Day Two on the Halcyon, Part 2: The Heist
Day Two on the Halcyon, Part 2: The Heist
Yet more voyaging aboard the Galactic Starcruiser!
Need to catch up?
So, after getting back from Batuu, we took a bit of time to clean up and get changed and ready for the afternoon and evening. I’m very, very glad we gave ourselves this brief respite in the middle of the day rather than staying on Batuu longer. Batuu will, after all, still be there after September 30.
Then it was time for…
1:45pm: Lightsaber training! This is something else that the marketing really made look like a gimmick, rather than selling what a deeply moving experience it has the potential to be, if you’re in a receptive frame of mind. Saja Tycer led our session, and apart from obviously having some real stage combat and/or martial arts training, he also just made it feel, well… magic.
It’s also quite a workout! I’m a walker by nature, and all the bending and squatting involved some muscles I do not typically exercise. My thighs were feeling it for a few days afterwards! One person, in front, has the lightsaber and is, at first, trying to hit a beam of light; the people behind them have shields and are there to catch the blast if it gets past the lightsaber. Then for the final round, you don’t see the beam of light, but rather a little glimmer — which is, as the Saja will tell you, the Force giving you a hint about where to aim. I was actually better at it than I expected to be.
At the end, there’s a very cool moment where you hear the voice of Master Yoda. It’s brief, but… yeah, hearing Yoda say that you’ve taken your first steps down the path and “May the Force be with you”? It got to me! The whole experience really is much deeper and more, well, spiritual than the advertising made it look — and a lot of that is down to the skill and heartfelt emotion of the Saja leading you.
And afterwards, I went to thank Saja Tycer and ended up getting pulled aside for a chat. We talked about, oh, all sorts of things. Personal philosophy. The legacy of the Force. The nature of the balance of chaos and order in the galaxy. How to deal with life when it feels out of control and overwhelming. It was really lovely. Truly, one of the things the Halcyon does so well is leaving room for these moments of personal connection. Then we walked together back over to Noah, commenting on his nature as an agent of chaos — and isn’t a little drop of chaos necessary in the world? Well, it certainly is in mine. ;)
We then had a brief bit of time to get a snack and some water before it was time to free SK-620!
3:15pm: So we met up with Lenka, along with a lot of other people, to come up with a plan to distract Lieutenant Croy. We had the unbolting codes and everything else we needed, but of course as soon as Croy realized SK-620 was gone, he was going to try to start looking for them — so we had to delay him as long as possible, to give SK the chance to safely hide away.
The main part of the distraction was a bunch of kids with small toy droids creating a ruckus in the middle of the Atrium. Saja Kyr did manage to dash over and free SK quickly, but Croy noticed very soon afterward. (This is a place where I’m genuinely not sure how fast the beat is supposed to go, if Croy is always supposed to figure it out that fast, or if the distraction just did not give him enough excuse for plausible deniability). But the group did manage to delay him getting out, asking him if every one of the toy droids was the droid he was looking for.
The best part of this was when Croy got tired of our nonsense and snatched up one of the small droids that a boy had been playing with, and he stormed off saying something to the effect of, “Until I get SK-620 back, this droid is mine!” (I believe it was one of the ship’s loaners, but it was still fun to act like he’d stolen from a child).
We were still in the Atrium when Croy came back a little while later. I got myself in some trouble by suggesting to him that, well, if the First Order had the codes to unlock SK, maybe he should look to his stormtroopers. It sure seemed like it must have been an inside job?
Croy was very offended, but I thought I was just being logical. Then when the Captain showed up, Croy told her what I’d said. “Lady Anna suspects my stormtroopers of disloyalty.” Then everyone present started talking him around in circles pointing out that he said he had a droid, clearly, right there, and he had very clearly stated “This droid is mine” when he left, so… what was the problem? He had a droid! And then some other passengers had to relate to Croy the story of his stormtroopers getting locked in the brig, which they hilariously decided to do through spoken word poetry. I quite enjoyed watching that unfold and applauding every ridiculous bit of it. (And I maintain it sure sounds like the stormtroopers locked themselves in the brig).
