissioning board that laid down the specs for the Imperial II. As a captain he was in command at Dorus IV, where one of the last hold outs of the CIS was burned from the sky, and took the initiative in ensuring that the munitions factories could never be brought back into service through the systematic destruction of both their physical and human capital. He has overseen blockades and interdictions following destruction of farmland which left worlds to surrender from starvation with a minimal risk to imperial assets.

In this time of galactic uncertainty, with his old sometimes-friend-sometimes-rival Tarkin dead, Grand Moff Hargrad knows only one thing: the future is grey, triangular, and will burn those rebel scum from the galaxy. And that his friends in Kuat Drive Yards and the Navy will appreciate his friendship greatly.

Preferred Sector - any. The character will change a bit depending on the sector - an outer rim one is one where he's doing the crackdowns more personally while a core one will emphasise his industrial ties and role as a military theorist.
 
EarthScorpion said:
In this time of galactic uncertainty, with his old sometimes-friend-sometimes-rival Tarkin dead, Grand Moff Hargrad knows only one thing: the future is grey, triangular, and will burn those rebel scum from the galaxy. And that his friends in Kuat Drive Yards and the Navy will appreciate his friendship greatly.
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Hargrad looking at Tarkin proudly showing off the Death Star: "Disgusting, wasteful, useless, could have been a hundred Super Star Destroyers."

Hargrad looking at Thrawn proudly showing off a thousand TIE Defenders: "Disgusting, wasteful, useless, could have been one Super Star Destroyer."

dash931 said:
Grand Moff Clem Shacklemorr​
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​

Not Pictured: General Grievous, Savage Oppress, and Whorm Loathsome crying sad tears that Clem Shacklemorr chose to side with the Republic
 
Wade Garrett said:
Hargrad looking at Thrawn proudly showing off a thousand TIE Defenders: "Disgusting, wasteful, useless, could have been one Super Star Destroyer."
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"I have some design criticism. It's too expensive. Cut the hyperdrive - waste of money and mass. Cut the shielding - it's not needed for its tactical role. And honestly it's overgunned, too - I don't see what this brings to the table that the ship it's operating from doesn't provide."
 
Name: Grand Moff Arcturus Zillon
Basic Concept: True Believer
Oversector: 1

A veteran commander of the Clone Wars who witnessed the corruption of the Republic up close, Arcturus Zillon was an early and vocal supporter of Palpatine as a breath of fresh air and then later his new order.

During the Clone Wars, Zillon did lead a handful of direct combat actions, but he truly shined when overseeing logistics as support for other military units.

Due to a combination of skills, near blind-loyalty to Palpatine, and his outstanding record as a supporter of the New Order, Zillon was appointed a Moff within the inner reaches of the Empire shortly after the conclusion of Clone Wars, and his early success would later lead to his appointment as Grand Moff for the entire home-turf Oversector. Among his accomplishments for which he is most recognized are a fanatical push of twin "Palpatine is always right" and "What would Palpatine do?" propaganda campaigns, as well as a series of measures designed to engrain a 'Humanity First' mindset in not just human Imperials, but also convince non-humans of humanities superiority as well.
 


GRAND MOFF VITIION KORRAAY
the clinical one
​
Among the ne'er-do-wells who pollute the Empire's highest ranks, Vitiion Korraay is an outlier: she is obviously not a man, not explicitly military, and not outrageously impetuous. The ample woman is a humble student of medicine. Since Vitiion's childhood in her mother's veterinary clinic, her passion has been the act of healing the body. What exactly that entailed and the lengths to which she would go to achieve the ideal state made her a useful tool for the Emperor.

The New Order is explicitly a human one for Vitiion. The Clone Wars of living memory were a conspiracy of aliens (the midi-chlorians count in Dooku Serrano made him different) to attack the edifice of human supremacy built over the centuries in the Old Republic. So many threats were posed for that very purpose. Even after victory, they had to be studied and countered for the safety of the Empire.

These softly spoken assurances have turned her medical practice into a coercive repository of the living and the dead. Vitiion's titles and responsibilities only expanded the reach of her laboratory. The Emperor on one memorable trip mentioned his pleasure at the "curiosities" she had amassed, some natural and some not.

