#i can make several of them in swtor real quick

[snootysith]

Sometimes I think about commissioning portraits of Vowrawn's (close) family members to put into a family tree.

But unfortunately, I cursed the both of us by giving him too many family members.

[depizan]

I was thinking about the post I reblogged about the loss of the Alliance in SWTOR, and some of my other disappointments with how faction is handled in the game, and how faction based MMOs in general tend to get stuck in this kind of "eternal conflict" mode. (Not that factionless MMOs don't get stuck in their own kind of weird "eternal conflict" mode, too. Look at Guild Wars 2 and the growing list of things that have tried to destroy Tyria.)

But there are stories that lend themselves to a faction model, and SWTOR does have - or does begin with - one of those. It's just that with no prospect of whatever conflict divides the factions ever being resolved, you have a weird permanent stalemate situation, kind of. The Sith Empire will never win, because that would make Republic players unhappy. The Galactic Republic will never win, because that would make Empire players unhappy. No actual solution to the conflict can ever be found because then it would be game over. (Also, no real faction shifting because how would you code that?)

Except... maybe none of that is true. There are games that have faction shifting of a kind coded in. Think of all the minor factions in World of Warcraft, some opposed to one another, some just independent. Sure, those faction shifts are mostly achieved with some kind of grind, but it does prove that mutable factions are codeable.

This might even solve the problem of the Smuggler and the Bounty Hunter being tied to specific factions when that leads to some very odd story stuff, particularly outside of each class story. It suggests a way to handle factional grouping and third faction classes without making those factions "better" because all flashpoints are available to them.

Here is Mac's theoretical redesign of SWTOR with a different handling of factions and playing into the story focus that is the game's best quality.

Republic and Empire each get three classes, Smuggler and Bounty Hunter are Underworld (a third, neutral to the others faction). Since the galaxy is supposed to be under a peace treaty - the Treaty of Coruscant - you design the game with flexible faction tagging and lean in hard to the Cold War set up.

You have degrees of faction, just like those minor factions in WoW. I'm going to borrow the middle part of WoW's faction set up for this. Theirs runs Hated - Hostile - Unfriendly - Neutral - Friendly - Honored - Revered - Exalted. We just need the middle chunk, from Hostile to Friendly. Hostile is typical enemy mob: bar is red, it will attack you on sight. Unfriendly is an orange bar, but will not fight you unless you attack. Neutral is a yellow bar, again, will not fight you unless you attack. Friendly is typical allied mob: bar is green, etc.

Imperial players can go to Coruscant, and Republic players to Dromund Kaas, but everything is Unfriendly to them, they can't buy anything (except maybe at the spaceport?), and there are no quests available to them. Underworld players start out one tick up at Neutral and have a few merchants and quests available. Ones that it makes sense would be available to random people. (This is to balance out Underworld space starting at Neutral to Pubs and Imps.) And, obviously, Pub space starts out Friendly to Pubs and Imps space Friendly to Imps. (Though I would be slightly tempted to have Korriban be neutral to the Agent class because, as a non-Force-Sensitive you don't really belong there.)

(As you can see, we're basically using a game mechanic to underline the state of galaxy. We can also set things so that people can't go fuck things up for their fellow players by coding it so that if you just go attack people on the opposite faction capitol, you get blipped to hostile and squashed like a bug.)

Now, we write the game like there is actually a Cold War happening. This means missions for Imps and Pubs that send people into "enemy" space (not, to start with the capital or Force User planets, though) where they have to accomplish their missions without attracting the attention of the other faction. We can take advantage of instancing to allow for diplomatic incidents, like thinking "well, they can't report I'm here if they're dead," without triggering the anti-trolling splat mobs. This is also where we introduce some side quests that give people the opportunity to work on becoming to Neutral with the opposite faction.

Smugglers and Bounty Hunters are off doing Underworld stuff, with some options to take quests that benefit the Republic or the Empire. (Giving them the chance to work on becoming Friendly with one or both factions.)

All class stories get written so that there are several potential outcomes. We're going to use the Agent story as a model here, and basically set it up so that everyone has a story line that ends with them still loyal to the faction they began with, now Underworld/Unallied, or loyal to the opposite faction. This gets paired with the ability for characters to keep doing things to make the other faction like them better and you're setting up defections or the decision to go neutral with mechanics and story.

