Destruction

Around 19 BBY, as the Clone Wars raged on, elements from the Believers, a Sith cult, exerted influence over the Wyrd. The Wyrd were a group of Tarasin witches who wielded the Force. The Sith cult influenced them to corrupt the ch'hala trees on the planet of Cularin, twisting them to the dark side of the Force. This scheme was foiled by Jedi Master Lanius Qel-Bertuk. The Tarasin leader, Mother Dariana, then alerted the Cularin Armed Forces, the planet's Republic military, to the Believers' involvement. Due to the Believers' allegiance with the Confederacy of Independent Systems, a Separatist faction at war with the Republic, General Osten Dal'Nay of the Cularin Armed Forces decided to investigate Dariana's claims. He began planning a mission to extract intelligence from an abandoned Separatist base situated on a planetoid within a featureless system. It was suspected that the Believers had relocated to this base. Republic scouts were dispatched to scout the system, reporting minimal enemy presence near the base.

Sith Lord Darth Sidious became aware of the planned mission and devised a scheme to exploit it for his own purposes. The Cularin Armed Forces, with limited resources, intended to assign the Vigilance, a Republic Navy light cruiser stationed in orbit of Almas in the Cularin system, to the mission. This would leave Almas vulnerable, guarded only by a single Thaereian customs ship. Sidious planned to exploit this vulnerability by dispatching his Dark Jedi subordinate, Garth Ezzar, to assault Almas and strike at the Almas Academy, a Jedi academy located there. Furthermore, the Dark Lord intended to use the mission to draw the Heroes of Cularin—a group of freelance agents operating on Cularin—away from Almas during Ezzar's attack, ostensibly to protect them. His true aim was to corrupt these agents to the dark side, transforming them into servants of the New Order he envisioned for the galaxy. He transformed the abandoned base into a trap to ensnare them. Sidious believed the agents would survive this ordeal, and that any who died would not be worthy of his recruitment.

Dal'Nay eventually formed a small task force under the command of Captain Suubrin. This force included the Vigilance, two support ships, several starfighters, a contingent of clone marines, and some engineers. To mask the true objective of intelligence gathering, the majority of the troops were led to believe their mission was simply to attack and destroy the Separatist base. This deception was reinforced by the mission's codename, "Destruction," and the task force's designation as Task Group Destruction. Palpatine secretly arranged for a high-ranking official on Coruscant to request the Heroes of Cularin's involvement in the mission, a request the CAF granted. The agents received a private briefing from Dal'Nay and General Xirossk, another Cularin Armed Forces leader, who assigned them to a specialist team tasked with infiltrating the base to recover any data of value to the Republic.

As the stage was set for the attack on Almas, Sidious authorized Ezzar to proceed to the planet and assault the Jedi academy. During his journey, Ezzar was pursued by Jedi Master Ki-Adi-Mundi. However, the Cerean Jedi experienced a vision of Almas in flames and abandoned his pursuit to rush to the Cularin system. Ezzar, however, caught up to his former pursuer and attacked the Jedi Master in the system where the abandoned base was located, inflicting injuries on the Cerean.

The task group jumped to hyperspace from the Cularin system. Arriving near the abandoned system, Garth Ezzar spotted the flotilla and fled in his starship. The Republic force soon encountered a small squadron of Believer-operated Z-95 Headhunters and droid starfighters of a type commonly used by the Separatists. Republic starfighters were dispatched to engage them. After a brief skirmish, the Separatist and Believer ships were destroyed, and the task force approached the abandoned base. Scans indicated no life signs within the facility and only a few active droids, leading Suubrin to believe the installation was deserted. Under Suubrin's orders, a team consisting of the Heroes of Cularin, four engineers, and twelve clone marines was sent to the base. The engineers and six marines went to restore power, while the freelance agents and the remaining marines headed for the command center to retrieve any accessible data.

The Vigilance detected Mundi's starfighter, and the task group moved to intercept the Jedi's craft, leaving one support ship in orbit of the base in case the landing party needed to be withdrawn. Mundi boarded the cruiser and was taken to the medical bay. The Heroes of Cularin continued through the base, passing inactive battle droids that suddenly reactivated and attacked. The agents defeated the droids and entered the command center. Once the engineers had restored power, the agents attempted to access the main computer. However, upon attempting to interface with the computer, the command center doors sealed shut, and a jamming field activated, preventing communication with the engineers. A recording by Sidious began playing from speakers in the control room, initiating a countdown. At the end of the countdown, the recording revealed the base was a trap to protect the agents and that the doors would reopen after three hours. The agents eventually escaped the command center and were taken to the Vigilance, which had returned to orbit.

