Base Delta Zero

[Mr. Oragahn]

• Dankayo
  

Adventure Background

Some Rebel bases and installations have made it into the galactic news services, becoming almost shrines or memorial to the people who served there. The Dantooine base that served so well for so long; the fighter base at Yavin's Moon, where the Death Star was destroyed; these and other rumored strongholds create the legends that surround this terrible civil war.
But it is in places like Dankayo, a little-remarked planet in a little-known system, that the unsung war is waged. Dankayo, an Alliance administrative base, coordinated clandestine missions throughout no less than three separate sectors. Extensive records were kept there, of virtually every undercover agent, safehouse and Rebel contact within its sphere of activity.
This tiny, unobtrusive installation also served as the hub of Alliance Intelligence in these sectors; the central brain that kept the missions running smoothly. As good an information center it was however, Dankayo command never expected to learn everything. In fact, the base was lucky to receive the message ordering the Imperial Star Destroyers Relentless, Avenger and Devastastor to rendezvous at Dankayo and reduce the tiny base to molten slag.

3 Star Destroyers were involved.
Notice that Dankayo is a small planet. Could it be so small that very little energy would be needed to remove any form of atmosphere there might be there?
The Rebel base itself is described as unobtrusive.

Recent Events

Even before the last of its atmosphere drifted away, before the dense clouds of atomized topsoil could begin to settle, Imperial transports Elusive and Timely, as well as a complement of TIE fighters, moved in to perform "mop-up" operations and a thorough search of Dankayo's now evenly-cratered surface. What they found surprised them. The Rebel Alliance, having some warning of the impending raid, ordered the base evacuated. Not a single being, living or dead, was discovered on the planet.

This section directly follows the Adventure Background one.
"Even before the last of its atmosphere drifted away" either means that if the planet is addressed, then the SDs were still bombarding it, as it requires a continuous input of energy to lift an atmosphere off a planet.
If it was the base's atmosphere, as artificial and contained, then leaks in the structure were still letting air escape into space.
We notice the dense clouds of atomized topsoil. It is most obvious that it would be rather bizarre to speak of clouds if a planet had been thoroughly subjected to a rain of teraton shots, which would have created a wholly thick and uniform, tumultuous secondary atmosphere, which none could described as discrete clouds. It would be all one and unique thick layer of polluted particles.

There mere idea that TIEs and troops would be sent down there for any mop-up is absurd beyond words. The planet would be nothing more than a lava covered ball, with huge tidal waves of molten matter flawing back into craters, while the rest of the superhot matter would rain from the skies. Not to count the absurd overall heat and the raging storms and winds due to the newly created charged atmosphere out of the planet's own vapourized rock, turned into plasma and blasted debris... and still being bombarded.

We also understand that as massive starships are already incapable of scanning correctly through an asteroid field, no one would think about relying on TIE fighters to scan the surface of such a place. It would simply fail.

And of course, evenly cratered only means that craters are roughly equidistant, on the average. It gives no information about the distance between craters.

The Imperial commander in charge sighed resignedly and began making plans to blame the debacle on an inferior officer. He was, however, cautious enough to order a complete stripping of the planetary installation, in the slim hope that a clue would be discovered as to the location of the hole into which the fleeing Rebels had scampered.
The majority of the tast force soon departed, leaving Elusive to pick up the pieces. A wealth of datapacks were recovered, but Elusive's commander reasoned that they were probably worthless considering the Rebels had left them behind. Still, he would transport them to the Imperial Intelligence center on Coronar just in case.

How would one expect to find anything, or even wish to find anything, by looting the scrapped metals of a base as it should be nothing more than molten slag now?
All the ships would pick would be giants buckets of lava, and nothing else.
Actually, it's pretty much stupid to come to this planet with the plan to literally melt this world and the entirety of the base, before trying to find some precious documents in it.

The comedy would stop writing itself here if the Imperial had no actually recovered a mass of functional datacards.
One would easily make a parallel with some passport making it out of some craft vapourization... totally undamaged.
It is more than obvious that it should not be taken literally that the base would be entirely slagged. Not even to a high degree. It would be sufficiently damaged to get rid of any defense that would be present there -remember, the slag part was found in the order before the ships arrived, there's no saying they would know what they'd really find- and breach the outer perimeter for easier invasion.

