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Hoth: Under the Ice
 Part 3: Merchants of Death
 Part 4: A Brief Thaw
 Part 2: Steady, Girl
 Planet Hoppers: December 2003
 Part 1: Snowflake Base
  
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Hoth: Under the Ice

Part 2: Steady, Girl


Compiled by Cory J. Herndon

Though the Alliance suffered a major defeat at the Battle of Hoth, the quick establishment of Echo Base was still a minor victory in and of itself. Unable to rely on their speeders in the bitter cold, the Alliance engineers sent ahead to prepare for the arrival of the main forces found alternate modes of transportation -- tauntauns. While tauntaun handlers like Corporal Corman Quien and Corporal Maer have since become well known, Corporal Vyn Rolado's log chronicles the first Rebel attempts at taming the beasts.

Corporal Vyn Rolado's Personal Log

Provided by the Rieekan Historical Collection. Reprinted with permission.

The old smuggler that sold us the location of these caves said the creatures are called "tauntauns." He didn't know much else about them, except that they smelled terrible and that he'd heard tales of some of his fellow smugglers once taming the things and using them as mounts. We'd figured the tauntauns might make a good source of food, but now that we're having so much trouble with the speeders, I've been given the unenviable task of leading the Alliance's first tauntaun training unit. I just had to go and tell the lieutenant how much the damned things reminded me of the Ycaqts I used to ride back on Velmor, before my family moved to Corellia.

It took us a week to get close enough to a tauntaun pack to even think about capturing a few. Without speeders, we had to bait them out using wounded ice scrabblers, that little lichen-eating species that seems to be the only thing tauntauns eat. It wasn't pretty work, or particularly noble, but the sedative we'd injected into the scrabblers knocked out our new mounts quickly enough.

At first, the tauntauns simply screamed themselves hoarse all day. We had them penned up like banthas for the slaughter, and they didn't like it one bit. By this point, the main engineering team had excavated the main hangar, and more ships were moving in from the fleet. Already, the main computer stations were up and running, and the power generators had reached half capacity -- soon, the defense shield would be up, and the population of Echo Base would increase 1,000% overnight. There was no way the tauntauns would be ready in time.

I convinced the lieutenant to spare me an excavation rig and manned it myself to clear out a holding area for the tauntauns that gave them room to move, which calmed them down enough to attempt breaking one to the saddle. As it happened, I chose the alpha female for my first attempt and earned a concussion for my efforts. Clearly, breaking them to the saddle wasn't going to happen indoors.

For my second attempt, I had the alpha sedated and taken outside the hangar entrance (the heavy shield doors are in place, but not yet functioning; the hydraulics keep freezing up). She came out of sedation slowly and accepted food from my hand again. This time, she held still as I swung into the saddle and only barked a few times. Once I was in place, I gave her a light kick with my heels, and we were off. We ranged almost 35 kilometers according to my field odometer, and ended up racing nightfall back to the base.

Since that exhilarating ride, the pack's behavior immediately changed. I believe we've underestimated the intelligence of these creatures, as this could only have been a result of the alpha communicating to the others. And so the tauntauns and our people have settled into an alliance of our own. The tauntauns will share "their" caves with us, as long as we join them for a daily run over the plains.

GM Notes: Tauntaun Alpha Female

Despite their thick layers of fur and insulating fat, tauntauns are technically reptiles, like their ice scrabbler prey. Several species inhabit Hoth, though only the ice field subspecies saw extensive use as mounts by the Rebels.

Tauntauns in the wild live in a matriarchal pack structure. The alpha is usually the strongest female in the pack (and therefore the oldest), and has so much influence over her fellow tauntauns that she can cause them all to alter their behavior overnight.

Species Traits

Survival: Because tauntauns evolved on the bitter ice world of Hoth, they gain a +4 bonus to Survival checks in any frozen environment.

Pack leader: The pack will follow the will of the alpha in most situations, unless survival instincts overwhelm the alpha's influence. If a character makes a successful Handle Animal check involving the alpha, Handle Animal checks involving the same task with other individual pack members automatically succeed for the same character.

Tauntaun Alpha: Large female arctic herd animal 5; Init +5 (+1 Dex, +4 Improved Initiative); Defense 19 (+1 Dex, -1 size, +9 natural), touch 18, flat-footed 18; Spd 22 m, climb 10 m; VP/WP 32/18; Atk +6 melee (1d4+5, claw) or Atk +6 melee (1d6+5, bite) or +2 ranged; SQ Species traits; SV Fort +8, Ref +2, Will +1; Face/Reach 2 m by 4 m/2 m; FP 0; DSP 0; Rep +0; Str 20, Dex 13, Con 18, Int 4, Wis 14, Cha 8. Challenge Code C.

Skills: Listen +6, Spot +6, Survival +9.

Feats: Improved Initiative, Skill Emphasis (Survival).

Check below the lefthand navigation links for previous parts of "Hoth: Under the Ice," or return to the introductory page for the feature.

Can a Jedi use the lightsaber of a fallen opponent? How about selling it to fund a shopping trip to Coruscant? Get designer JD Wiker's take in the latest installment of "Jedi Counseling."



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