Every campaign needs a place for weary adventurers to sit down for a while, enjoy a drink, and maybe find some new work, and that’s no different a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Looking for a cantina for your spacers to visit that’s not on that dust-ball called Tatooine? Need some staff and patrons to interact with? Hooks to kick off your next adventure? Then fire up your hyperdrive and make the jump: we’re heading to the Smuggler’s Moon of Nar Shaddaa to grab a drink and some work at the curiously-themed cantina known as The Astrogation Glitch!

I’ve kept things system-agnostic, here. Whether you’re using the Narrative Dice System like the crew of the Borrowed Time, the original d6 system, Saga Edition, whatever – everything you find here should be useful. You’ll have to do some mechanical work of your own, of course, but in terms of character and story you should be off to a good start.

Alright, we’re here, let’s go on in and see what’s up . . .

The Astrogation Glitch

Often referred to simply as ‘The Glitch’, the Astrogation Glitch is a cantina and eatery located in the upper levels of one of Nar Shaddaa’s towers, usually catering to spacers. It gets its name from the artwork: a rather large series of paintings and holograms depicting a wide variety of all the disasters that could befall a ship traveling through hyperspace, many of them taken from old stories and real-life accounts. Some find it a bit on the ghoulish side, but most of the clientele find it darkly amusing. The entire space is rather garishly lit, making the walls uncovered by art look like hyperspace on the fritz.

It’s a higher-end establishment than most spacer dives, but the Glitch is still on Nar Shaddaa; one spacer once described it as ‘Chalmun’s but with better lighting’. Violence isn’t met with a shrug, but neither is it entirely condemned, nor will repeat offenders be allowed back in just because they tip the bartender.

Staff

Quorsil – Owner and Bartender

Species: Givin

Description: An average-looking skeletal Givin, usually seen in rather drab-looking grey robes – that sentients who can see in the ultraviolet spectrum assure others is as garish as the Glitch’s lighting.

Profile: Quorsil is not your friendly neighborhood bartender by any means. They don’t want to hear about your problems, they don’t want to offer advice, and they don’t care to distribute information – they’ll point you towards one or more of the patrons if you ask. Quorsil wants to serve drinks, take credits, and get on with life.

However, if one was to approach Quorsil with a mathematical question or a story of astronavigation gone entirely wrong, one would find them much more interested, even personable. Do that enough times and they might reveal that they were kicked off of Yag’Dhul by the Body Calculus for their radical theories about hyperspace and the difficulty of traveling into the Unknown Regions, hence winding up on Nar Shaddaa running a cantina.

Hooks

• Quorsil has heard of a painting of the destruction of the Red Empress, a luxury yacht that supposedly had the bad fortune to jump right between two black holes and get devoured by both of them. They want to add it to their collection, and are willing to pay well for it . . . but it is currently owned by a member of Black Sun.
• Quorsil wants to show the Body Calculus – show them all, the fools! – that their calculations to travel through hyperspace deep into the Unknown Regions are correct – but they don’t have a ship of their own or a crew to do it with. They’ll offer to pay the party whatever price – perhaps even ownership of the Astrogation Glitch – if they agree to try and make the journey, but they’re called the Unknown Regions for more than one reason . . .

Dundruff – Bouncer

Species: Gigoran

Description: A black-skinned furry giant, usually seen looming quietly near the Glitch’s entrance, although sometimes he can be spotted behind the bar. Wearing the typical translating vocoder required for Gigorans to speak Basic, Dundruff is otherwise unadorned – his sheer strength usually does the trick in his line of work, and if not he has Quorsil’s permission to throw a table at someone.

Profile: How Dundruff found his way to Nar Shaddaa – and found his way there free, at that – he won’t say, but he’s as much of a fixture at the Glitch as the art. When violence does break out, and Quorsil gives the nod, Dundruff is the one to end it. More often than not he manages to do so just by looming menacingly, but patrons have still coined the phrase ‘got Dundruffed’ to describe those who have been bodily hurled from the premises.

By and large he keeps himself to himself, but others have noticed that he takes notice when word of the slave trade comes up. Still others have noticed the tendency of slavers to get ‘Dundruffed’ at the slightest provocation, sometimes for clearly fabricated reasons. That has caused some tension between the Glitch and slavers (and their patrons), but the Glitch’s regulars have Dundruff’s back; the one time a group tried to deliberately start something it didn’t end well for them.