Croy eventually stormed off again, and a blueshirt very kindly invited us to join Know Your Copilot, a Newlyweds-Game-esque event in the Atrium. I actually would have loved to have played! But it ran right up to our, ah, prior engagement, so we had to decline.
3:55pm: We headed down to the cargo hold to meet Raithe. As with the Captain’s meeting the night before, people kept trying to come in (to complete a cargo mission for Sammie, I think, which was on the other side of the hall — another place where I’m not sure if that’s supposed to be an impediment or if it’s a bit of cross-scheduling that got tangled. I can see it either way, but it did make the scene a little hard to get through). Raithe had to chase some of them out and then post someone to keep others from coming in.
Then Raithe went through the whole plan, using sabacc cards on the floor to map it all out. Our testing of the systems had, as it turned out, created a small window of time when Watch was going to run a diagnostic. We had from 4:15 to 4:35pm to get the job done. (I think I’m remembering that rationale correctly).
Raithe was great throughout all of this — so quick with the jokes on top of managing a fairly sizeable group of people. (I’d guess there were about 25 of us crammed in there?) Everyone got assigned a role, mostly in groups of three-ish, with a few larger groups. And most of those were things well-suited to the characters, which is also a very impressive bit of interaction.
Noah and I, along with Lady Ganmé from Naboo, he had clocked as being “good at dealing with authority figures,” so we were tasked to intercept the Captain if she came into the Atrium while the heist was going down, then find some way to get her into the Sublight Lounge and hand her off to Gaya, who would keep her occupied a while longer. Other people were causing a larger distraction with Sandro, involving an impromptu Gaya celebration dance party, and others had to help with slicing into the hyperspace compass’s systems and actually getting the stone out. There were other tasks, too, but I can’t remember them all! It’s really quite a complex bit of social engineering.
Ultimately, though, the plan is to swap in the stone we got made on Batuu for the real thing, and no one would be the wiser! And really, it’s not like the display antique would suffer for it. So we would do this, for Ryloth!
And then, as we were wrapping up, the Captain walked in! And we had to try very hard to pretend we were just a meeting of the Gaya Fan Club… in the cargo hold… nothing suspicious at all! But the Captain, well, she’s no fool — and she likes her plausibile deniability, too. She just told Raithe to “stay out of trouble” — and, hey, as long as we didn’t get caught, he would be! Raithe reminded us all that we were about to commit a felony together, and Noah pointed out that it’s only a felony if they catch and convict you.
4:15pm: Heist time!!! Things kicked off with the dance party in one corner. We had to wait a few tense minutes for our part in it to manifest. Then, along with Lady Ganmé, we intercepted the Captain as she came down from her quarters. I started pitching an idea for a special cultural tour, one that would start at Naboo and work its way over to the Tapani sector.
And look, it was a very good distraction. I could’ve kept going for ages on that topic, but we handed her off to Gaya and then took up our secondary posts, which were to relay a warning signal if the Captain re-emerged.
Which she did, of course, at the most dramatic possible moment! She confronted Raithe and made him turn out his pockets and his pouch, which were… not holding the Hayananeya stone! Or, for that matter, any other incriminating items. Because he had passed it off to someone else for safekeeping…
4:35pm: Back down to the cargo hold for the debrief and to celebrate our felonious act! Raithe wonderfully gave each different set of us our due accolades, even if he did rib me for the Captain distraction being “almost long enough.” Look, I had handed her over to Gaya as instructed! (And, of course, she’s not meant to stay distracted actually long enough, because that other scene has to play out.)
