Captivity

Captivity was a small moon located in the Grehollo system, a part of the Manoe sector in the New Territories portion of the Mid Rim. A permanent layer of thick and swirling clouds and mist covered Captivity, and the moon's weather conditions were violent with frequent raging storms and occasional rain. The winds were cold, loud, and abrasive, and they carried grit with them. From the moon's surface, the sky featured streaks of blue and brown, and shades of gray, and the daylight on Captivity was gray in color.

Shifting magnetic storms ravaged Captivity's surface, which was highly irregular and battered and featured cliffs and other jagged formations of rock and towering mountain peaks. The magnetic storms made starship instruments unreliable, and the atmospheric and surface conditions on the moon greatly increased the difficulty of landing a ship there.

Since the time the Rebel Alliance was still in its infancy, the Galactic Empire used Captivity to exile prisoners who for various reasons could not be executed, such as Imperial senators. The hostile conditions of the moon, coupled with frequent TIE fighter patrols from the nearby Grehollo station, made Captivity an ideal prison, with starship pilots unwilling to risk landing there in order to mount a rescue of prisoners.

During the Galactic Civil War, the Rebel Alliance began to suspect that many political prisoners vital to the Rebel cause, including senators and important Rebel sympathizers, were exiled on Captivity. Determining that the mountain peak known as Borolol's Claw could be used to land a rescue ship, the freighter Millennium Falcon, on Captivity, the Alliance nevertheless judged such an attempt to be dangerous enough to only risk it once. Therefore, the small team of Rebel soldiers tasked with locating and rallying the prisoners would have to find another way onto Captivity.

Upon learning that the Empire was preparing to supplant the Rajah and the Royal Court of the Inner Rim planet Virujansi with Imperial officials, the Alliance suspected that the Empire would either execute the Rajah, keep him under house arrest, or exile him to Captivity. The Rajah and his advisors were then secretly moved to a Rebel safeworld, and the Rebel team impersonated the Rajah and the Royal Court at the Palace of Splendid Harmony on Virujansi during the Imperial takeover.

The Rebel team then convinced Major Lariss, the leader of the Imperial operation, to exile them to Captivity. The disguised operatives were subsequently transported to Captivity and jettisoned over the moon in a drop pod. The Rebels then reprogrammed their pod controller, which allowed them to achieve a safe landing on the moon's surface.

Upon emerging from the pod, the Rebel team came under an attack by a gang of violent prisoners. The team was then lured into a seemingly safe cave by Andews Rolo—another prisoner who, unknown to the Rebels, was the leader of the gang. Rolo pretended to be the leader of a small group of political prisoners in order to deceive the Rebel agents into revealing their identities. The criminal then ordered his gang to capture the team.

Eventually, the Rebel soldiers made their way to the camp of the group of political prisoners led by the former Imperial Navy captain Dedelin. The Rebels then retrieved their drop pod and used it to transport all of the camp's equipment to the top of Borolol's Claw as the exiles made their way up to the mountain's summit, with the storm reaching its full fury in the meantime.

Upon reaching the top of the mountain, however, the Rebel team realized that the storm was milder than predicted, and as a result the peak had not been cleared of clouds and mist. Since the Millennium Falcon, which by that time had arrived and was being pursued by a group of TIE/rc starfighters, could therefore not locate the prisoners, the Rebels created a signaling device by using one of the power generators from Dedelin's camp. Several of the TIE fighters also noticed the signal and attacked the group on Borolol's Claw. Eventually, the Rebel team and the Falcon succeeded in driving the fighters away. Captain Han Solo and co-pilot Chewbacca of the freighter transported both the soldiers and the prisoners off Captivity, evading further Imperial starships and leaving the Grehollo system.

Captivity was populated by Imperial prisoners, several of them Human, who were dropped on the moon's surface in escape pods. The pods were intentionally programmed to engage their braking jets at the last possible moment of the landing. Thus, it was assured that the pods would be damaged upon landing and would be unable to be used for leaving Captivity.

One of the criminals exiled on Captivity was Andews Rolo. The former leader of the Spectrader Ring gang, Rolo was left alive so that an Imperial Grand Moff could use the threat of the former's return to ensure the obedience of the new leaders of Rolo's gang. On Captivity, Rolo organized other exiled criminals into a brutal gang that eventually exterminated all other groups of prisoners on the moon—with the exception of that led by Captain Dedelin. Since Rolo had eliminated all the other parties on Captivity, defeating Dedelin's group became an obsession for the criminal.