Hooks

• A relatively small-time Hutt has taken an interest in ‘acquiring’ the Glitch, and their agents have become increasingly insistent. Dundruff becomes worried that he won’t be able to handle all of them, and approaches the party for assistance. Showing the thugs the door won’t be too hard, but will the Hutt continue to take no for an answer, or will they escalate the situation?
• Dundruff gets words of a group of Gigoran slaves being moved through the Nal Hutta system – and his long-lost family is among them. Roused from his quiet guardianship of the Glitch, Dundruff asks for help in freeing his kin. The Zygerrians probably won’t know what hit them, but only if they actually get hit: Dundruff’s family will only be on Nar Shaddaa for two days . . .

Notable Patrons

Thriask Fey’lya – “Arms Dealer”

Species: Bothan

Description: A light-furred being wearing typical enough spacer’s clothes, with the one notable piece being a bantha-hide jacket that looks like it saw both ends of the rancor. A quick-draw blaster is in a holster on his thigh, and he’s usually sharing a table with one of his crew – an Aqualish, Squib, Sullustan, and Human.

Profile: Thriask Fey’lya – “No relation”, he’ll say – is an arms dealer with a small but profitable business moving weapons from source to buyer. Essentially he’s part smuggler, part broker, part thief, and part mercenary – whatever it takes to get the goods in the first place and then sell them, he’ll do. He has a ship and a small crew of his own, but he also often contracts with other crews to handle his oversized workload – or to avoid having every piece of his business associated too closely with himself. While he moves around a bit, he does have a usual table at the Glitch, where he can put his back to a wall and watch both the main entrance and the door to the kitchen.

That’s what the underworld knows him as. Actually, he’s Commander Thriask Fey’lya – still “No relation” – of Alliance Special Operations, and all of his efforts are meant to help support the rebellion. While many of his jobs are actually ‘legitimate’, in that he is actually buying and selling weapons to ‘fellow’ criminals, it’s essentially all a front. Many of the weapons he buys or steals end up in the hands of Alliance troopers or aboard Alliance ships, and what would usually be his actual profit on the ‘legit’ jobs either turns into more Rebel weapons or is directly funneled back to the rebellion.

Alliance Command had concerns when the Commander approached them with the idea, as it seemed ripe for corruption, but so far those concerns have been unfounded; Thriask has kept well clear of the truly rotten parts of the underworld, and hasn’t kept a decicred for himself. However, he knows this dance in the shadows can’t last forever, so he actually is stockpiling a few weapons for himself, in the hope that he can gather enough trustworthy crews to pull off one last big job worth bringing back to the Alliance.

Hooks

• Thriask hires the party to transport a shipment of blaster rifles and other weapons from one point to another, keeping hands-off himself. Whether it’s flying the crates from Teth to Nar Shaddaa or driving a hovertruck from one pole of the moon to another, however, the party quickly runs into Imperial complications. Thriask hired the party so none of his own people got exposed, but if the party succeeds he pays them well, offers them more work . . . and maybe a recruitment pitch for the Alliance.
• An Imperial Intelligence team has set up a front smuggling operation of its own on Nar Shaddaa, in an effort to infiltrate or smoke out Thriask’s. The Bothan has caught wind of it, however, and hires the party to ‘steal from a competitor’ by raiding the warehouse the Imperials are using, figuring that at least it’ll throw the Imps off his trail and onto the party’s. There’s definitely profitable stuff to steal, but the party finds themselves in a trap sprung by ‘smugglers’ with obvious military training . . .

Louye – Fixer

Species: Quarren

Description: An ochre-colored Quarren usually seen in a battered old duster concealing a pair of blaster pistols and a wide-brimmed hat perched on the top of his head, almost always with a drink in one hand and a datapad or a comlink in the other.

Profile: Louye is a fixer, plain and simple. He does very little of the actual heavy lifting when it comes to his line of work, but he knows people, places, and products; his talents come in bringing them together in a profitable manner and taking a fair cut for his efforts. The Astrogation Glitch practically functions as his office, and he’s usually found at the same end of the bar making comlink calls, typing in notes on his datapad, and chatting with the odd ‘walk-in’ customer.

He’s also unaffiliated, to a fervent degree. While he’ll do business with the big players if the profit is good enough he’ll never sign on to any outfit full-time, and he genuinely prefers to work with ‘the little people’. Friendlier, he says, and less likely to try and kill him or co-opt him just because they can.