Gaya joined us, and the Hayananeya stone was restored to her. Gaya then gave a really wonderful speech about what that stone means to her people — and this is a place where it’s incredibly important that Gaya is always played by a woman of color. The story of Ryloth is one of colonization, occupation, and enslavement, so when she speaks about standing up to oppressive powers, about not losing faith in yourself and your people even in the darkest times… it has a special resonance.
Raithe is adorably earnest throughout all of this, showcasing more wonderful talent from that performer — being able to switch from the rapid-fire, devil-may-care attitude to that total heart is a real skill. We were all declared to be members of Gaya’s crew, Gaya’s Singing Stones. (And we got a datapad achievement icon to prove it!)
4:55pm: Raithe followed up with a datapad message, telling us not to miss Gaya’s acoustic set in the Atrium later that evening. As if we would!
5:00pm-ish: Noah had a secret meeting in Engineering with Lenka. I did not have this one (and would later figure out it was because I already had the Saja meeting scheduled for a little later, and those things appear to be experientially if not temporally mutually exclusive, as part of how they engineer everyone getting something cool and small-group like that). I tagged along just to see if they’d slip me in, since I had also been helping Lenka. The blueshirt started to be very apologetic about saying no, but I waved her off. “I understand completely. We all have our own roles to play. Ignite the spark.”
As it turned out, they could have slipped me in, because as Noah told me later, someone else didn’t show up and they were one station short, which made their task a bit hectic — but instead, I had an incredible moment of serendipity.
I wandered over to the climate simulator to just take a few minutes of a breather. At least, that’s what I thought I’d be doing. I was sitting there alone, arranging rocks, when the door opened and a bunch of people started streaming in, ushered by Saja Kyr.
I realized this was probably another small-group meeting, and thus I should not be there, so I stood and made for the door to absent myself — but Kyr stopped me. “No. I can trust you. Stay with us.” Which felt really nice to hear! So, I did.
And that’s how I ended up accompanying her and the rest of the group to the transport bay to welcome Rey on board. I am guessing that’s what was happening with whoever had Bridge training or a Bridge event at that time — and was possibly also connected to what Noah was doing in Engineering? At any rate, it was… really pretty cool to just stumble into that.
Rey is a character who is definitely more there for the kids than the adults, and the kids in our group adored her. They were so eager to tell her All The Things that had happened! When she looked me dead in the eye, though, I did take the opportunity to tell her that Croy seemed really needy and desperate for approval.
5:15pm? ish?: And then, the First Order took full and complete control of the ship.
This was probably my favorite moment of atmospheric work in the entire experience, and I’ll talk more about it in my analysis post. I don’t know if it would’ve been as noticeable if I’d been elsewhere, but back in the transport bay, the ship’s engines are really very loud, this constant humming in the background. You stop noticing them, just white noise… until they’re not there anymore.
When that power cut out, everyone in that corridor looked at each other with expressions of total horror, and poor Saja Kyr seemed about to panic. We realized we couldn’t just keep hanging out in this transport bay. Rey had with her a piece of a … honestly, I forget what it was called, she had a MacGuffin. She needed to put it together with another MacGuffin from the ship (I think Sammie’s plot revolved around this? But I never interacted with that line at all!).
So we had to get her over to, I think, Engineering. We moved with her out of the transport bay, only to run into some stormtroopers! Eek! But, lol, no worries. Rey just used the Force on them and made them forget seeing her. As she kept moving, I faded back to let the kids accompany her to Engineering. I needed to go find Noah and catch up on what was happening elsewhere!
And we’ll wrap things up in the next post!
"Noah pointed out that it’s only a felony if they catch and convict you." Excellent energy to bring to any situation of this kind.
I must say, while the acting of the crew and the story-telling as a whole is very good, especially considering they have multiple lines going on at once, what I find really impressive is when they adapt it to the passengers. I am sure that for a Star Wars fan it is exciting even when you know that it is technically all the same for everyone following your path, but when Raithe gave you a job based on what he felt suited your characters and when Saja Kyr invited you to join her, I am sure that felt a whole another kind of special.