Contrary to the commander's beliefs, however, the datapacks are not worthless. Dankayo's automatic destruct sequence, designed to destroy every last scrap of data contained in the base's memory banks in case of an attack, had failed. The seemingly useless datapacks actually contain complete, detailed information about every Rebel intelligence operation under Dankayo's control. Now that information is enroute to the Imperial Intelligence center on Coronar. Once decoded and analyzed, the Empire will use the data to hunt down and destroy the unsuspecting agents, safehouses, and contacts that help the Alliance.

Most interesting is how the Rebel base on Dankayo is actually called twice by the planet's name, which makes it even harder to claim that it was the planet which lost its atmosphere.

Read Aloud

The Empire has attacked and destroyed the Rebel base on Dankayo. Although all personnel were evacuated in time, data detailing Alliance activities in the neighboring sectors was left behind. The ruins of the base - including the important data - were picked up by the Imperial cargo ship Elusive for transport to an ISD research facility.

It is made clear, again, that what was left of the Rebel base were ruins, which were scouted and excavated to find countless datapads.
And if things were not as straight forward as some would think, consider this:

The PCs can attack Elusive immediately, or keep talking and try to move closer. If they choose to roleplay it out for a whilte without opening fire, have them a few moderate con checks. This particular officer isn't too bright, so it shouldn't be too hard to trick him. After some talking, have the officer inquire:

"Shuttle Bonderium, have you perhaps run into a convoy of fleeing Rebels running your way with their tails between their legs?"

He then proceeds to give a cheery synopsis of the failed attack on Dankayo in a chatty, one-com-officer-to-another fashion, until the Rebels are about ready to attack.

Here, the officier says that the attack on Dankayo failed.

PLAYER HANDOUT:
The Final Log of Agent ZNT-8

Transmitted from Dankayo to Alliance Com Buoy 965C shortly after the Imperial attack.

Entry 1
As instructed, I have remained behind until the last of our transports depearted safely into hyperspace. Imperial Star Destroyers have so thoroughly blasted Dankayo that I fear for my safety, even in this deep-planet survival shelter.

Entry 2
The bombardment has ceased. I have crawled up the accessway to the surface - or what is left of it. If nothing else, the Empire is generous with its overkill. I expected much of what I have observed through my macrobinoculars: Imperial stormtroopers sifting through the rubble of our defensive installations, others loading salvaged equipment into barges for transport, probably to Imperial Intelligence for analysis. What I did not expect was to see them blasting open the doors to an intact chamber in the main base!
It appears that the central base computer has not yet completed its self-destruct sequence. I will attempt to get closer and determine whether this is the case.

Entry 3
My worst fears are realized. The first Imperial barrage knocked out the power supply to the central base computer banks, and the backup power supply wasn't equal to the task of detonating all of the programmed charges. I estimate it shorted before it could destroy more than 20 percent of the computer center, certainly not enough to ensure that crucial data is kept from Imperial hands. I suppose under the cimcumstances you'd better not send my pickup boat. I've a thermal detonator or two, and a fair amount of detonite. I'm going to try to go in there and finish the job the automatics started. I'll send this off first, so you'll know if you don't hear from me again that I didn't make it. Remember, it's the Imperial transport Elusive that'll have the data if I can't stop them.

End of transmission.

• Entry 1: The Rebel agent could still find enough material around to send a deep space signal. It has argued the agent's fear is proof that the firepower of the ships could reach his bunker, but this is just exageration. Anyone would be scarred shitless, no matter how deep one would be taking refuge. The overliterally interpretation requires that the agent is thinking in purely non emotional and non instinctive ways. It's just absurd.
  Finally, there is the mere fact that with the bombardment going on at the surface, any attempt of getting out of this alive, either on the short term or long term, would be largely vain.
• Entry 2: As for the troopers, it was argued that they used lava-gear. As we see, they're just your vanilla stormtroopers, not lavatroopers. One could argue that lavatroopers are a branch of the stormtroopers and the agent wouldn't bother with such a dinstinction, but if anything, the evidence for lavatroopers is just terribly slim if nonexistent.
  Next, agent ZNT-8 actually found an accessway to the surface. How could that be possible if the base, no matter the firepower actually, and really been melted?
  Needless to say that it completely disputes that idea, and above, completely mocks the claim of high firepower used there.
  As we move on, we see that he's now on the surface and yet undetected, so he's probably hiding... under some ruins. He looking at distant stormtroopers picking up salvage and some other equipment. Obviously, the base on the surface is far from being that smoking and boiling crater some would hope us to believe in.
  Even better, he's seeing troopers destroy the doors of an intact chamber in the main base, and that while he's on the surface.
  Finally, we can wonder about the power of the explosives used there, considering that even a partial detonation of the charges didn't cause that much destruction.
• Entry 3: Pretty much confirmed in this last entry, the backup generator couldn't provide enough power to all the charges (!) and so only 20 percent of the base was destroyed. And that with the destroyers also firing left and right.
  Yet, that feable amount of damaged caused by the Imperial ships is considered to be "generous overkill" by the Rebel agent.

