Starkiller

The Starkiller was a Frommon longhaul all-purpose transport, which was among the earliest freighter models capable of hyperspace jumps during the early years of the Galactic Republic. This starship, designed to be a transport and measuring thirty meters in length, was intended to be operated by a crew of two. Its design featured a narrowing shape towards the bow, and the stern housed two engine pods, each containing a single ion coil sublight engine. The ship's name, Starkiller, was displayed in red letters along its side. It also included a deflector shield generator, a nav computer, and a life support system that provided a breathable atmosphere.

The cargo hold of the Starkiller, capable of holding one hundred metric tons of cargo, was located between the two engine pods. A lift at the rear of the hold allowed for cargo loading and unloading, but a security lock prevented its use while the ship was in space. Inside the hold, four grav-nets were used to secure crates. A secret compartment was located beneath the floor of the hold. The engine room, which housed the hyperdrive access panel, was located amidships, ahead of the cargo hold. The Starkiller used a Class 4 hyperdrive and lacked a backup drive.

The bridge of the Starkiller was situated at the front of the ship. It featured a viewport and two chairs in front of the bridge control console. The firing computer for the Starkiller's laser cannon turret could be connected to the console. Access to the ship's computer banks was also available, but unauthorized attempts at slicing into the system triggered a trap: a blast door sealed the bridge off, and ventilation ducts began removing oxygen from the room. The autopilot could be engaged from the bridge. Also, unauthorized tampering with a computer terminal elsewhere on the ship, or bypassing the security lock of the inner airlock hatch, triggered an alarm in the bridge.

Although the Starkiller was not designed to carry passengers, it featured a lounge located behind the bridge. This room was furnished with a table and two com-form chairs. It also had a viewport, red emergency lighting, and a holoprojection disc in the center of the room. The controls for the holoprojector were integrated into the lounge's furnishings. When activated, the device projected a hologram of a black creature with membranous wings and a mouth filled with [fangs](/article/tooth-legends] that dripped venom. The hologram initially emitted a loud screech before rising from the floor, spreading its wings, and looming over whoever was watching.

The Starkiller's head, located in the outer corner of the lounge adjacent to the bridge, contained washing and basic waste-disposal facilities. It included a toilet, opposite which was a vidscreen and a medpack hanging beside it. The vidscreen was programmed with periodic files for reading. The ship's small airlock was located at the other outer corner of the lounge, consisting of an outer hatch, an inner hatch, and the airlock itself, which was bare except for a security lock next to the inner hatch. The inner aft corner of the lounge contained what appeared to be a standard storage locker. An emergency space suit hung in the back of the room, and two boxes containing miscellaneous junk were on the floor. A hidden hatch in the ceiling concealed a retractable ladder leading to the firing seat of the Starkiller's laser turret.

Adjacent to the lounge was the Starkiller's galley, stocked with everything necessary for food storage and preparation, including an autochef. The ship carried enough consumables for two months. Located behind the galley, the captain's quarters included a bed, a chair, and a desk. A computer terminal providing access to the ship's computer system was mounted on the desk. A storage cubicle in the aft wall of the room housed a suit of bounty hunter armor, a force pike, and a heavy blaster pistol.

At some point, the upper hull of the Starkiller was modified, and the ship was officially listed as having no weapons, despite the presence of the laser cannon. During the starship's twenty millennia–long journey at sublight speed, it became heavily outdated, with its ion coil engines being primitive by the standards of the Galactic Civil War.

The Starkiller also became battered over its long journey, with its name becoming barely legible by the time of its encounter during the Galactic Civil War. A collision with a meteor had dented and jammed the outer hatch of the ship's airlock. The air inside the vessel had become stale, and a thick layer of dust covered everything in the lounge, obscuring the holoprojector. The emergency lighting in the lounge had also activated, and the autochef in the galley had malfunctioned.

The bounty hunter Leshy Drobo owned the Starkiller before 20,000 BBY. By that date, Drobo and his partner, the XT labor droid that became an assassin droid, XT-8, captured Roni von Wasaki, a Jedi Knight for whom a crime boss had offered a bounty of one hundred thousand credits. The pair of bounty hunters then froze the Jedi in carbonite to deliver him to the crime lord. Drobo took Wasaki's lightsabers and stored them in the storage cubicle of the Starkiller's captain's quarters. The ship, carrying the frozen Jedi hidden in a secret compartment and fifty crates of useless junk disguised as repulsorlift parts in its cargo hold, then set off to deliver the bounty.

After capturing Wasaki, Drobo recorded the event in his personal log, stored in the Starkiller's computer system. By this time, Wasaki, who had retained his mental abilities and use of the Force while frozen, began to telepathically influence Drobo to free him from the carbonite. Shortly after the Starkiller entered hyperspace, Wasaki successfully implanted a suggestion in Drobo's mind, prompting the bounty hunter to act. However, XT-8 discovered its partner's intentions and confronted Drobo in the ship's engine room. During the confrontation, the assassin droid fired its built-in submachinegun at Drobo. Drobo was killed by the bullets, but the hyperdrive access panel was also damaged by XT-8's attack. This damage caused the ship to revert to realspace.

