#ch: nikihlus

[tiredassmage]

No more designation - not even a name. You're a ghost with enough secrets to blackmail the galaxy.

[tiredassmage]

hoth-imperial_agent.exe

[tiredassmage]

"I can do much worse to you. Consider this a mercy."

One blaster shot. Spilled chemicals. An explosion No evidence of murder. Make him pay, if you like.

[tiredassmage]

" It's been a while since I've dealt with the underworld. I'm out of practice. "

[tiredassmage]

I always find it so FASCINATING how you play through the same story (IA of course) with multiple characters and see how each new dynamic plays out, because I just don’t work that way xD I put one lil guy into one situation and then nobody else gets to be there, it’s been claimed. So it’s very neat to see a more varied approach and watch each new take and how they add to your relationship with the story!

THAMK you!!!! I also find it really fascinating, which I guess is my fuel for doing it. xD It's admittedly one of the several things I have done in playing SWTOR that I never would have guessed I'd do when I started playing - and, to be fair, there are certain stories that I'm sorta that way about! And perhaps if everyone will indulge me, I'm gonna take this as an excuse to ramble about what I enjoy both about this particular class, and SWTOR as a whole, really.

but first I'll take an excuse to post my main 3 (so far) agent boys :3

from left to right then: tyr, alucren, and nikihlus!

Part of the agent storyline being so attractive to me personally is I'm sure, for better or worse, that I'm admittedly a sucker for a spy action flick, and since it's kind of my exact cup of tea, there feels to be a level of variance in how it plays out and how a character can interpret their experiences within it that's delightful for me to dive into and tear apart like a dog with new stuffed toy, lol.

I've played all eight class stories I think at least twice now, and several of them, clearly, far more than that, so I think one of the overall continuously endearing things about the game is that any of those eight can be someone's Thing. Everyone's got their favorites and I really, truly, after several spins through them all, don't think there's really a single bad class story. Finding the right character to pick apart what really makes a story tick for you, personally, I think is where... some of the challenge can occur.

I, for example, enjoy, conceptually, Consular, Inquisitor, and Trooper, but the first two of those I outright don't have a canon character "filling" that role, and Trooper I only have halfsies because my favorite run of that is actually Tyr's AU where I dropped him in the Trooper story for kicks and it changed my entire outlook on what I'd previously considered one of the more lacking class stories to the point where I think I might owe Aric Jorgan a personal apology letter and I'd even consider advocating for the story now. All of these stories I still think are good, fun, and interesting, but I haven't found a character whom I enjoy seeing in the role they play, if that makes sense.

What I at least enjoy about any of the characters I keep bringing back up here that I've played is that their viewpoints and experiences are pretty distinct to me. Even within my agents - and maybe especially with them, they all come at the role of Cipher with very different backgrounds and perspectives. Pretty much all three of them I've learned a lot more about since creating them, as you do when characters change over the course of a story and you point them at things that challenge their thinking, but their... fundamental, pre-Intelligence backgrounds greatly inform how they handle the rest of... everything. And only one of them is my canonical Cipher Nine; that honor remains with Tyr; Alucren's designation is Cipher Eleven, and Nikihlus's is Cipher Seven, respectively, but they've also... both kinda run away from me and since I have such a feel for who they are, it's also incredibly interesting to tackle the story as if they do belong there, in that particular role - because it tells me something about them that's not just applicable there.