The Imperials have destroyed the Rebel base on Dankayo, reducing the facility to slag. Now that slag has been loaded into a transport for shipment to an Imperial research base. Buried within the wreckage are intact data banks containing the locations of every Rebel contact in this portion of the galaxy.
...

Again, another proof that "slag" is not what it seems. It's associated with "wreckage" and contained "a wealth of datapacks".

[Mike DiCenso]

Great find there, Oragahn! Where did you find a copy of the sourcebook to transcribe down the text from (Please tell me it's not an April Fools Day joke)? You just know that the Warsies will cry out that you've made it up, so it might be a good idea to have the book on hand in which to scan images of it from.

At any rate, it's interesting to find out that Dankayo is described as a "small planet". Sadly, though this confirms that it took 3 ISDs to do the job, there is nothing to indicate more precisely how long the task took.
-Mike

[Praeothmin]

As Mike said, nice find, and indeed there are a lot of conflicting information making an thorough analysis impossible.
The operative was able to go back to the surface after the attack, with no mention of survival gear or respiratory equipment, yet the atmosphere is supposed to have drifted off...
And many other like.

But, there are two interpretation mistakes you made, I think.

One, Dankayo isn't described as a "slittle planet", but rather a little-remarked planet, only meaning it wasn't noticed much.
Its actual size is never mentioned, but since there is also no mention of special gravity, lower or higher, then we can assume it is Earth-sized.

Two, the atmosphere that was "supposedly" blown off was the planet's, not the base's.
The shape of the sentence, later talking about the "evenly cratered surface" of the planet, means that the drifting atmosphere is also the planet's.

We later see how this is denied when the rebel goes to the surface without special equipment, but still, that's what the sentence meant...

[Mr. Oragahn]

But, there are two interpretation mistakes you made, I think.

One, Dankayo isn't described as a "slittle planet", but rather a little-remarked planet, only meaning it wasn't noticed much.
Its actual size is never mentioned, but since there is also no mention of special gravity, lower or higher, then we can assume it is Earth-sized.

Yes, thinking of it, I recon that it's a double word, so there's no firm data on the planet's size.

Two, the atmosphere that was "supposedly" blown off was the planet's, not the base's.
The shape of the sentence, later talking about the "evenly cratered surface" of the planet, means that the drifting atmosphere is also the planet's.

Not necessarily. The Rebel base is called Dankayo twice. If you consider that they were speaking of the base, it would mean the base's surface was evenly cratered.
Considering the description, it appears that most buildings were on the surface (since the main building could be observed from the surface, and agent ZNT-T even saw, from his position, stormtroopers getting inside an intact chamber).

The second option is that the planet is small and barely had any atmosphere, yet would still require copious amounts of energy spent to push the atmosphere away, which would be immediately replaced by the newly created atmosphere made of atomized topsoil.

On the same hand, it does mention topsoil, which is a problem.
Generally this would point to a planet with enough gravity to maintain an atmosphere and then a biosphere. However, the amount of energy needed to pull an atmosphere away from such a planet simply does not fit with the other descriptions at all.

Of course, a planet with little gravity and atmosphere would likely have very little protections against star radiations.

One may want to explain how fungus could be found on such a planet. Perhaps the planet contains large amount of ice on and underneath its surface. Clearly one would have to wander on speculative fields about the nature of the fungi lifeforms found on Dankayo.

It is much possible that the whole Dankayo case is self contradictory.
Or perhaps the problem lies in how we understand "drifted away". If it's clearly the part that poses the problem, and it's not unusual that writers dramatically underestimated the amount of energy necessary to remove an atmosphere from a planet.

We later see how this is denied when the rebel goes to the surface without special equipment, but still, that's what the sentence meant...

The whole idea that the planet was subject to a rain of Chicxulub-like events so much as to make most of the planet's atmosphere drift away, and then almost send people in there at the same time is just beyond ridicule.