Vitiion left day-to-day affairs to her backbiting assistants. The accumulation of power bored her. It was only a means to an end. The destruction of the Death Star is an opportunity to see the fruits of her labor spring forth.​

Preferred Oversectors: Any
 


Grand Moff Gorgon the Golden​

"Our Partner in Peace and Prosperity"

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Elevator Pitch​

What if Sheev Palpatine made a Hutt crime lord a Grand Moff shortly after the Battle of Yavin because he thought it would be funny? (And because the last three Grand Moffs he appointed to try and get Hutt Space under control had mysterious accidents after failing to stamp out piracy, and the Empire is desperate for resources.)

​


It is 0 ABY. For more than twenty years Gorgon has lounged supine on the Golden Palanquin of Nal Hutta. He is the Grand Moff of the Trans-Nebular Oversector by the will of Sheev Palpatine, and master of Hutt Space by the might of the Five Hutt Families. He is a giant gastropod high on spice from the mines of Kessel. He is the Slug Lord of Nar Shaddaa for whom a thousand small aquatic creatures are sacrificed every day, so that he may never grow hungry.

Yet even in his corpulent and hallucinogenic state, the crime lord continues his eternal vigilance. Cargo ships constantly transit the pirate-haunted nebulae of Hutt Space, location of the quickest hyperlanes from the mineral rich worlds of the Outer Rim. Their trade routes are now guarded and taxed by the selfsame corsairs who once preyed upon them, the manifestation of Gorgon's will. Atrocities are committed and tribute levied in his name on a thousand worlds.

Greatest amongst his enforcers are the Kajidics, loyal Hutt clansmen and ruthless gangsters whose influence touches every corner of the galaxy. Their comrades in arms are legion: the fearless Imperial Storm Troopers and countless mercenary warbands of Gamorreans, Ubese, Weequay, Niktos and Ganks, the ever vigilant Bounty Hunters and the brave freedom fighters of Trandosha to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from Rebels, Separatists, envious Imperial colleagues - and worst of all - the Pykes. :mad: :mad:

To live in these times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruel and bloodthirsty era of the Galactic Empire. These are the tales of those times. Forget the old religion of the Jedi, for their light is gone from the galaxy, never to be rekindled. Forget the memory of peace and democracy, for in the nightmarish present there is only Galactic Civil War. There is no peace amongst the stars, only the certainty of carnage and slaughter, and the laugher of Emperor Palpatine.​



Preferred Oversectors
Oversector 13/Trans-Nebular Oversector, A.K.A. "Hutt Space"

(Basically the "Hutt Space" part of Oversector 13, which I imagine was made something of a "Special Administrative Zone" due to the difficulties in governing it effectively.)​
 
As funny as the idea of a Hutt Grand Moff is, I think I'll probably have to veto that one, since you'd be playing a pretty different game in terms of, like, prestige and available titles to everyone else.
 
Maugan Ra said:
As funny as the idea of a Hutt Grand Moff is, I think I'll probably have to veto that one, since you'd be playing a pretty different game in terms of, like, prestige and available titles to everyone else.
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What rampant speciesism and prejudice to suggest that a thousand year old Hutt crime lord cannot rise up on his own merits to become Chairman of COMPNOR. Not a good look!
 

The Man Who Erased His Namesake​

Zsinj, Killer of Zsinj. Zsinj, Crusher of Dathomir. Zsinj, first Warlord of the Empire.

If life's a play, then the galaxy is the stage, and Zsinj will not settle for being some bit player. This world exists for Zsinj to succeed, and he will continue to do so, be it within or without the lines of the Quelii Oversector.

Sector 10.
 
Murswungle Splott the First

Murswungle Splott is a tidy, portly, unassuming little man. He is a doctor-turned-bureaucrat with a long marriage to a Coruscanti wife, three kids who are all in the Imperial Civil Service, and a perfectly acceptable level of corruption. He's not particularly great at everything (And neither are his aggressively-promoted children), but he is outwardly a basically-competent loving family man.

Also, he's been running horrific human experimentation projects since the clone wars. At first they were an attempt to outdo the Kaminoans and the Grand Army of the Republic, to create a new, perfect human that could maintain order for the republic as soldier-administrators across the galaxy. He was censured by his colleagues, fired from the medical firm he then worked at, all but relegated to obscurity by war's end.

Then the Empire took over, the Emperor started promoting him due to the 'promise' of his pet project, and all brakes slid off the experimentation train.