And also, it's just... really fun for me to compare them like yardsticks against each other, lol. And it's a fun little exercise in appreciating the why of how different their playthroughs and experiences are. The short of them is that Tyr's the most idealistic of the three, the agent of change - a double agent for the SIS because he believes in something bigger and greater and ideals are enough to motivate him. Alucren's a loyalist - to the Empire, and to the Sith beyond that. Born and raised Imperial just like Tyr, but where Tyr came from some of the cracks in that society as an orphan (according to official records, at least) raised in a not-quite-family resulting from a marital alignment between a Sith and a naval officer, Alucren is relatively silver spoon-born - from a fairly prominent and historically loyal family. Those two have very different ideas of what Imperial Intelligence is, even, to great effect on how they respond to the pressures of the story and what's done to them in the titular role. Nikihlus is an outsider; in much the way that Kaliyo is using Intelligence as the next opportunity, so too, to an extent, is Nikihlus. He's there not exactly of his own will - it was cooperate or die, so his loyalty to Intelligence is only as far as they'll pay him, and that the Empire remains a more sound employer. Sith politics and even the larger conflict of Republic vs. Empire interest him no further than how to stay alive as someone who is painfully aware (sometimes, or perhaps even often, to a degree of paranoia) that neither side is interested in having a place for an "ex-"underworld assassin and enforcer like himself. His main motivator, at the end of the day, is always to stay alive.

Sometimes the three of them have overlap in their choices made along the story. Sometimes they're polar opposites. Sometimes, they do the same things for vastly different reasons. And that is almost more fun than seeing the outcomes themselves. At the very least, it's definitely at least equally as fun as seeing the outcomes!

But there are also those stories that I've done a certain way and I don't think, at the moment, at least, I'll do them as well again. Savosta and Rhyst, for example, are sort of... the definitive version of my Wrath and Jedi Knight. The Sith Warrior is one of my other favorite stories on some of that variance aspect that's so appealing in Imperial Agent for me, but I just... haven't done it like I did it with Savosta before or since because I'm so satisfied with how he came together. And it's a similar thing with Rhyst and Jedi Knight, although Knight is also... one of the ones that took me the longest to figure out the kind of character I wanted in that role - the kind of character that made me feel really engaged with the story.

And Rhyst is probably also the character I've changed the most about, over the course of his existence - from physical appearance to actually getting a grasp on his motivations and what's stuck with him about his experiences.

And especially since I've worked a lot mentally on how those two develop a relationship with each other, I feel like I'd be missing something that's become a huge part of how I enjoy the full picture between the Knight & Warrior without having a pair of them.

Anyway... Part of this response is maybe for a takeaway of this game is so fucking good when it gets you, and I think part of it's 'goodness,' if you will is how individual the different stories can become when you lean into the 'roleplay' part of it for the characters made, at least in my experience, and... yeah, I'll take the platform to be excited about the many different experiences of all of these characters I have, lol! Part of what I've loved so dearly about this game as a community around it and enjoying the characters I've created for it is how passionate people are with their characters; I think I've used... something of the phrase for trying to discuss Tyr's experiences that... something something, all of that is true, for him, in his eyes, how he sees the world [for whichever character you'd like to apply this to]. His views and actions are justifiable, if you will, from his perspective, just as Alucren's are from his, even though those two I created to be nearly complete opposites to see paths of the Agent campaign I never would just replaying Tyr over and over (though I still do that, clearly), lol.

And... I also meant to touch on and didn't earlier, but... I also distinctly recall saying when I was closer to starting to play this game that I wasn't sure I'd ever quite get why to play the same character in different stories, and now I've got a version of Tyr for each of the tech class stories that were all really fun to explore, and some of them are even... pretty distinct 'versions' of him from the others, if you will. Which does always make me think about that post that goes something about... not "he wouldn't fucking say that" but... what would it take for this character to act or feel this certain way? What aspects of environment and circumstance and who they met, etc etc, form who they are, what their opinions are? What would it take for a Jedi Knight to "fall" to the Sith I think is a bit of a fairly obvious one in Star Wars media, and I, admittedly, sort of avoided that one for a while because I wasn't sure I'd get anything out of the pondering that I'd enjoy with Rhyst, but I've played with it a bit here and there since and it's actually revealed some very interesting insights - things like some of his insecurities that better inform me about the kind of presentations he makes as a Jedi, and better inform his later-in-life complicated feelings with the Order and the Republic in general, even better insight into what he'd like to do maybe after he hangs up his lightsaber, or what kind of life he might've led if he hadn't grown up with the Jedi Order.

