The Iron Dawn Flies Again

After my first foray into Star Wars with the D6 system, I picked up the D20 Star Wars system as soon as it came out. It was my first campaign. I was 15.

I gathered by best friend, Nate, My friend who taught me how to RP with the D6 system, Mike, his little brother Cliff, my friend from theater sets class, Kate, my older brother, Andrew, and there were two other guys, Ben and someone else (I can’t remember his name). Ben and the other guy were occasionals, Cliff didn’t ever seem super interested, but Nate, Mike, Kate and Andrew made up our core group. We’d play for a few hours on Saturday, then take our boffer weapons out into the front yard and fight each other.

It’s now been 19 years. 2020 marks 20 years since that campaign kicked off, leading to many adventures across the Episode 1 era.

The characters were:

Nate: Alan Page, Human mercenary, soldier. He’s a no-nonsense guy who likes his guns as big as possible.

Kate: Irulan Vendalion, Human Jedi. Her master died, leaving her adrift in the world to continue her Jedi training.

Mike: Kami’Atra, Miralukan force mystic. A mysterious and wise sage who cares deeply about his friends.

Andrew: Bax, Dug mechanic. The only thing he loves in this world are his droids.

Myself: Kibur Blastblade, Human pilot. I was unaware at 15 that the GM doesn’t usually have a character, so I made the group’s pilot to get them around and accompany them on adventures. He’s very much a Han Solo type, but a little less cynical.

Cliff played a Jawa who was insanely rich, and I can’t remember what Ben and the other guy played at all.

Their ship was called the Iron Dawn, a name generated from a random ship generator.

The group’s adventures took them to the battle of Naboo, to the dark shadows of Black Sun, across Coruscant, and into the snowy wastelands of Ando Prime. As games do, the game eventually fell apart, and we went out separate ways.

10 years later, I realized I was still friends with all these people on Facebook, so I asked if everyone wanted to get the game going again on RPOL. We kicked it back off. After a month or so, Andrew had to drop out of playing due to time constraints, but we continued on.

For the past 10 years, we’ve carried on our adventures. We had skipped forward to just prior to Episode 2 when we got back together, and moved through the Clone Wars, the Great Purge, and then fled from the Empire in the Dark Times. Eventually, we decided it was time to retire the characters, and wrote up a great epilogue having them retire. Two of the characters, Kibur and Irulan, had kids and settled on a farmworld. The game went silent for about a year.

Then, I shared to our group chat a new opening crawl:

The Iron Dawn
Episode IV
Infinite Empire

A new hope has appeared in the galaxy. Striking from their hidden rebel base, the Rebel Alliance has destroyed the Galactic Empire’s most fearsome weapon, the dreaded Death Star.

The Empire’s wrath was swift, driving the Rebellion further and further out into the edge of the galaxy. Now, the war has arrived on the Outer Rim world of Pii IV.

The peaceful farmworld, home to a pair of heroes who battled the Empire in the distant past, is in grave danger as an Imperial Star Destroyer appears in orbit over the planet…

And with that, we were back.

Nate, Andrew and I both live in Spokane, but Mike and Kate moved away. But recently, Mike has moved back to town, and Kate will be back for New Years Eve, so we’re getting back together in person for the first time in nearly 20 years.

I’m very excited for this. As we draw closer to New Years, I’ll be talking about the game more and how I’m prepping. I’m doing a lot to make the game the highest quality I can. I’ve ordered all kinds of terrain, and painted up custom minis. Keep your eyes open for that.