You use the Cold War setting to ramp up general tension. Have more missions like that one on Republic Hoth where you can work with some Imperials. Or the times where a Sith Warrior can use Republic soldiers to their advantage. So the whole base game has this good overlay of people wanting peace and people wanting to go back to war (on all sides!). This lets you really flesh out the factions, and the good and bad people in them. Have a more positive sort of Gray Morality going on.

As far as Flashpoints go, you re-write The Black Talon/Esseles for proper Cold War subtlety. I think we want to use the intro flashpoints to give people a better idea of the kind of proxy conflict stuff, where you might be fighting what appear to be a third party (like pirates), but you get info (of the non provable kind) that they're working for the Empire/Republic. And maybe come up with some kind of mechanic where party members can get special communications based on faction. Like, the main (everybody) cut scenes for the Esseles talk about it being pirates that are attacking them, but the Jedi/Trooper characters get a quick comm call that the pirates are probably working for the Empire and after a particular person.

For all the shared flashpoints, you tweak them so they are truly shared. One queue for everyone, we still need to work out exactly how we're getting the different factions their special flavor bits, but there's more of that here. And maybe a kind of saboteur mechanic for things like what to do with the missiles on Cademimu, so that they can still be launched at a fleet for a DS option, but it's not in-character obvious that someone did it.

We can still have some Empire and Republic specific flashpoints, which we might allow Underworld characters who are Friendly with the right faction to do. (Or maybe not if we're keeping the ones we have. They've got a bit of a secret mission vibe. Maybe we add a fun treasure hunt flashpoint for the Underworld folks.)

The end of the base game becomes the Cold War going hot because of Revan (and let's say it's not the Republic at large backing him, but a smaller group within the Republic that's okay with his plan). Now we get proper fall out from someone wanting to commit mass murder, we get a good climax, and we can shift from writing eight class stories to three-ish main stories with class and faction related flavor bits. You'd have those fighting for the Republic (ex-Empire characters could get good flavor bits about fighting their old allies and some suspicion from their new ones - a suspicion ex-Underworld characters would also get), for the Empire (again, joined members get some good flavor bits), or who are with the Underworld now.

First expansion is the war, maybe with some of what we used to have in Chapter Three going on. I'm also kind of tempted to weave in some actual foreshadowing for Zakuul here. I'm not keen on Space Voldemort or the time skip, but other parts of those expansions seem worth trying to save. But maybe we have the player characters working with Lana and Theron like in the Revan expansion, but it's about hints that there's something bad coming instead.

Next expansion, Zakuul attacks, things go super to shit, Lana, Theron, some people from Zakuul and the player character(s) form the Alliance. Oooh, wait, lets go ahead and keep the Vitiate/Valkorian thing, and have killing the Emperor be the end of the first expansion (because he wants to eat the galaxy - he's gone mad, but the Empire as a whole won't acknowlege it and are following him off a cliff, the Republic isn't seeing him and the Empire as separate, even evil characters live in the galaxy, etc). Now, Zakuul invades because when you kill Vitiate, Valkorian keels over. Whoops.

(Zakuul is the backup plan. If he can't destroy the galaxy as Vitiate, here comes the uber-Empire! You just managed to off him, but the uber-Empire gets fired at the known galaxy anyway.)

Now we have one story going, with different flavors depending on the characters relation to the three old factions. Kind of like we do in the existing game. And we avoid bumping the player character up to a ridiculous level of authority by making them part of the leadership of the Alliance instead of the leader. Keep them more in line with the base game power level.

Not quite sure where we go from here, but basically you have this kind of flowing faction thing going through the game that meshes well with the story.

I don't know. Mostly I wanted to work out how you could do something more interesting with faction.

[tk-duveraun]

Sunlight 4/6

Setting: SWTOR Rating: T Genre: Adventure & Romance Pairing: Amos/Cassandra Sa’alle Notes: read it on ao3

Cassandra the Mandalorian had called her. The name rattled around in his lungs and fought to be spoken aloud. Amos had some understanding from the exchange. Lord Silence, Sa’alle, Cassandra had loved that Mandalorian’s brother, he died, and Lord Sa’alle the Elder had promise to revive him. He knew well enough already that woman would never give her something she wanted so dearly, even if it were possible, but he understood her desperation at his core. Untrained as he was, he’d been more than ready to jump to Cassandra’s defense if her sister had attacked in the hangar.

His heart hurt to see the naked grief on her face as she leaned over the railing in her ship’s lounge. Her hands shook and her shoulders were bent. Her hair was loose, but not obscuring the pain pulling on her mouth or the tears in her eyes. Unable to keep his distance this time, perhaps never again, Amos stepped up to her and touched her back.

