May You Always Find Water

After a quick discussion about what to do, the group creeped forward in an effort to storm the laboratory.  As they approached, they noticed a fifth Rodian scout observing the lab from a distance but they appeared undetected.  Not wanting to waste time, they began to head backwards towards the rest of the group but were overheard when an errant tree branch snapped beneath them!  The Rodian charged towards their general direction until Dakapota stood up and used Force Thurst to hurl him through the air towards a large rock.  Before the Rodian could recover, Spandow Calcitron lined his head up with his trusty club and made mince meat out of him. 

Confident the quick combat went unheard, but unwilling to waste any more time, they headed directly towards the Lab door.  When it opened on its own, Dekapota leaned into a cleaning chamber to see the rest of the interior.  To the right, the building's L-shape turned out of his line of vision.  However, on his right, two Rodians were stringing up explosives on the wall and a third, larger Rodian was facing them, flanked by three Mon Calamari prisoners, bound in the corner. 

Although Rrwarr the Wookie burst into the room to force the Rodians to act, he was blasted by both explosive-laying Rodians as well as a third Rodian from the right whose efforts with a vibrodagger made the Wookie regret his actions.  A few well placed blaster bolts from Bib Comett saved him, however.  In the meantime, Spandow and Dekapota took on the Rodians on the left, exchanging blaster fire, accidentally killing two of the hostages and narrowly avoiding hitting the charged explosives.  Despite the leader of the Rodians threatening to blow up the building in an act of "space martyrdom" the group called his bluff and between blaster bolts and force powers, they took down the last of the Rodians.

After checking on the last hostage, they grabbed a datapad carried by the Rodians and noticed the computers had been wiped clean. The pad contained what appeared to be data regarding mushroom growth patterns and medicinal uses.  The scientist, grateful for his life, told them he and his team of scientists were hired by Kalgass Mining to come here and work three weeks ago and a month ago all mining ceased.  He believes that there are other mobile labs in the southern part of the land owned by Kalgass but each group of scientists must be working independent of one another because he has no contact with other groups.  He insists they were brought in to look into the usefulness of the mushrooms and to try and work out ways to grow them outside of their native terrain and environments.  He used the computer to access employee records and noted that Khirra was not on the employee list  but her name did appear weeks ago on the shuttle transfer from Juggsmuk Station to Kalgass facilities and then on a smaller transport to the northern mines, but her return from the mines was not noted.  Agreeing to travel with them to help them avoid security, they deactivated the explosives and returned to the breach in the gate so they could fly their airspeeder further away into the woods and then returned.  All five of them set out on swoop bikes headed north.

Gamorrean Mushrooms and Mines

After the three day journey to Gamorr, the group landed on Docking Bay 2 and began the process of tracking down Khirra.  A search of the computer systems revealed the ship Khirra arrived in three months ago.  They made their way to the ship and found it untended with an astromech droid on board.  Taking the information from the databases they obtained a copy of a set of coordinates that they later learned belonged to Kalgass Steel.
They learned that much of Gamorr was under the control of two different mining facilities: Kalgass and Farsteel.  The Rodian-run Farsteel workers revealed that they were concerned about the mines being wiped dry and job security.  Farsteel has been trying to buy Kalgass for quite some time but Kalgass is not willing to sell.  They also learned that in addition to valuable land, Kalgass has notations about the discovery of mushrooms native to this land and Nar Hutta. 

They rented a speeder and followed the transports of Kalgass to their land.  They noticed many miners gathered near the landing area just standing around.  Instead of trying to run the outer walls, they began to circumnavigate the walls looking for a weak point.  Traveling far enough, they discovered a small breach in the wall and they landed and sneaked into the land. 

Appraoching what looked like a science lab, they were about to sneak up on a Mon Calamari scientist when Chris noticed several Rodians sneaking up as well.  Abandoning his squid relative, he allowed the Rodians to approach, kill him and head into the science building

From Moonus Mandel to Gamorr

The party, fresh off their encounter with a mysterious Jedi named Sypher Dias, and satisfied they had adequately upgraded their ship to disguise their transponder to match their forged paperwork, headed back to Tatooine.  Halfway through the journey, they sensed a tail but were unable to tell exactly how far behind them they were being followed.  Fearing the worst, and not wanting to lead whoever was following them back to Calla, they left hyperspace near the peaceful planet of Lahsbane. 

Granted permission to land on the planet, they were greeted by the diminutive and friendly LAHSbanians.  Realizing that they were in no danger and the LAHSbanians only wanted news of the outside world, they accepted food and hospitality for the rest of the day and headed back to Tatooine after they felt the tail had safely passed without stopping.

They arrived back on Tatooine at nighttime and landed in Mos Espa.  After lamenting a return to such a dry planet, especially the Mon Calamari, they slept in the safety of their ship until they could safely make their way to Calla's palace in the morning.  After a tense transaction, they exchanged the information on the data pad for the full 250,000 cr.  and agreed to be available in the future for Calla should she need more work done. 

Returned to the ship and saw two Bothans outside the hanger.  Cutting to the point, they simply approached them and immediately recognized one of them as the spy on Moonus Mandel.  They went into the hanger to get off the street and talk further.  The speaker introduced himself as Velliam Rankyyr and implored the group to go to Gamorr and look into the disappearance of his cousin, Khirra.  She was sent by the Jedi to investigate a disturbance in the Force three months ago and disappeared almost a month ago.  After several questions, they discovered that she frequently worked for the Jedi because her skills in tracking were aided by her Force sensitivity.  She had to have landed initially at Juggsmuk Station (a large outpost for foreign visitors to stay safely).  The planet is valuable as a mining facility despite the volatile nature of the natives.  Although Velliam had little to offer in the way of money, he offered them to NOT tell the Jedi who had paid them to follow them and that they would have access to the Bothan Spy Network going forward, as well as his gratitude.  After some conversation and discussion privately, the group agreed to search for Khirra and determine what happened to her.  Gamorr was a 3 day journey from Tatooine so they decided to resupply including replacing their missing escape pod.