Aboard the Vigilance, the Heroes of Cularin met with Suubrin in his conference room, reporting on their experiences in the base. They then spoke with Ki-Adi-Mundi, who planned to return to Coruscant and inform the Jedi Council about Ezzar. Driven by his premonitions, the Cerean urged the agents to return to Almas. They immediately departed for the Cularin system. They arrived on Almas during the attack led by Ezzar against the Almas Academy, arriving too late to save it. Ezzar's forces had reduced the academy to ruins, killing almost all of the resident Jedi.

The Destruction mission was conceived by Ronald A. Heintz and featured in the role-playing supplement Destruction, a module within the Heart of Evil trilogy of the Living Force campaign. The choices of the players, role-playing as the Heroes of Cularin, can influence the outcomes of events. When traveling to the abandoned base, the player characters can choose to travel to the deserted system aboard the Vigilance, in one of the support vessels, in their own starship, in an assigned Wayfarer-class medium transport, or in Cularin Armed Forces fighters, if the player characters are Jedi. The assigned fighters can be Z-95 Headhunters, and up to two of them can be G61 Delta Wings. The article states that no Jedi starfighters are available for use by the players, but despite this, role-playing statistics for a Delta-7 Aethersprite-class light interceptor are provided in an appendix to the article, with statistics for the other potential assigned fighters. The players can also request that the Republic supply them with equipment that could be reasonably deemed to be required for the assignment, such as medpacs, glow rods and ascension guns, and players that are formal members of the CAF can request additional weaponry.

During the combat with the Separatist fighters, the player characters can either fly starfighters, operate some of the Vigilance's bridge functions, or crew a starship of their own, if they brought one with them. After the player characters land in the base, they are assigned to travel with six clone marines, and the players don't want the clones to escort them, then they can ask the troopers to go with the team of marines and engineers that was sent to power up the base. This results in an argument ensuing between the marines and the players, and it is possible for the marines to eventually be ordered to go with the other group.

When the player characters are attacked by the reactivated battle droids, the model of the droids is dependent on the role-playing tier of the players, with lower tier players facing B1-series battle droids, medium tier players facing B2 super battle droids and higher tier players facing Droidekas. The number of the droids that attack is determined by the number of player characters and is equal to the number of player characters multiplied by two and added to six. During the encounter, any Jedi player characters are individually targeted by at least two droids. The players also have the option of contacting the marines accompanying the engineers, to request assistance with combating the droids.

When the Heroes of Cularin become trapped in the command center, it is possible for the player characters to attempt to slice into the base's main computer, to try and stop Sidious' countdown, or to try and open the doors to the command center. If their endeavor to open the doors is successful, then, then they can make their way to the base's main doors and have to repeat the process that they used to get the first set of doors open. However, if the players fail at two attempts to open either set of doors, then that door will become jammed, and can not be opened for at least an hour. If the players fail at trying to stop the countdown, or do not try to stop it, then when it ends, nothing harmful happens to them, and a holographic recording of Sidious appears. If the players stop the countdown then afterward, a slicer discovers the recording and the players activate it. Alternately, if the player characters leave the base before the countdown ends, the a Republic engineer's sensors detect the activation of a holoprojector when the recording plays, and it is possible for the player characters to reenter the base, to investigate the device's power up. After about 30 to 40 minutes have passed, if the players have still not freed themselves from the command center, then they are released by the engineers in the other team that landed in the base, or by another team that is sent down from the Vigilance.

There is a discrepancy in Destruction concerning the starfighters engaged by the Republic task group upon arriving in the deserted system. The adventure's narrative section identifies them as droid fighters and indicates that role-playing statistics for these vessels are in one scenario's appendixes. However, the relevant appendix only contains statistics for Believer-operated Z-95 Headhunters, not droid fighters. Therefore, this article assumes the starfighter force comprised both droid starfighters and Z-95 Headhunters.