I dunno. Honestly, maybe at the end of the day, I love getting this and getting to share this because creating fictional little characters is just fucking cool and fascinating by itself and it's an experience or hobby even, if you will, that's been so much fun for me throughout life that I really hope everyone gets to experience something that engages them this much. They're a really cool vehicle for exploration - and that can mean as much or as little as you want it to. And that's so fucking cool that they can do that.

Anyway pt 2, lol, I love, again as I said, comparing my agents like yardsticks, love yapping about how their differences play out in the story, I am almost always down to talk about Imperial Agents. And Rhyst, stars I need to talk about him more. Which I always say and then I don't without prompting, but genuinely they have almost a whole story together in my head and I'm just not a longfic person so it'll probably never come out that way, but I think about it. Trust that I think about it, lol. And honestly, it's really cool what I learn about them when I talk about them and talk with others. Rhyst is a good example for that; a lot of what I've learned and developed with him and Knight in particular is from yapping with friends and mutuals and hearing some of what others have done; the beauty of having a buddy is that they'll ask about or talk about aspects of the story or characters you might never have considered on your own. Some of my favorite little character facts or insights have honestly come from discussion with friends.

OCs are so fucking cool. Thanks for coming to my TED talk about it, I guess? xD

[tiredassmage]

It's your responsibility now: everything we built, everything we hid from you. You're the only one like us left.

[tiredassmage]

betting on a sunrise

I insist that there was a missed opportunity for Nik to drain that Cassandra Sunrise right in front of Hunter and be almost bored about it, so my brain insisted that we may as well write something to fix it. So, here we are: we'll let Nik steal the spotlight of being Nine for just a moment so that I can have this as a little amusement.

Also posted to ao3(x). And, ofc, Imperial Agent spoilers for the chapter 2 prelude, The Master Strategem.

rating: teen (some swearing); characters: hunter, the imperial agent, shoutout to our best support vector hyllus

Neon lights so vibrant and eclectic they’d be burned into the back of your eyelids for another three days, even in your sleep. At least Nar Shadaa never changed - a reliable bastion of backstabbing, gambling, backstabbing, cartels and street gangs.

And backstabbing, of course.

Still enough to make Nikihlus’s lip curl back slightly over his teeth. And still, he’d rather his chances here than the cloying egos of Dromund Kaas. Or that killer humidity, for another.

“Many auras here oscillate… wildly, agent.” Vector Hyllus cocks their head with the faintest trace of a frown at the corner of their lips. A blue twi’lek woman in a fit of laughter stumbles into their shoulder on her way out with her companion without so much as a glance back. “It is… interesting to sort through.”

“Been to many a cantina, Vector?”

“The nest is not without its celebrations, if that is what you are inquiring, agent.”

The zabrak nearly rolled his eyes, though settled for inclining his head towards the bar. “You’ll have to forgive me if I pass on participating, given the opportunity.”

“Each to their own taste,” they replied lightly. Their eyes drifted across the room as the pair picked their way around a few tables, while the agent was clearly concerned with making for the bar. “We believe it best we do not imbibe at this time. We shall watch your back.”

Nikihlus cast a glance at them over his shoulder. “Suit yourself.” He gestured towards the wall at the end of the bar. “Try to keep yourself out of trouble.”

“Noted.” Certainly they both knew that was why Kaliyo had not accompanied them to this particular rendezvous.

It was curious enough Imperial Intelligence would have one alien Cipher, he could’ve argued. Not that they’d make half so odd a pair here on the Hutt moon, and Hyllus was not exactly much less of a curiosity. Nik could’ve likely enjoyed the higher threat of something starting a brawl with the Rattataki at his side, but rules were rules with their Imperial masters.

For now, at least. And he wasn’t half as much as interested in trying to explain Djannis’s plan to Keeper’s stiff lips. He was, perhaps, on enough of the woman’s bad side as it was.