Since XT-8 was unable to repair the Starkiller, it continued the journey at sublight speed, turning a trip that would have taken thirty days into a twenty-thousand year odyssey. Over time, the assassin droid's mission to deliver the Starkiller's cargo at all costs became ingrained in its memory circuits, and by the Galactic Civil War, most of the ship's power was dedicated to its sublight engines.

Meanwhile, Wasaki, kept alive by his carbonite imprisonment, continued to reach out through the Force for someone to liberate him. The constant loneliness, frightening dreams, and extreme sensory deprivation eventually drove the Jedi insane. Over the millennia, failed Jedi and drunken spacers occasionally claimed to have encountered the Starkiller, leading to rumors that it was a pirate vessel. The rumor claimed that the Starkiller had depressurized during a raid, killing its crew, who remained connected to the physical world. However, knowledge of the ship's name, model, and the real owner's occupation was also preserved.

During the Galactic Civil War, another starship traveling through hyperspace unexpectedly dropped into realspace near the Starkiller. The Starkiller, not attempting to communicate, was on a collision course with the newly arrived vessel, and the ship's astrogator pointed it out to the crew through the cockpit viewport.

A crew member familiar with ancient criminal history identified the vessel and shared some of its history, and another spacer noticed the modified upper hull. The group's starship's sensors detected no life-forms aboard the Starkiller and indicated that its power was rerouted to its engines. A Force-sensitive member of the group also failed to detect any living beings, although Wasaki finally established a faint and incoherent telepathic contact with one of the crew members.

When the starship approached the Starkiller for boarding, the Starkiller opened fire and attempted to escape. After a chase that resulted in severe damage to the Starkiller, its engines shut down, and the ancient vessel appeared dead in space. XT-8, at the bridge control console, began striking the viewport to shatter it and expose the would-be boarders to the vacuum of space. The pilot of the other starship then pulled alongside the Starkiller and attached a landing claw, allowing the crew to enter the drifting freighter through its airlock.

Once aboard the Starkiller, the explorers accidentally activated the hologram in the lounge, prompting one of them to fire at the insubstantial image, damaging the room. The boarding party also discovered the hidden ladder to the laser turret. Upon entering the bridge, they were immediately attacked by XT-8, who attempted to force the battle into the lounge to minimize the risk of damaging the ship's functionality. The group eventually defeated the droid and accessed Drobo's personal log and the shipping manifest from the ship's computer system via the bridge control console, triggering a built-in trap that they eventually escaped.

During their exploration, the group repaired the damaged hyperdrive and discovered the secret compartment in the cargo hold containing Wasaki's frozen body. After de-carbonizing the twenty-thousand-year-old Jedi, both the explorers and Wasaki left the Starkiller aboard the group's starship.

The bounty hunter Leshy Drobo privately owned the Starkiller. To conceal his illegal activities, Drobo maintained a cover as a wealthy merchant who ran a freight-hauling business. Drobo partnered with the droid XT-8 and an individual named Gammid, who Drobo considered incompetent and who died during the capture of Roni von Wasaki. After XT-8 killed Drobo during a dispute over releasing Wasaki from his carbonite prison, the assassin droid became the sole surviving crew member of the Starkiller. The droid spent time on the ship's bridge, controlling its flight and weapons systems and monitoring the alarm system.

The Starkiller was the primary setting for "Disturbance in the Force," a roleplaying mini-adventure written by Chris Hind as a supplement for West End Games' Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game, illustrated by Paul Daly, and published in Challenge 66 in November 1992. Besides the ship's deckplan, "Disturbance in the Force" included another illustration that showed two different vessels, but the adventure did not specify which, if either, corresponded to the Starkiller.

"Disturbance in the Force" suggests the Starkiller's airlock as the most probable entry point for the player characters, but it also notes that the characters could create an entrance anywhere on the ship's outer hull using explosives, a lightsaber, or a fusion cutter. Damaging the engine pods in this way is described as potentially "messy." Additionally, if the players fail to find the secret compartment containing the frozen Jedi in the cargo hold, the adventure suggests that one of the characters may receive a telepathic suggestion from the prisoner to aid in the search.

During the events of "Disturbance in the Force," the player characters disable the Starkiller. The adventure also notes that "if" this occurs, XT-8 will attempt to shatter the bridge viewport to expose the approaching boarders to the vacuum of space. However, there is an apparent contradiction, as the adventure also states that XT-8 abandons the bridge to search for the characters if they trigger an alarm by slicing into a computer terminal or the security lock of a hatch. This article assumes the scenario plays out as described.