Day One on the Halcyon, Part 2

A continued chronicle of my Starcruiser journey

So, where were we?

Ah yes — just a bit after Muster and the Captain’s Reception.

Need to catch up?

• Day One, Part 1: Arrival and Exploration

4:55pm: Lt Croy slid up into my DMs! I tried to play it as coy as possible (such as the pre-set dialogue options will allow). I actually gave a scoundrel answer to one of his questions, because I didn’t want to pledge loyalty to him or give away my affiliation with the Resistance.

5:30pm: Captain Keevan followed up with a message about making a deal with Gaya to capture and split some coaxium on its way to the First Order. At this point I realized I was going to have a fine line to dance, since I very much wanted to help the Captain and Raithe and Gaya.

5:40ish: Completed a task for Lenka, overwriting some systems on the ship to help hide information from Croy. We needed to cover up some tweaks to the personnel files, because as it turns out, mechanic/engineer Sammie wasn’t actually crew with the Chandrila Star Line! He was a new Resistance recruit that Lenka brought on-board.

Almost immediately after doing that, I got contacted again by Croy! He continued to test my allegience, and warning me off Sammie (with whom I had really not interacted at all, but I trusted Lenka about him). I played very dumb, choosing all of the “Oh, I’m sure there’s nothing suspicious going” on dialogue options.

Somewhere in here we also stopped into the Sublight Lounge for a drink and a couple rounds of sabacc.

I sort of wish we’d had the chance to play more! We had vague intentions of doing one round of the tournament on Day 2, but as you’ll see, we were far, far too busy for that. It’s definitely something I’d try to work in if I were able to go again.

6:00pm: We had a little time before bridge training, so we decided to hang out in the Atrium -- and happened to be there for Sector Set starting! So, sure, why not? It’s basically space bingo, and even if I am baffled as to why it uses totally different galactic divisions than the usual Core, Colonies, Inner Rim, Mid Rim, etc, it was fun! The blueshirt running it also gave some trivia about the planets as they were called.

And then Lieutenant Croy sat down right next to us and asked us how to play. I tried to play off “charming socialite, not suspicious at all, just a frivolous passenger!” Then he took over the drawing and was very hilariously grumpy about it. He kept pulling out planets and saying, “No, I don’t like that one. No, not that one. No, that’s too hard to say,” and tossing the chips aside.

6:30pm: Bridge Training! This was seriously so much fun — and it’s part of some amazing scaffolding that I’ll talk about in the analysis post later. Honestly, I wasn’t sure going in that I would like this, because it was one of the things that the marketing for the Starcruiser made look very gimmicky. But it was so fun and so well-run.

So how it starts is: the passengers, here for a demonstration of the ship’s operations, get divided into four groups: Blue Banthas, Gold Mynocks, Red Rathtars, or White Wampas. Those groups are each assigned to a station with consoles: Systems, Weapons, Shields, or Loaders. Weapons and Loaders both operate on the absolutely massive Bridge viewport; Shields has a big circular display in the center of the Bridge; Systems has complex panels with lots of dials and switches and toggles. You also get to meet AJ-1O, aka “Watch,” the ship’s navigation droid, unseen but often heard.

At each station, there are two rounds: one for practice, and one for points. The goal is to beat the blueshirts’ scores — which I would be astonished if any passengers ever did, because the blueshirts are very, very good! But I think the Blue Banthas performed pretty well! (I wish these scores somehow ended up in your datapad; being bad with remembering numbers, I had trouble tracking our performance).

Noah and I started at Weapons, which was simple but very satisfying: I was aiming, Noah was firing. I really can’t overstate how cool it is to play the game on that enormous viewport. It’s very easy to forget you’re not actually in space, firing lasers. From there we moved to Shields (I think; I may have steps 2 and 3 backwards in my brain), which is essentially playing Pong, but it’s also so satisfying. We both liked this station best — which apparently is an unusual choice? But we were very good at it. (This would be important later). Loaders was a bit like weapons, with one of us moving and the other grabbing cargo out of space. Then Systems was the hardest by far — but I think my second-favorite station. The display tosses up a sequence of positions that the console’s various dials, buttons, and toggles need to be in, and you have to match it as fast as possible to keep the ship in good repair. That station was manic. There are so many buttons. It was genuinely hard to keep track of them! But hard in a fun way.

Then — plot happened.