The disillusioned, formerly highly popular Captain Dedelin led a group of thirty-three political prisoners. The group was smaller in numbers than the gang led by Andews Rolo but had the advantage in skills and leadership. Dedelin's group included several senators, of which only two, Farazzish and Templeton, remained alive by the time of the Galactic Civil War.

When the Rebel team tasked with rescuing the prisoners of Captivity arrived on the moon, their drop pod landed at the edge of a cliff. A number of caves had been worn into a lower section of the cliff. The criminal Andews Rolo used one of the caves in order to deceive the newly arrived Rebels into revealing their identities. The cavern was dimly illuminated by torches and was poorly ventilated, with stinging smoke perpetually hanging in the air. Possessions lying in the cave were bundled together in order to indicate their ownership and to mark specific sections of the cave.

A slippery, gently-downward-sloping side passage led from one of the caves to a natural chamber with a low ceiling. A rapid underground river flowed through a notch it had eroded in the cave's floor. Twisting through dark and irregular passages, the river finally slowed and exited into a basin of gravel.

The camp of the group led by Dedelin was located less than twenty meters from the exit of the underground river. The encampment could also be reached aboveground from the territory of Rolo's gang by walking along a defile. The camp consisted of well-kept huts that had been painstakingly built from rock, mortar, and a type of wood known as edgelwood. All the tools and equipment in the camp had been either scavenged or made from wreckage of the prisoners' drop pods. The huts were surrounded by a hand-extruded, powered wire fence, with the perimeter of the camp being patrolled by two old guards. The territory of the camp also included several fields used for agriculture.

Captivity was the site of the mountain peak known as Borolol's Claw. It was frequently situated in a funnel-shaped, low-pressure center of a storm. Usually, the "eye" of such storms briefly penetrated the moon's cloud cover, allowing a risky landing attempt atop the mountain.

Captivity appeared in "To Free the Forgotten," a roleplaying game adventure published in the 1989 The Star Wars Rules Companion for use with West End Games' Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game. The adventure was written by Greg Gorden, who developed it from a story by Steve Gilbert and Michael Stern.

"Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, How I Wonder Where We Are," a 1990 roleplaying game source article published in Voyages SF 13, placed the Grehollo system in a sector of the same name. Since the article was released outside of the Lucas Licensing process, its canonicity within the Star Wars Legends continuity was never confirmed, and the StarWars.com Online Companion to the 2009 reference book The Essential Atlas instead placed the Grehollo system, and therefore Captivity, in grid square K-7 as part of the Manoe sector.

In "To Free the Forgotten," if the player-characters have successfully gotten themselves exiled to Captivity, the amount of the equipment they are able to evacuate from Dedelin's camp depends on whether they have previously landed their drop pod without damaging it. If they have not, their and the prisoners' ability to carry their possessions is limited, and the creation of a signaling device atop Borolol's Claw and the defense against the Imperial TIE fighters is more difficult.

In addition, the adventure presents the game-master player with several scenarios for how events can unfold following the Rebels' encounter with Andews Rolo. If, facing capture by Rolo's gang, the player-characters lie about their identities, the criminal makes a Rebel brawl with one of his underlings, Volq, in a duel ring. The outcome of the duel depends on whether the player-characters cheat during the fight or not.

If the Rebels prevail in the fight without cheating, Rolo decides to get rid of the potential threat to his reign and deceives the Rebels into going to an underground river. Rolo claims that, as a reward for their victory, his gang will let the Rebels retrieve several valuable items from their "treasure vault," which supposedly can only be accessed via the river. In reality, the player-characters are simply carried by the fierce current of the river out of the caves and to the vicinity of Dedelin's camp, where they face the difficult challenge of convincing the camp's guards that they indeed represent the Rebel Alliance.

If the Rebel team does not cheat and loses the fight against Volq, or does not lie in the first place, Rolo's gang surrounds the soldiers. If the Rebels proceed to fight their way out of the gang's cave, they encounter one of the patrols of Dedelin's group and are taken to its camp. Upon surrendering or being defeated by Rolo's underlings, however, the Rebel soldiers are taken prisoner and Rolo attempts to ransom them with Dedelin's group in exchange for a power generator. Subsequently, a fight between the two groups of prisoners breaks out, after which the victorious Dedelin takes the player-characters to his camp.

In the case where the Rebel team cheats during the fight, regardless of the outcome, Rolo accepts the soldiers in his gang and takes them on a raid on Dedelin's group. While underway, Dedelin leads an ambush on the criminals, which can result in a victory for either party, after which the former Imperial captain and the player-characters travel to the former's camp. This article assumes the events of the adventure play out as described.