Hooks

• Louye has a number of items – a suit of Mandalorian armor, six cases of Booster Blue, a tank of bacta, a hundred doses of spice, a pair of T-7 disruptor rifles, a crate of Whyren’s Reserve whiskey, a particularly grumpy assassination droid – that he has taken as payment for services rendered, and he’s looking to turn them into credits. He’d rather not do it himself, though, so he’s offering to make the party the middlemen: find buyers, negotiate prices, and arrange the transport and he’ll let you take the business – for a cut, of course.
• A weaponsmith known only as The Drall (presumably he’s the only one on Nar Shaddaa) has run into a spot of trouble, and has paid Louye to hide him and get him off of the Smuggler’s Moon. Louye approaches the party with a job to get his charge all the way home to Drall in the Corellian system, but it won’t be easy: the Empire, Alliance, and Zann Consortium all want some of The Drall’s creations.

Jae Averre – “Bounty Hunter”

Species: Human

Description: Dark-skinned, with her dyed-blonde hair in an undercut tail, she’s most often seen wearing a suit of battered laminate armor with a blaster rifle on her back. She doesn’t tend to sit down while at the Glitch, either standing at the bar or walking from table to table with her drink, free hand flipping a credit chip into the air as she asks questions.

Profile: Jae Averre is a licensed bounty hunter who has specialized in taking Imperial bounties targeting suspected or known Rebel agents, although they certainly aren’t the only prey she hunts. Her personal style involves careful preparation and information gathering; she spends a lot of time asking around and researching, always willing to spend the credits to grease the necessary palms, before going after her target; the Glitch is a favorite stop for her. She’s gained a reputation in the underworld for being professional, successful, and clean: most of her ‘alive or dead’ bounties come in alive.

In reality Jae is an agent of the Imperial Security Bureau, operating number ISB-688, using her persona as a bounty hunter to tap into intelligence sources that would otherwise be reluctant to deal with the Empire directly. Combined with more standard Imperial intelligence and resources, this gives Jae an edge both as an ISB agent and as a bounty hunter.

However, while she would never accept an actual bribe, Jae is in her own way corrupt. While she sometimes take non-Rebel bounties to maintain her cover, she has also taken several more technically illegal bounties for entities like the Hutts and Black Sun without her superiors’ knowledge, pocketing the credits for herself.

Hooks

• Jae approaches the party for help with a bounty, presenting evidence of a smuggler engaging in sentient trafficking. The smuggler and their crew are actually sympathetic to the Alliance, and are helping to get escaped prisoners and Alderaanian survivors to safety, but Jae’s evidence has been carefully doctored to appear legitimate. If the party helps and are none the wiser, she pays them well and goes on her way. If they figure it out . . .
• Jae approaches an Imperial-friendly or at least neutral party for help with a Rebel bounty who has been stealing bacta from Imperial hospitals. In reality the bounty has stolen the bacta directly from the cartels to distribute on their plague-stricken homeworld, but a Hutt they ran afoul of caught wind of it and placed a bounty – with a bonus if the Hutt gets the bacta as well.

Other Hooks

• One of the art pieces has been stolen, and Quorsil wants it back. They don’t care what happens to the thief, they just want the blank spot on the wall filled again. Turns out the thief is the former owner of the ship featured in the art, though, and they’re not happy with the Glitch using their loss as part of the decor. Can the party reach a compromise or find a replacement?
• A drunk who can always be found sitting at the other end of the bar from Louye rants about the loss of his old crew, speaking of horrors in the depths of Wild Space . . . and of the treasure he was forced to leave behind. For the right price – or enough drinks – he’ll give up the hyper routes needed to get there, but he was right: Sith-crafted monsters wait to devour anyone who tries to raid the tomb of their creator.
• Just another day in the Glitch, when someone bothered by the lighting finally snaps or someone cheats at sabaac and gets punched for it. A brawl breaks out, and Dundruff wades in, but what most don’t know is that Rebel and Imperial agents have been stalking one another here, and they take the opportunity to try and take out their opposite numbers for good.

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Some of the Glitch’s patrons are more secretive than others, though. There’s this Ithorian, always sitting in the corner, muttering about the future and dark powers . . .

Alright, we’ve had our drink and we’ve got a few leads for our next job, but Dundruff is starting to give that table of Nikto dirty looks, so it’s probably best to hit the road. Hopefully you’ve found the Astrogation Glitch an interesting place to visit. Maybe you’ll become a regular! In any case, good luck out there, and may the Force be with you.

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