He's been having sapients, monsters, and animals from across the galaxy ripped apart, genetically sequenced, and turned into a startling variety of augmentations. Augmentations that are then tested on prisoners and the occasional stormtrooper platoon. Successes (Mostly minor medical advances so far) are deployed as terror troops or sold to other moffs, for even his most impressive successes so far have failed to sate Murswungle's ambitions. He will settle for nothing less than the perfection of the human form, to be deployed as servile soldier-clerks across the entire galaxy, proving his superiority over long-dead Kaminoans.

Flexible on Oversector.
 
Alexandraghast Ludentii Arkwright Praji-Kuat, Kuat of Kuat, Supreme Executive of Kuat Drive Yards, Grand Moff of Oversector 4 - White Cuirass

Tall, tanned, and trim, the young Grand Moff is the very vision of a dark haired, gold-eyed, beauty of the Core. The thing propaganda posters are made of, the stuff on which cultural imperialism is built upon. His manner is easy, his laugh light and genuine. He has the grace and composure, the pleasant affect, of a man who has never not been welcome anywhere in his life. Who has never encountered a closed door that couldn't be opened with a polite knock and a patient wait. Who doesn't love him? Who could ever dream of despising him? Even the coldest, grey-faced military man feels a warmth in his presence. Even the most blood-splattered, credit-compromised collaborator feels elevated just speaking with him. Praji-Kuat is a creature of culture, a being of taste, and, even before his ascension to his dearly departed father's post, was a bonafide celebrity. Taken seriously as both an intellectual force and a creative genius. Adored by both the masses and the Imperial literati alike.

He is the poet-laureate of the Empire. An essayist and, most recently, a cinematographer. He is the man who explains Palpatine's regime to itself. Who constructs something emotionally intelligible from the blood and chaos, the paranoia and the horror. The collection of writings compiled in The Superstructure is one of the most widely read pieces of literature in the last quarter-millennium. His poem, "The Ancient Regime", dramatizing the Jedi Coup and the martyrdom of the hero Anakin Skywalker in the last days of the Clone Wars, has been personally praised by the Emperor. And of course he is the scion of corporate royalty, heir to an industrial edifice older than many galactic nation-states. He and his mother, their small household, the unquestioned victors of the bloody succession crisis on Kuat after Old Man Praji made the transition from "political actor" to "physics equation" at Yavin. Electing to discontinue his existence as a sapient organism in favor of a collection of molecules dispersed among a billion tons of durasteel and ruined Imperial war machinery.

Praji-Kuat is in many ways a strange fit for the Imperial upper echelon. He is neither bureaucrat nor Dark Side cultist, he came up through institutions of art and classical education, not the Army or Fleet. He sees Human High Culture as an arid and sterile project, and has vocally expressed admiration for the Hutts and their system of client races. Once one of the most promising products of COMPNOR's Sub-Adult Group program, Grand Admiral Ishin Il-Raz now regards him with a mixture of hurt betrayal and a kind of psychosexual fury after Praji-Kuat split with the Commission in his early twenties, deeming its work as more akin to creative butchery than anything with real cultural import, the product of intellectual lightweights than true visionaries.

But in other ways Praji-Kuat is something that could only exist within the environment of the New Order. He is the gangster as a social scientist. The poet as a propagandist, the aesthetician as the fascist. He makes beauty out of Imperial brutalist megastructures, a higher cause out of campaigns of conquest and subjugation. With words alone he has moved crowds to weeping and exhorted them to greater acts of Imperial devotion. With words alone he rallied the KDY security forces to his cause and brought the Imperial garrison under his sway during the fighting for the colossal orbital shipyards. He is not an occultist no, nor a military genius or an especially able administrator. But he has within him, beneath the sly smile and that joie de vivre a terrifying facility with people. Love him. Dread him. Kill for him. Die for him.

Worship him, because with a flourish of his pen he can give you the meaning you've craved all your life.
 
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Maugan Ra said:
As funny as the idea of a Hutt Grand Moff is, I think I'll probably have to veto that one, since you'd be playing a pretty different game in terms of, like, prestige and available titles to everyone else.
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Skippy said:
What rampant speciesism and prejudice to suggest that a thousand year old Hutt crime lord cannot rise up on his own merits to become Chairman of COMPNOR. Not a good look!
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In all seriousness, after looking at the rules I see your point.

