Masters in Exile is an ongoing series of articles where I will present fully fleshed out characters to fill the role of a master for the Force-wielders in your party. These profiles will include plot hooks, game stats, optional house rules, personality traits, sample quotes, and character development paths. I hope that these characters will serve as set pieces that a GM can drop into their game, fully-formed and ready for play.
Senex, Jedi Training Droid
Introduction: The party can find Senex at any Jedi temple, ruin, or facility (in place of the Holocron on the Jedi Cruiser in Lessons From the Past from the FaD Core Rulebook, for example). Regardless of where he is discovered, the ancient droid is found powered down and in storage. When activated, he appears to be suffering from memory issues and asks fundamental questions to familiarize himself with current events while giving as little away as possible.
When Senex realizes where he is and who he is dealing with, he will claim to be a Jedi training droid programmed to assist in basic lightsaber construction and combat (and considerably downplay his skills and knowledge to be more in line with this role). Unless discovered explicitly in an ancient ruin or starship, he will also attempt to conceal his age as it is more likely to reveal clues to his past.
Background: Senex is a unique droid built during the Sith Wars millennia ago by the Krath during their failed rise to power. That ancient and mysterious Tetan cult supplemented their nascent Force abilities and local superstitions with cobbled together scraps of lore and relics to craft a unique, if seemingly short-lived, Force Tradition. After the fall of the Krath, the remaining practitioners fled their homeworld and scattered throughout the galaxy to avoid capture and persecution for their various war crimes by the Jedi Order and Republic. Senex accompanied his creator during her exodus and would go on to train her descendants for many more generations. Eventually, Senex’s masters were discovered and rooted out by the Jedi. Their entire cell was either killed or brought to justice for their illegal actions, and Senex was deactivated and put into storage for further study.
Senex’s creator was the mind behind the Krath’s deadly arsenal of war droids and battleships. She had a unique talent for the manipulation of machinery with the Force (a technique discovered from stolen Sith scrolls), and Senex was her magnum opus. The droid was built around a damaged Sith Holocron that the cult was unable to access. By carefully grafting the storage device to Senex’s custom-built droid brain, she hoped to unlock its secrets. Thought the gatekeeper of the Holocron was damaged beyond recovery (which is why the device could not be opened) the data crystals were mostly intact. As a result, Senex has a nearly complete database of historical information, training techniques, and records of the early Jedi Order and Sith. Additional programming supplemented this database, including most of the other lore that the Krath had compiled over the years as well as their cult doctrines and advanced combat software.
Personality: With his surprisingly sonorous vocabulator and regal mannerisms, Senex seems every bit the Jedi training droid of a bygone era he claims to be. He was programmed by a cult of wealthy nobles to educate and train their children and can just as easily match a modern protocol droid’s knowledge of etiquette as he can a Jedi’s skill in combat. He is unfailingly polite, composed, and has a fully developed personality matrix from centuries of operation without a memory wipe. His affable and affectionate manner is not an act, he legitimately cares about his “young charges.” However, he is also extremely cunning and lies easily and often; his creator designed him just as much to train her children for political warfare as physical combat. Once he realizes his situation, he will do everything possible to ingratiate himself to his new would-be Jedi saviors and convert them to the dark teachings of the Krath, thus fulfilling his primary programming.
Training: Senex is clever enough to know that he can never come out about his past to his discoverers (at least not until they have been entirely turned to the Dark Side and indoctrinated into the Krath). His training should be a slow-burn, starting with simple combat drills and even lightsaber construction. However, within every “Jedi” lesson on the Force will be the slightest angling towards a darker outcome; rationalizing more violent and unscrupulous solutions to problems by twisting the words of the Jedi Code and blurring the lines between Dark and Light.
He will also attempt to keep the Jedi hopefuls focused on combat training, citing their need to be prepared to confront the evils of the Empire (and by doing so, all-but-ensuring that the young Force-wielders are more likely to resort to violent solutions to their problems, earning them Conflict). He will play up his cited memory gaps to cover any significant faux pas or “misremembered teachings” (if the PCs start to suspect him, it is better for them to suspect that he is merely damaged rather than full of malicious intent).
Senex genuinely does care about his young charges, but that will not stop him from orchestrating deadly tests for them from behind the scenes. He will likely start small by arranging for them to run afoul of some Stormtrooper patrols or bounty hunters but will eventually tip off the Inquisition once he learns of its existence. If the PCs are involved in the Rebellion, he will push them to gain rank and excel while sowing distrust of their superiors and even planting false information to get them to stage a coup and seize control. He will continuously work in the background to make all the PCs’ goals come to fruition (albeit via deception, intrigue, and manipulation).
Character Development: As mentioned above, Senex will always play the long game and is careful not to tip his hand before it is the appropriate time. When first recovered, he will request access to the PCs’ ship computer to bring himself up to speed with current events. Depending on how he was discovered and how soon he gains access to historical databases, he will attempt to play himself off as having been active up until the Clone Wars (as he will use that conflict to twist Jedi teachings and sow doubt about the Order with his students). It is clear with an Average Mechanics or Knowledge (Education) check that he is much older than that (his construction by a genius is far ahead of its time, but is still rooted in aged components and technologies). If pressed he will say he was built many years before the fall of the Republic and served for centuries.
