•The party helps liberate Keren, and ultimately Naboo, from the Mandalorians.
•The true identity of Mandalore is revealed.
The adventure begins with the party on its way to Keren to liberate the city. After discussing plans with the resistance, the party decided to scout ahead first, using a stolen Mandalorian gunship to avoid attracting attention — the Capanata is left behind at the abandoned Eutix station. Ras enters a meditative trance while Marina and Yvegeny fly the ship (which, they note, has been heavily slave-circuited to only need two pilots instead of the usual eight) and Gobmush works the sensors. As the ship approaches Keren, Gobmush soon detects that the gunship has been hooked up to the local Mandalorian network — all the ships here are connected by a central communications relay. By poking around the network, they find that the city of Keren is guarded by an energy shield protecting it from bombardment (about 30 ships constantly overhead, waiting for the shield to fall or looking for weak spots in the shield), and the Mandalorian force engaged with the city is about 100 Mandalorian troops with 500 sentinel droids, while the city has a colonist militia, light artillery, and guerilla troops. The party finds it odd that the Mandalorian force is composed of mostly droids.
The gunship is hailed by the central relay, asking what they're doing in Keren. Yvegeny claims their ship is the Aay'han and they're an infiltration team trying to get into Keren, getting them permission to land, though there will be a Mandalorian team waiting for them when they land in the woods outside Keren. At the landing, Yvegeny sticks to his story, but when the Mandalorians push to be included, Yvegeny says he'll give a signal when he's ready for the second Mandalorian team to enter.
The party begins the walk to Keren, when they begin to notice that they are being followed. Gobmush decides to fall back from the main group and find out who they are, only to end up surrounded by camouflaged humans — definitely not Mandalorians. He tries to communicate through his vox-box, but has a hard time convincing them he's not a Mandalorian. Finally, he turns on his comlink, and Lyta persuades the guerillas that they're not with the Mandalorians — they just lied to them to get past their ships. The guerillas agree to let the party inside Keren. The Mandalorians radio Yvegeny and let him know they're getting impatient; they want 10-minute status reports, or they'll storm the city themselves.
The party crosses through the forest and across the plains to the walled city of Keren, which sits on a river and near Lake Varum. Inside, the city is mostly undamaged — the colonists got the shield up and running before the Mandalorians could hit too hard. Although most of the citizens are armed, life generally proceeds as normal within the walls of the city. The guerillas lead the party to the central town hall, where they're met by the lieutenant governor, a Trandoshan named Surussk, who explains that the previous governor is dead.
The party explains that they're with the resistance, and begin helping around the city. Yvegeny works on fixing up a comm relay to be able to communicate with the insurgents in Theed and the Eutix labs, while Lyta and Oro set up a triage to help out with medicine in the city; Keren's doctors died in the initial assault, and since then, they've been relying on a med student. Gobmush investigates the possibility of using submarines to evacuate the city if need be, while Kelif meets with the city's anthropologists, who have been studying Gungan culture, and meets with the few Gungans who are living peacefully in the colony. Monad, a shaak shepherd, knows about Gobar Binks in particular, pointing out that most Gungans know who he is — he's now the Gungan-Mandalorian liaison.
Surussk, asking about how the party got to Keren, learns that the party is hooked up to the Mandalorian network. He points out that the ships are connected by the central comm tower — it was initially built for the Republic to coordinate ships, but the Mandalorians seized it in the early attack. If they can capture or destroy the tower, the Mandalorian ships around Keren will be confused and probably regroup at the war forge. Yvegeny plans to lure the Mandalorians outside into Keren, where they can be easily ambushed; meanwhile, Yvegeny, Marina and a Twi'lek from Keren named "Twitchy" will use the gunship to attack and destroy the tower.
Yvegeny detonates some abandoned buildings near the edge of town, then comms the Mandalorians to begin their attack there. When the strike team breaks through the wall, they find Ras, Kelif and Gobmush waiting for them with an army of armed colonists, while Lyta and Oro work the triage. Ras uses the Force to crash a wall on most of the foot soldiers. Gobmush and Ras face a Mandalorian Wookiee who flies into a rage and batters them with his fists, but they figure out how to use his aggressive tendencies against him and bring him down. A black-armored Mandalorian produces a barrage of blaster fire that badly wounds Kelif; he takes cover behind a vehicle before Gobmush charges the Mandalorian, finishing him off. Kelif grabs the black Mandalorian armor and the autofire gun, a prototype interchangeable weapo system (modulating between blaster rifle, sniper rifle, and grenade launcher). Meanwhile, Yvegeny bluffs his way into the relay tower's airspace before blowing it to smithereens. As the tower falls and the ships fly away to regroup, the gunship gets a comm from the wreckage below. He says he's leaving the Mandalorians and he can provide valuable intelligence if they rescue him. The gunship lands and picks up an older Gungan, who introduces himself as Gobar Binks (Kelif's father).