Each Bridge training session is interrupted by some character, introducing some plot point. It’s different each time, and each one plays into the larger story. As I understand it from talking to other passengers, the first one brings Gaya on-board, the second one sneaks Chewbacca on, and then there was ours. We got taken over by Lieutenant Croy.

This was my face.

Croy forced us to help him as he made an unscheduled jump to (I think) Kuat to pick up some First Order supplies. Croy was in communication with one of his superior officers, and as part of the conversation, he talked about knowing that SK-620 had information that he wanted, and that he was going to get it one way or another. I was pretty livid by this point. How dare he threaten my new friend SK??

Unfortunately, we jumped straight into an asteroid field. (This seemed to be happening a lot with these unscheduled jumps; I have some questions about Watch’s astrogation). If I’d been on Loaders or even Weapons at this point, I could’ve just been spectacularly bad at my job to make Croy look bad in front of his superior, but I was on Systems, and… I couldn’t let the ship get damaged! So I had to do a good job, but it was under protest.

7:15pm: Walked out of bridge training and immediately tried to catch Lenka’s attention to warn her that Croy was threatening SK. I missed catching her, but Saja Tycer saw me trying and promised to pass the message along. I think this may have upped my credit with the Sajas at this point, because I started getting more messags from them soon thereafter.

Then, we randomly joined the tail end of Outer Rim Regalia, because… why not? That’s basically just a fashion show. I took a nice little twirl down the red carpet.

We also realized at this time that we had some more messages from Raithe! We’d heard by then about the Hayananeya Stone, from the card he’d given us earlier. The stone is sacred to Ryloth (the homeworld of the Twi’lek), but had been stolen from them centuries earlier. And it turned out… the Hayananeya was in the antique hyperspace compass in the Atrium.

I love this so much because it’s developing some wonderful lore, and it ties in with the greater struggle for Ryloth’s freedom, which is a plot point in books like Resistance Reborn and, I think, an underappreciated thematic element in the Star Wars universe. (More on that in Day Two’s recap.) Anyway, Raithe said he’d noticed us as passengers perhaps willing to break the rules for a good cause. So he sent us to go test the alarm systems.

7:30pm: We received messages from Croy thanking us for help on the bridge, even though we only did it under duress and to keep the ship from exploding. He asked for my loyalty. I left him on “read” until I could ask the Captain what to do.

7:45pm: Right before dinner, I went to meet the Captain in the cargo hold! Which I had trouble finding, because I hadn’t actually made it to that point in exploration. Fortunately I saw someone else who’d been in our earlier meeting, and she helped me get to the right place.

The Captain let us in on some of her plans. She had an amazing way of communicating utter sincerity and earnestness, holding eye contact with such potent meaning. We had to tell anyone who tried to come into the cargo hold that we were having a private tour, and another would be starting shortly! It happened so many times — which added a good balance of levity to the otherwise serious scene. And then a couple of stormtroopers walked right in! So several of us in the group started babbling all sorts of nonsense about how impressive the cargo hold’s organization was. I think I said something like, “You know, we travel through space all the time, and we take it rather for granted, but it really is quite a marvel when you think about it.”

The Captain also told those of us not currently under suspicion from Croy that, if we were brave enough to play double agent, we could try to get more information out of him — so I responded to his message at last. He asked me to get into the Engineering room for him, but I left that task on “read” as well. I suspect here I missed out on a branch of tasks — but there was truly just no way to do everything, and I’m happy with the choices I made. If I were to go again, though, I do think I’d lean more heavily into the double agent role. I could never, never swear myself to the First Order — but Lieutenant Croy is an incredibly fun character to play with, and our performer was thoroughly charming.

Meanwhile, Noah was helping Raithe, watching to see what happened in the Atrium when the silent alarm on the hyperspace compass was triggered. I think the stormtroopers went right from the cargo hold up there, to check out what happened, because Noah told me that when the silent alarm was triggered, the stormtroopers came to check it out, but it took them a few minutes.

8pm: And then… Dinner! Which was delightful! The food was great, our lovely server Gladys from Batuu was attentive and so friendly, and the floor show from Gaya was superb. Seriously, friends, her songs are total bops. “Coaxium” is my favorite, but they’re all delightful. Go look up the Galactic Starcruiser soundtrack on your music platform of choice. You’re welcome. There are also some great videos of the floor show on YouTube. The music ties in to her overall story, particularly with the Hayananeya stone.

