Welcome to the HoloNet Uplink, citizen. This series focuses on Fantasy Flight Games’ Star Wars Roleplaying Game, with content aimed mostly at the Gamemaster. Threats, adventure seeds, rules supplements, and more are all to come for those who access The HoloNet Uplink.
Content entries for this series, that is to say the HoloNet Uplink as a whole, run from high power adversaries such as the Sith Juggernaut, to more mundane topics such as today’s Imperial Emigration Officer write up. While the former may be more “sexy”, the fact of the matter is that entries like today’s are far more likely to be useful to the average GM. So, it is with great pleasure I put the same effort into this faceless, yet ubiquitous Imperial apparatchik as I have towards towering Sith Lords.
Imperial Emigration Officer [Rival]
The free flow of sentient beings, as with many failings of the Old Republic, can no longer be tolerated by the Empire. The Imperial Security Bureau now centrally manages interplanetary customs and immigration. Inducting existing security forces, such as CorSec, into the Imperial fold, movement off heavily populated worlds is strictly controlled by local emigration officers. Ostensibly designed to prevent transplanetary crime, the Empire is far more concerned with controlling populations as resources. Workers in critical industries, such as naval construction at Corellia, are routinely denied exit visas. Much cheaper than centrally training and posting military or ISB personnel to far flung worlds, the trade off is a lack of indoctrination and thus reliability. It is not unheard of for local emigration officers to break protocol in compassionate cases or even accept bribes, actions deemed anathema to zealous Imperial personnel.
Br 2, Ag 2, Int 2, Cun 3, Will 3, Pres 2
Soak 3, W. Threshold 12, Def M/R 0/0
Skills: Astrogation 1, Discipline 1, Perception 2, Vigilance 3.
Talents: Nobody’s Fool (Upgrade the difficulty of incoming Charm, Coercion, or Deception checks once).
Abilities: None.
Equipment: Encoded datapad, secure comlink, hand scanner.
Starport Security Quick Reaction
To security personnel, starports are among the most challenging and most frustrating places to protect. Critically important infrastructure with large volumes of people, security planners must balance protection against efficiency. Traffic must be allowed to flow through and offworld, while protecting the starport from terrorist attack and enabling security forces to ferret out criminal activity. Part of this balancing act is the ability to scale up or down security, and thus the presence of a quick reaction force.
Generally only a small fraction of available security forces are visible to the average spacer. A few security posts and roving patrols, each consisting of perhaps two to four sentries, are the norm. This holds true for both local security forces and Imperial military. The remainder are held at varying degrees of readiness, able to respond to threats as required. GMs should keep this in mind should the PCs instigate a security alert at a starport.
Within mere moments of an alert, perhaps a round or two, a roving security patrol can arrive on scene. If the situation escalates, a squad of four to eight can arrive in a matter of minutes. The narrative dice system does not link rounds with time, but this next wave should be several rounds out to represent time for the PCs to slip away or otherwise begin to accomplish their task. Within tens of minutes, local police or the military garrison can surge forces to the starport. Considering the importance of interplanetary movement and commerce, it is likely this response has been well planned and heavily rehearsed. Again no particular number of rounds can be prescribed due to the flexible nature of this system, but this force should generally arrive no earlier than 7-10 rounds into an encounter, or perhaps as the start of a new climactic encounter. Although airspeeders provide rapid response capability, travel time is a remains a realistic constraint in the Star Wars universe. Use your practical experience and common sense as a guide for how quickly these external forces can react.
Christopher Hunt
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