About four years into my D6 Star Wars RPG campaign, I wanted to shift the party’s focus to new enemies and threats to coincide with all of the new Expanded Universe (EU) novels that were coming out in the early 90s. In preparation, I had taken my group through the Battle of Endor where they participated in the space battle. This paved the way for us to then begin playing in the as yet mysterious years between Return of the Jedi and Heir to the Empire. Aside from the Timothy Zahn novels, the only other EU material was the Dark Empire comics from Dark Horse. These let me know that a lot of Imperial leaders had retreated into their systems and sectors to reinforce with some becoming warlords and establishing their own small empires until the Emperor had returned in the events of Dark Empire. I decided to focus on one of these warlords and that led me to creating adventures in and around the Mahrusha Sector. My goal today is to guide you through my creative process and share with you a campaign setting for Star Wars that can be dropped into any game.
So, at the time I was trying to develop this new story arc for my campaign, our game had moved from the events of the movies to the time after Return of the Jedi. This was the time period of the EU (now Legends) and there was a lot of excitement about getting to play in this new larger sandbox. Even so, don’t feel obligated to use any of the ideas I share here only in that post-Endor time period. Most of it may not mesh well with the Aftermath era of the new canon anyway, but it can easily be adopted to any campaign set during the time of the Empire.
As I had established above, I was seeking to create a warlord that could serve as the new focus of the adventures my PCs would be undertaking. I knew that warlord would also need a base of operations, or sector, to operate from. I was completely enamored with Grand Admiral Thrawn, mysterious antagonist of the Zahn books, and I wanted a villain that was as calculating and deadly as he was without being a total rip-off of him. I picked up one of my West End Games rulebooks, the Imperial Sourcebook, in an effort to find inspiration. Sometimes, when I need ideas, I will just pick up my books and skim them looking for something that jumps out at me. I found what I needed under Chapter Eight, Sector Group Organization (pp. 107-108), in a discussion about sector fleets and their organization. The text was discussing deepdock complexes; mobile shipyards that can repair damaged vessels or build new ones. It goes on to mention that the largest one in operation, Rendili R/M Facility Number Four, was located in the Mahrusha Sector.
That was the first mention I ever recall of the Mahrusha Sector and the book did not reference it anywhere else in the text. At the time, I decided that such an important asset as the Rendili deepdock needed to be located somewhere close to where the Empire was pursuing its fight against the Rebel Alliance. I decided that it should be a sector in the Mid Rim providing support to Imperial Navy forces in the Outer Rim. That is where I placed it in my game.
However, in researching this article, I found that Star Wars: The Essential Atlas has definitively placed the Mahrusha Sector as a subsector of the Sertar Sector and it is located within the Outer Rim. This does nothing to change anything that I will share with you regarding the use of the Mahrusha Sector as a campaign setting. Wookieepedia also has a few articles regarding two planets located within Mahrusha; Sembla and Kazarak. Sembla was the home of the Vurk species and Kazarak was a world mentioned in the Wizards of the Coast book Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds.
Now that I had a place to base my new warlord in, I had to decide who that warlord was and what was going to make him so dangerous. A name came to me on page 108 of the Imperial Sourcebook as the book discussed Sector Groups of the Imperial Navy. The text stated that a Sector Group HQ has a squadron of ships under the direct command of the sector Moff and that the Moff will have more than one squadron if they are well-connected or exceptionally competent. The book goes on to read “…Grand Moff Tarkin and Moff Carlinson could easily have 15 additional squadrons…” as part of their Sector Group HQ. Moff Carlinson became my warlord and he was going to be based in the Mahrusha Sector.
But what was going to set Moff Carlinson apart and make him stand out as the BBEG for this next story arc of my campaign? Sure, he could have 16 squadrons in his Sector HQ under his direct command, but raw military power wasn’t going to necessarily rule the day in the post-Endor galaxy. He needed those ships to consolidate his power and defend his sector. What was so special about him or the Mahrusha Sector that the Empire deployed its largest deepdock facility there? That was when I decided that Moff Carlinson was a highly-skilled starship engineer and bureaucrat. He had control of R/M Facility Number Four because he could command its operations effectively and he could utilize its excess capacity to build prototype starships to enhance the Imperial war effort. That was what was going to set him apart as a challenge for my PCs; an Imperial leader that could send warships with unusual capabilities to threaten the fledgling New Republic in unexpected ways.
This was the jumping off point for my new campaign arc and I began preparing a number of adventure ideas that would bring my PCs into contact with forces of the Mahrusha Sector and Moff Carlinson. I was still fleshing out the details, but I had the underpinnings identified. I will continue to delve deeper into the Mahrusha Sector and its leader, Moff Carlinson, in upcoming articles.
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