A theater shield would certainly solve nothing. How could troops get inside? What would happen once the shield would be down -the book mentions "rubble of our defensive installations"- when your planet is literally bathed in superhot plasma and is quite a new star on its own for quite some time now?
Probably the same effect as standing at the feet of a large dam that is blown up, only a trillion times more powerful.

[l33telboi]

The image is identified as "Caamas_TFUCG", probably a picture from The Force Unleashed series products, a card game I'd wager.

It's from the Force Unleashed SAGA edition RPG sourcebook.

[Mike DiCenso]

As Mike said, nice find, and indeed there are a lot of conflicting information making an thorough analysis impossible.
The operative was able to go back to the surface after the attack, with no mention of survival gear or respiratory equipment, yet the atmosphere is supposed to have drifted off...
And many other like.

Ah yes, but this being the SW universe where you can go into an asteroid's cave with only basic respirator gear on.... ;)

However RoTS shows that working on the surface of Polis Massa requires full out EVA gear, so we're dealing again with contradictions.

But, there are two interpretation mistakes you made, I think.

One, Dankayo isn't described as a "slittle planet", but rather a little-remarked planet, only meaning it wasn't noticed much.
Its actual size is never mentioned, but since there is also no mention of special gravity, lower or higher, then we can assume it is Earth-sized.

Ah, good catch there. Having posted late at night and mostly scanning through the commentary from Mr Oragahn I completely missed that. Oh well. So we're back to not knowing the size of the planet after all.

Two, the atmosphere that was "supposedly" blown off was the planet's, not the base's.
The shape of the sentence, later talking about the "evenly cratered surface" of the planet, means that the drifting atmosphere is also the planet's.

Yes, and topsoil might mean that there was an ecosystem, but it just simply be refering to a relatively arid planet's upper soil layers without any kind of biological matter whatsoever. When talking about Mars, it is not unusal to refer the upper layers of of the Martian surface as "topsoil" as seen in this abstract paper here. So it does not help us at all in determining how large or otherwise small this planet is, or anything else. If we take it mean that the topsoil is the first 20 or so centimeters of the surface soil, then blowing off a layer or so of topsoil is not nearly so impressive as certain Warsies would have us believe. Certainly nothing like the 1 meter deep liquification of it's surface!

We later see how this is denied when the rebel goes to the surface without special equipment, but still, that's what the sentence meant...

Unfortunately a vauge description all around. We know that the only thing to be turned to "molten slag" on Dankayo was the tiny rebel base, not the whole planet itself and that the job required three Star Destroyers. However we still don't know key elements that would help us pin down things more precisely:

* We do not know Dankayo's size, nor how thick the atmosphere is, or any other special characteristics. Gravity would not likely get a mention so long as did not completely render working on the surface impractical.

* We do not know how long the bombarment operation took, and so we cannot derive work from the energy put into it.

So while there is useful information to be had here, and is especially in strong contradiction to the Saxton ICS books, there is little other useful information to more precisely quantify the firepower of an ISD.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

Oh while scanning through the text again, I found this:

My worst fears are realized. The first Imperial barrage knocked out the power supply to the central base computer banks

Note the emphasized words. However long it took, the three ISDs required multiple seperate barrages to do the job. This was not one big quick (or long) bombardment.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

Oh while scanning through the text again, I found this:

My worst fears are realized. The first Imperial barrage knocked out the power supply to the central base computer banks

Note the emphasized words. However long it took, the three ISDs required multiple seperate barrages to do the job. This was not one big quick (or long) bombardment.
-Mike

Eventually, the main generator was located underground. However, notice how it says the base was slagged, yet it was a failure (so they didn't really know what they wanted or what?) yet there were copious amounts of junk, the base was in ruins, not turned into solidified blackened matter, and ZNT-8 could walk around and even a chamber of the main building survived intact.

[Mike DiCenso]

Or, like a lot of things in this story, it is just colorful exaggeration.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

Or, like a lot of things in this story, it is just colorful exaggeration.
-Mike

Well, that's a hell of an exaggeration!

[Mr. Oragahn]

Bumping this for Caamas related scans from "Coruscant and the Core Worlds":



As said much earlier on, some plants and animal survived the bombardment, and the oceans were never removed.
The Jedi Temple is still present, but in ruins.
The last shield generator, at least the section "deep underground", survived the attack. You'd think that they'd be blasted to bits as a priority target rather swiftly with those giga/terat/petatons guns.