Her entire chest shuddered as she took a deep breath and straightened. She shook her head and turned to him. As if some foreign spirit had entered her body, she started and her expression morphed into confusion, though the pain was still there on the edges. Cassandra pressed against his hand even as she looked down at herself. She closed her her hands, running her fingers over the scars on her palms. She met his eyes.

“I did not expect… This,” Cassandra said with her own mouth and own voice.

“I… You can speak?” Amos asked. It was wrong, wrong. She couldn’t. He knew that. Was she a doppelganger? A vision?

She swallowed and the droid bobbed up over her shoulder. “No. I cannot. Do not think on it,” it said for her. She pushed a lock of hair behind her hair and stared at her hand when it shook.

Amos took her hand when she lowered it and it felt as cold as ice. “You’re hurting. Tell me what to do.”

Cassandra huffed, something close to a chuckle, and tears fell from her eyes. She wiped them away with her free hand and curled her fingers around him. She looked down at her clothing again and shook her head. “What is this?”

“I don’t know,” Amos whispered. He took her other hand and held them together. He wanted to embrace her, hold her until her tears dried and everything was right again. “When I look at you, I just… I want.” He didn’t know what he wanted, probably wouldn’t have words for it if he did.

Again, she looked down at herself, as if she expected to find someone else’s body. She shook her head as she tilted it up, her hair swishing impossibly loud in the still lounge. More still spilled from her eyes as she stared into his. “I can see that, but I do not understand.”

“I just want to make it better. For you.” For us. The words stuck in his mouth like thorns, but she nodded as if she’d heard them. Amos bowed his head until it touched hers. It shouldn’t have, she was so short, but he couldn’t bring himself to question it when she wasn’t pulling away from him. “Tell me what to do.”

“There are no orders for this, Amos. There cannot be.” Cassandra pulled away then, but just enough to lift her hand and cup his cheek. She was speaking without her droid again and the long lines of her Sith robe tried to draw his attention, but couldn’t keep it. “But we may have time for this. Rest now. I will endure, as ever.”

Blackness overwhelmed Amos. He gasped and cracked his head against the cramped wall his bunk was built into. He blinked the stars out of his eyes and clutched the lump. A dream. It had been a dream. No, no, it had been real. But he’d been asleep. He squeezed his eyes shut and fought back the pain in his head. She’d spoken without the droid. At the beginning and the end. It had to have been a dream.

He rolled out of the cramped space and staggered around, trying to dress himself properly. His clothes were wrinkled, but hers had changed in the dream. But he couldn’t believe his own imagination could recreate her so truly, so genuinely. Heart aching, Amos staggered through the ship until he found her, again in the lounge.

Sa’alle, Cassandra, was standing at the railing, but not leaning as she had been in the dream. She was waiting for him and nodded when they made eye contact. She was as small as she should have been and her pain was hidden in only the twitch at the corner of her mouth and the slight tilting of her hands. She waited until he was next to her to have her droid say, “It is my father’s talent to enter dreams as such.”

“Then it was real?”

Cassandra turned to look out the windows, but her hand out for him to take. Her meaning was clear to him, if no one else. It is all real. Always real. Between us.

“What do you see?” Amos asked, though he immediately knew it was the wrong question. He pulled her hand to his chest, stepping up to her to avoid pulling her to him. “What are you looking for?”

She leaned against him, just the slightest press, not even enough to share warmth. “Peace.” Cassandra nodded at the window and then pulled away. With no further signs of her pain, of her heart, she disappeared back to her command.

The feel of her lingered on Amos�� skin like a sunburn just settling in. He cherished the feel of it, tried to keep the smell of her in his mind, tried to remember the sound of her real voice, the one stolen from him in the waking world. Something had passed between them, something had changed, like her clothes had in the dream, though he couldn’t think of-

She’d known it was a dream. Known it was his dream and she’d kept looking at herself expecting to see… what? What did she think he wanted to see her wear? An image of her in a formal gown flashed behind his eyes, but it didn’t feel right. He didn’t desire that as much as… Oh. Oh.

His breath caught in his throat and the tingle on his skin turned into a blazing fire. He couldn’t swallow for the dryness in his mouth. She hadn’t expected to be wearing anything.

And the image would never leave his mind again.