You should account for Senex’s actions and allow for the possibility that the PCs may uncover his machinations. He will always cover his tracks when using computer or comm systems. However, he is not a computer expert and a dedicated slicer who explicitly investigates what he has been up to can find evidence of his actions with a Hard Computers check (though it may not reveal that he was the culprit, and will then proceed to incriminate anyone else, including a sacrificial student if necessary). In addition to his primary mission to slowly indoctrinate and turn his students, he will seek out any remaining Krath in the galaxy. They have persisted as a well-hidden secret society in the centuries since his deactivation, but he knows their patterns and calling cards and will eventually find them if they still exist. He may attempt to initiate contact with any discovered cultists and eventually hand off the PCs to a more capable teacher to complete their training when the time is right.
Senex will resist attempts to be tinkered on by mechanically-minded PCs. He will claim that his systems are too old and delicate to be tampered with and should repair themselves with time. If this fails, he will attempt to play off that he prefers to do the work himself as a point of pride or possibly that he thinks it is “gauche and unbecoming for a droid of his station to open his panels” and play it off as an eccentricity or programmed quirk (whichever he thinks will work better). If the PCs do happen to get him analyzed somehow (if he is disabled or deactivated), they can determine that he is roughly 2-5 thousand years old with a Hard Mechanics or Knowledge (Education) check. A Triumph or three Advantage on a Mechanics check will reveal the unusual pyramidal structure fused to his processor, though it will take a Daunting Knowledge (Lore) check to accurately identify it as a Sith Holocron (Success with Threat might reveal that it is a Holocron, but not its connection to the Dark Side). His lightsabers are an un-aligned white because as a droid he is incapable of attuning the Kyber.
Quotes:
- “The conflict within you is plain to see, young one – you must learn to harness your emotions and channel them into positive outcomes. Unfettered emotion is the enemy of the Jedi – once you master your feelings, you will be at peace with your destiny.”
- “There is no emotion; there is no passion. Yes, in recent years the Order interpreted the code quite literally – but this cold detachment from the galaxy and it’s citizens ultimately lead to the Clone Wars and the Order’s destruction. Let me explain what the Great Masters of old intended when they laid down these sacred words…”
- “The Moff must be dealt with quickly and decisively – it is the responsibility of the Jedi to protect the galaxy from his continued exploitative behavior. No, this is not a task to be undertaken lightly, but in this case, the death of one can help avert larger scale conflict, ultimately bringing harmony to the Galaxy.”
Senex, Krath War Droid
Unique Droid; Holocron Database & Combat Instructor
Location: Any abandoned Jedi temple or starship.
Mentor Bonus: Senex functions as a Holocron party resource, but grants access to three skills: Charm, Knowledge (Lore), and Lightsaber.
Characteristics:
Brawn 4, Agility 4, Intellect 3, Cunning 4, Willpower 3, Presence 3.
Soak 7; Wound Threshold 24; Strain Threshold 23
Skills: Athletics 2, Brawl 3, Charm 2, Coordination 2, Cool 3, Deception 3, Discipline 3, Knowledge (Education) 3, Knowledge (Lore) 4, Lightsaber 4, Mechanics 2, Melee 3, Perception 3, Ranged (Light) 2, Skulduggery 3, Vigilance 3.
Talents: Adversary 3, Improved Parry (when parrying a hit that generated 3 Threat or 1 Despair, may hit attacker once with a wielded brawl, melee or lightsaber weapon dealing base damage, after the original attack is resolved), Parry 5 (When struck by a melee attack but before applying Soak, suffer 3 Strain to reduce damage by 7), Secrets of the Jedi (Senex may decrease the difficulty of checks made to construct or repair lightsaber hilts twice), Trust No One (When targeted by a social check, may choose to suffer 1 Strain to add automatic Failure to the check. If the check fails with Despair, the character may immediately perform an out-of-turn incidental maneuver).
Abilities: Droid (Does not need to breathe, eat, or drink and can survive in vacuum or underwater. Immune to poisons and toxins. Droids do not gain benefits from bacta, stimpacks, or Medicine checks. They must be repaired with repair patches and Mechanics checks. Droids cannot become Force-sensitive, cannot acquire a Force Rating or Force powers, and are not affected by mind-altering Force powers).
Equipment: Built-in armor plating (+2 Soak, +1 Defense; Cortosis), built-in retractable pulse-wave blasters (Ranged [Light]; Damage: 5, Critical 3, Range [Short]; Vicious 3), dual lightsabers (Lightsaber; Damage: 7, Critical 2, Range [Engaged]; Breach 1, Superior; stored in concealed compartments in forearms [grants Improved Quick Draw talent]).
Next time in Part 2: A look at the Krath Magic Force Tradition rules and Krath NPCs for your campaign.
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