Pondering, it seems like the only adjustment you'd need to make is to make Gorgon not eligible for any of the major Titles, but gaining some free Control which does not count against the Favour cap? (To represent an independent power base and thoroughly bribed local authorities, but also how inherently coup-proofed he is by being an alien, making independence much less threatening.) Custom Titles like "Grand Poobah of the Spice Guild" might be valid, but nothing giving the powerful abilities that let you make laws or do other Big Stuff by leveraging galactic institutions. Of course if this is not a variable you want in your game I fully understand.

But as a thought experiment it's interesting to think of how you'd represent that kind of "satrap" or "client king" type of character in the mechanics you've set up, if you or someone else were running this again, or even using the rules for something outside Star Wars. It's honestly a pretty nifty ruleset for any setting with scheming governors/generals and an absolutist sovereign.
 
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I'm definitely going to be taking notes on how this one works out mechanically with an eye towards future games, yes. Unrest and Operations in particular are things I am hoping can get refluffed into a variety of other systems with persistent local problems that need you to keep a lid on, like Warhammer and the local beastmen/greenskin population.
 
@Skippy could always go with Grand Moff Mal Uhmon, dread master of Gorgon the Hutt who definitely isn't a bunch of holo-fakes, Naboo body doubles, and ID-chits of dead men? First rival with hard evidence to prove otherwise gets to invade the wastelands of Tatooine!
 
Grand Moff Palima Polevas

Exudes mean rich girl jock vibes and is infamous for throwing some of THE craziest garden parties. She'd be the worst kind of old money, if she hadn't emerged in the chaos following the dissolution of the Republic created from whole cloth. How she got the job is between herself and Palpatine, and none of your goddamn business

Palima is the sort of slick devil that wields brutality wrapped in cruelty layered in elitist charm, and revels in it. Her idea of a funny joke is hunting the people she invites on her wookie hunts. If there was an HR department she'd be immediately fired for weird flirting with Lord Vader. Palima Polevas is what you get if you took an angry feral cat, washed it, groomed it, and then gave it ultimate power over billions of people and an unlimited drinks budget.

Oversector Preference: 9, 1, 2
 
Player Roster
  • Threadmarks
    • Alrighty then, I've gone through the applications and made my choices.

    My apologies to those who didn't get in, but I had more than thirty applications for a game where I was originally looking for maybe twelve, and while I have expanded that to fifteen (with five NPC Grand Moffs, in order to provide some space and punching bags), I still had to discard half the list at least.

    Without further ado, our cast of Medium Quality EU Novel Villains is as follows:

    Oversector 1 "Azure Hammer" - Grand Moff Palima Polevas @Mina
    Oversector 2 "Green Mantle" - Grand Moff Kanne Yaxia @AKuz
    Oversector 3 "Steel Blade" - Grand Moff Vitiion Korray @Carol
    Oversector 4 "White Cuirass" - Grand Moff Alexandraghast Ludentii Arkwright Praji-Kuat @TenfoldShields

    Oversector 7 "Golden Nyss" - Grand Moff Inderion Hargrad @EarthScorpion
    Oversector 8 "Bright Jewel" - Grand Moff Murswungle Splott the First @Havocfett

    Oversector 10 "Crimson Dagger" - Grand Moff Zsinj @Dekutulla
    Oversector 11 "Blazing Claw" - Grand Moff Praises-the-Extinction-of-False-Doctrines Pafano @Gargulec
    Oversector 12 "Cerulean Spear" - Grand Moff Tradum Gavax @BigBacon
    Oversector 13 "Iron Lance" - Grand Moff Clem Shacklemorr @dash931
    Oversector 14 "Red Tails" - Grand Moff Lorn Vree Taa @Wade Garrett

    Oversector 17 "Chrome Shield" - Grand Moff Bif Krietten @bookwyrm
    Oversector 18 "Night Hammer" - Grand Moff Carlo Vikal @NonSequtur
    Oversector 19 "Dark Saber" - Grand Moff Vicious Malorax @Squidfam
    Oversector 20 "Emerald Banner" - Grand Moff Byg Fauma @Doctor Elsewhere

    I have decided to repurpose a discord I used for my previous games for this one, so I'll include a link below for those who aren't already on there:

    Join the Dark Greetings Discord Server!

    Check out the Dark Greetings community on Discord - hang out with 48 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.
    discord.gg discord.gg
     
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