Caamas is now a dead world. Devastated shortly after the Clone Wars by an orbital bombardment ordered by the Emperor, Caamas' vegatation and animal life - including most of the Caamasi people- died in the space of a day.

It certainly put this quoted material into perspective.

EDIT: since we're looking for a rationalization of any contradiction in material which was written to obviously shoe horn some figures against evidence, we have to explain the 24 hours timeframe needed to kill all life.
Well, guess what, I've seen people like Dr Strangelove recently claim it sets a low end for the firepower, as if the bombardment took less than 24 hours.
But this is not true. We know that life died slowly. So:

The firepower could not be greater otherwise there would have been less surviving lifeforms than there were, and the conditions would have been so harsh than no survival of any plant or animal seeking food could have happened.
So obviously the application of firepower was limited, certainly nowhere close enough to liquefy the surface of a planet under several hours.

The 24 hours timeframe is an indication of how long it took for species to die. It could be understood as it took 24 hours for the large majority remaining lifeforms to die after the bombardment was done.

[Mike DiCenso]

The Caamas BDZ incident's actual details have been mentioned on RSA's website as well as our own Database. But this is the first time I've seen scans of the actual book's text. The descriptions fit well with the bombardment on Dankayo and Nar Shaddaa, and all are considerably less energetic than the Saxtonian/ICS BDZ. The only thing about the Caamas example is that we do not seem to have a number given for how many star destroyers or other ships were involved in the operation.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

One more note about Dankayo.
There's another thing to be said about the ridiculous claim made about the planet's atmosphere being removed.
We know that the Rebel agent used macrobinoculars to look at the remaining building which the Imperial troops were getting in. Don't you think it would be a bit hard to see anything if the planet had been evenly cratered insofar as to remove the entire atmosphere and atomize the entire topsoil, which as we understand would have certainly raised more particles into the newly super hot and thick-as-a-soup second atmosphere... more like a fog, really?
How could one see anything in front of their nose in such conditions?
Who would be idiot enough to pretend that you could enjoy a clear enough view when walking on the surface of a planet exposed to countless gigaton to teraton shots?

[Mike DiCenso]

That does not stop the more ludicris claims from certain Warsies, like claiming that the Rebel agent who survived int the deep shelter and the Stormtroopers were equipped with super-duper lava-resistant suits and so on, when there is little to nothing to suggest that the surface of Dankayo was turned molten to any degree. Only the the base itself was described as being slagged, and the contradictory nature of the bombardment descriptions has only added to the confusion.

So we might say that the planet was heavily bombarded for hours or even perhaps days, the text really doesn't say, and that maybe some atmosphere was liberated, but not anywhere near enough to prevent the pulverized topsoil from forming huge clouds in the remainder. The clouds then after the bombardment was done settled enough for the agent to see what was going on with the Stormtroopers mop-up ops.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

That does not stop the more ludicris claims from certain Warsies, like claiming that the Rebel agent who survived int the deep shelter and the Stormtroopers were equipped with super-duper lava-resistant suits and so on, when there is little to nothing to suggest that the surface of Dankayo was turned molten to any degree.

I say leaving craters and liquefying the surface seem mutually exclusive.

Only the the base itself was described as being slagged, and the contradictory nature of the bombardment descriptions has only added to the confusion.

Indeed, and it was possible for people to move around the ruins and even enter a building, so obviously the slagging was rather tame.

So we might say that the planet was heavily bombarded for hours or even perhaps days, the text really doesn't say, and that maybe some atmosphere was liberated, but not anywhere near enough to prevent the pulverized topsoil from forming huge clouds in the remainder. The clouds then after the bombardment was done settled enough for the agent to see what was going on with the Stormtroopers mop-up ops.
-Mike

It solely depends on what you understand by Dankayo. As I pointed out, the base is also called Dankayo, and I suggested that the surface of Dankayo could be the base's area. It would just make much more sense on absolutely all terms.

Also, I must say that the latest pro-ICS arguments gathered in that thread are most amusing.
By the words of Leo1/Vympel, Saxton was being conservative when working from the premise of a melt-the-surface BDZ with one ship under one hour. Yes, conservative. Because a hundred to a thousand times more energy would be required in real. Of course, instead of increasing the timeframe or the fleet size, one decreases both and calls that conservative. Go figure.