When the party regroups happily in Keren (although Kelif is off helping the colonists), they meet up with Gobar Binks, who's very enthusiastic about helping the Republic beat the Mandalorians, and readily admits that he can be useful — he knows that Mandalore the Divider is at the war forge, and he's pretty sure he can get some of the Gungan tribes together to take down the Mandalorians. The party debates what to do: some want to free Theed, while some want to directly attack the war forge.
Eventually, the party hatches a plan. Gobar Binks gets some of the Gungan tribes to help take back Deeja Peak and Theed, and Sith officer Ordal Naberrie will be in charge of hooking up with the rebels in Theed to help retake that city. Meanwhile, colonist ships will attack the war forge, providing cover while the Capanata enters the war forge to assassinate Mandalore the Divider. Gobmush will travel separately in a Gungan bongo with a guide.
As the battle rages overhead, the Capanata sneaks underwater, dodging falling debris to enter the war forge. Gobmush secretly breaks off from the Capanata and heads off to a different location. Inside, the war forge is on high alert, and the party fights through legions of foot soldiers to reach the inner sanctum, thanks to blueprints that Gobar Binks provided. Along the way, Rek Luk, who reveals he's been following the party and is joined in the battle over the war forge, tells the party he wants the Raraza back.
Ras, Yvegeny, Lyta and Oro cross over the factory in the core of the war forge, past a null gas trap, to find Mandalore the Divider himself, a tall, well-armored soldier, and his minions loading riches into an escape pod. The party quickly wipes out Mandalore's minions, and while Mandalore talks a big game, he doesn't back it up with any strong show of might. Mandalore soon falls, and when the party takes off his helmet, it's just a shrimpy Neimoidian inside, and the vaunted "helmet of Mandalore" (whosoever wears the helmet of Mandalore, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of the Mandalorian clans) is nothing but a clever forgery.
Ras broadcasts to the Mandalorian fleet that Mandalore is dead and the helmet has been destroyed; some soldiers fight to the death, but most of the soldiers — being conscripts — surrender or defect immediately. The party finds some very nice gear in among the treasure for their troubles. Rek Luk picks up the Raraza, and immediately begins petitioning the Naboo provisional government for purchase of the war forge to turn it into a Luk Shipping factory.
Gobmush arrives at his destination: the underwater Eutix lab, near the planet core. He was sent to Naboo in the first place by Czerka to destroy the Eutix facility. The Selkath scientists are cowed by his mighty arg'garok, so he has Chuckles kill the beck-tori. His mission on Naboo is now complete, and he rejoins the party.
The party's mission on Naboo is done. With the help of the Sith navigator, the party learns that the Sith who attacked Coruscant regrouped at the nearby planet Chommell Prime, and the Republic prepares to attack the planet. For all their efforts, however, the Republic first agrees to provide the party with some much-needed R&R before they rejoin the fleet to help attack Chommell Prime. Gobar Binks, eager to leave Naboo for new pastures, joins with the party.
DM's Notes:
- I was originally planning to have the party travel to Otoh Bokan, but I decided it would be more interesting to have the mountain come to Mohammed and bring Kelif's father, Gobar Binks, to the party instead. He's a very different kind of Gungan than we've seen before — he's very social and very ingratiating. He comes across like a used car salesman. (And I wasn't entirely sure what I'd have the rest of the party do if they went there. I'd conceptualized the city as undergoing a bloody political coup, but I didn't really see the party getting involved in Gungan politics.)
- My original concept for the fake Mandalore would be that he was a former Mandalorian who'd ended up being a gladiator-for-hire after the war, and he had the idea to build a new helmet and rally the clans because he earnestly believed in the Mandalorian cause. But I liked the idea that it was just a con artist who was looking to grab his own planet and taking advantage of the lore surrounding the helmet. (In canon, Darth Revan held onto the helmet after the end of the Mandalorian Wars specifically to prevent them from picking a new Mandalore, then gives it to Canderous before heading off to the Unknown Regions before the start of KotOR II.) The idea of a fake Mandalore helmet being used to revive the war effort is one I've had since the campaign began.
- The Naboo war forge survived the Mandalorian Wars simply because it was underwater, and Revan and his troops didn't know about it because it wasn't in a big, obvious place (as war forges usually are). It holds all the Mandalorian ship blueprints, hence there being authentic gunships, fighters, etc. in operation on Naboo.
- While the party believed at some points that these Mandalorians held multiple planets, they only ever held Naboo (I didn't want to correct the party). They would've eventually tried to take a nearby planet if left to their own devices too long, but they only had the manpower to hold Naboo. As for where all the riches came from that Mandalore the Divider was loading into his escape pod before his defeat, those are from his ships raiding nearby planets and ships. Really, not much better than common pirates.
