Hi All

And more pics can be seen over in my starwars dio section

Background Story

Tatooine is an isolated garrison planet. Pretty much seen by imperials as a punishment posting. There are numerous posting like this in the SW universe. The local Imperial Commandant has abandoned ambition & a military career for a more lucrative criminal life. The sector Moff is uninterested in his activities as long as he receives his tithe.
The Tatooine Commandant has specialized in taking on the "lost causes" & "head cases" of the local sector Imperial command. Any trooper, specialist or command imperials who are too hard to handle are sent to the Tatooine garrison so as not to interfere with other, more efficient militant posts.

The Tatooine Commandant takes on the washouts, executes the unreliable, promotes & transfers out any quality staff & keeps the dregs. This allows him to maintain a hardened crew that can compete with the local crime lords and keep the money & illicit goods rolling in. He ensures that all communication back to sector command has just the right balance of weary compliance, hopelessness & lack of any substance that would interest anyone higher up in the command chain.
He is on his way to becoming a rival to Jabba himself.

Then all hell breaks loose threatening to expose his quiet vicious happy little world.
A huge star destroyer bigger than any he had ever seen is in orbit. Lord Vader himself, a figure he thought was mostly a political myth, has his unrelenting gaze focused on Tatooine. The Commandant has very little time & even less room to maneuver, to extract himself from the situation. Vader doesn't care about anything but a life pod that has landed somewhere around the Northern & Western Dune Seas. It's a massive area. In addition Vader wants to keep this operation quiet from the local population. Any blowback from this needs to be directed at a non imperial source, say a local crime lord & any witnesses silenced. The Commandant thinks blaming the local vermin such as the Jawas or the Sandpeople would be a better idea, easy to stage & believable . The Moff has reinforced Vader's orders with threats of disintegration if Vader is not made happy very quickly so they can all return to their happy little lives. He tells the Commandant that Vader is barely in control & the very name of Tatooine seems to anger him further.

The Commandant turns out every Trooper & Officer he has to scour the place. But it is a huge area & the chances of finding anything is remote. To make matters worse Vader has dispatched a significant number of specialist troopers, in groups or individually (the loose custom troopers such the Jedi Hunter, etc), to hunt for the prize. The Commandant instructions to his officers are simple & clear, find the pod first, leave no witnesses to imperial activity, use the Sandpeople as a cover for any atrocities & any acts will be forgiven if the pod is found. If they fail every personnel file, with detailed lists of all individual crimes, will be sent to the Imperial Guard for processing. The stakes are high.
As the day progresses a breakthrough. A patrol has found the pod but frustratingly it's empty. Two sets of droid tracks are found, a bipedal & possibly an astromech, leading away from the pod (the LOOK SIR DROID'S dio). Vader's orders did not indicate that they would be looking for a droid! Vader punctuates the new orders to find these droid's with the execution of the imperial gun crew that did not fire upon the pod in the first place. The message is clear, success or death.

The result is immeasurable scenes of chaos on Tatooine. While the Imperials are distracted a lot of the population are taking advantage, sorting out old grudges or trying to make a few credits. A spice dealer trying to diversify into blaster smuggling gets caught in an imperial roadblock, panics & tries to run, cutting down a trooper & is shot to death by the other troopers manning the position. (The MEDIC Dio).
A patrol backed by an AT ST finds a 3PO unit working for a rival gang leader on his moisture farm. The patrol destroys the farm & the droid leaving planted evidence of Sandpeople activity. (the ATST dio).

A patrol headed by a particularly ruthless officer and made up of local & off world troopers including an intelligence specialist, manages to connect the pod droid tracks to a Jawa Sandcrawler. The Sandcrawler is found, its Jawa crew are slaughtered & all the droid's removed/destroyed. They make contact with the Commandant. He hopes that the droid's they have found are the ones they need. The Commandant instructs the patrol to to make it look like a Sandpeople strike. The Officer tells the Commandant that the Sandcrawler had made at least three stops to sell junk before the patrol found it as the intelligence clone gleaned from the crawler logs. The Commandant instructs the patrol to backtrack & hunt down any droids or droid parts that may have been sold off.
The first homestead farmer states that he only bought some Landspeeder & Vaporator parts from the Jawas. After handing over the parts he is immediately executed. His shocked farmhand, watching from inside the homestead, tries to get help from the nearest farm by messaging them. Owen Lars receives a garbled message that the imperials are murdering people & his neighbor was just shot. The message ends abruptly. Leaning over the body of the farmhand the Officer is assured by the trooper commander that the message was jammed. The patrol again disguises the crime as an act of the Sandpeople & moves on to the destination of the message & the next Jawa stop, Owen Lars' moisture farm.

The patrol spreads out as it enters the next farmstead. The trooper acting as point radios the patrol officer that the farm is empty & it is safe to approach. Owen watches in horror as the patrol gathers near the entrance to the homestead just as Beru is returning from looking for Luke. Beru waves to the patrol nervously & Owen watches as the scout raises his blaster. As their attention is centered on Beru the whole patrol comes under projectile fire, killing the scout & winging the officer. The patrol returns fire & in a withering blaze of blasterfire Owen is cut down. Beru is killed in the crossfire.
The officer is livid with the trooper commander. He was almost killed because of the troopers incompetence. How could the scout have missed the woman approaching them? As the argument rages the other troopers continue on with thier work. The firetrooper destroys any evidence of imperial activity. A trooper is laying down some Sandpeople debris as he has done all day. The offworld imperial intelligence trooper is examing all droids & droid parts for evidence of recent star travel.

After torching the homestead the patrol moves onto their last destination hoping to find the droid's & get out of the blasted Sun's. The Commandant is getting very little back from any of the patrols, numerous droids & parts but nothing to suggest a connection to the pod & Vader's prize. Time is running out.

RECIPE

Figures & Structure - All figures are from Hasbro some have been heavily modified and some slightly using either Hasbro parts or parts from the bits box.

Base - The base is an old picture frame, and has been built up using sand, plaster of paris. The footprints were done using other Trooper feet All figures and Dome are painted using Vallejo and GW paints and the base has been painted using Vallejo paints.

Ron