---

After she touched his dream with the Force, Amos was unable to wonder where Cassandra was. He could feel her. It was no longer just that his senses functioned better. He wondered if this is what she felt like to other Force Sensitives. This beacon of power and warmth that called to him through the cold metal walls. It had taken him days of agonizing thought, trying to come up with something he could do for her, something he could offer her, before he’d realized that he did have something. He knocked on her office door. Without waiting for a verbal cue, he stepped in as soon as the door unlocked. He took his time closing it, just letting the feel of her so close wash over him.

She glanced up at him, but her eyes didn’t linger. Cassandra had two datapad in front of her and a news report was playing in the background. It was in Huttese, so Amos could only make out “dead” and then several numbers without context. He sat across from her in the purposefully uncomfortable chair. After so many lessons, he was as used to it as a person could be, so he waited for a pause in the rhythm of her work.

When she shifted between the datapads, her fingers typing into empty air, Amos said, “Cassandra.”

The datapad did not fall from her hand, but there was shock in her tight grip on it and the muscles around her mouth couldn’t decide how she felt about his use of her name. She set the datapad on the glass surface and stared into his very soul. “That name is my father’s doing, as well.” The back of her hand brushed against the glass, sweeping away debris that wasn’t there.

He knew her meaning well enough without words. I do not like my feelings on him, but they are what they are.

“I have proof of Lord Aucht’s treachery.”

She froze then, breathing in hard and loud. Her hand clenched into a fist before withdrawing under the desk. “As do I. It was not for the name or the Dream Walking that I refused to turn him to the slaughter.”

Aucht is your father? He wanted to ask.

She answered him with the same silent gestures. She turned her head, leaving her chin at a sharp, accusatory angle. You did not know? Cassandra let out a quick breath from her nose and tilted her head again. Her hands came back to rest on the desktop. Of course not. It is because… “Even if that woman could,” she huffed a rough breath, the ghost of a derisive laugh, “even if she would have returned Aaron to me, I would not sacrifice so many for him. For any one person.” She looked at her hands, still with her Force to stop the tremor. Nor would you. You trusted I would refuse.

Amos reached out and his palm hovered over her hands, completely hiding them from view. He held it there, agonizingly close, but not touching. I had to give you something. Everything.

She tried to pull her hands away - I need nothing - but Amos closed his hand over hers - Let me. She allowed him to hold her still. There was no doubt in his mind she could resist him, remove him from her ship, her life, her aura, but she remained under his touch.

As if she was just as ensorceled by him as he was by her.

“Let me help,” Amos said. He wouldn’t leave room for confusion, wouldn’t let her purposefully miss his meaning or pretend a vague touch meant something else. “I’m no more your hostage than I ever was a servant.”

“That was the purpose of your lessons.” She couldn’t hold his gaze and looked several times at his hand over hers. “But it is not so simple as staying when offered the chance to leave.”

The words hung in the air, bricks in a wall Amos had felt but not truly realized was there. “Because you kidnapped me.” He didn’t need her to say anything, he knew, he understood. “You are no one’s servant” had meant more than words because it was more than words. He could make excuses for her, but if she were swayed by them, she would not be his sun. He swallowed, though his parched throat protested. “Was the purpose.”

“Yes,” Cassandra said. “That woman is a foe you cannot fight. I cannot afford the resources required to keep you safe.” She stacked her second datapad on top of the first. “I have already contacted the governor of Olkin II. He has produced the purchase documents of one former slave with your bioscan. You are to be released at the earliest opportunity. He believed you would wish to return to Olkin II, but it is at your own discretion.”

“That would be best,” Amos said. He knew he couldn’t convince her to let him stay and there was nowhere else to go. She wouldn’t have left him empty-handed, but he needed a purpose, a task and Morathis could give him that. He didn’t want it. He wanted the one he’d chosen, wanted to stay and bask in Cassandra’s sunlight, even if it was going to burn him. “I-”

“No, Amos. Not now.”

Not now. But later. He could have her later. She would leave him on Olkin II and he would find his way back. He would check on Cate, ensure she was healing properly. He would repay Morathis for everything. He would make himself useful enough that Cassandra couldn’t afford to leave him behind.

Later, he would have her.

[achantersayswhat]

30 Day SWTOR OC Challenge (Ruqi and Tig Edition) Day 12: Religion/Force Orders

Is your OC religious or loyal to a particular Force-based Order? If so, what do they believe? Is their religion centered around the Force? If not, what is it centered around and how do they react to Force-based religions? Have they ever had an experience they consider religious (real or imagined)?

For the Sith: Do they follow the Sith Code? Do they trust the Dark Council and follow them? Do they want to take a seat on the Dark Council?

