| |
|
Storm, Modified Hapan M'ytil Starfighter . . Okay, so it’s a tad large. I believe the craft actually measures either 3m or 9m in the Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels. I doubt the exact measurements are given in the Courtship of Princess Leia, but I may be incorrect on that count. In any case, my model is twenty-six studs long. The ship is a single-seater with a experimental R2series 5 astromech droid in a somewhat cramped socket anterior to the four Incom Corp. engines. As the name suggests, this ship is a modified version of the stock Hapan My’til starfighter, which is usually carried onboard their double-saucer shaped star cruisers called Battle Dragons. Though it is a miniscule ship, approximately the size of an A-wing I believe, Storm is packed with miniaturized weapons, hyperdrive, sensor jammers, and even a spa. Okay, I suppose it doesn’t have a built in spa, there wasn’t room next to the entertainment center. As I was saying, she has a pair of ion cannons mounted on the wingtips, a trio of laser cannons on the nose beside the jammers, a mini concussion missile launcher beneath the nose (not present in my model for obvious reasons), and a pair of thermal detonator bombing chutes mounted on the tops of the wings. All of this can be seen in the lovely schematic below.
SPOILERS FOR THE PLOT OF COURTSHIP OF PRINCESS LEIA! A LOT of them.
Now for the narrative to tell you who on earth this little ship belongs to.
The Hapes Consortation is a matriarchy of sixty-three planets located in a cluster by the same name and surrounded by a nebula known as the Transitory Mists. In addition to being excessively wealthy, cultured, attractive, and well defended, the Hapan nobles are some of the most ruthless and treacherous beings in the Galaxy. Not the least of whom is the queen mother, Ta Chume as of circa 7 A.B.Y. Ta Chume had her eldest son and his wife assassinated because she found them unfit for the throne and also killed her other son, Isolder’s, betrothed for similar reasons.
The Hapans keep to themselves for the most part, like rich chaps locked up in their mansions, but that started to change when Counselor Leia Organa arrived on a diplomacy mission to bring the Consortation into the New Republic. Isolder saw the princess and immediately made plans to propose to her, arriving at Courscant several weeks later with a fortune in gifts and sixty-three battle dragons. Han, fresh back from battling the Imp Warlord Zisnj, was in no mood for blondy to propose to his lady, to say the least. As for Leia, well, an alliance with the Hapans (which would be impossible if she refused) would give the new government the clout it needed to finish the Imperial Remnant and add several tech upgrades to the New Republic’s arsenal. If that weren’t enough, Isolder was charming, heroic, and good-looking. In short, the sci-fi prince charming vs. Han Solo. Man I pity the Hapan! Intent on winning Leia’s favor, Han entered undoubtedly the highest stakes Sabaac game in his gambling career and won the deed to a planet. He intended to give it to Leia and the other misplaced Alderaanian refugees, it was a lovely world after all, but a certain Warlord Zisnj controlled it, making colonization futile. In desperation, Han played his trump card: he kidnapped Leia, grabbed C-3PO and Chewie and blasted off for his new world, a planet called Dathomir in the hopes that Leia would change her mind on the ‘romantic’ trip. Once they arrived, they found Zisnj and his Supper Star Destroyer, Iron Fist in orbit making repairs. After a somewhat hurried landing in a dense evergreen forest, Han and Leia ran into some stormies and an AT-ST. dire straits indeed when what should come crashing through the trees? (I’ll give you a hint, it’s not Chewie) It was several Rancors complete with local riders. Said riders were part of the Singing Mountain Clan, one of Dathomir’s many clans of Force-sensitive, Amazon-esche, ‘witches’. Said witches were founded by an exiled Jedi centuries ago, but let’s not get into that right now. Point being, they had elementary and archaic mastery of the Force and hated the Imperials who had been aiding their foes, the Nightsisters, since before Palpatine’s end a few years back.
Meanwhile, on Courscant, Luke and Isolder had decided to head to Dathomir and retrieve Leia, totally unaware that they would be up against an SSD and it’s flock of smaller craft. They emerged from hyperspace, assessed the situation and scrambled fighters to make a show battle while Luke in his X-wing and Isolder in Storm flew through the mayhem, took out a few ships, and faked death so as to crash on Dathomir. The plan worked well, both blondes and Artoo found themselves, ships demolished, in the middle of the rugged worlds wilderness with few days of provisions and zero knowledge of the planets current events. They eventually ran-a’foul of a certain young witch named Teniel Djo who captured both the prince, and the enigmatic ‘male witch’. (Luke. You see, Dathomiri consider males, like myself, inferior, and thus incapable of using the ‘magic’) Now, since Luke was such a rare catch, Teniel figured she would marry him, as was legal on Dathomir, but that fell-through when Luke saved her life from a certain Nightsister. Now the poor young woman was stuck with the gorgeous billionaire, who wasn’t too thrilled with the prospect of marrying her anyway.
As it turned out, Leia had made great friends with Teniel’s clan, the same who had saved them from the Imps, and the witches had used their domesticated Rancors to bring the Falcon all the way to their mountain fortress. Their were approximately two problems, however. First, the Falcon couldn’t fly without repairs that required certain parts on a world with stone-age technology. And Second, the parts they needed were in the former Imp prison, owned by the Nightsisters, who needed a starship to go conquer the Galaxy with after Palpy’s troops had destroyed every ship on the planet. Let’s just say they went in, got the parts, repelled a Nightsister attack on the Singing Mountain Clan’s town, and got all parts operable and ready to fly, then the sky went black. No natural darkness was this, but a specialized network of satellites that blocked solar rays from the planet. No sun, no plants, no animals, no humans, no life but lots of ice. Zisnj had deployed his orbital nightcloak and offered the Nightsisters an ultimatum: capture my enemy Solo and I’ll send two shuttles, one for you without weapons and one with weapons and stormies to take Solo back to me or freeze with the rest of your planet. Thinking he could use this to destroy the Nightsisters, Han Solo put a thermal detonator in his pocket and went off to turn himself in. Things backfired when the darksiders killed both shuttle crews, disarmed the grenade, and started amusing themselves by slowly breaking every bone in Solo’s body. They only shattered a few teeth before the Millennium Falcon blasted into view, piloted exclusively by Luke with the rest of the gang on board. The Nightsisters made a run for space while they got Han aboard and flew up into a massive battle between the Hapan rescue fleets and Zisnj’s starfleet.
Han took the controls and flew like a madman through the chaos, making a direct assault on an Imperial Supper Star Destroyer. He opened a link to Zisnj, the man he had spent months pursuing, to deliver one final message: “Kiss my Wookie!” Zisnj’s brigde shields were down and it was the work of an instant to unload the Falcon’s considerable payload of concussion missiles right into the warlords shocked face. With that the battle was won, the satellites were shot down, Han gave the Dathomiri legal ownership of their planet, and they all sat down for a big victory dinner. Isolder, against his evil mother’s wishes, decided to take Teniel as his queen and Han and Leia had a nice wedding onCourscant. Poor Luke was left, once again, without a wife. Well, at least until a certain assassin….The End.
Leave a review. I insist.
|
