Session 17: Martyr's Plaze

The battle for Nizon reached its fiery climax in the heart of Martyr’s Plaza. The heroes advanced under blaster fire and the thunderous steps of an AT-ST patrolling before the communications bunker. The towering walker stood as a symbol of Imperial dominance—unyielding, relentless, and deadly. Desperate for an edge, the heroes turned to the massive statue at the plaza’s center, a monument of a proud Nazren hero from an age before Imperial occupation. Through daring coordination, they brought the statue toppling down, its massive stone form crashing onto the plaza in a deafening roar. The AT-ST narrowly avoided total destruction, twisting aside as the falling monument shattered against its side and sent the war machine tumbling onto its flank. Sparks flew and servos screamed as the walker crashed to the ground, its weapon mounts sparking uselessly. The crew inside bailed out, only to be cut down by the heroes’ blaster fire. The once-unstoppable walker lay smoking and broken, felled beneath the symbol of the very people it had sought to crush.   With the walker neutralized, the heroes pressed their assault, tearing through the automated defenses surrounding the communications bunker. Blaster bolts traced through the haze as they disabled one turret after another, each explosion shaking the plaza until silence at last reclaimed the square. Seizing the bunker, the heroes worked quickly to override Imperial systems. In a flurry of code and commands, they severed Imperial communications planetwide and assumed control of the rogue fragments reporting station. The sudden blackout threw the Imperial forces into disarray, and within hours the massive Star Destroyer Arkanian Dragon and its dreadnaught escorts began to withdraw from orbit. For the first time since the rebellion began, Nizon’s skies were free. Yet their victory brought with it a darker discovery—a transmission from an Imperial officer to a man named Vril Vrakth, ordering the destruction of something called the Sarlacc Project and the evacuation of Imperial forces from Nizon. The message pinpointed Vrakth’s position: Point Gold, atop Mount Antas.   Determined to end the threat, the heroes commandeered a battered speeder and ascended the harsh cliffs toward the construction site of a massive planetary shield generator. There, among the half-built towers and crackling conduits, Vril Vrakth awaited them. He was a hardened gunman, flanked by his crab droid enforcers, his presence as cold and precise as the rifle in his hands. The battle that followed was ferocious. Blaster fire lit the mountainside while machinery exploded around them, the heroes locked in a deadly dance with the Imperial agent. Vrakth’s aim was merciless, and his droids pressed every advantage, but the heroes’ resolve burned brighter. After a desperate struggle, they struck him down, the last of his droids collapsing in ruin beside him.   Searching Vrakth’s body revealed a damaged datachip bearing the seal of the Sarlacc Project. Though fractured and corrupted, Kira painstakingly decrypted its contents. The fragments spoke of a massive Imperial construction effort somewhere deep within the Core Worlds—a project so vast that its cost had driven the Empire to enslave entire populations to sustain it. What the Empire was building remained hidden, but every communication and contact led back to one place: Coruscant. Whatever secrets the Sarlacc Project held, their answers waited there, buried beneath the Imperial capital itself.