For the Jedi: Do they believe in the Jedi Code? Do they follow the Jedi Council without question or do they feel they are fallible?

Ruqi

Ruqi is Sith, raised in a Sith family, and was taught the Sith Code from early childhood. She interprets “peace is a lie” as, essentially, “you don’t need to always be looking for a fight but you do need to always be ready for one”, and she accepts the rest of the Code’s precepts pretty much wholeheartedly, with “through victory my chains are broken” in particular being something that has strongly resonated with her all her life.

Ruqi has not always trusted the Dark Council. From the end of the base game to the start of KOTFE, the only ones I can say with assurance that she trusts are Marr, Vowrawn, and Occlus (Vondalian). During and after KOTFE/KOTET…it really depends who’s on the current Council, which I have no idea about (except that Vowrawn’s apparently still around). If she hadn’t been chosen as the Wrath, she might have aspired to one day have a seat on the Council in order to advocate for reform in the Empire.

For a born-and-raised Sith, I would say Ruqi has a fairly neutral opinion on the Jedi, or at least individual Jedi she encounters. Like most of her kind, she grew up with stories of how the Jedi tried to wipe out the people and would probably do so again given the chance, and she has no very good opinion of the Order. That said, she’s also grown up hearing Sith disparage Jedi for embracing the Light Side while she came to embrace it herself, and she’s very aware that she and others like her are not what someone who grew up in the Republic would expect a Sith to be, so how many Jedi out there might be very different from what she’s been taught to expect? All of which is to say that while she has no qualms about trash-talking the Jedi Order or fighting a war against them, when she goes into an encounter with a Jedi she tries to approach them as an individual and not A Jedi And Therefore My Enemy, and hopes they’ll do her the same courtesy. She is often disappointed in this regard because man, the Imperial storylines like their self-righteous jerkwad Jedi NPCs, but this accounts somewhat for Ruqi’s openness to alliances and eventually even friendship with Jedi.

Tig

Tig is a Jedi, raised from very early childhood in the Order. I’ve never nailed down exactly what the deal with her birth parents was, but I imagine she was either orphaned very early due to the war, or her parents weren’t able to provide for her and were thus happy to send her to to be raised by the Jedi.

As a Padawan, Tig did her best to take the Jedi Code to heart, only to have it become apparent that she just wasn’t cut out to fully embrace precepts like “there is no emotion” and “there is no passion”. As she got older, and as she started to flourish under Orgus Din’s training, she started to see the Code as more like guidelines than actual rules, as an ideal to strive toward rather than a mandate to constantly measure yourself against.

Tig starts out with an enormous amount of respect for the Jedi Council, and retains that respect for some of them, mainly Satele, Bela Kiwiks, and eventually Chrisera. Others, such as Jaric Kaedan, she eventually comes to see as short-sighted and hypocritical (her pivotal “oh, okay, I get it now, you’re an asshole” moment with Kaedan being when he draws his lightsaber on Scourge in the Council Chamber on Tython). In a larger sense, she gradually comes to see the Council as being out of touch and misguided in several regards, although she cuts them some slack for having an enormous burden on their shoulders and believes Chrisera’s appointment to the Council is the best thing to happen to it in years and hopefully a sign of good things to come (…more on that if I ever do this challenge with Chrisera and/or get around to hashing out what happens with her and the Council after the base game).

So, between gradual disillusionment with the Council, her doing a number of things that would most likely not be Council-approved like oh say falling in love with a Sith, and the events of KOTFE/KOTET and her new status as of the end of KOTET, Tig has drifted pretty far from the young, very-much-devoted-to-the-Order Jedi she once was. That said, she still considers herself a Jedi. I’m not sure that anything would ever make her stop considering herself a Jedi. This is at least in part–possibly a very large part–my Catholic upbringing showing, which I can go into detail about if anyone has a burning desire to hear me ramble about religion but I suspect no one really does. Suffice to say, Tig will continue to consider herself a Jedi barring some unforeseen event forcing her to make a definitive break with the Order.

Tig is a big believer in wanting to see the best in everyone and believing everyone has the capacity to do good, and that carries over into her interactions with the Sith. She doesn’t think all Sith or all adherents of the Dark Side are all inherently evil or anything like that, and when she encounters Sith and says things like “let’s talk and see if we can resolve this peacefully”, it’s not just lip service. Thus, with Sith like Scourge and eventually Lana and Ruqi and Vondalian, she’s always willing to at least hear them out, if sometimes wary of being too quick to trust them.