Nikihlus sighed as he finally rested his arms against the bar. Something strong ought to take the edge off of the work. At the very least, it was far preferable to wasting time wondering if Keeper thought this was some amusing jest for what had transpired on the Dominator. And far more preferable than trying to puzzle out that particular master’s ideas of fate. It was more than enough to make a man miss working for the Hutts.

“Well, hello there.”

Nik closed his eyes and buried a groan somewhere beneath his stomach before he let his eyes slide to his right and settle on the blonde perched against the bar two seats down already wearing a smile.

At least make it good.

The man opened an arm to gesture to a glass beside him. “I suppose she didn’t want to finish her drink. Perhaps I can interest you in what’s left of a Cassandra Sunrise?”

Nik weighed flashing a scowl against the proffered nearly-full glass. And Hyllus’s absence from his side to comment on accepting drinks on the job - from strangers in cantinas, no less.

“Perhaps,” Nik allowed a drawl over the word and shifted to lean against one arm on the bartop - a better mirror of his would-be company. “What’ll it cost me?”

The blonde’s smile grew, and rather pleased, too, with a chuckle to match. “Ah, are all Imperial Ciphers so mistrusting?”

Nik stiffened, breath stilling in place as golden eyes narrowed slightly.

Enough to make the blonde laugh again. He pushed off the bar to close the distance between them and slid the glass closer. “Oh, I’m sorry. Pretty presumptuous of me. Though… I suppose I could just have to keep looking for that Cipher somewhere else… Imperials wouldn’t have such a good sense of direction down here with little old us, would they?”

Nik blew a sharp exhale out of his nostrils. Cocky. He pressed a smile to his lips as his company turned like he was about to leave and took up the glass. “It’d certainly be interesting, wouldn’t it?”

“Very,” the blonde agreed. He perched back against the bar. “Couldn’t imagine it’d have anything to do with that Cipher wanting to change sides.”

Nik hummed as he raised the glass to his lips. Not for the faint of heart. “Careful,” he mused, “I might start believing you got this for me instead of your lady friend.”

That grin glittered like a Hutt statue. “Maybe I did. Maybe I didn’t. You certainly gave me enough time. Made the check at the spaceport.”

The kind of burn that might fry the horns off a krayt dragon, that Sunrise. Nik swallowed and held out the glass to inspect the remaining contents. “Reckon your Imperial ‘friend’ would like that, would you..?” He glanced at the blonde over the rim of the glass.

“Codename Hunter, Strategic Information Service.”

Nik flashed a wry smile. “Trying to kill me already, hm?”

Hunter shrugged. “That’s what we’re going to find out, if you still plan on playing along.” For a mercy, that obnoxious little dangle on his lips seemed to be quieted as he eyed Nik, glass to lips again. “Nothing’s free-”

“Except the drink?”

Hunter’s smile dropped, leaving behind only dark eyes that Nik met silently over the glass. “Job first, then we’ll see if you’re worth anything. No sob stories, no complaints, no questions. Then I’ll consider introducing you.”

With all pleasantries discarded, Nik merely inclined his head slightly. “Better keep talking, then.” The Sunrise would only last so long, after all. Without breaking eye contact, he tipped the glass just enough to offer a steady burn.

“There’s a new factory in town, Cipher - a courtesy of a little deal between Nem’ro the Hutt and your dear Empire. It’s supposed to manufacture hunters, crawlers, Jedi-killers… All the best - and nasty - stuff. You’re going to do something about it.”

Nik’s brow raised briefly as he swallowed. Of course I will. Almost empty. “I’ve been known to deal with a few Hutts,” he said. “Here I was thinking it’d almost been too long.”

“Tempting as that may be, save your thoughts of reunions.” Nik rolled his eyes and took up the glass again. “You’ll need your Cipher clearance. Security’s tight, but automated. Get inside. Get me reconnaissance. We talk again when I know what you’re dealing with, and we make this little problem disappear. Deal?”

Nik set down the glass heavily on the bartop and rolled his neck. “Thought you already knew that much, no? Hunters, killers…?”

Nothing shifted in those dark eyes. “Like you said. Try to make it worth my credits.”