The other characters move in and out of dinner as well — and I know they’re also bopping back and forth from other scenes and Bridge trainings, so this again speaks to the wonderful talent and stamina of these performers. The Captain welcomes everyone and sits at her table for a bit; Croy comes in to grandstand; Sandro gets Gaya’s attention and actually gets to play with her and Ouannii — it’s a wild hour. Dinner is not downtime!

Toward the end of dinner, we got a message from Lenka telling us to meet her for her toast later that night -- that she’d have a plan for keeping SK safe from Croy.

9:30pm: Unfortunately, before that point, Croy assaulted SK! He took over and threw his weight (and that of his stormtroopers) around to put a restraining bolt on them! The absolute cruelty! In the hubbub, Noah and I shouted about droids’ rights. (If I had the ability to go again, I would definitely be bringing swag from a droids’ rights nonprofit agency).

At this point, it also appeared that Sammie betrayed the Resistance, turning SK and Chewbacca over to the First Order! And the Captain had to let it happen — but she assured us in a datapad message that she had a plan, and that Sammie was taking an opportunity to get a closer look at the Order’s inner workings.

We had a quick minute to talk to Raithe after that. He checked in with us about the Hayananeya’s legacy, affirmed that we were all-in to help Gaya and Ryloth, and then said, with this absolutely wonderful chaotic energy, “We’re gonna steal it.” (At least, I am almost certain this is when he said that. It might have been earlier. I genuinely can’t keep it all perfectly straight in my head.) He invited us to meet him at 4pm the next day in the cargo hold to discuss the plan. This meeting, he warned us, would not show up on our datapads, and it really felt very cool to get that personal invite.

9:45pm: We got some more messages from Raithe, following up on the spoken conversation — and also bringing in the plot point about getting some coaxium, as the Captain mentioned earlier. Noah and I both answered in the affirmative; we were down to commit felonies for a good cause!

We also decided to step into the Sublight Lounge for a nightcap. We spent a little time chatting with some lovely fellow passengers.

10pm: I received a message from Saja Tycer, who asked what path I saw myself taking. I knew the Force answer would lead to more interaction along that line, but I had to be honest: Resistance. That still seemed to work, as the Saja’s response was about counting on our friends. Noah answered true to himself as well, and I think the scoundrel answer there might have shut down this branch for him, at least on the datapad.

10:30pm: I think this is about when we realized we were getting a little tired (we were running on about four hours of sleep) and wanted to conserve our energy for the morrow, so rather than closing down Sublight, we took ourselves up to bed.

And then we had an amazing conversation with D3-09. Honestly, this is something I’m not going to go into too much detail about, because it felt so personal and like it had been tailored just for us. I know it wasn’t, and that other people had the same interaction, or very nearly, but… well, we love droids! So it was very special for us, and for Noah especially. (There’s a whole backstory there with the Edge of the Empire game we were in and the droid interactions he had in that). If I have any regret about the trip, though, it’s that I didn’t catch that one on film — but I thought we were just going to say a quick goodnight! I didn’t realize it was going to be A Whole Thing!

10:45pm: We both had a few more messages from Lenka, setting up things for Batuu and giving us some options on what task to prioritize. We both asked if we could help free SK, of course.

11pm: And then, after changing into my PJs, I had to put clothes back on to complete one last mission for Lenka before bed! Noah, fortunately, had not yet changed. I just counted myself lucky no one saw me all schlumped down. Not the way Lady Annazena wants to be seen! We had to go to the console and enter a configuration to scramble the data that Croy was extracting from SK. Fortunately, there’s one on each deck, so we didn’t have to wander too far.

I also got a final message for the night from Saja Tycer! Giving me missions to accomplish on Batuu. (Noah did not get these).

11:05pm: Still not done! We got some messages from Raithe about plans for getting the Hayananeya, telling us to meet him in the Atrium at 4:15 -- but we already had the verbal invites to join him at 4pm in the cargo hold (which I now knew how to find). He also gave us instructions about what to do on Batuu.

And then, more from the Captain for me! (Cannot remember if Noah got these or not). Also about doing things on Batuu.

By the end of all of this, I had high familiarity and high trust from everyone except Sammie and Croy. Sammie was low familiarity but high trust, I suppose because the Captain and Lenka trusted me. Croy was, hilariously, high familiarity but low trust. Valid.

And that was Day One!

To be continued in…

• Day Two on the Halcyon, Part 1: Batuu

• Day Two on the Halcyon, Part 2: The Heist

• Day Two on the Halcyon, Part 3: Coaxium