“What? Your bosses not like cantina tabs on your write-offs?”

“You deal, or you don’t.” Hunter turned to leave. “We’ll know either way, Cipher. But the next round’s on you. I know how to reach you, so you’ll know where to go. Within an hour, or I might have to come looking for my credits, and your work could get very complicated.”

Nik’s narrowed eyes followed his back as he left. Vector rejoined him as the blonde turned a corner out of the cantina and beyond view. “Agent?” He could hear the mild frown on the Joiner’s face without looking for it.

“So goes our man,” Nik gestured towards the doorway lightly.

“And? We… hope you minded yourself."

Nik hummed thoughtfully. “We’ll see, I suppose. Won’t we?” He blinked and glanced back towards the bar before he dug in his pocket and tossed a few credits out by the empty glass. To cover the tab or, perhaps, to make a bet. “We shall see, my friend. Come then. I’ve a feeling Kaliyo will be jealous for not bringing her along, so we may as well make it a damn good story.”

[tiredassmage]

sure, i'll use bounty hunter being one of the classes up for weeklies in swtor as an excuse to post len's growing list of nicknames for those he's grown fond of (it has developed into a sign of his affection if the name sticks, though he'd never admit this)

(these are all for other ocs, which does imply the need for me to nickname his crew as well. i'll have to workshop that.)

so. without further ado! callout post for len having a heart, i mean, len's silly little nicknames that he teases people (he likes) with:

Pup (for Shrike)

Runt (for Leo)

Spooks (for Yiress)

Sparkles (for Alucren)

Spikes (too apparent) Stripes (for Nikihlus)

... to be continued/I already feel like I'm missing some. The hell's with the 's' theme, too, old man kandflkansdfl;ksf

honorable mentions to blorbos belonging to @fromdeadstars

[tiredassmage]

[tiredassmage]

I c o n o c l a s m

[tiredassmage]

" I get to lie, cheat, and murder - legally, and for profit. "

-- imperial agent & dromund kaas

[tiredassmage]

accessing... designation: cipher seven.

known aliases. nikihlus darkmount. snakebite.

asset enlisted into operations on authority: KEEPER. former enforcer and assassin selling out services to a variety of underworld gangs and suspected cartel connections. subject designated CIPHER SEVEN. minders advise close monitoring of subject's mission parameters and outcomes. subject granted intelligence authorizations after detainment by imperial forces. order of execution dismissed by authority: KEEPER. subject possesses both strong will and physical stamina - a biological advantage. potential underworld contacts pose an avenue of favor - or extra liability. recommend additional security protocols. subject may be resistant to [dATa cORrU-]

access failed. system offline. attempting secure reboot...

[tiredassmage]

i'm back in the fucking building. (because i missed him).

[tiredassmage]

being coherent is hard but i love digging up old ocs i loved as concepts and getting to actually flesh them out by sitting with them longer and redoing some steps with them. going from the conceptual building blocks and adding more to why are you like this / what made you this way has really made several side blorbos dearly beloved.

alucren arguably got a lot of this, and len's had it but it hasn't escaped discord dms yet but he's my ridiculous blockhead fr <3. and now my latest subject is nikihlus and i'm just. i'm just so in love with him and it's epic to finally do things with him because he absolutely deserves it and he's such an interesting lens for me to take to the agent story. bc yes i haven't escaped being the agent mutual on your dash. it's chronic /lh.

anyway/again being coherent about it is still kind of hard bc i'm a little bit behind school-wise and rn i'm eepy, but just. guy who was cool and aloof and self-interested & now i have started dissecting his layers and his reasons and knowing all of that makes playing so, so much more fun and dynamic. he's playing for survival always + has been for years + the resentment about it i think is only getting stronger. he Looks like he's always in control and i still think he's probably still one of the most assured about his own place and goals of my little stack of agents, but he's also worse than all of them about always looking for exit strategies. he's constantly vigilant for back doors. he manages to maintain alliances and at least a surface-level workable trust kind of deal, but also in the end he trusts no one or damn well next to it. he's an incarnation of leave before they can get to you first and once again he's not meant to be another canon nine for me, but examining him under that lens is going to (and already has) taught me so, so much about him and it's just so SO cool i fucking love ocs.

there's no real part of him that wants to get feelings and 'shouldn't be like this' and ideals and morals and all that involved, but existence isn't really going to let him keep that in the 'choice' category, i think.

[tiredassmage]

know the enemy. be the enemy. destroy the enemy.

imperial agent + balmorra

[tiredassmage]

I finally have my personal trifecta of agents: a defector, a loyalist, and... this. And oh stars, do I have a lot of feelings about this old man.

For one, here's the 'Nine takes the Codex and disappears' version of the final conversation with the Minister/ending to the agent storyline for those interested.

For two, I.... I need to have emotions.

In short. Or as a first premise. This is the most blatant and forward I've ever seen this man speak about plans to my agents. And that's what makes me so damn emotional about it.

So. Each of my three main agents have had their own very unique relationship with this man. Tyr adores him and considers him a mentor (and this conversation makes me feel I really owe this old man an apology for making that boy his son, but that's another post), Alucren wasn't ready to accept his advice or his apology at the time it was offered and has an indifferent to standoffish relationship with the man, and Nik is... somewhere in the middle.

Nik's in Intelligence because the Minister recruited him after he was arrested on Imperial charges. It was employment with Imperial Intelligence or death, and Nik's always being alive. Nik held no loyalty nor love for the Empire and not particularly Intelligence - not more than was required to fulfill his position. And he's always been on the lookout for how to get himself out of a still all-but-inevitable tangled end with the Empire.

So here's the Minister, who speaks with Tyr about ideals not always being a feasible life-sustaining motivator in the environment of the Empire, and here he is giving as about a blatant apology about everything that's transpired since Nine stepped foot on Hutta as he gets. Because Imperial Intelligence is gone. The Black Codex was the last Hail Mary to maybe set a few things right. And Nik asks because he... didn't know, genuinely, what the old man was planning. Only that, if he had to follow anyone's orders in this last gasp, he didn't like his chances with the Sith (his 'loyalty' to Jadus was, again, one of convenience, of not dying at the time it was first offered), and Nik certainly wasn't ever going to trust the SIS after Ardun Kothe's involvement. Nik's not interested in the war, exactly.

He's been trying to take care of just himself. And now the man that got him involved in this whole mess, that he snapped at for getting him involved and used, is offering him everything he could've wanted, but... wasn't ever going to count on, lest he be disappointed: freedom. To just... walk away. Start over. Try again. No more masters.

And it's so!!!!! I'm having feelings in a bunch of different directions; this is a post kind of all over the place because of it. trying to have feelings about ocs and this damned old man in the same breath but! It's so fascinating to see this... directness out of him.

Tyr I think understood that this was maybe what the old man would've wanted for him, but also respected him as the mentor that taught him that ideals were valuable enough to fight for, so Tyr smiles and tells him it's okay he doesn't have security even when he risked it all himself by choosing to play the double agent game longer. Because it was important enough to him to keep risking it.

Alucren was too stubborn to accept an attempt at apology, and wasn't ready for the question of who else might you have liked to be, if you hadn't been shaped into who you are now? Alucren's prideful, and determined to maintain he gets himself into things, that he made his own choices, and mistrusts the man's intentions too much to let him explain, lest he get another chance to lie.

And Nik maybe didn't... trust him all the way, at the start. But he was one of the better employers Nik's played this game for in his life. And in an effort to protect himself, he was of course going to question the man's motivations.

And it's just... it's truly fascinating to see different sides to these characters in each of the ways this whole story has unfolded. Truly love this old man and deeply fascinated by his own feelings about the story and position he's in. The choices he made.

There should maybe be a more graceful ending here but I don't got it right now. If anybody needs me, I'll be chewing on this for at least the next 48 hours. And maybe considering crying about it again. <3